Fact or Falsehood?

1. Fact or Falsehood? • Memory storage is never automatic; it always takes effort. • False • The day after you are introduced to a number of new students, you will more easily recall the names of those you met first. • True • Memory aids (e.g., those that use imagery and devices for organization) are no more useful than simple rehearsal if information. • False • Only a few people have any type of photographic memory. • False • Although our capacity for storing information is large, we are still limited in the number of permanent memories we can form. • False

2. We store information in memory as libraries store their books, that is, in discrete, precise locations. • False • When people learn something while intoxicated, they recall it best when they are again intoxicated. • True • The hour before sleep is a good time to commit information to memory. • True • Repeatedly imagining a nonexistent even can lead us to believe it actually happened. • True • Children typically will repress any memory of having seen one of their parents being murdered. • False

3. Name the 7 Dwarfs • Grouchy, Gabby, Fearful, Sleepy, Smiley, Jumpy, Hopeful, Shy, Droopy, Dopey, Sniffy, Wishful, Puffy, Dumpy, Sneezy, Lazy, Pop, Grumpy, Bashful, Cheerful, Teach, Shorty, Nifty, Happy, Doc, Wheezy, Stubby • Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy, Happy, Doc, Bashful

4. How many can you remember?

5. Make up a story. How many can you remember this time?

6. The woman who could not forget The man who could not remember

7. MEMORY AND THINKING Chapter 7

8. MEMORY AND HOW IT WORKS • Memory: Learning that has persisted over time • To remember an event, we must successfully • Encode – get information into our brain • Storage – retain information • Retrieval – getting information back out

9. HOW WE ENCODE • Parallel processing – doing many things at once • We automatically process information about space, time, frequency and well-learned information • Effortful processing – encoding that requires attention and conscious effort • Can be boosted through rehearsal – conscious repetition • Overlearning increases retention

10. HOW WE ENCODE -CONT- • Spacing effect – we retain information better when our rehearsal is distributed over time • Spaced study and self-assessment beat cramming • Serial position effect – tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list • Primacy effect – best recall for first items • Recency effect – best recall for last items

11. Washington 19 J. Adams 15 Jefferson 13 Madison 4 Monroe 2 J. Q. Adams 6 Jackson 5 Van Buren 1 Harrison 3 Tyler 2 Polk 5 PRESIDENTS Taylor 3 Fillmore 1 Pierce 0 Buchanan 1 Lincoln 19 A. Johnson 3 Grant 2 Hayes 1 Garfield 2 Arthur 0 Cleveland 3 Harrison 0 Cleveland McKinley 1 T. Roosevelt 11 Taft 6 Wilson 4 Harding 1 Coolidge 1 Hoover 8 F.D. Roosevelt 13 Truman 8 Eisenhower 6 Kennedy 18 Johnson 3 Nixon 8 Ford 9 Carter 8 Reagan 9 G. H.W. Bush 17 Clinton 17 G.W. Bush 18 Obama 19

12. SERIAL POSITION EFFECT 90 Percentage of words recalled 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Position of word in list

13. WHAT WE ENCODE • Visual encoding – encoding of images • Mnemonics – memory aids that use vivid imagery and organizational devices • Acoustic encoding – encoding of sounds • Semantic encoding – encoding of meaning, including meaning of words

14. Fed Ex Mnemonic Commercial

16. EXAMPLE A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is a better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill but is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room.

17. LEVELS OF PROCESSING

18. Memorize as many digits as you can (in order) • 216964615199725246801296160894

19. chunking - organizing items into familiar, manageable units

20. Memory Olympics

21. SHORT TERM VS. LONG TERM MEMORY • Short-Term Memory • Limited, unless actively processed • Capacity of 7 digits +/- 2 • Better for random numbers than random letters • Better for sound than sight • Long-Term Memory • Limitless

22. STORING MEMORIES • Flashbulb memories – clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event • Strong emotional experiences = strong, reliable memories • Amnesia victims • Have implicit memory – how to do something • But no explicit memory – memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare”

23. SHORT-TERM MEMORY DECAY 90 80 Percentage who recalled consonants 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 3 6 9 12 15 18 Time in seconds between presentation of contestants and recall request (no rehearsal allowed)

24. RETRIEVAL: GETTING INFORMATION OUT • Priming - often unconscious activation of particular associations in memory • “memoryless memory” • Context effects • Easier to remember things in the same context you learned them • Déjà vu - sense that “I’ve experienced this before” • Mood congruent memory - tendency to recall experiences that are consistent w/one’s current good or bad mood

25. EFFECTS OF CONTEXT ON MEMORY Percentage of words recalled 40 30 20 10 0 Water/ land Land/ water Water/ water Land/ land Different contexts for hearing and recall Same contexts for hearing and recall

26. WHY WE FORGET • Three sins of forgetting • Absent-mindedness - inattention to details • Transience - storage decay over time • Blocking - inaccessibility of stored info • Three sins of distortion • Misattribution - confusing the source of the information • Suggestibility - lingering effects of misinformation • Bias - belief-colored recollections • One sin of intrusion • Persistence - unwanted memories

27. FORGETTING • Course of forgetting is initially rapid, but levels off w/time • Interference • Proactive interference - something you learned earlier disrupts your recall of something you experience later • Retroactive interference - new information makes it harder to recall something you learned earlier • Freud believed we repress - banish anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings and memories

28. WHICH PENNY IS THE REAL THING? Which penny is the real thing?

29. EBBINGHAUS’ FORGETTING CURVE Percentage of list retained when relearning 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 10 15 20 25 30 Time in days since learning list

30. PROACTIVE AND RETROACTIVE INTERFERENCE

31. FAULTY MEMORY CONSTRUCTION • Misinformation effect - incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event • Source amnesia - attributing the wrong source to an event we have experienced, heard about, read about or imagined • False memories feel as real as true memories • Unreliable memories • Things happening before age 3 • Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or drugs

32. MEMORY CONSTRUCTION Depiction of actual accident Memory Construction Leading question: “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”

33. IMPROVING MEMORY Study repeatedly Make the material meaningful Activate retrieval cues Use mnemonic devices Minimize interference Sleep more Test your own knowledge

34. EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/gwells/theeyewitnesstest.html