Chapter 8 - Memory

Memory

The persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information. Atkinson and Shriffin proposed that we form memories in 3 stages: - Sensory memory - Short-term memory (working) - Long-term memory

Consolidation

The process of converting temporary memories into permanent structural changes in the brain

Retrieval

The process of getting information out of memory storage

Encoding

The processing of information into the memory system E.g. Extracting meaning

Long-Term Memory

The relatively permanent and limitless store-house of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences

Storage

The retention of encoded information over time

Spacing Effect

The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Mood-Congruent Memory

The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood. Emotions that accompany good or bad events become retrieval cues When teens are down, their parents seem inhuman; as their mood brightens, their parents morph from devils into angels.

Testing Effect

"Testing is a powerful means of improving learning, not just assessing it." So here is another point to remember: Spaced study and self-assessment beat cramming

Sensory Memory

The immediate, fleeting, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

Medial Temporal Area

The inner area of the temporal lobe that stores verbal memories. Damage to this region (including the hippocampus) causes profound impairment of the ability to form new explicit memories

Distortion - Suggestibility

The lingering effects of misinformation A leading question - "Did Mr. Jones touch your private parts?"- later becomes a young child's false memory

Retrograde Amnesia

The loss of memory for events occurring before some damage or disruption to the brain

Amnesia

The loss of memory. Whatever has destroyed conscious recall in these individuals with amnesia has not destroyed their unconscious capacity for learning

Three Sins of Forgetting

- Absent-mindedness - Transience - Blocking

Three Sins of Distortion

- Misattribution - Suggestibility - Bias

One Sin of Intrusion

- Persistence

Flashbulb Memory

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event. The people who experienced a 1989 San Francisco earthquake did just that. A year and a half later, they had perfect recall of where they had been and what they were doing

Recall

A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test

Recognition

A measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test

Relearning

A memory measure that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for a second time

Echoic Memory

A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds

Iconic Memory

A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

Hippocampus

A neural center that is located in the limbic system and helps process explicit memories for storage. With left hippocampus damage, people have trouble remembering verbal information, but they have no trouble recalling visual designs and locations. With right-hippocampus damage, the problem is reversed The rear area processes spatial memory The hippocampus is active during slow-wave sleep, as memories are processed and filed for later retrieval. The greater the hippocampus activity during sleep after a training experience, the better the next day's memory

Working Memory

A newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory Working memory associates new and old information and solves problems

Short-term Memory

Activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten

Are Children's Memory Unreliable?

Although children's memory can be easily distorted, if questioned about their experiences in neutral words they understand, children often accurately recall what happened and who did it Memory prior to three years of age is unreliable.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

An increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory. Memory increase: - One approach is developing drugs that boost production of the protein CREB, which can switch genes off or on. - You may recall that genes code the production of protein molecules. With repeated neural firing, a nerve cell's genes produce synapse strengthening proteins, enabling LTP

Infantile Amnesia

As adults, our conscious memory of our first three years is blank

Source Amnesia

Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. (Also called source misattribution) Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories

Conditioned Responses

Behaviours or emotions that occur automatically as reactions to outside events as a result of past associations

Distortion - Bias

Belief-colored recollections (current feelings toward a friend may color our recalled initial feelings)

Massed Practice (Cramming)

Can produce speedy short-term learning and feelings of confidence. But distributed study time produces better long-term recall

Distortion - Misattribution

Confusing the source of information (putting words in someone else's mouth or remembering a dream as an actual happening).

Emotion and Memory

Conversely, weaker emotion means weaker memories. People given a drug that blocks the effects of stress hormones will later have more trouble remembering the details of an upsetting story

Anterograde Amnesia

Difficulty in forming new memories for events occurring after some damage or disruption to the brain

Effortful Processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort Produces durable and accessable memories

Imagination Inflation

Even repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories. Students who repeatedly imagined simple acts such as breaking a toothpick or picking up a stapler later experienced this imagination inflation

Automatic Processing - Well Learned Information

For example, when you see words in your native language, perhaps on the side of a delivery truck, you cannot help but register their meanings. At such times, automatic processing is so effortless that it is difficult to shut it off.

Semantic Memory

General knowledge about the world, including knowledge about language, that isn't identified with a particular event in your life

Repression

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. But the submerged memory will linger, he believed, to be retrieved by some later cue or during therapy.

Forgetting - Blocking

Inaccessibility of stored information (seeing an actor in an old movie, we feel the name on the tip of our tongue but experience retrieval failure—we cannot get it out)

Forgetting - Absent Mindedness

Inattention to details leads to encoding failure (our mind is elsewhere as we lay down the car keys).

Misinformation Effect

Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event

Parallel Processing

Simultaneous activity

Episodic Memory

Knowledge of the specific events or episodes in your own life history (part of explicit memory)

Gist Memories

Memories of imagined experiences are more restricted to the gist of the supposed event - the associated meanings and feelings. Because gist memories are durable, children's false memories sometimes outlast their true memories, especially as children mature and become better able to process the gist e retain the memory of the event, but not of the context in which we acquired it.

Explicit Memory

Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare." (Also called declarative memory.) (In the Hippocampus) Alzheimer's patients, whose explicit memories for people and events are lost, display an ability to form new implicit memories

Imagery

Mental pictures; a powerful aid to effortful processing, especially when combined with semantic encoding

Connectism

One modern model, connectionism, views memories as emerging from interconnected neural networks. Specific memories arise from particular activation patterns within these networks

Chunking

Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically. We all remember information best when we can organize it into personally meaningful arrangements. ROY G. BIV

Serial Position Effect

Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list.

Recency and Primacy Effect

Perhaps because the last items are still in working memory, people briefly recall them especially quickly and well (a recency effect). But after a delay—after they shift their attention from the last items—their recall is best for the first items (a primacy effect)

The Cerebellum

Responsible for implicit memory. Although your hippocampus is a temporary processing site for your explicit memories, you could lose it and still lay down memories for skills and conditioned associations. Implicit memory formation needs the cerebellum. age 7 but only 34 percent remembered at age 9

Implicit Memory

Retention independent of conscious recollection. (Also called nondeclarative memory.) They can learn how to do something (In the other areas of the brain + cerebellum)

Forgetting - Transience

Storage decay over time (after we part ways with former classmates, unused information fades)

Déjà vu

That eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience. The current situation may be loaded with cues that unconsciously retrieve an earlier, similar experience Events in the past may have aroused a specific emotion that later primes us to recall its associated events

Frontal Lobe

The "source monitor" or "reality monitor" of the brain. Damage to this area causes partial impairment of the sources of explicit memory, specifically, the ability to recall the source (for example, a dream, a conversation, or an actual personal experience) of facts and events

Priming

The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory. In an effort to recall his early life experiences, Aaron formed vivid mental images of rooms in his childhood home. He was engaged in the process of priming

Rehearsal

The conscious repetition of information, either to maintain it in consciousness or to encode it for storage The amount remembered depends on the time spent learning

Retroactive Interference

The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information It is rather like a second stone tossed in a pond, disrupting the waves rippling out from a first

Proactive Interference

The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information If you buy a new combination lock, your memory of the old one may interfere

Semantic Encoding

The encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words Processing a word deeply by its meaning (semantic encoding) - produces better recognition later than does shallow processing,such as attending to its appearance (visual encoding) or sound (acoustic encoding)

Visual Encoding

The encoding of picture images

Acoustic Encoding

The encoding of sound, especially the sound of words

Automatic Processing

Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as: - Space - Time - Frequency, - Well-learned information - such as word meanings.

Intrusion - Persistence

Unwanted memories (being haunted by images of a sexual assault).

Self-Reference Effect

We have especially good recall for information we can meaningfully relate to ourselves

State-Dependent Memory

What we learn in one state—be it drunk or sober—may be more easily recalled when we are again in that state, a subtle phenomenon

Hierarchies

When people develop expertise in an area, they process information not only in chunks but also in hierarchies composed of a few broad concepts divided and subdivided into narrower concepts and facts. When the words were organized into groups, recall was two to three times better

Prolonged Stress on Memory

When prolonged as in sustained abuse or combat stress can act like acid, corroding neural connections and shrinking the brain area (the hippocampus) that is vital for laying down memories Moreover, when sudden stress hormones are flowing,older memories may be blocked. It is true for stressed rats trying to find their way to a hidden target And it is true for those of us whose mind has gone blank while speaking in public

Stress and Memory

When we are excited or stressed, emotion-triggered stress hormones make more glucose energy available to fuel brain activity, signaling the brain that something important has happened. Moreover, the amygdala, two emotion-processing clusters in the limbic system, boosts activity and available proteins in the brain's memory-forming areas The result? Arousal can sear certain events into the brain, while disrupting memory for neutral events around the same time

Retrieval Cues

When you encode into memory a target piece of information, such as the name of the person sitting next to you in class, you associate with it other bits of information about your surroundings, mood, seating position Given retrieval cues ("It begins with an M"), we may easily retrieve the elusive memory

Automatic Processing - Time

While going about your day, you unintentionally note the sequence of the day's events. Later, when you realize you've left your coat somewhere, you can recreate that sequence and retrace your steps

Automatic Processing - Space

While studying, you often encode the place on a page where certain material appears; later, when struggling to recall that information, you may visualize its location

Automatic Processing - 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."

Mnemonics

[nih-MON-iks] memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices. Retrieve lengthy memorized passages and speeches