Transcript Myers Module Twenty Five & Twenty Six

Retrieval
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Memories are held in storage by a web of associations, each piece of
information interconnected with others.
The best retrieval cues come from associations we form at the time
we encode a memory: smells, tastes, sights, sounds.
Fig. 25.1 (mp331 cp316 f8.16)Priming is the awakening of
associations. The spreading of associations unconsciously activates
related associations.
Fig. 25.2 (mp 331 cp 317 f8.17)Context-dependent memory. Words
heard under water were best recalled under water; words heard on
land were best recalled on land. (Godden & Baddeley, 1975 mp331
cp 316).
Memories are mood congruent; people in a good mood judged
themselves competent and effective, others as benevolent. (DeSteno
et al., 2000 mp332 cp 317).
Currently depressed people recall their parents as punitive; formerly
depressed people's recollections of their parents matches the nondepressed. (Lewinsohn & Rosenbaum, 1987 mp332 cp 317).
Retrieval
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Fig. 25.3 (mp 333 cp 318 f8.18)Serial position effect. (Reed, 2000).
Because of rehearsal-both conscious and subvocal--we recall the
names of the first people we meet at a social event, and the names of
the last ones. Middle names are repeated the least.
The last people will be recalled especially well, because of recency
effect, as these items are still in working memory.
After a dela, when attention has been shifted away from the last
items, recall is best for the first items, or primacy effect.
What always suffers performance-wise are the middle items;
remember this when you study for the next exam.
Try this: Consciousness, Learning, Memory; then Memory, Learning,
Consciousness, then Learning, Consciousness, Memory. Altering the
sequence allows the middle item more opportunities for rehearsal.
Memory Construction
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It is an evolutionary advantage to discard out-of-date information; if
we remembered every detail, we would have great difficulty
generalizing, organizing and evaluating priorities, thinking styles
which have greater survival value than merely remembering facts.
(Parker et al., 2006 m p334 cp319)
Myers makes a point that may help your Oct 29 exam: “If a memoryenhancing pill ever becomes available, it had better not be too
effective.”
Anterograde amnesia is the inability to form new memories;
retrograde amnesia is the inability to recall long-term memories.
Anterograde amnesia can be caused by severe alcoholism, in a
condition formerly known as 'wet brain': the mammilary lobes of the
hippocampus have been destroyed by alcohol, and therefore no new
memories can be formed.
Anterograde patients can be classically conditioned, and develop
non-verbal skills, but they have no conscious memory of having ever
acquired those skills.
Memory Construction
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We selectively attend to only a few of the myriad sights and sounds
around us; for example, can you draw the sides of a 'loonie' from
memory? A coin-collector (numismatist) would.
Fig. 26.1 (mp336 cp320): Forgetting as encoding failure: we cannot
remember what we have not encoded.
Fig. 26.3 (mp336 cp321)Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve. He found that
memory for novel information fades quickly, then levels out.
Fig. 26.5 (mp 337 cp823)Retrieval failure: sometimes stored
information cannot be accessed, which leads to forgetting. Memories
are stored primarily by semantic webs of meaning, as opposed to
sights, sounds, smells and tastes.
Proactive (forward-acting) interference: If you learned French just
before learning Spanish, your French could make retrieval of Spanish
more difficult.
Retroactive (backward-acting) interference: you may remember a
new version of a movie, say 'Planet of the Apes, (2014)' better than
the old one (2001) if you saw them in the original sequence.
Memory Construction
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Fig. 26.7(mp340 cp325 f8.25) Forgetting can occur at any memory
stage. As we process information, we filter, alter or lose it.
What about repressed memories? Freud build his career on it, and it
is still the favorite of writers, because then the reader can discover
the mysteries in a story at the same time the character does.
but..while peoples' efforts to intentionally forget neutral material often
succeeds, but fail when the to-be-forgotten material has a strong
emotional charge. (Payne & Corrigan, 2007 mp340 cp325 ).
Misinformation effect: (Loftus & Palmer, 1974 mp341 cp326): When
people who had seen a traffic safety film of a car accident were later
asked a leading question, they recalled a more serious accident
than the one they have actually viewed.
Guessed details will be absorbed into our long-term memory, and
feel as real as if we had actually experienced them.
Memory Construction
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Misinformation and imagination inflation occur partly because
visualizing something and actually perceiving it activate similar brain
areas. (Gonsalves et al., 2004 mp342 cp327).
The more vividly we can imagine things, the more likely they are to
become memories. (Loftus, 2001.)
Source amnesia aka source misattribution. The 'Mr. Science'
experiment (Poole & Lindsay, 2002 mp343 cp328), children mixed a
real experience with one their parents read to them.
Deja Vu: the uncanny feeling that 'all this has happened before' can
be induced by the use of subliminal stimulation. Remember that
conscious processing of information is the exception, not the rule.
If the temporal lobe (which creates the feeling of familarity) and the
frontal lobe/hippocampus are out of sync, we will have a sense of
familiarity without conscious recall.
Maturation makes liars of us all.
Memory Construction
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Suggesting interview techniques: (Brown & Ceci, 2004 mp 344
cp329): children were asked to think about real and fictitious events.
After 10 weeks, 58% of preschoolers produced false (often vivid)
stories regarding events they had never experienced.
Children can be good eye-witnessed, but...neutral words and nonleading questions must be used in the interview technique. (Holliday
& Albon, 2004 mp345 cp 330).
Repressed or Constructed memories of abuse:
Sexual abuse happens; injustice happens; forgetting happens;
recovered memories are commonplace; memories of things before
age 3 are unreliable; memories 'recovered' under hypnosis or drugs
are especially unreliable; memories, whether real or false, can be
emotionally upsetting.
People who recall abuse spontaneously rarely form false memories in
a lab setting; people who form memories of abuse during suggestive
therapy tend to have vivid imaginations and score high on falsememory tests (McNally, 2003 mp347 cp332).