I

Chapter 7

Memory: Remembrance of Things Past and Future

LECUTRE OUTLINE

I. Memory Systems: Pressing the “Rewind” and “Fast-Forward” Buttons.

A. Explicit Versus Implicit Memories.

1. Explicit memory: referred to as declarative memory is memory for specific information.

2. Implicit memory: referred to as nondeclarative memory is memory of how to perform a task, how to do something.

3. Episodic Memory: a form of explicit memory, memories of the things that happen to us or take place in our presence. Also referred to as autobiographical memory. “I remember…..”

4. Semantic Memory: On Not Getting Personal. Memories of general knowledge. Semantics concerns meanings. “I know…”

5. Implicit Memory: Remembering as Doing.

a. Characteristics:

i. Implicit memories are suggested (implied) not declared.

ii. Implicit memories are illustrated by the things that people do but not by the things they state.

iii. Implicit memories involve skills, both cognitive and physical: they reveal habits and involve effects of conditioning.

iv. Implicit memories can persist even when we have not used them for many years.

v. Implicit memories can become relatively automatic referred to as priming.

B. Retrospective Memory Versus Prospective Memory.

1. Retrospective memory is the recalling of information that has been previously learned. This includes:

a. Episodic

b. Semantic

c. Implicit

2. Prospective memory involves remembering to do things in the future.

a. Prospective memory tends to fail when we are:

i. Preoccupied

ii. Distracted

iii. Feeling stress of time pressure.

b. Various types of prospective memory tasks include:

i. Habitual tasks

ii. Event based tasks

iii. Time based tasks

3. There is an age related decline in both retrospective and prospective memory.

4. Moods and attitudes have an effect on prospective memory.

a. Negative emotional states impair prospective memory.

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II. Processes of Memory: Processing Information in Our Most Personal Computers.

A. Psychologists and computer scientists speak of processing information.

1. When we perceive information we must convert it into a form that can be remembered.

2. Memory is the processes by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved.

B. Encoding: The Memory’s “Transformer”.

1. Information about the outside world reaches our senses in the form of physical and chemical stimuli.

2. When we encode information we transform it into psychological formats that can be represented mentally.

a. Visual code: remembering things as a picture.

b. Acoustic code: remembering things as a sequence of sounds.

c. Semantic code: remembering things in terms of their meaning.

C. Storage: The Memory’s “Save” Function.

1. Storage: maintaining information over time.

a. Maintenance rehearsal: mentally repeating information.

b. Metamemory: our awareness of the functioning of our memory.

c. Elaborative rehearsal: elaborating or extending the semantic meaning of the what you are trying to remember.

D. Retrieval: The Memory’s “Find” Function.

1. Retrieval of stored information requires locating it and returning it to consciousness.

E. Memory: the process by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved.

III. Stages of Memory: Making Sense of the Short and the Long of It.

A. Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory:

1. There are three stages of memory and information progresses through these stages determining how and how long the information will be retained.

a. Sensory memory

b. Short-term memory

c. Long-term memory

B. Sensory Memory: The Flashes on the Mental Monitor.

1. Sensory Memory is the type of memory that is first encountered by a stimulus.

a. Vision example:

i. Saccadic eye movements: series of eye fixations; movements which jump from one point to another about four times each second.

ii. Memory trace: visual impression left by the stimulus.

iii. Held in visual sensory register.

iv. Research has used the whole report procedure and the partial report procedure in memory tasks.

b. Memory trace for visual stimuli decay within a second.

2. Iconic Memory

a. Visual stimuli are referred to as icons. The sensory register that holds icons is labeled iconic memory.

b. Iconic memories are accurate, photographic memories but briefly stored.

i. Photographic memory is technically referred to as eidetic imagery.

ii. Eidetic imagery: photographic memory; having the ability to store visual stimuli for remarkably long periods of time.

3. Iconic Memory and Saccadic Eye Movements.

a. Saccadic eye movements occur about four times every second.

b. Iconic memory holds icons for up to a second.

c. The combination is what allows us to perceive imagery in film as being seamless.

4. Echoic Memory.

a. Mental representations of sounds, or auditory stimuli, are called echoes.

b. The sensory register that holds echoes is called echoic memory.

i. Echoic memory can last for several seconds.

ii. By selectively attending to certain stimuli we sort them out from background noise.

C. Short-Term Memory: Keeping Things “In Mind”.

1. If one focuses on a stimulus in the sensory register, they will tend to retain it in short-term memory (also referred to as working memory).

2. In short term memory the image tends to significantly fade after 10-12 seconds if it is not rehearsed.

3. To retain the information then rehearsal is needed.

4. The Serial-Position Effect.

a. The tendency to recall the first and last items in a series is known as the serial-position effect.

b. Primacy effect: tendency to recall the initial items in a list.

c. Recency effect: tendency to recall the last items in a list.

5. Chunking: discrete elements of information.

a. Seven chunks, plus or minus one or two, is a “magic” number of the amount of information a typical person can remember.

b. Rote learning: mechanical associative learning that takes time and repetition.

6. Interference in Short-Term Memory.

a. Prevention of rehearsal can inhibit short term memory.

b. Appearance of new information can displace the old information.

D. Long-Term Memory: Your Memory’s “Hard Drive”.

1. Long-term memory is the third stage of information processing.

a. The vast storehouse of information.

b. Information can be kept in the unconscious; long-term memory by the forces of repression (a belief of Freud and some psychologists).

2. How Accurate Are Long-Term Memories?

a. Loftus notes that memories are distorted by our biases and needs.

b. We represent our world in the form of schemas.

c. Loftus and Palmer and the experiment of the car crash. Words served as diverse schemas that fostered the developed the very different ways of processing information.

E. A Closer Look: Can We Trust Eyewitness Testimony?

1. The words chosen by an experimenter and those chosen by a lawyer interrogating a witness have been shown to influence the reconstruction of memories.

2. Children tend to be more suggestible witnesses than adults.

a. When questioned properly, young children can provide accurate and useful testimony.

3. Hypnosis does more than amplify memories; it can also distort them

a. Witnesses may accept and embellish suggestions made by the hypnotist.

4. Witnesses may pay more attention to the suspect’s clothing than to more meaningful characteristics such as facial features, height and weight.

5. Other problems with eye-witness testimony are:

a. Identification is less accurate when suspects belong to ethnic groups that differ from that of the witness.

b. Identification of suspects is confused when interrogators make misleading suggestions.

c. Witnesses are seen as more credible when they claim to be certain in their testimony but there is little evidence that claims of certainty are accurate.

F. How Much Information Can Be Stored in Long-Term Memory?

a. For all practical purposes, long-term memory is unlimited. Your long term memory is a biochemical hard drive with no known limits.

b. The information can endure for a lifetime.

c. Information can become lost but not destroyed or deleted.

2. Transferring Information from Short-Term to Long-Term Memory: Using the “Save” Function.

a. The more often chunks of information are rehearsed, the more likely they are to be transferred to long-term memory.

b. Repeating information over and over to prevent it from decaying is termed maintenance rehearsal.

c. A more effective method is to make information more meaningful; relating information to well-known material is termed elaborative rehearsal.

3. Levels of Processing Information.

a. Elaborative rehearsal to remember things are processing information at a deeper level than people who use maintenance rehearsal.

b. Information is remembered if processed deeply-attended to, encoded carefully, pondered, and related to things we already know. Remembering relies on how deeply we processes information.

c. Research has shown that deep processing is related to activity in the prefrontal area of the cerebral cortex.

4. Flashbulb Memories

a. People tend to remember events that are surprising, important, and emotionally stirring. These memories are termed flashbulb memories.

i. One factor is the distinctness of the memory.

ii. The feelings caused by them are special.

iii. We are likely to dwell on them and form networks of associations.

G. A Closer Look: Life Is Pleasant and Memory Helps to Keep it That Way!

1. Some people’s recollection of past memories tends to be positively biased.

a. Pleasant events outnumber unpleasant events.

b. Pleasant emotions fade less quickly.

c. Fading does not happen for everyone.

H. Organizations in Long-Term Memory.

a. People tend to organize information according to a hierarchical structure.

i. A hierarchy is an arrangement of items into groups or classes according to common or distinct features.

2. The Tip-of-the-Tongue-Phenomenon.

a. The tip-of-the-tongue-phenomenon is the feeling of knowing experience. Why?

i. Words were unfamiliar so elaborative rehearsal did not take place.

ii. Seems to reflect incomplete learning.

iii. Our knowledge of the topic may be incomplete, we don’t know the specific answer but we know something.

3. Context-Dependent Memory: Been There, Done That?

a. The context in which we acquire information can also play a role in retrieval.

b. Context-dependent memories are clear in the context in which they were formed.

i. Being in the proper context can dramatically enhance recall.

c. Context for memory extends to language.

d. Déjà vu: the feeling that we know this person or have been there before.

i. Seems to occur when we are in a context similar to the one we have been in before.

4. State-Dependent Memory.

a. State-dependent memory is an extension of context-dependent memory.

i. We retrieve information better when we are in the physiological or emotional state that is similar to the one in which we encoded and stored the information.

ii. There is evidence of support for this with love, anger, frustration, rage, sober or inebriated, happy, sad, and bipolar.

IV. Forgetting: Will You Remember How We Forget?

A. Ebbinghaus and the research with nonsense syllables.

1. Remembering should depend on simple acoustic coding and maintenance rehearsal rather than on elaborative rehearsal.

2. This research is well suited for the measurement of forgetting.

B. Memory Tasks Used in Measuring Forgetting.

1. Three basic memory tasks have been used to measure forgetting:

a. Recognition

b. Recall

c. Learning

2. Recognition.

a. Failure to recognize something we have experienced.

b. The easiest type of memory task.

3. Recall.

a. Remembering information from memory without cues.

b. Research conducted in this area used paired associates.

c. Recall is more difficult than recognition.

4. Relearning: Is Learning Easier the Second Time Around?

a. We can relearn information more rapidly the second time.

b. Ebbinghaus devised the method of savings.

i. Record the number of repetitions needed to learn.

ii. Record the number of repetitions to relearn the list.

iii. Compute the difference; called savings.

C. Interference Theory.

1. We may forget information in short-term and long-term memory because newly learned material interferes with it.

a. Two types:

i. Retroactive

ii. Proactive

2. Retroactive interference: new learning interferes with the retrieval of old learning.

3. Proactive interference: older learning interferes with the capacity to retrieve more recently learned material.

D. Repression: Ejecting the Unwanted from Consciousness.

1. Freud suggested that we are motivated to forget painful memories because they produce anxiety, guilt, and shame. (Repression)

a. This is the heart of disorders such as dissociative amnesia.

b. Stress hormones released when we experience extremes of anxiety actually heighten memory.

c. Repressed memories may not be ill-formed we just don’t focus on them.

2. Do People Really Recover Repressed Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Or Are These “Memories” Implanted by Interviewers?

a. Many recovered memories are sometime induced by therapists.

b. Techniques used to recover memories: hypnosis and guided imagery.

E. Infantile Amnesia

1. Infantile amnesia is difficulty in remembering episodes that happened prior to age 3 or so.

a. Has little to do with the fact that the episodes occurred in the distant past.

2. Reflects the interaction of physiological and cognitive factors.

a. The hippocampus does not become mature until we are about 2 years of age.

b. Cognitive factors include:

i. Infants are not particularly interested in remembering their past.

ii. Infants don’t weave episodes together into meaningful stories.

iii. Infants don’t make reliable use of language to symbolize their events.

c. We are unlikely to remember episodes unless we are reminded of them from time to time as we develop.

d. There is no evidence to suggest that early memories are systematically repressed.

F. Anterograde and Retrograde Amnesia.

1. Anterograde amnesia is memory lapses for the period following a trauma.

a. This memory loss has been linked to damage to the hippocampus.

b. The case of H.M.

2. Retrograde amnesia is memory lapses for the period before the accident.

G. LIFE CONNECTIONS: Using the Psychology of Memory to Enhance Your Memory.

1. Psychologists have developed methods for improving memory.

2. Drill and Practice: “A,B, C, D, …”

3. Recommendations from Herrmann (1991) to remember a person’s name:

a. Say the name out loud.

b. Ask the person a question, using her or his name.

c. Use the person’s name as many times as you can during your conversation.

d. Write down the name when the conversation has ended.

4. Relate New Information to What Is Already Known.

a. Elaborative rehearsal.

5. Form Unusual, Exaggerated Associations.

a. It is easier to recall stimuli that stand out.

b. Create unusual associations.

6. Use the Method of Loci: Meatloaf in the Navel.

a. Method of Loci: select a series of related images and then attaché information that you want to remember to those images. (e.g. parts of the body).

7. Use Mediation: Find a Conceptual Bridge.

a. The method of mediation also relies on forming associations.

i. Lind two items with a third one that ties them together.

8. Use Mnemonic Devices: “Soak Her Toe”

a. Mnemonics are systems for remembering information typically using chunks of information combined into an acronym.

V. The Biology of Memory: The Brain as a Living Time Machine.

A. Engrams are viewed as electrical circuits in the brain the correspond to memory traces.

B. Neural Activity and Memory: “Better Living Through Chemistry”.

1. There is reason to believe that the storage of experience requires the number of avenues of communication among brain cells to be increased.

2. Research conducted with sea snails shows that they can be conditioned, they release more of the neurotransmitter serotonin at certain synapses.

a. As a result the transmission at the synapses becomes more efficient as trials progress. This greater efficiency is termed long-term potentiation (LTP).

3. Serotonin increases the efficiency of conditioning.

a. It is released when stimuli are paired repeatedly.

4. Acetylcholine (ACh) is vital in memory formation. Low levels of ACh are connected with Alzheimer’s disease.

5. Glutamate in the brain promotes conditioning.

6. Adrenaline and noradrenaline both strengthen memory when they are released into the bloodstream following learning.

7. Vasopressin facilitates memory functioning particularly working memory.

8. Estrogen and testosterone facilitate the functioning of working memory.

C. Brain Structures and Memory.

1. Hippocampus is involved in the formation of new memories.

2. Parts of memories are stored in appropriate areas of the sensory cortex.

a. Sight in the visual cortex; sounds in the auditory cortex, etc.

3. The limbic system is largely responsible for integrating these pieces of information when we recall an event.

4. The prefrontal cortex acts apparently as the executive center in memory.

5. Thalamus is involved in verbal memories.

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