Transcript Memory - rcook

MEMORY
Rachelle Blash, Elias Harraldsson,
Scottie Stroup, Jay Patel, and English June
The Phenomenon of Memory
 Memory - The persistence of learning over
time through t he storage and retrieval of
information.
Your memory is your mind’s storehouse.
Roman Cicero theory “the treasury and
guardian of all things.”
Flashbulb Memory – A clear memory of an
emotionally significant moment or event.
Information Processing
 In forming memories, you, too, must select,
process, store, and retrieve information.
 You process information by not only in the
“cramming” you do to study in your courses,
but also in the skills you learn and in your
processing of countless daily activities.
Information Processing
 To remember any event, we must get information
into our brain (encoding), retain that information
(storage), and later get it out (retrieval).
 Encoding – The processing of information into the
memory system.
 Storage – The retention of encoded information over
time.
 Retrieval – Process of getting information out of
memory storage.
Information Processing
 Sensory Memory – The immediate, very brief recording
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of sensory information in the memory system.
Short-Term Memory – Activated memory that holds a
few items briefly.
Long-Term Memory – The relatively permanent and
limitless storehouse of a memory system.
Incoming stimuli, along with information we retrieve
from our long-term memory, become conscious shortterm memories in a temporary construction zone.
Working Memory – A newer understanding of short-term
memory that involves conscious, active processing of
incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of
information retrieved from long term memory.
Encoding: Getting Information In
Automatic Processing
 Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as
space, time, and frequency, and of well learned
information, such as word meanings.
 Space: While reading your textbook, you often encode the place
on a page where certain material appears; later, when struggling
to recall the information, such as a friend’s new cell phone
number, you need to pay attention and try hard.
 Time: While going about your day, you unintentionally note the
sequence of the day’s events. Later, when you realize that you
left your coat somewhere, you re-create the sequence of what
you did that day and retrace your steps.
 Frequency: You effortlessly keep track of how many times things
happen, thus enabling you to realize “this is the third time I’ve run
into her today.”
Automatic Processing
 All of this processing goes on without our
needing to pay attention to it.
 Some forms of processing require attention
and effort when we first perform them, but
with experience and practice become
automatic.
Effortful Processing
 Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.
 This type of processing produces durable and accessible
memories.
 Rehearsal, the conscious repetition of information, either
to maintain it in consciousness or to encode it for
storage, is a form of effortful processing.
 The German philosopher ,Hermann Ebbinghaus, studied
his own learning and forgetting of verbal materials.
Through his studies he found that the amount
remembered simply depends on the time spent learning.
Harry Bahrick
 9-year experiment
 Harry and three of his family members practiced
foreign language word translations for a given number
of times, at intervals ranging from 14 to 56 days.
 Their findings: The longer the space between practice
sessions, the better their retention up to 5 years later.
 Spaced study beats cramming.
 Serial Position Effect – Our tendency to recall best the
last and first items in a list.
Encoding Meaning
 When processing verbal information for storage, we
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usually encode its meaning, associating it with what we
already know or imagine.
We tend not to remember things exactly as they were.
Visual Encoding – The encoding of picture images.
Acoustic Encoding - the encoding of sound, especially
the sound of words. (“If the glove doesn’t fit, you must
acquit” vs. “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must find him
guilty.”)
Semantic Encoding - The encoding of meaning,
including the meaning of words.
Visual Encoding
 There is greater ease in remembering mental
pictures or imagery.
 Imagery - Mental pictures; a powerful aid to effortful
processing, especially when combined with semantic
encoding.
 We remember concrete words that lend themselves
to visual mental images better than we remember
abstract, low-imagery words.
 Rosy Retrospection – People tend to recall events
such as a camping holiday more positively than they
evaluate them at the time.
Visual Encoding
 Mnemonic - Memory aids, especially those
techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational
devices.
 Using the “method of loci,” Greek scholars imagined
themselves moving through a familiar series of
locations, associating each place with a visual
representation of the to-be-remembered topic.
When speaking, a person would mentally revisit the
location and retrieve the associated images.
Organizing Information for
Encoding
 Meaning and imagery enhance our memory partly by
helping us organize information.
 We more easily recall information when we can organize
it into meaningful units or chunks.
 Chunking – Organizing items into familiar, manageable
units; often occurs automatically.
 Hierarchies
 When people develop expertise in an area, they process
information in hierarchies composed of a few broad concepts
divided and subdivided into narrower concepts and facts.
Gordon Bower
 Presented words either randomly or grouped
into categories.
 When words were organized into groups,
recall was two or three times better.
Storage: Retaining Information
At the heart of memory is storage.
Anything stored in a long-term memory lies
dormant, waiting to be reconstructed by a cue.
Sensory Memory
 George Sperling did an experiment in 1960 by
showing people 3 rows of 3 letters each for
only 1/20th of a second.
 Sperling stated that even at faster than lightning-
flash speed, people actually can see and recall all
the letters, but only momentarily.
 The participants rarely missed a letter, showing
that all 9 letters were momentarily available for
recall.
The Results
 Sperling’s experiment revealed that we have
a fleeting photographic memory called iconic
memory.
 For an instant, our eyes register an exact
representation of a scene and we can recall any
part of it, but only for a few tenths of a second.
 Your visual screen clears quickly in order for old
images to be replaced by new ones.
Sensory Memory
 We also have a sensory memory for auditory
stimuli called echoic memory.
 If partially interpreted, an auditory echo lingers for
3 or 4 seconds.
Working/Short Term Memory
 We retrieve information from long-term
storage for “on-screen” display. But unless
our working memory meaningfully encodes
or rehearses that information, it quickly
disappears from our short-term memory.
 Example: phonebook ---> phone
Working/Short-Term Memory
 Without active processing, short-term memories
have a limited life. They are limited not only in
duration, but in capacity as well.
 Our short-term memory typically stores just
seven or so bits of information at a time. George
Miller (1956) titled this recall capacity as
“Magical Number Seven”
 Our short-term recall is usually better with
random numbers (for example a phone number)
rather than random letters.
 At any given moment we can consciously process only
a very limited amount of information.
Long-Term Memory
 Our capacity for storing long-term memories
is essentially limitless.
 The average adult has about a billion bits of
memory and storage capacity.
 The total memory capacity of computers
anywhere in the world is far less than that of a
single human brain.
 Researchers study memory using different levels
of analysis, including the biological.
Storing Memories in the
Brain
 Despite the brain’s vast storage capacity, we
do not seem to store most information
exactly as it comes to us.
 Forgetting occurs as new experiences interfere
with our retrieval of past memories.
 The search for the physical basis of memory has
been linked to the synapses.
Synaptic Changes
 Memories begin as impulses whizzing
through brain circuits, somehow leaving
permanent neural traces.
 These neural changes occur in the synapsis, where
nerve cells communicate with one another
through neurotransmitter messengers.
 Increased synaptic efficiency makes for more
efficient neural circuits.
Synaptic Changes
 Long-term potentiation: an increase in a
synapse’s firing potential after brief rapid
stimulation.
 With repeated neural firing, a nerve cell’s genes
produce synapse strengthening proteins, enabling
long-term memories to form.
 after long-term potentiation has occurred, passing
an electric current through the brain won’t disrupt
old memories.
But the current will wipe out very recent memories.
Stress Hormones and Memory
 The stress hormones that humans and
animals produce when excited or stressed
make more glucose energy available to fuel
brain activity.
 This action signals the brain that something
important has happened.
Stress Hormones and Memory
 Emotion-triggered hormonal changes help
explain why we long remember exciting
events.
 Example: first kiss, natural disasters, etc.
 There are however limits to stress-enhanced
remembering.
 When prolonged, stress can act like acid,
corroding neural connections and shrinking a
brain areas (the hippocampus) that is vital for
laying down memories.
Storing Implicit and
Explicit Memories
 A memory-to-be enters the cortex through
the senses and finds it’s way into the brain’s
depths.
 Amnesia: the loss of memory.
 Implicit Memory: retention independent of
conscious recollection.
 Explicit Memory: memory of facts and
experiences that one can consciously know
and “declare”.
Types of Long-Term Memories
Explicit: with conscious
recall
 Processed in the
hippocampus
Implicit: without conscious
recall
 Processed, in part, by
cerebellum
 Memories of facts and
 Classical and operant
general knowledge.
 As well as personally
experienced events.
conditioning effects.
 As well as motor and
cognitive skills.
The Hippocampus:
a neural center that is located in the
limbic system and helps process explicit memories for storage.
 Explicit memories for facts and episodes are
processed in the hippocampus and fed to
other brain regions for storage,
The Cerebellum
 The brain region extending out from the rear
of the brainstem, plays a key role in forming
and storing the implicit memories created by
classical conditioning.
Retrieval: Getting Information Out
Ways to Indicate Memory
Remember, memory is any sign that something
learned has been retained.
 Recall - A measure of memory in which the person
must retrieve information learned earlier. (e.g. fill-inthe-blank test)
 We remember more than we recall.
 Recognition-A measure of memory in which the
person need only identify items previously learned,
as on a multiple-choice test. (e.g. recognizing a
yearbook photo of an elementary school classmate)
 Relearning – A memory measure that assesses the
amount of time saved when learning material for a
second time. (e.g. reviewing for a test)
Retrieval Cues
 Anchor points you can use to assess the target information when
you want to retrieve it later. The more retrieval cues a person has
the better.
 Information is referred to as a web of associations. Information is
interconnected with other pieces of information.
 Priming (“wakening of associations”) – The activation, often
unconsciously, of particular associations in memory.
 Example of Retrieval Cues
 Mnemonic Devices
• ROY G BIV – Red, Orange Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet
• PEMDAS – Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
• HOMES – Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior
John Hull
 Lost Eyesight
 Difficulty Recalling Events
 “The memories of people you have spoken
to during the day are stored in frames
which include the background.”
Retrieval Cues
Context Effects
 Putting yourself back in the context where you
experienced something can prime your memory
retrieval.
 Scenario: You walk into the kitchen to get an apple.
Once you get to the kitchen you forget your purpose
for being there (this is a result of a change in context
or environment). Returning to the room you were in
before you went to the kitchen helps you remember
why you were going to the kitchen in the first place.
 There are few cues to lead you to your reason for doing
something in a new context.
Retrieval Cues
Context Effort
 Déjà Vu ( French for “already seen”) – The
eerie sense that “I’ve experienced this
before.” Cues from the current situation may
subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier
experience.
 Current situations may be loaded with cues of
similar situations.
 Unconscious retrieval of earlier experiences.
Retrieval Cues
Moods and Memories
 State-dependent Memory – What we learn in
one state is more easily recalled when we are
again in that state.
 If a person hides money when they are drunk
they may only be able to remember the
location in which they hid it when they are
drunk again.
Retrieval Cues
Moods and Memories
 Mood-congruent Memory – The tendency to recall
experiences that are consistent with one’s current
good or bad mood.
A person who is currently depressed may describe
their parents in negative ways while those who were
formerly depressed may describe their parents in a
way that a person who has never suffered
depression would.
Forgetting
Three Sins Of Forgetting:
 Absent Mindedness - inattention to details
produces encoding failure (our mind is elsewhere as
we lay down the car keys)
 Transience - storage decay over time (after we part
ways with former classmates unused information
fades)
 Blocking - inaccessibility of stored information
(seeing an old classmate, we may feel the name on
the tip of our tongue, but we experience retrieval
failure and cannot get it out)
Three Sins Of Distortion:
 Misattribution - confusing the source of information
(putting words in someone else’s mouth or
remembering a movie scene as an actual happening)
 Suggestibility - the lingering effects of
misinformation (a leading question-”Did Mr. Jones
touch your private part?”-later becomes a young
child’s false memory.)
 Bias - belief-colored recollections (a friend’s current
feelings toward her fiancé may color her recalled
initial feelings)
One Sin Of Intrusion:
 Persistence - unwanted memories (being
haunted by images of a sexual assault.)
Encoding Failure
 - Not recalling the details of a specific object,
even if it’s reoccurring.
 Ex. Remembering what’s on the front of the
penny.
Why Encoding Failure?
 We cannot remember what we fail to encode,
because the information never enters longterm memory.
 Ex. What letters accompany the #5 on your
telephone?
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Storage Decay
 - The course of forgetting is initially rapid,
then levels off with time (Wixted and
Ebbesen, 1991).
 Even after encoding something well, we
sometimes later forget it.
 Ex. School Work (Spanish Vocabulary)
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Storage Decay
 Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve (1885)
 - After learning lists of nonsense syllables,
Ebbinghaus studied how much he retained up
to 30 days later. He found that memory for
novel information fades quickly, then levels
out.
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Storage Decay
 Harry Bahrick’s Experiment (1984)
 He quizzed students on Spanish vocabulary. Compared
with those just completing high school or college
Spanish course, people who had been out of school
for 3 years had forgotten much of what they had
learned. However, their forgetting leveled off; what
people remembered then, they still remembered 25
and more years later.
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HARRY BAHRICK’S EXPERIMENT
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Retrieval Failure
 - When we lack the information needed to
look something up and retrieve it, even when
that something is stored in our brain.
 Ex. A name may lie on the tip of our tongue,
waiting to be retrieved. Given retrieval cues
(“It begins with an M”), we may easily
retrieve the name.
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Retrieval Failure (Interference)
 - Learning some items may interfere with retrieving others.
 Ex. If you buy a new combination lock or get a new phone, your
memory of the old one may interfere. Two Types:
 Proactive Interference – The disruptive effect of
prior learning on the recall of new information
 Ex. Studying French earlier on can help you when
learning Spanish later on, due to their similarity in
vocabulary.
 Retroactive Interference – The disruptive effect of
new learning on the recall of old information
 Ex. Learning new students’ names typically
interferes with a teacher’s recall of the names of
previous students.
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Retrieval Failure (Motivated
Forgetting)
 - When people unknowingly revise their own histories
 (Sigmund Freud) Repression - to submerge memories
memories but leave them available for later retrieval under
the right conditions.
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Freud suggested that people frequently have imperfect or no
memory recall of traumatic events or of things associated
with unpleasant feelings.
 Ex. A person is highly motivated to forget a doctor’s
appointment if he fears the doctor.
 However, researchers think repression rarely, if ever, occurs.
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Memory Construction
Some Vocabulary From My
Section..
 Misinformation effect- incorporating
misleading information into ones memory
of an event
 Source amnesia- Where you have the
inability to remember where , when, or
how you previously learned the
information.
Children's Eyewitness Recall
 Children's eyewitness recalls can be
unreliable if leading questions are asked.
 If you let the child tell their own testimony
it is far more accurate because no opinions
from other people can change their views.
Repressed Memories
 Many psychotherapists believe
early childhood sexual abuse
results in repressed memories
 Other psychologists think that it is
constructed though.
Constructed Memories
 Loftus research shows that if false
memories are implanted in
individuals, and they fabricate
their memories
Improving Memory
Improving Memory
Strategies to Improve Memory
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Study repeatedly to boost long term memory.
 Over learn
 Spend more time rehearsing or actively thinking about the material.
 Memories are weak so they require exercise.
 Study Actively
 Make the material personally meaningful.
 Take notes in your own words.
 Form images, understand, and organize information.
 Relate material to what you already know.
 Form as many associations as possible.
 Use mnemonic devices to remember a list of unfamiliar items.
 Associate items with peg-words.
 Make up a story.
 Chunk information into acronyms.
Improving Memory
Strategies to Improve Memory
• Refresh your memory by activating retrieval cues.
 Re-create the situation and mood in which the original learning occurred.
 Return to the same location.
• Recall events while they are fresh, before you encounter possible
misinformation.
 Record your memory before allowing another person memory to
interfere.
• Minimize interference.
 Study before sleeping.
 Don’t have back-to-back study times for conflicting topics (e.g. Spanish
and French).
• Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to help determine
what you do not yet know.
 Outline topics on a blank page.
 Define terms/concepts on your own.
 Take practice test.
John Shaughnessy and Eugene Zechmeister’s
Experiment
 A “reread group” repeatedly read dozens of factual
statements, then judged the likelihood that they would
remember each fact, and finally were tested on their recall.
Students in this group felt fairly confident of their knowledge,
even on the questions they later missed. Students in a
“practice test” group also read the statements, but they spent
the rest of the time responding to tests that required them to
retrieve the facts. Compared with the “reread” group, the
practice test group did just as well on the final recall test. They
could also better determine what they did and did not know.
 Self-testing enhances recall and can help you to know what
you know which enables you to focus on what you do not yet
know.