Transcript Introduction - Dave Brodbeck

Psychology 3717
Dr. David Brodbeck
Introduction
• Memory is a part of cognitive psychology
• So, let’s start by defining cognition
• Matlin (1994)
– Cognition, or mental activity involves the
acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of
knowledge
• Gietman (1984)
– What organisms know and how they know it
More definitions
• Ellis and Hunt (1983)
– Cognitive psychology proceeds with its study of
mental functioning through the scientific
method…
• Tulving (1972)
– One of the unmistakable characteristics of an
immature science is [its] looseness of definitions
You have to think about these ideas in
terms of the study of memory
• There are some commonalities about these
definitions
• Pattern recognition for example
• Attention
• Knowledge about the world
• Autobiographical events
• imagery
More commonalities
• Problem solving
• Creativity
• You need to use memory, indeed to acquire,
store and retrieve information in order to do
any of these things
• We can look at memory as the persistence of
learning
• Pretty much everything we do as humans
needs the use of memory
• So without memory we could not do those
other cognitive things
• It may be said that memory is the core of
cognition
Question about memory
• All science begins with the statement ‘I do
not know’
• Are memories permanent?
• Where are they stored?
• Can I improve my memory?
• How are they stored?
• If I forget stuff is it really gone?
• Is our memory similar to other species?
There is a catch
• We of course want to study it scientifically
• Science is about measurement, control and
prediction
• Science is about experimentation
• Science is about cause -> effect relationships
• How do we measure and control something
we ‘can’t kick?’
Operationalize!
• We have to say we will measure variable A,
which we believe to be correlated with
memory or the result thereof
• So, percentage of words recalled
• Word fragments completed
• Types of errors made
analogies
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Wax tablet
The sieve
The library
The workbench
The network
The filing cabinet
The computer
What is common about those?
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Memory is seen as a thing
A kind of space if you will
Encoding
Storage
Retrieval
(some have more of each than others)
Attributes of memory
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Acquisition
Representation
Direct experiences are primary memory
Previous states, working on stuff with other
info is secondary memory
• William James said this and we still say it
today!
Ebbinghaus
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Three different ways of retrieval
Recollect the past intentionally
Unintentional too
Memory can show up without awareness
Again we still use distinctions like this today!
Other attributes
• Memory can be reconstructive
• Basically memory is multidimensional
• There are many forms, everything from
knowing the capital of Viet Nam to knowing
how to ride a bike to knowing what you had
for breakfast (and knowing what breakfast is)
Investigating memory
• There are some general principles
– Forgetting curve
– Power law of practice
– Encoding specificity
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Free recall
Recognition
Sentence verification
priming
More investigations…
• Practice effects
• Imaging
• Analysis of errors
Models, Atkinson-Shiffrin
Sensory
Register
Short
Term
Memory
Long
Term
Memory
Neural networks
• Separate processors or nodes
• Deal with recognizing different things,
attributes, characteristics what have you
• Say from lines to letters to words to concepts
• Connections, MANY connections
Other models
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Episodic v semantic
Procedural v declarative
Working v reference
Again, share some commonalities
conclusions
• Memory is a diverse and exciting field
• It is possible to measure memory, indirectly,
and now, maybe directly
• There is a place for the neuro types, but the
psychologists still need to be around