Chapter 6 - Psychology

Organize

1. review your course notes routinely and catch potential errors and ambiguities early. There is no sense in memorizing inaccurate or incomplete information. 2. organize the material in a way that will allow you to commit to memory effectively. Arrange information, rework material, and give it a structure that will help you to remember it. 3. experiment with different organizational techniques. One approach is to use a hierarchy such as an outline. You might create analogies (such as the earlier comparison of retrieval from long term memory to finding a book in the library) that take advantage of your pre-existing schemas.

keeping memory sharp

2 years later wetherill was dead, and the autopsy showed a brain ravaged by Alzheimers disease a progressive, irreversible brain disorder that is characterized by gradual deterioration of memory, reasoning, language and eventually physical functioning.

Donald Hebb(1949, 1980)

Canadian psychologists, suggested that assemblies of cells, disturbed over large areas of the cerebral cortex, work together to represent information, just as the connectionist network perspective would predict.

How memories are stored

Experiments with thousands of rats showed that the loss of various cortical areas did not affect rats' ability to remember the pathway, leading Lashley to conclude that memories are not stored in a specific location the brain. Other researchers, continuing Lashley's quest, agreed that memory storage is diffuse, but they developed additional insights. (Karl Lashley 1950)

Brain Structures and Memory Functions(explicit and implicit)

Explicit memory: in many aspects of explicit memory, information is transmitted from the hippocampus to the frontal lobes, which are involved in both RETROSPECTIVE (remembering things from the past) and PROSPECTIVE (remembering things we need to do in the future) memory. The left front lob is especially active when we encode new information into memory; the right frontal lobe is more active when we subsequently retrieve it. Implicit memory: there cerebellum (the structure at the back and toward the bottom of the brain) is active in the implicit memory required to perform skills.

Tips from the science of Memory for studying and for life

How can you apply your new knowledge of memory processes to improving your academic performance--and your life? No matter what model of memory you use, you can sharpen your memory by thinking deeply about the ''material'' of life and connecting the information to other things you know. Perhaps the one most well-connected node or most elaborate schema to which you can relate something is the self--what you know and think about yourself. To make something meaningful and to secure its place in memory, you must make it matter to yourself.

Semantic Memory

Is a person's knowledge about the world. It includes one's areas of expertise, general knowledge of the sort learned in school, and everyday knowledge about the meanings of words, famous individuals, important places, and common things. For example, semantic memory is involved in a person's knowledge of chess, of geometry, and of who the Dalai Lama, LeBron James, and Lady Gaga are. The difference between episodic and semantic memory is also demonstrated in certain cases of amnesia (memory loss). A person with amnesia might forget entirely who she is-her name, family, career, and all other vital information about herself-yet still be able to talk, know what words mean, and have general knowledge about the world, such as what day it is or who is currently holds the office of U.S. president. In such class, episodic memory is impaired, but semantic memory in functioning.

Schema

Is a preexisting mental concept or framework that helps people organize and interpret information. Schemas from prior encounters with the environment influence the way we handle information-how we encode it, what inferences we make about it, and how we retrieve it.

Procedural memory

Is a type of implicit memory process that involves memory for skills. For example, assuming that you are an expert typist, when you type a papery are not conscious of where the keys are for the various letters; somehow, your well-learned, nonconscious skills typing allows you to hit the right keys. Another type of implicit memory involves classical conditioning, a form of learning. Recall that classical conditioning involves the automatic learning of associations between stimuli, so that one stimulus comes to evoke the same response as the other. Classically conditioned associations involved nonconscious, implicit memory. So, without realizing it, you might start to like the person who sits next yo you in your favorite class, because she is around while you are feeling good.

Priming

Is the activation of information that people already have in storage to help them remember new information better and faster. In a common demonstration of priming, individuals study a list of words (such as hope, walk, and cake). Then they are given a standard recognition task to assess explicit memory. They must select all of the words that appeared in the list-for example, "Did you see the word hope? Did you see the word form?" Then participants perform a stem-completion task, which assesses implicit memory. In this task, they view a list of incomplete words (for example, ho__, wa__, ca__), called word stems, and must fill in the blanks with whatever word comes to minds. For example, they are more likely to complete the stem ho__ with hope than with hole. this result occurs even when individuals do not recognize the words on the earlier recognition task. Because priming takes place even when explicit memory for previous information is not required, it is assumed to be an involuntary and unconscious process. Priming occurs when something in the environment evokes a response in memory-such as the activation of a particular concept.

Episodic memory

Is the retention of information about the where, when, and what of life's happenings-how we remember life's episodes. Episodic memory is autobiographical. For example, episodic memory includes the details of where you were when your younger brother or sister was born, what happened on your first date, and what you ate for breakfast this morning.

serial position effect

Is the tendency to recall the items at the beginning and end of a list more readily than those in the middle. If you are a reality TV fan, you might notice that you always seem to remember the first person to get voted off and the last few survivors. All those people in the middle, however, are a blur. the primary effect z; better recall for items at the beginning of a list; the recency effects refers to better recall for items at the end

Imagery

Mental imagery entails visualizing material that we want to remember in ways that create a lasting portrait. Imagery functions as a powerful encoding tool for all of us, certainly including the world champions of memory listed in. Figure 4

Forgetting

One of psychology's pioneers, Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), was the first person to conduct scientific research on forgetting. In 1885, he made up and memorized a list of 13 nonsense syllables and then assessed how many of them he could remember as time passed. (Nonsense syllables are meaningless combinations of letters that are unlikely to have been learned already, such as Zen, xid, lek, and ray.). Even just an hour later, Ebbinghaus could recall only a few of the nonsense syllables he had memorized. Figure 16 shows ebbinghaus's learning curve for nonsense syllables. Based on his research, ebbinghaus concluded that most forgetting takes place soon after we learn something.

long-term memory

Relatively permanent type of memory that store huge amounts of information for a long time. The capacity of long term memory is staggering.

Neurons And Memory

Researchers hav proposed the concept of LONG-TERM-POTENTIATION to explain how memory functions at the neuron level. In line with connectionist theory, this concept states that if two neurons are activated at the same time, the connection between them-and thus the memory-may be strengthened. Long-term potentiation has been demonstrated experimentally by administering a drug that increases the flow of information from one neuron to another across the synapse, raising the possibility of someday improving memory through drugs that increase neural connections.

Retrieval

Takes place when information that was retained in memory comes out of storage. You might think of long-term memory as a library. You retrieve information in a fashion similar to the process you use to locate and check out a book in an actual library.

Recall and Recognition

The presence or absence of good cues and the retrieval task required are factors in an important memory distinction: recall versus recognition. Recall is a memory task in which the individual has to retrieve previously learned information, as on essay tests. Recognition is a memory task in which the individual only only has to identify (recognize) learned items, as on multiple-choice tests. Recall tests such as essay tests have poor retrieval cues.

Chunking and Rehearsal

Two ways to improve short-term memory are chunking and rehearsal. CHUNKING involves grouping or packing information that exceeds the 7 +- 3 memory span into higher-order units that can be remembered as single units. Chunking words by making large amounts of information more manageable. To get a sense of chunking, consider this word list: hot, city, book, forget, tomorrow, and smile. Hold these words in memory for a moment; then write them down. If you recalled the words, you succeeded in holding 30 letters, grouped into 6 chances, in memory. Now hold the following list in memory and then write it down: O LDH ARO LDAN DYO UNGB EN How did you do? Do not feel bad if you poorly. This string of letters is very difficult to remember, even though it is arranged in chunks. The problem is that the chunks lack meaning. If you re-chunk the letters to form a meaningful words ''old Harold and young ben'', they become much easier to remember. Another way to improve short term Memory involves REHERSAL: the conscious repetition of information. However, if rehearsal is not interrupted, information can be retained indefinitely. Rehersal is often verbal, giving the impression of an inner voice, but it can also be visual or spatial, giving the impression of a private inner eye.

Context at Encoding and Retrieval

While the factors that we have discussed so far relate to the retrieval of generic information, various kinds of special memory retrieval also have generic information, various kinds of special memory retrieval also have generated a great deal of research. These memories have special significance because of their relevance to the self, to their emotional or traumatic character, or because they show unusually high levels of apparent accuracy.

Working Memory

a combination of components, including short-term memory and attention, that allow us to hold information temporarily as we perform cognitive tasks. Working memory is not the same thing as short-term memory.

John von Neumann

a distinguished mathematician, put the size at 2.8x10^20 (280 quintillion) bits, which in practical terms means that our storage capacity is virtually unlimited. Von Neumann assumed that we never forget anything; but even when considering that we do forget things, we can hold several billion times more information than a large computer.

anterograde amnesia

a memory disorder that affects the retention of new information and events (antero indicates amnesia that moves forward in time). H.M suffered from this. What he learned before the surgery (and thus before the onset of amnesia) was not affected. For example, H.M could identify his friends, recall their names, and even tell stories about them, if he had known them before the surgery. People who met H.M after the surgery remained strangers, even if they spent thousands of hours with him. H.M's post surgical experiences were rarely encoded in his long term memory.

Autobiographical memory

a special form of episodic memory, is a person's recollections of his or her life experiences. An intriguing discovery about autobiographical memory is the REMINISCENCE BUMP, the effect that adults remember more events from the second and third decades of life than from other decades. This reminiscence bump may occur because these are the times in our life when we have many novel experiences or because it is during our teens and 20's that we are forging a sense of identity.

tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon (TOT)

a type of ''effortful retrieval" that occurs when we are confident that we know something but cannot quite pull it out of memory. In a TOT state we usually can successfully retrieve characteristics of the word, such as the first letter and the number of syllables, but not the word itself. The TOT phenomenon arises when we can retrieve some of the desired information but not all of it.

Memory

as the retention of information or experience over time.

Repressed memories

can an individual forget, and later recover, memories of traumatic events? A great deal of debate surrounds this question. REPRESSION: is a defense mechanism by which a person is so traumatized by an event that he or she forgets it and then forgets the act of forgetting. According to psychodynamic theory, repression's main function is to protect the individual from threatening information.

Eyewitness testimony

eyewitness testimonies, like other sorts of memories, may contain errors, and faulty memory in criminal matters has especially serious consequences. when eyewitness testimony is inaccurate, the wrong person might go to jail or even be put to death, or the perpetrator of the crime might not be prosecuted. It is important. to note, however, that witnessing a crime is often traumatic for the individual, and so this type of memory typically fits in the larger category of memory for highly emotional events. One reason for distorting is that memory fades. In one study, people were able to identify pictures with 100 percent accuracy after a 2-hour time lapse. However, 4 months later they achieved an accuracy of only 57%; chance alone accounts for 50% accuracy.

Sensory Memory

holds information from the world in its original sensory form for only an instant, not much longer than the brief time it is exposed to the visual, auditory, and other senses. Sensory memory is very rich and detailed, but we lose the information in it quickly unless we use certain strategies that transfer r into short term or long term memory.

Motivated forgetting

if repression exists it can be considered a special case. Which occurs when individuals forget something because it is so painful or anxiety laden that remembering it is intolerable. This type of forgetting may be a consequence of the emotional trauma experienced by victims of rape or physical abuse, war veterans, and survivors of earthquakes, plane crashes, and other terrifying events.

prospective memory

involves remembering information about doing something in the future; it includes memory for intentions. Includes both timing (when we have to do something) and content (what we have to do).

short-term memory

is a limited capacity memory system in which information is usually retained for only as long as 30 seconds unless we use strategies to retain it longer. Compared with sensory memory, short-term memory is limited in capacity, but it can store information for a longer time. Much information goes no further than the stage of auditory and visual sensory memory. We retain this information for only a brief instant. However some information especially that to which we pay attention, proceeds into short term memory.

implicit (nondeclarative) memory

is memory in which behavior is affected by prior experience without a conscious recollection of that experience. In addition to explicit memory, there is a type of long term memory that is related to non-consciously remembering skills and sensory perceptions rather than consciously remembering facts.

Flashbulb memory

is the memory of emotionally significant events that people often recall with more accuracy and vivid imagery than everyday events. Many adults can remember, for example, where they were when they first heard of the terrorist attacks on the united Staes on 9/11. An intriguing dimension of flashbulb memories is that several decades later, people often remember where they were and what was going on in their lives at the time of such an emotionally charged event.

Components of Long term memory

long term memory is complex, as figure 9 shows. At the tope level, it is divided into substructures of explicit memory and implicit memory. Explicit memory can be further subdivided into episodic and semantic memory. Implicit memory includes the systems involved in procedural memory, classical conditioning, and priming. To explore the distinction, lets look at the case of a person known as H.M. Afflicted with severe epilepsy, H.M. underwent surgery in 1953, when he was 27 years old, that involved removing the hippocampus and a portion of the temporal lobes of both hemispheres in his Brian. H.M'S epilepsy improved, but something devastating happened to his memory.Most dramatically, he developed an inability to form new memories that outlive working memory. H.M'smemory time frame was only a few minutes at most, so he lived, until his death in 2008, in a perpetual present and could not remember past events (explicit memory). In contrast, his memory of how to do things (implicit memory) was less affected. For example, he could learn new physical tasks, even though he had no memory of how or when he learned them.

Amnesia

loss of memory Recall the case of H.M in the discussion of explicit and implicit memory. In H.M's surgery, the part of his brain that was responsible for laying own new memories was damaged beyond repair.

Autobiographical Memory and the Life Story

may be one of the most important aspects of human life. For instance, one of the many functions that autobiographical memory serves is to allow us to learn from our experiences. In autobiographical memory, we store the lessons we have learned from life. These memories become a resource to which we can turn when faced with life's difficulties. It also allows us to understand ourselves and provides us with a source of identity. In his studies of self defining autobiographical memories, Jefferson singer and his colleagues maintain that these internalized stories of personal experience serve as signs of the meaning we have created out of our life events and give our lives coherence.

retrograde amnesia

memory loss for a segment of the past but not for new events.

Inference theory (one of the reason that people forget)

people forget not because memories are lost from storage but because other information gets in the way of what they want to remember.

Levels of processing

refers to a continuum from shallow to intermediate to deep, with deeper processing producing better memory.

Elaboration

refers to the formation of a number of different connections around a stimulus at any given level of memory encoding. Elaboration is like creating a huge spider web of links between some new information and everything one already knows, and it can occur at any level of processing.

Retrospective memory

remembering from the past

Attention

selective attention involves focusing on a specific aspect of experience while ignoring others. Attention is selective because the brain's resources are limited-they cannot attend to everything. These limitations mean that we have to attend selectively to some things in our environment and ignore others.

Martin Conway and David Rubin(1993)

sketched a structure of autobiographical memory that has 3 levels(Figure 15). The most abstract level consists of LIFE TIME PERIODS; for example, you might remember something about your life in high school. The middle level in the hierarchy is made up of GENERAL EVENTS, such as a trip you took with your friends after you graduated from high school. The most concrete level in the hierarchy is composed of EVENT-SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE; for example, from your post graduation trip, you might remember the exhilarating experience you had the first time you jet-skied. When people tell their life stories, all 3 levels of information are usually present and intertwined.

Memory for traumatic events

some psychologists argue that memories of emotionally traumatic events are accurately retained, possibly forever, in considerable detail. There is good evidence that memory for traumatic events is usually more accurate than memory for ordinary events.

Encoding Failure

sometimes when people say they have forgotten something, they have not really forgotten it; rather, they never encoded the information was never entered into long-term memory.

Atkinson-Shiffrin Theory

states that memory storage involves 3 separate systems: sensory memory - time frame of a fraction of a second to several seconds short-term memory- time frame up to 30 seconds long-term memory - time frames up to a life time

Explicit Memory(declarative memory)

the conscious recollection of information, such as specific facts or events and, at least in humans, information that can be verbally communicated. Examples of using explicit or declarative, memory include recounting the events in a movie you have seen and recalling which politicians are in the president's cabinet. Forgetting tended to occur in the first 3 years after taking the classes and then leveled off, so that adults maintained considerable knowledge of Spanish vocabulary words up to 50 years. Permastore memory represents that portion of original learning that appears destined to be with the person virtually forever, even without rehearsal.

Encoding ( the first step )

the process by which information gets into memory storage. When you are listening to a lecture, watching a play, reading a booker talking with a friend, you are encoding information into memory.