Chapter 6: Memory

amnesia

severe memory loss

Hermann Ebbinghaus Famous Study

-Ebbinghaus decided to test the effect of association on memory, recording the results mathematically to see if memory follows verifiable patterns. -he then created 2,300 "nonsense syllables", all three letters long and using the standard word format of consonant-vowel-consonant -he looked at each syllable for a fraction of a second, pausing for 15 seconds before going through a list again. He did this until he could recite a series correctly at speed. -He tested different lengths and different learning intervals, noting the speed of learning and forgetting.

Hermann Ebbinghaus Famous Study Results

-Ebbinghaus found that he could remember meaningful material, such as a poem, ten times more easily than his nonsense lists. -He also noted that the more times the stimuli (the nonsense syllables) were repeated, the less time was needed to reproduce the memorized information.

Auditory Sensory Memory

-echoic memory - Holds sound information for 3-4 seconds

Visual Sensory Memory

-iconic memory -holds an image ¼ to ½ second before being replaced

retrograde amnesia

-loss of memory, especially for episodic information; backward-acting amnesia -results from a blow to the head -don't remember events leading up to the accident

Elaborative Rehearsal

-more effective; focusing on the meaning of information to help encode and transfer to long term memory -relate the information to other information you already know - improves memory of new material and better retention -engages the hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdala

flashbulb memory and 9/11 study

-studies of flashbulb memories examining long-term retention show slowing in the rate of forgetting after a year, whereas others demonstrate accelerated forgetting. -the rate of forgetting for flashbulb memories and event memory (memory for details about the event itself) slows after a year -the strong emotional reactions elicited by flashbulb events are remembered poorly, worse than non-emotional features such as where and from whom one learned of the attack -the content of flashbulb and event memories stabilizes after a year.

when a new memory is formed significant changes occur

-the function of the neuron is altered -the structure of the neuron changes

decay theory

-the view that forgetting is due to normal metabolic processes that occur in the brain over time -studies show that info can be remembered decades after it was originally learned -when a new memory is formed it creates a memory trace distinct structural/chemical change in the brain

Qi Wang's studies of autobiographical memories

1. Average age of earliest memory was much earlier for the US born students than the Taiwanese and Chinese students 2. American memories were more discrete, one point in time events reflecting individual experiences and feelings like being stung by a bee while Taiwanese and Chinese students recalled more routine activities with family and schoolmates or community members - America- the self plays the leading role; self awareness while Asian cultures included memories with other people-self not easily separated from community 3. These differences are created by interactions with family members 4. Shared Reminiscing-the way mothers share stories of their family's past and children learn how to be a "self" in their culture -Asian mothers discuss group situations and deemphasize emotions that might have separated someone from the group -Western mothers discuss individual activities, accomplishments and emotional reactions

Results of Sperling's Experiment

1. First-subjects reported only 4 or 5 of the 12 letters- 2. Variation- with Tone and focused attention- if tone sounded under 1/3 of a second subjects reported about 3 of the 4 letters of that row - after 1 sec the image gone -if sounded more than 1/3 of a second the recall was decreased dramatically -more than one second no recall Conclusion: Our visual sensory memory holds a great deal of information very briefly (a ½ second) -available just long enough for us to pay attention to what is significant and then transferred to short term memory

Sensory Memory

1. information registered from the environment 2. holds for only a brief time= we process a lot of sensory information but select certain aspects/ need to pay attention (11,000,000 bits of information per sec; we process 40) 3. ¼ sec to 3 seconds the information fades 4. "snapshots" with momentary focuses of attention on specific details until the next "snapshot"

Long Term Memory

1. what most people define as memory 2. storage potentially for a lifetime 3. transfer of information between short and long term goes both ways 4. unlimited capacity 5. Info stored longer than 20 secs is in long term memory up to a lifetime 6. Retrieval quick and with usually little effort

Information Processing Model

A cognitive understanding of memory, emphasizing how information is changed when it is encoded, stored, and retrieved.

Cerebellum

A large structure of the hindbrain that controls fine motor skills. involved in classically conditioned simple reflexes, procedural memories and other motor skill memories (Implicit)

Alzheimer's disease

A progressive disease that destroys the brain's neurons, gradually impairing memory, thinking, language, and other cognitive functions, resulting in the complete inability to care for oneself; the most common cause of dementia. -AD patients develop an abundance of beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles -plaque interferes with the ability to communicate -tangles interrupt the flow of nourishment

recognition

A test of long-term memory that involves identifying correct information out of several possible choices; multiple choice tests

cued recall

A test of long-term memory that involves remembering an item of information in response to a retrieval cue; fill in the blank test

recall

A test of long-term memory that involves retrieving information without the aid of retrieval cues; essay tests

Eric Kandel

American neurobiologist, born in Austria, who won a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on the neural basis of learning and memory in the sea snail Aplysia. -memories change the function and structure of neurons -increases # of dendrites and increases synapses

Suzanne Corkin

American neuropsychologist who has extensively investigated the neural basis of memory, including several investigations of the famous amnesia patient H.M.

Karl Lashley

American physiological psychologist who attempted to find the specific brain location of particular memories. -memories are distributed and study this with rats and mazes

Richard F. Thompson

American psychologist and neuroscientist who has conducted extensive research on the neurobiological foundations of learning and memory -potential for localizing and distribution -rabbits split type experiment

Elizabeth F. Loftus

American psychologist who has conducted extensive research on the memory distortions that can occur in eyewitness testimony

George Sperling

American psychologist who identified the duration of visual sensory memory in a series of classic experiments in 1960

Brenda Milner

Canadian neuropsychologist whose groundbreaking research on the role of brain structures and functions in cognitive processes helped establish neuropsychology as a field; extensively studied the famous amnesia patient H.M.

Ways to increase the amount of information you can hold:

Chunking- grouping related items together to remember more and retrieves from long-term memory to create more meaning for the information

suppression

Consciously and intentionally pushing unpleasant feelings out of one's mind

Forgetting Curve (Ebbinghaus)

Describes how the ability of the brain to retain information decreases in time.

University of Arkansas James Lampinen study

Drawing participants' attention to the missing person minimally affected sightings, and only when strategic monitoring did not occur. Strategic monitoring had a larger effect on sightings but did not cause a ceiling effect, suggesting a role for face recognition and other factors in determining sighting rates.

source confusion and burglary study

Eye witnesses would remember false details about a burglary that had happened

Sperling Experiment

Flashed Images for 1/12 of a sec of 12 letters on a screen arranged in 4 rows of 3 letters each 1. Experiment 1: focused on screen and immediate after the screen went blank participants reported as many letters as they could remember 2. Experiment 2: 12 letters in 3 rows of 4 letters and immediately after the screen is blank a tone played under 1/3 of a second after it went blank High-pitched tone=report top row Medium pitch tone= report middle row Low pitch tone= report bottom row (Focus their visual sensory memory before it faded)

"Psychology Professor Office" study

For example, psychology professor's office, participants were taken to another room and asked to recall the details of the office. Many falsely remembered objects that were not in the office like books, pens, etc. they remember items that would be consistent with a typical professor's office

proactive interference

Forgetting in which an old memory interferes with remembering a new memory; forward-acting memory interference.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

German psychologist who originated the scientific study of forgetting; plotted the first forgetting curve, which describes the basic pattern of forgetting learned information over time

Chunking

Increasing the amount of information that can be held in short-term memory by grouping related items together into a single unit, or chunk.

"Memory Wars" Controversy with Repression Therapy & Abuse

Is it ethical and safe for therapists to bring back traumatic memories of abuse.

What happens when Short Term Memory is filled?

New information displays currently held info which can be helped with maintenance rehearsal

Familiarity and Suggestion Effects on False Memories

Results showed that conceptual elaboration of suggested events more often resulted in high confidence false memories false memories that were accompanied by the phenomenal experience of remembering them than did surface-level processing.

Brain dysfunction

The idea that a brain is not operating as normal brains do

motivated forgetting

The idea that we forget because we are motivated to forget, usually because a memory is unpleasant or disturbing.

Maintenance Rehearsal

The mental or verbal repetition of information in order to maintain it beyond the usual 20-second duration of short-term memory. Does not work for Long Term Memory

encoding specificity principle

The principle that when the conditions of information retrieval are similar to the conditions of information encoding, retrieval is more likely to be successful.

flashbulb memories

The recall of very specific images or details surrounding a vivid, rare, or significant personal event; details may or may not be accurate.

Working Memory

The temporary storage and active, conscious manipulation of information needed for complex cognitive tasks, such as reasoning, learning, and problem solving.

how to Avoid Prospective Memory Failure

Use external memory aids such as the alerting calendar on cell phones. Avoid multitasking when one of your tasks is critical. Carry out crucial tasks now instead of putting them off until later. Create reminder cues that stand out and put them in a difficult-to-miss spot

Alan Baddeley-Model of Working Memory

When we recall and manipulate information held in long term memory Three Main Components or ways we do this: 1. Phonological Loop- specialized for verbal information (lists of numbers or words)-most tested in memory tests 2. Visuospatial Sketchpad- specialized for spatial or visual material (layout of a room or a city) 3. Central Executive- controls attention, integrates information coming into the system and manages the activities of the phonological loop and visuospatial Sketchpad; initiates retrieval and decision processes as needed

retrieval cues

a clue, prompt, or hint that helps trigger recall of a given piece of information stored in long-term memory

false memories

a distorted or fabricated recollection of something that did not actually occur

Memory

a group of related mental processes that are involved in acquiring, storing and retrieving information -not a single process, it's a network

long-term potentiation

a long-lasting increase in synaptic strength between two neurons

source confusion

a memory distortion that occurs when the true source of the memory is forgotten

deja vu experience

a memory illusion characterized by brief but intense feelings of familiarity in a situation that has never been experienced before

Imagination Inflation

a memory phenomenon in which vividly imagining an event markedly increases confidence that the event actually occurred

Stage Model of Memory

a model describing memory as consisting of three distinct stages: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Created by Richard Atkinson & Richard Shiffrin

script

a schema for the typical sequence of an everyday event

source amnesia

attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined

Nelson Cowan

believes early research used a certain type of stimulus that led to overestimation of capacity because people automatically chunk numbers, letters, words

Hippocampus

encodes and transfer information to long-term memory (Explicit Memory)

Amygdala

encoding and storing the emotional qualities associated with particular memories

medial temporal lobe

encoding complex memories by forming links among the information stored in multiple brain regions

inattentional blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

retroactive interference

forgetting in which a new memory interferes with remembering an old memory; backward-acting memory interference

Semantic Memory

general knowledge that includes facts, names, definitions, concepts and ideas; "personal encyclopedia" -stored in long term memory without remembering when or where you originally acquired the information

Semantic Network Model

how information is organized in long term memory -when one concept is activated in the semantic network, it can spread -activating other associations in the semantic network -these associations activate other concepts

Procedural Memory

how to perform different skills, operations and actions; developed early in life, sometimes we don't even know when we learned it, and difficult to explain-we just know how to do it

misinformation effect

incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event

Association

information is logically linked Ex: Red and apple

anterograde amnesia

loss of memory caused by the inability to store new memories; forward-acting amnesia

George Miller

made famous the phrase: "the magical number 7, plus or minus 2" when describing human memory limit short term memory to seven items

source memory

memory for when, where, and how a particular experience or piece of information was acquired

Explicit Memory(declarative memories)

memory with awareness; information or knowledge that can be considered recollected, including episodic and semantic;

Implicit Memory(non-declarative memories)

memory without awareness; not consciously recollected but still affect behavior, knowledge and performance, including procedural memory

absentmindedness

occurs because you don't pay enough attention to a bit of information at the time when you should be encoding it.

Schemas

organized cluster of info about a particular topic

Clustering

organizing into related groups during recall; our brain naturally categorizes things

serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list

pre-frontal lobe

sequence of events not the events themselves

Storage

process of retaining information in memory so that it can be used later

Encoding

process of transforming information into a form that can be entered and retained by the memory system encoding patterns of lines, words, and dots on a page in a textbook into meaning

dementia

progressive deterioration and impairment of memory, reasoning, and other cognitive functions occurring as the result of a disease or a condition

interference theory

proposes that people forget information because of competition from other material -the more similar the info is the more likely the 2 memories will interfere

serial recall

recall the list items in their original order of presentation

Retrieval

recovering stored information to our consciousness

Autobiographical Memory

refers to events in your personal life AND also the semantic memories of when and where things happened; plays a key role in your sense of self -Most adults have early memories around 2 and 4 which mark the beginning of the autobiographical memory and development of our sense of self

Episodic Memory

refers to specific events or episodes in your life

prospective Memory

remembering to do something in the future

"Lost in the Mall" study

research strategy of using info from family members to help create/induced false memories of childhood experiences

frontal lobes

retrieving and organizing information that is associated with autobiographical memories and episodic memories (working memory & Explicit)

Short Term Memory

the active stage of memory in which information is stored for up to about 20 seconds

memory consolidation

the gradual, physical process of converting new long-term memories to stable, enduring memory codes -stimulants and stress enhance it

memory trace (engram)

the hypothetical brain changes associated with a particular stored memory

retrieval cue failure

the inability to recall long-term memories because of inadequate or missing retrieval cues

encoding failure

the inability to recall specific information because of insufficient encoding of the information for storage in long-term memory

retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage

tip of the tongue phenomenon

the temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that it's just out of reach

Self Reference Effect

the tendency to process efficiently and remember well information related to oneself

mood congruence

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's mood

Context effect

the tendency to recover information more easily when the retrieval occurs in the same setting as the original learning of the information

Encoding (Long Term)

transforming the new information into a form that can be retrieved later- most important part of short term memory

Repression

unconsciously pushing unwanted memories out of awareness

Jeffrey Rouder

used simple visual stimulus instead of letters or numbers; participants remembered position of squares (they only held 3 or 4 items at a time WHEN CHUNKING IS NOT A OPTION)-MOST RESEARCHERS BELIEVE TODAY