Transcript Module 25 Retrieval

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 Priming is the awakening of associations. The
spreading of associations unconsciously activates related
associations.
Fig. 25.2 Context-dependent memory. Words heard under water
were best recalled under water; words heard on land were best
recalled on land. (Godden & Baddeley, 1975).
Memories are mood congruent; people in a good mood
judged themselves competent and effective, others as
benevolent. (DeSteno et al., 2000).
Currently depressed people recall their parents as punitive;
formerly depressed people's recollections of their parents
matches the non-depressed. (Lewinsohn & Rosenbaum, 1987).
Retrieval
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Fig. 25.3 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It is an evolutionary advantage to discard out-of-date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)
Myers makes a point that may help your Nov. 7 exam: “If a
memory-enhancing 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
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: Forgetting as encoding failure: we cannot remember
what we have not encoded.
Fig. 26.3 Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve. He found that memory
for novel information fades quickly, then levels out.
Fig. 26.5 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,
(2010)' better than the old one (2001) if you saw them in the
Memory Construction
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Fig. 26.7 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).
Misinformation effect: (Loftus & Palmer, 1974): 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.
Think about this fact, and integrate it with your knowledge of
PKMZeta: 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).
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), 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):
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
non-leading questions must be used in the interview technique.
(Holliday & Albon, 2004).
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 false-memory tests (McNally, 2003).