Memory
Memory Model
- Use highest technology as metaphors of memory
- Wax tablet
- Telephone switchboard
- Computer
- Information processing model
- Encoding
- Storage
- Retrieval
- Process information
Types of Processing
- Automatic
- Information encoded
- Space
- Time
- Frequency
- Occurs with little or no effort
- Without awareness
- Occurs without interfering with other tasks
- Stroop Task
- Effortful
- Rehearsal
- Ebbinghaus
- Nonsense syllables
- Recall
- Principle of learning
- Amount remembered depends on time spent learning
- Effortful processing aids encoding
Encoding
- The form in which information is stored in memory
- Meaning
- Encoding facilitated when meaning is attended to
- Integrates new information with other information stored in LTM
- Levels of Processing Theory
- Memory in terms of encoding
- Craik & Lockhart
- Retention depends on the type of encoding that information undergoes
during processing
- Shallow
- Physical features of the stimuli
- Medium
- Sound of the stimuli
- Deep
- Meaning of the stimuli
- Orienting task
- Encourages certain types of processing
- Chunking
- Organization
- Short term memory (STM)
- Contains information we are currently attending to
- Capacity is typically between 5 and 9 items
- Organization determines what an item is
- Using information stored in LTM to organize and group information
in STM into meaningful units
- DeGroot
- Experts versus novices
- Replace chess pieces
- Performance differences due to chunking ability
Memory Storage
- Three storage bins
- Sensory store
- Short term memory
- Long term memory
Short term memory
- A limited capacity store
- Capacity
- 5-9 items
- Duration
- Rehearsal
- Need to prevent rehearsal to determine duration of STM
- Brown-Peterson task
- Description
- Dependent variable
- % correct over time
- Information in STM endures for 15 - 30 seconds without rehearsal
- Nature of stored information
- Acoustic codes
- Evidence
Acoustic confusion - substituting an item that is acoustically similar
for a list item
- Conrad
- Visual codes
- Evidence
- Mental transformation tasks
- Mental rotation
- Semantic codes
- Evidence
- Release from PI
- PI = proactive inhibition/interference
- Old materials increasing forgetting of new materials
- Brown-Peterson task
- 3 sets from same category
- 4th set from new category
Long Term Memory
- Capacity
- John Von Neuman
- 2.8 X 1020 (280 quintillion) bits
- Storage capacity is virtually unlimited
- Duration
- Some information persists a lifetime
- Inability to remember information is due to retrieval failure rather
than forgetting
- Nature of stored information
- Unitary storage
- Multiple Memory systems
- Mediated by different areas of brain
- Store different types of information
- Different cognitive processes operate on that information
- Semantic memory
- Memory for facts and for meanings
- General world knowledge
- Isn’t time dated
- Episodic into semantic
- Schemas
- Type of semantic memory
- Organized bodies of knowledge of commonly encountered people, places,
and events
- Contain knowledge about what is generally true
- Comprehension
- Allow us to fill in missing or unspecified details
- Allow us to ignore the commonplace and attend to novelty
- Brewer & Treyens (1981)
- Episodic memory
- Personal experience and the context within which the experiences occurred
- Shared by only a few other individuals
- Difficult to examine empirically
- Flashbulb memory
- Type of episodic memory
- Memory of a situation that is very arousing, surprising, or emotional
- Usually more detailed than those for everyday events
- Sometimes involve dramatic public events
- Studied by researchers
- Characteristics
- High level of surprise
- High level of emotional arousal or perceived importance.
- More likely to be rehearsed
- Content
- Duration
- Accuracy
- Declarative memory
- Memory for factual information
- Contains both episodic and semantic memory
- Procedural memory
- Memory for how to perform certain actions and sequences of actions
- Amnesiacs
- Implicit memory
- When memory or previous experience affects performance on a task
that does not require intentional remembering
- Incidental, unintentional and unconscious remembering
- Explicit memory
- Any memory which involves intentional recollection of previous
experiences
- Conscious, accessed directly
- Best assessed through recall or recognition measures of memory
- Implicit memory and amnesiacs
- Memory tasks
- Problem solving tasks
- Physical tasks
- Retain past and past experiences
- Implicit memory tasks
- Designed to show an effect of past experience without having to
directly recall those experiences
- Word fragment completion
Memory Retrieval
- Tip of the Tongue (TOT)
- A sensation we have when we are in a confident that we know the
word we are searching for, yet we can not recall it
- Brown & McNeill (1966)
- Accuracy
- Interference
- Retrieval failure
- Tulving & Pearlstone (1966)
- Free recall
- Cued recall
- More information encoded than could be recalled without cues
- Retrieval failure rather than forgetting
- Encoding specificity
- Describes which types of cues might be most effective in overcoming
retrieval failure
- Information is encoded into a richer memory representation
- Includes any extra information about the item that was present
during encoding
- Predicts that associations formed at encoding will tend to be effective
retrieval cues
- Context effects
- The phenomena where retrieval is better when the location at testing
matches the location at learning
- Godden & Baddeley (1975)
- Scuba divers
- State dependent memory
- Better recall when physical state at retrieval matches that at
encoding
- Mood dependent memory
- Tend to associate good and bad events with their associated moods
- Moods can act as retrieval cues
Reconstructed memories
- People add their own general knowledge to material they encounter
- Remember this information as being presented with the original
material
- Recall can contain inferences or logical interpretations
- Frederick Bartlett
- "War of the Ghosts"
- Memory for meaningful material is not reproductive
- Omissions
- Normalization
- Eyewitness testimony
- Loftus & Palmer (1974)
- Showed Ss a videotape of an automobile accident
- Biasing information introduced during questioning
- Information affected recall
- Repressed memories
- Arguments for repressed memories
- Common for patients to repress traumatic incidents in their unconscious
- Sexual abuse in childhood is far more widespread than most people
realize
- Recent upsurge in reports of repressed memories
- Due to increased sensitivity to the issue
- Arguments against repressed memories
- Results from therapist suggestions
- Hypnosis, dream interpretation and leading questions
- Creates memories of abuse
- Discredited cases
- Recanted cases
- Psychological research
- Imagery
- Repetition
- Semantic associates