Psych 111 - Memory

Mind of a Mnemonist

"S" = Solomon Shereshevskii - Had extraordinary memory - Had to adopt tricks to forget things.

Baddeley's Working Memory Model

- Articulatory/phonological loop - Used to maintain verbal information for a short amount of time and for acoustic rehearsal. - Word length affect (sum, hit, harm vs opportunity, individual, university). Effect disappears with artic. supression - preventing them from rehearsing. - How fast speaker talks - Effect of articulatory suppression (ex: repeatedly saying "the" when viewing the list of words). Prevents formation of phonological code. - Acoustic similarity (words/letters that don't sound similar are easier to remember than those that do sound similar). - Visuo-spatial Sketch pad - Devoted to visual imagery and spatial processing. - Information can either enter the buffer through long term memory or directly from visual perception. - Image can be rotated, scanned, enlarged mentally. - Dual task paradigm - Sketchpad can be disrupted by requiring volunteers to tap repeatedly a specified pattern of keys or locations while using imagery at the same time. - Central executive - Supervise attention - Focuses attention on relevant information and i inhibits irrelevant ones. - Planning/coordination - Plans sequence of tasks to accomplish goals, schedules processes in complex tasks, often switches attention between two different parts (. multi-tasking, problem solving, cognition). - Updates and checks constantly to determine next steps in sequence of parts. - Monitoring of mental activity (mental workspace) - Whenever you need to retain some information while processing other information.

Chunking

- Chunking increases the amount of information you can store in short-term memory as it takes up less space than 7 items. Expands capacity. -Chunking can increase working memory for expertise more than for people who aren't experts. They have an advantage.

Herman Ebbinghaus

- Devised and memorized nonsense syllables (meaningless stimuli = shallow processing) - Memories faded pretty quickly; by day 31, Ebbinghaus had like 20% of memory of syllables.

Craik and Lockhart's Level of Processing Model

- Different ways we process information lead to different strengths of memory. - Deep processing leads to better memories (elaborating according to meaning leads to a strong memory). -Shallow processing emphasizes the physical features of a stimuli (memory trace is fragile and quickly decays). - Distinguished between elaborative rehearsal and maintenance rehearsal. - Results: recall of words independent of length of time (number of intervening words) it was maintained in STM. - Maintenance rehearsal did not automatically lead to LTM. - Level of processing: students rehearsed the words without elaborating on their meaning = shallow processing. Self-reference effect: People are more likely able to remember/recall potential words that could describe them (even if those words ended up not describing them). - Even better memory for the words that did describe them. - Bigger effect for positive traits.

Spacing

- Discovered by Ebbinghaus - Distributed practice - Studying material for shorter amount of time (but every day) leads to better encoding/retention of the material.

Long-term Memory

- Fed by short term memory. - Virtually unlimited capacity and duration - Getting into LTM takes a lot of effort.

Sensory Memory

- Getting information in - Very limited duration - Keep only what is processed - Visual = iconic, auditory = echoic. - Can only recall a few items, but can select which ones from a larger set. - Large capacity, only holds a short duration - Old information is pushed out by new information - ATTENTION determines what makes it from this stage to short-term memory.

Shephard's Recognition Test

- In 1967, showed subjects 612 pictures and asked them if they recognized some of them. Even by 4 months, they guessed more than half correctly. What's the limit? No one knows!

Factors that affect false memories

- It is possible to implant false memories. - It is easier to implant plausible memories than implausible. - Repetition of the false info helps - Imagination Inflation: Don't just tell them it happened, make them imagine it. - Some individuals appear to be more susceptible than others.

Short-term Memory

- Limited capacity (7 +/- 2) - Take in from sensory memory and long-term memory - Persists as along as rehearsed. - We generally have conscious awareness of what is stored in our short term memory. - Study showed that short term memory generally lasts around 15 seconds, without rehearsing or focusing on the words. - Persist for a short duration - Rehearsal determines what stays.

What factors improve retention/recall?

- Spacing - Organizing -State/context dependent memory Encoding specificity effect: our ability to remember a stimulus depends on the similarity between the way a stimulus is processed at encoding and the way it is processed during testing.

Atkins and Shiffrin's 3 Stage Model of Memory

- The classical view - Sensory input ---> sensory memory ---> (attention) ---> short-term working memory ---> (rehearsal and encoding) ---> long-term memory. - We have different types of sensory memory for the different types of sense. - Maintenance and rehearsal is what helps keep short term memory.

Why do we forget? Failure to Encode

- We probably never encoded in the first place. - How many of us know how a penny looks like? - We only see it for it's function. - Shallow processing leads to less stable memories. - The way we process information leads to stronger or weaker memories.

Types of Amnesia

Anterograde Amnesia - cannot make new explicit/declarative memories. - Examples: Henry Molaison (H.M.) - Can still learn via implicit memory (skills), classical conditioning (cerebellum), can form preferences for music but can't recognize the melodies. Retrograde Amnesia - usually temporary graded. Can't recall explicit information of the past. - memory for old information usually in tact - more recent memories are more vulnerable.

Theories about Forgetting

Decay theory - memory is weakened with disuse. Simply passage of time (long time has passed since you've engaged with the memory). Proactive - Old memories are interfering with the recall of new information. Retroactive - New memories are interfering with the recall of old information.

Processes in Memory

Encoding - Processes we use to transform sensory data into some mental representation in memory. Most of what we experience we do NOT encode (information overload). Retaining (Storage) - processes used to maintain information in memory (so we can access it later). Retrieval - Processes used to get information back out of memory.

Eyewitness

Eyewitness memory for complex events can be distorted in a number of ways. - You may forget the things that happened - You may remember things that didn't happen - You may integrate new information/memories - Your memory may be influenced by: interim misinformation or how you were questioned later on. - Misinformation effect: information that comes after the event has happened.

Explicit Memory Tasks

Involves conscious recollection - Can be recall or recognition - Participants know they are trying to retrieve information from their memory.

What is memory?

Means by which you retain and retrieve past experiences to use that information in the present. As a process, refers to the dynamic mechanism associated with encoding, retaining, and retrieving information about past experiences

Brain and Memory

Medial temporal lobe and hippocampus are important for new explicit long term memory formation. Mirror Reading Study: Patients with amnesia and normal patients both acquired the skill of reading backwards (implicit). However, normal patients read repeated words faster because they could recognize it (explicit).

Bahrick's Research on Very Long Term Memory

Permastore - subjects remembered high school Spanish or the names/faces of their high school classmates even 30, 40, 50 years later!

Procedural vs Declarative Memory

Procedural Memory: knowing how to do something - Ride a bike - Touch typing - Skateboarding - Skiing Declarative Memory: tested with explicit memory test. - Memory for facts (semantics) and events (autobiographical, episodical).

Methods Used to Study Memory

Recall: You have to generate an answer - Free Recall: recall all of the words you can from the list you've previously seen. - Serial Recall: Need to recall order as well the names (more difficult than free recall) - Cued Recall: give participants paired words of list words and associated words. Give them some clues to trigger recall. Recognition: You have to recognize the right answer among multiple possible choices.

Implicit Memory Tasks

Requires participants to complete a task - The performance of the task indirectly indicates memory. - Priming

Determining whether each word is pleasant or not

Semantic/deeper level processing.

Sensory Synesthesia

Unusual, usually involuntary, association among different sensory modalities or representations (ex: color blue signifying the number 3).

State Dependent Memory

When internal physiological state of recalling matched the physiological state (mood) of encoding. Recall is improved. Internal.

Context Dependent Memory

When the environment of recalling matches the environment of encoding, you learn better. External/physical. -Time of day is also important