Chapter 7: Memory

Define memory.

Memory is the nervous system's capacity to retain and retrieve skills and knowledge.

Short-Term Memory

A memory storage system that briefly holds a limited amount of information in awareness.

Identify factors that contribute to errors in eyewitness testimony.

Eyewitness testimony is susceptible to error due to suggestibility, confirmation bias, and false memory.

Identify brain regions involved in learning and memory.

Memory is distributed across many brain areas, including the hippocampus, medial temporal lobes, and cortical sensory areas.

Define mnemonics.

Mnemonics, such as the method of loci, are learning strategies that improve recall through the use of retrieval cues.

Retrieval

The act of recalling or remembering stored information when it is needed.

Absentmindedness

The inattentive or shallow encoding of events.

Anterograde Amnesia

A condition in which people lose the ability to form new memories.

Transience

Forgetting over time.

Describe working memory and chunking.

Information can be held in working memory for 20 to 30 seconds. Working memory span is approximately seven items (plus or minus two). The number of items in working memory can be increased by chunking, organizing information in to meaningful units.

Retroactive Interference

Interference that occurs when new information inhibits the ability to remember old information.

Mnemonics

Learning aids, strategies, and devices that improve recall through the use of retrieval cues.

Chunking

Organizing information into meaningful units to make it easier to remember.

Generate examples of source misattribution.

Source misattribution is the distortion of the circumstances surrounding a memory. The false fame effect, the sleeper effect, source amnesia, and cryptomnesia are examples.

Cryptomnesia

A type of misattribution that occurs when a person thinks he or she has come up with a new idea, yet has only retrieved a stored idea and failed to attribute the idea to its proper source.

Describe spreading activation models of memory.

According to association network models of memory, information is stored in the brain in nodes, and nodes are connected via networks to many other nodes. Activating one node results in spreading activation to all associated nodes within the network.

Discuss methods to reduce persistence.

Persistence is the remembering of unwanted memories, usually encountered under stressful circumstances. Reconsolidation can reduce persistence but only for recent memories. HDAC inhibitors may help erase old persistent memories, but additional research is needed. Further, erasing memories can pose ethical concerns.

Explicit Memory

The system underlying conscious memories.

Implicit Memory

The system underlying unconscious memories.

Blocking

The temporary inability to remember something.

Schemas

Cognitive structures that help us perceive, organize, process, and use information.

Identify retrieval cues.

Retrieval cues help with recall. According to the encoding specificity principle, any stimulus encoded with an experience can serve as a retrieval cue. Internal and external cues can also serve as retrieval cues.

Explain how schemas influence memory.

Schemas are cognitive structures that help us perceive, organize, process, and use information. Schemas can lead to biased encoding based on cultural expectations.

Flashbulb Memories

Vivid episodic memories for the circumstances in which people first learned of a surprising, consequential, or emotionally arousing event.

Retrograde Amnesia

A condition in which people lose past memories, such as memories for events, facts, people, or even personal information.

Source Amnesia

A type of misattribution that occurs when a person shows memory for an event but cannot remember where he or she encountered the information.

Discuss the levels of processing model.

According to the levels of processing model, memory is enhanced by deeper encoding. Maintenance rehearsal - repeating an item over and over - leads to shallow encoding and poor recall. Elaborative rehearsal links new information with old, leading to deep encoding and better recall.

Distinguish between retrograde and anterograde amnesia.

Amnesia is the inability to retrieve large amounts of information from long-term memory. Amnesia is atypical and can be caused by brain injury, disease, or trauma. Retrograde amnesia is the loss of memories from the past. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to store new memories. Patient H.M. suffered from anterograde amnesia.

Describe the processes of consolidation and reconsolidation.

Consolidation is the neural process by which encoded information becomes stored in memory. Reconsolidation described the neural and epigenetic processes that take place when memories are recalled and then stored again for later retrieval. This model may explain why and how memories change over time.

Memory

The nervous system's capacity to retain and retrieve skills and knowledge.

Consolidation

The neural process by which encoded information becomes stored in memory.

Encoding

The processing of information so that it can be stored.

Long-Term Memory

The relatively permanent storage of information.

Storage

The retention of encoded representations over time.

Explain transience, blocking, and absentmindedness.

Transience is memory decay that occurs over time. Transience is likely cause by interference. Retroactive interference is the loss of memory due to replacement by newer information. Proactive interference is the failure to store a new memory because of interference by an older memory. Blocking is a common, temporary inability to remember something known. Blocking is a retrieval failure likely caused by interference. Absentmindedness is forgetfulness cause by shallow encoding.

Amnesia

A deficit in long-term memory - resulting from disease, brain injury, or psychological trauma - in which the individual loses the ability to retrieve vast quantities of information.

Sensory Memory

A memory system that very briefly stores sensory information in close to its original sensory form.

Procedural Memory

A type of implicit memory that involves motor skills and behavioral habits.

Working Memory

An active processing system that keeps different types of information available for current use.

Retrieval Cue

Anything that helps a person (or a nonhuman animal) recall information stored in long-term memory.

Distinguish between sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed three parts to memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Sensory memory stores information from each of the five sense for less than one second, enabling the brain to perceive the world as a continuous stream. Iconic memory is visual sensory memory. Echoic memory is auditory sensory memory. Today, short-term memory is more accurately considered working memory, an active information processing system.

Discuss susceptibility to false memories.

False memories are created as a result of the natural tendency to form mental representations of stores. These mental representations can then become incorporated as true episodic memories. Most people are susceptible to forming false memories of event that could have happened but not of events that are unlikely to have occurred.

Discuss flashbulb memories.

Flashbulb memories are vivid episodic memories of important or emotionally arousing events. Flashbulb memories are recalled no more accurately than other episodic memories, although people often report them with more confidence.

Explain how information is transferred from working memory to long-term memory.

Information is transferred from working memory to long-term memory if it is repeatedly rehearsed, if people pay attention to the details, or if it aids adaptation to an environment.

Proactive Interference

Interference that occurs when prior information inhibits the ability to remember new information.

Distinguish between explicit, episodic, semantic, implicit, and prospective memories.

Long-term memory is composed of multiple systems. Explicit memory is the system underlying conscious episodic and sematic memories. Episodic memory is memory for personal past experiences. Semantic memory is memory for knowledge about the world. Episodic and sematic memory systems are different. Certain types of brain damage can disrupt the formation of episodic memories but spare semantic memories. Information retrieved from explicit memory is called declarative memory, because it is knowledge that can be declared. The system underlying unconscious memories is called implicit memory. Implicit memory can influence decision making by making information seem familiar in the absence of conscious awareness that the information was previously encountered. Procedural memory is a type of implicit memory that involves motor skills and behavioral habits. Prospective memory, another system of memory, involves remembering to do something at a future time.

Review evidence that supports the distinction between working memory and long-term memory.

Long-term memory is the relatively permanent storage of large amounts of information. The serial position effect and studies of memory impairment suggest that long-term memory is distinct from working memory.

Define memory bias.

Memory bias is the changing of memories so they become consistent with current beliefs. Memory bias affects individuals, groups, and societies.

Source Misattribution

Memory distortion that occurs when people misremember the time, place, person, or circumstances involved with a memory.

Semantic Memory

Memory for knowledge about the world.

Episodic Memory

Memory for one's personal past experiences.

Reconsolidation

Neural processes involved when memories are recalled and then stored again for retrieval.

Generate examples of each of these types of memory.

Recalling what you had for dinner last night is an example of explicit memory. Remembering the time you hit a home run in your baseball game is an example of episodic memory. Remembering what a noun is would be an example of semantic memory. An example of implicit memory would be experiencing joy at hearing holiday music due to past associations between the holiday and fun. Remembering to buy milk at the store tonight would be an example of prospective memory.

Prospective Memory

Remembering to do something at some future time.

List the seven sins of memory.

Schacter (1999) identified seven sins of memory: Transience, absentmindedness, blocking, and persistence are related to forgetting and remembering, and misattribution, suggestibility, and bias are distortions or memory. Although annoying, the first three sins are useful and perhaps even necessary for survival, since they reduce memory for irrelevant information.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

Strengthening of a synaptic connection, making the postsynaptic neurons more easily activated by presynaptic neurons.

Memory Bias

The changing of memories over time so that they become consistent with current beliefs or attitudes.

Declarative Memory

The cognitive information retrieved from explicit memory; knowledge that can be declared.

Persistence

The continual recurrence of unwanted memories.

Suggestibility

The development of biased memories from misleading information.

Encoding Specificity Principle

The idea that any stimulus that is encoded along with an experience can later trigger a memory for the experience.

Serial Position Effect

The idea that the ability to recall items from a list depends on the order of presentation, with items presented early or late in the list remembered better than those in the middle.

Describe contemporary views on repressed memories.

The legitimacy of repressed memories continues to be debated by contemporary psychologists, many of whom argue that such memories may be implanted by suggestive techniques.

Describe the three phases of memory.

The three critical phases for memory are encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding is processing information so it can be stored, storage is the retention of encoded representation, and retrieval is the active recall of stored information.