Transcript Memory - Wallkill Valley Regional High School

Learning
Three Kinds of Memory
• Memory is the process by which we recollect prior experiences and
information and skills learned in the past.
• There are three different kinds of memory.
Episodic Memory
• Episodic memory is memory of a
specific event.
• A flashbulb memory is a memory of an
important and intense event.
• Examples of flashbulb memory: the
memory of the terrorist attacks of 9/11
and the assassination of John F.
Kennedy.
Semantic Memory
• Semantic memory is the memory of
facts, words, and concepts.
• Episodic and semantic memories are
both examples of explicit memory,
which is a memory of specific
information.
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Learning
Implicit Memory
• Implicit memory is memory of things that are implied, or not clearly
stated.
• Implicit memory includes practiced skills and learned habits.
• Skills learned often stay with people for a lifetime, even if they do not
use them very often.
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Learning
Encoding
• The translation of information into a form in which it can be used is called
encoding.
• Encoding is the first stage of processing information.
Visual and Acoustic Codes
Semantic Codes
• One type of code is visual.
• Another type of code is semantic.
• People use visual codes when they
form a mental picture.
• A semantic code represents information
in terms of its meaning.
• Another type of code is acoustic.
• People use acoustic codes when they
use sound.
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Learning
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Learning
Storage
• Storage is the maintenance of encoded information.
• It is the second process of memory.
Maintenance Rehearsal
Elaborative Rehearsal
• Mechanical or rote repetition of
information in order to keep from
forgetting it is called maintenance
rehearsal.
• A more effective way to remember new
information is to relate it to information
you already know.
• The more time spent on it, the longer
the information will be remembered.
• This method is called elaborative
rehearsal.
• It is widely used in education.
• It does not connect information to past
learning and is therefore a poor way to
put information in permanent storage.
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Learning
Organizational Systems
Filing Errors
• Stored memories become
organized and arranged in the mind
for future use.
•
Our ability to remember is subject
to error.
•
Errors can occur because we file
information incorrectly.
• In some ways, the mind is like a
storehouse of files and file cabinets
in which you store what you learn
and what you need to remember.
• Your memory organizes information
into classes according to common
features.
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Learning
Retrieval
• Retrieval consists of locating stored information and returning it to conscious
thought.
• Retrieval is the third stage of processing information.
Context-Dependent Memory
State-Dependent Memory
• Context-dependent memories are
• Memories that are retrieved because
information that is more easily retrieved
the mood in which they were originally
in the context or situation in which it was
encoded is recreated are called stateencoded and stored.
dependent memories.
• Such memories are dependent on the
place where they were encoded and
stored.
• Memory is better when people are in
the same mood as when the information
was acquired.
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Learning
On the Tip of the Tongue
• Trying to retrieve memories that are not very well organized or are
incomplete can be highly frustrating.
• Sometimes we are so close to retrieving the information that it seems
as though the information is on the “tip of the tongue.”
• Psychologists call this phenomenon the feeling-of-knowing
experience.
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Learning
Current Research in Psychology
Unreliable Memories, Unreliable Witnesses
“Misleading details can be planted into a person’s memory for an event that
actually occurred. It is also possible to plant entirely false memories,” according
to Elizabeth Loftus and Daniel Bernstein (Bernstein et al., 2005).
• Loftus has shown that false
memories exist and also that
feeling sure about a memory does
not prove the memory is a reliable
one.
• One factor in false memory is
source confusion.
• Psychological research is helping
train police investigators to avoid
using interviewing techniques that
can mislead witnesses.
• One example is pressing for more
additional details when a witness
has already expressed uncertainty.
• If a person has a “gist trace” of a
memory rather than a “verbatim”
trace, the memory is likely to be
false or inaccurate.
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Learning
Sensory Memory
• Sensory memory is the first stage of information storage.
• It consists of the immediate, initial recording of data that enter
through the senses.
• Psychologists believe that each of the five senses has a register.
• Mental pictures we form of visual stimuli are called icons, which are
held in a sensory register called iconic memory.
• Iconic memories are very brief.
• The rare ability to remember visual stimuli over long periods of time is
called eidetic imagery.
• Mental traces of sounds are held in a mental sensory register called
echoic memory.
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Learning
Short-Term Memory
• Also called working memory, short-term memory is memory that holds
information briefly before it is either stored in long-term memory or is
forgotten.
The Primacy and Recency
Effects
Chunking
• The tendency to recall the last item or
items in a series is called the recency
effect.
• Psychologist George Miller found that
the average person’s short-term
memory can hold a list of seven items.
• The primacy effect is the tendency to
recall the initial item or items in a series.
• The organization of items into familiar or
manageable units is called chunking.
• There is no definitive explanation of the
primacy effect or the recency effect.
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Learning
Interference
• Interference occurs when new information appears in short-term
memory and takes the place of what was already there.
• Short-term memory is a temporary solution to the problem of
remembering information.
• It is the bridge between sensory memory and long-term memory.
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Learning
Long-Term Memory
• Long-term memory is the third and final stage of information storage.
• It is the stage of memory capable of large and relatively permanent storage.
Memory as Reconstruction
Schemas
• Memories are not recorded and played
back like videos or movies.
• They are reconstructed from our
experiences.
• Schemas are the mental
representations that we form of the
world by organizing bits of information
into knowledge.
• We shape memories according to the
personal and individual ways in which
we view the world.
• Schemas influence the ways we
perceive things and the ways our
memories store what we perceive.
• We tend to remember things in
accordance with our beliefs and needs.
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Learning
Capacity of Memory
• Psychologists have not yet discovered a limit to how much can be
stored in a person’s long-term memory.
• We do not store all of our experiences permanently.
• Our memory is limited by the amount of attention we pay to things.
• The memories we store in long-term memory are the incidents and
experiences that have the greatest impact on us.
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Learning
Forgetting
• Forgetting can occur at any one of the three stages of memory.
• Information encoded in sensory memory decays almost immediately
unless it is transferred into short-term memory.
• Short-term memory will disappear after only 10 to 12 seconds unless
it is transferred into long-term memory.
• Information stored in short-term memory is lost when it is displaced
by new information.
• The most familiar and significant cases of forgetting involve the
inability to use information in long-term memory.
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Learning
Basic Memory Tasks
Recognition
• Recognition is one of the three basic memory tasks and involves
identifying objects or events that have been encountered before.
• It is the easiest of the memory tasks.
Recall
• Recall is the second memory task and involves bringing something
back to mind.
• In recall, you do not immediately recognize something you have
come across before.
• You have to “search” for it and possibly reconstruct it in your mind.
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Learning
Relearning
• The third basic memory task is relearning.
• Relearning involves learning something a second time, usually in less
time than it was originally learned.
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Learning
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Learning
Different Kinds of Forgetting
• Much forgetting is due to interference or decay.
• Interference occurs when new information takes the place of what has been
placed in memory.
• Decay is the fading away of a memory over time.
• Both are part of normal forgetting.
• There are more extreme kinds of forgetting.
Repression
Amnesia
• Freud says we sometimes forget things
on purpose without knowing it because
some memories are painful and
unpleasant.
• Amnesia is severe memory loss, which
is often caused by trauma to the brain.
• He called this kind of forgetting
repression.
• People with retrograde amnesia forget
the period leading up to a traumatic
event.
• Memory loss of events after trauma is
called anterograde amnesia.
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Learning
Infantile Amnesia
• Retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia are extreme and rare.
• One type of amnesia that everyone experiences is infantile
amnesia, which is the forgetting of events before the age of three.
• Infantile amnesia is based on biological and cognitive factors.
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Learning
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Learning
Improving Memory
Drill and Practice
• Drill and practice, or repetition, is
one way to remember information.
• It is an effective way to transfer
information from sensory memory
to short-term memory and from
short-term memory to long-term
memory.
Form Unusual
Associations
• Memory can be enhanced by
forming unusual associations.
Relate to Existing
Knowledge
• Elaborative rehearsal—relating new
information to what you already
know—is another way to improve
memory.
Use Mnemonic Devices
• Mnemonic devices combine chunks
of information into a catchy or
easily recognizable format.
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