Chapter 7

Human Memory

Table of Contents

Human Memory: Basic Questions We Will Answer This Chapter

How does information get into memory? How is information maintained in memory? How is information pulled back out of memory?

Table of Contents

Today

OBJECTIVES:– ROLE OF ATTENTION– LEVELS OF ENCODING– HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY– INFORMATION-PROCESSING MODEL

Table of Contents

A NOTE ABOUT YOUR ASSIGNMENT FOR THIS CHAPTER. IT IS VERY DIFFICULT AND YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE DETAILS OR YOU WILL FAIL.

Before we begin today. . .

106106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106 106

Table of Contents

106

Table of Contents

YOUR ASSIGNMENT TONIGHT IS TO FORGET THE NUMBER

106

Table of Contents

YOU SHOULD ALL TRY TO NOT REMEMBER THE NUMBER 106 BECAUSE YOU WILL BE QUIZZED ON IT TOMORROW

Table of Contents

Encoding: Getting Information Into Memory

The role of attention – PAY ATTENTION!!! Focusing awareness – no multitasking Selective attention = selection of input

– Our brain is always filtering information since it can’t ALL get through

Table of Contents

Levels of Processing: Craik and Lockhart (1972)

Take 2 minutes to right down 1 example of: structural encoding; phonemic encoding; and semantic encoding

Incoming information processed at different levels: Deeper processing = longer lasting memory codes Encoding levels:

– Structural (Visual) = shallow– Phonemic (Acoustic) = intermediate– Semantic (Meaning) = deep

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Which type works best?

Table of Contents

Quiz Question

Darren was asked to memorize a list of letters that included v, q, y, and j. He later recalled these letters as e, u, i, and k, suggesting that the original letters had been encoded

A. Automatically

B. Structurally(Visually)

C. Semantically

D. Phonemically (Acoustically)

Table of Contents

Enriching Encoding: Improving Memory

Elaboration = linking a stimulus to other information at the time of encoding– Thinking of examples

• Self-generated examples work best (self-referent)

Visual Imagery = creation of visual images to represent words to be remembered– Easier for concrete objects: Dual-coding theory says both

visual and semantic get encoded, since either can lead to recall

Self-Referent Encoding– Making information personally meaningful

Table of Contents

Storage: Maintaining Information in Memory

Analogy: information storage in computers ~ information storage in human memory (fig.7.2)

Information-processing model (fig.7.3)– Subdivide memory into 3 different stores

• Sensory, Short-term, Long-term

Table of Contents

Attention

All the rest

External Stimuli

Sensory Registers

gone

Short Term Memory

Long Term Memory

Retrieval

1. Encoding

3. Retrieval

2. Storage

Information Processing Model

Table of Contents

Sensory Memory

Brief preservation of information in original sensory form

Auditory/Visual – approximately ¼ second– George Sperling (1960)

• Classic experiment on visual sensory store

Iconic (visual) memory – sensory images - ¼ sec Echoic (auditory) memory – sensory sounds – 3

sec.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Figure 7.1 – Nickerson & Adams (1979) – Which is the correct penny?

Table of Contents

Penny

Table of Contents

YOU HAVE 10 SEC. TO MEMEORIZE THESE NUMBERS

1776181219151945

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Short Term Memory (STM)

George Miller (1956) wrote a famous paper called “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,"

Name one aspect of our lives where we use a 7-digit number?– Phone number

Limited capacity – magical number 7 plus or minus 2- Chunking – grouping familiar stimuli for storage

as a single unit– Extends STM capacity

Table of Contents

STM

Name one aspect of our lives where we use chunking? – Social security, credit card

Limited duration – about 20 seconds without rehearsal– Rehearsal – the process of repetitively verbalizing or

thinking about the information

CHUNK fromGOONIES

Table of Contents

STM

DEMO: MEMORY CAPACITY

Table of Contents

DEMO: ALL PURPOSE MEMORY DEMONSTRATION

LISTEN TO THE LIST OF WORDS I WILL READ AFTER READING YOU WILL TRY AND RECALL

(WRITE DOWN ON SCRAP PAPER) AS MANY AS POSSIBLE

Table of Contents

All-purpose memory demo

Bed

Quilt

Dark

Silence

Fatigue

Clock

Snoring

Night

Toss

Tired

Night

Artichoke

Turn

Night

Rest

Dream

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Short-Term Memory as “Working Memory”

Baddeley (1986) – 3 components of working memory– Phonological rehearsal loop– Visuospatial sketchpad– Episodic buffer– Executive control system

Table of Contents

xxx 7.11

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Long-Term Memory: Unlimited CapacityOur more or less permanent memory storeAlmost unlimited capacity and durationPermanent storage?

– Flashbulb memories – not always accurate– Recall through hypnosis – can be false memories

Table of Contents

READ THE FOLLOWING WORDS ANDWRITE DOWN THE NAMES OF THE DIFFERENT GROUPS YOU SHOULD PLACE EACH INTO:

grapes table bus apple chair airplane desk banana sofa car train plum lamp motorcycle strawberry dresser bicycle peach

fruits, furniture, transportation

Table of Contents

How is Knowledge Represented and Organized in Memory?

Clustering -tendency to remember similar or related items in groups, and Conceptual Hierarchies -multilevel classification systems based on common properties among items. ex.- Animal-mammal-dog-beagle

Schemas -organized clusters of knowledge about a particular object or event abstracted from previous experience and Scripts -particular type of schema, organizing what a person knows about common activities.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

37. In a memory study, the experimenter reads the same list of words to two groups. She asks group A to count the letters in each word, and she asks group B to focus on the meaning of each word for a later memory quiz. During a recall test, participants in group B recall significantly more words than participants in group A. Memory researchers attribute this effect to differences in (A) priming (B) levels of processing (C) proactive interference (D) procedural memory (E) episodic memory

Table of Contents

Quiz Question

Your consciously activated but limited-capacity memory is called ________ memory.

A. short-termB. ImplicitC. EchoicD. ExplicitE. Semantic

Table of Contents

REVIEW WHAT IS THE DURATION & CAPACITY OF STM? 20 SEC., 7 +/- 2 UNITS

HOW CAN YOU EXTEND STM’S 20 SEC. DURATION?

REHEARSAL A GROUP OF FAMILIAR STIMULI STORED AS A

SINGLE UNIT WHAT IS CHUNKING? SEMANTIC ENCODING IS WHICH LEVEL OF

PROCESSING? DEEP

Table of Contents

How is Knowledge Represented and Organized in Memory? Clustering and Conceptual Hierarchies – F 7.13

Schemas and Scripts – Shank & Abelson (1977)

Semantic Networks – Collins & Loftus (1975) – Figure 7.14

Connectionist Networks and PDP Models – McClelland and colleagues - pattern of activity – neuron based model

Table of ContentsFigure 7.14 A semantic network..

Table of Contents

Automatic Processing

Unconscious encoding of incidental information.

Examples: what table you were seated at a restaurant; what you ate for breakfast, where on the page a word was, who you saw on the way to class today.

Things can become automatic with practice (when you first learn a new word, every time you hear it, you consciously and effortfully pull up the definition from meaning; after hearing it 50 times, you can understand the word without effort – reading Shakespeare.)

Table of Contents

Effortful Processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Examples: vocabulary for school, dates, names Rehearsal is the most common It depends on the amount of time spent

processing the information. Overlearning (reviewing things you already know)

enhances retention.

Table of Contents

Spacing Effect

We increase long-term retention when we study or practice over time.

Cramming is an inefficient means of studying (ie, cramming = less time for guitar hero)

Table of Contents

Serial Positioning Effect We tend to remember the beginning (primacy effect) and end

(recency effect) of a list best. Primacy effect is stronger than recency effect if there is a delay

between the list and recall.

Order on list

Words remembered

Table of Contents

Retrieval: Getting Information Out of Memory

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon – a failure in retrieval– Retrieval cues

Recalling an event– Context cues – “What president comes after Nixon?” – car– State-dependent retrieval – retrieval is better if you’re in the same

mental disposition

Reconstructing memories– ELIZABETH LOFTUS STUDY

• Eyewitness testimony of a car crash

-misinformation effect

Table of Contents

Forgetting: When Memory Lapses

Retention – the proportion of material retained– Recall – Recognition – Relearning

Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve– Non-sense syllables – Curve is very steep-most information is forgotten in the

first 9 hours, then it levels off over the next few weeks– Controversial due to non-sense syllables

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Why Do We Forget?

Ineffective Encoding -pseudoforgetting Decay theory Interference theory

– Proactive (forward acting)- previously learned information interferes with the retention of new information

– Retroactive (backward acting) - new information impairs the retention for previously learned information

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Retrieval Failure Encoding Specificity - the closer a retrieval cue is to

the way we encode the info, the better we are able to remember.

Repression – Freud’s term for motivated forgetting of painful, traumatic or unpleasant memories– Authenticity of repressed memories?– Memory illusions– Controversy

Table of Contents

REVIEW WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE MEMORY

RECOVERY PROBLEM THAT LOFTUS SHOWED IN HER EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY (CAR CRASH) STUDY?

MISINFORMATION EFFECT OR FALSE MEMORIES

ESSAYS QUESTIONS USE WHICH TYPE OF MEMORY RETRIEVAL?

RECALL

WHAT’S THE TERM FOR FREUD’S ‘MOTIVATED FORGETTING’ OF PAINFUL MEMORIES

REPRESSION

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

The Physiology of Memory

Biochemistry– Alteration in synaptic transmission

• Hormones modulating neurotransmitter systems– Cortisol helps make flashbulb memories

• Protein synthesis - if you give drugs that interfere with protein synthesis, memory is impaired

Neural circuitry– Localized neural circuits

• Reusable pathways in the brain - may be specific for specific memories• Long-term potentiation - long-lasting increase in neural excitability at

synapses along a specific neural pathway. • Consolidation theory – gradual process of making memories

permanent over time Anatomy

– Anterograde (for subsequent events) – Retrograde Amnesia (for prior events)

• Cerebral cortex, Prefrontal Cortex, Hippocampus,• Dentate gyrus (Hippocampus), Amygdala, Cerebellum

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Explicit (Declarative) - involves intentional recall

Episodic Memories– Bday, graduation,

Christmas

Semantic Memories– Concept-based

knowledge, facts,

Formed by the hippocampus; stored in the cerebral cortex.

Table of Contents

Implicit (Non-declarative) - incidental, unintentional remembering -

Procedural Memories– Locking doors, shooting a

basketball, etc

Conditioned Memories– Salivating, blinking, etc.

Formed by the cerebellum; stored in the cerebral cortex.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Neuroanatomy and memory

Hippocampus is the chief structure implicated in episodic and semantic memories (Tulving)

Plays a role is “fixing” memories during time after learning

Clive Wearing

Table of Contents

Clive Wearing

12 mins Part 1

Part 2 30 mins

Learner.org

Table of Contents

TECHNIQUES

Method of LociAs an aid to memorizing lengthy speeches, ancient Greek orators would visualize themselves moving through familiar locations

Peg Word SystemMemorize a master list: “one is a bun, two is a shoe…”

Use the same list, once you’ve memorized it, on any other listand visualize the 1st item on the list in between a hot dog bun, and the second being inside a shoe, etc.

Table of Contents

REVIEW:

WHICH MEMORY SYSTEM HANDLES PERSONAL EVENTS SUCH AS YOUR FIRST KISS OR YOUR GRADUATION?

EXPLICIT (DECLARATIVE)

WHICH MEMORY SYSTEM IS A GOLFER USING WHEN THEY SWING THE GOLF CLUB?

IMPLICIT (NON-DECLARATIVE)

LONG-LASTING INCREASE IN NEURAL EXCITABILITY AT SYNAPSES ALONG A SPECIFIC NEURAL PATHWAY IS THE DEFINITION OF WHAT TERM?

LONG-TERM POTENTIATION

GRADUAL PROCESS OF MAKING MEMORIES PERMANENT OVER TIME IS THE DEFINITION ON WHAT TERM?

CONSOLODATION THEORY

Table of Contents

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING MEMORIES WOULD BE CONTAINED IN AN INDIVIDUAL’S SEMANTIC MEMORY?– GRADUATION PARTY, HOW TO PARK A CAR, A

TEACHERS NAME, BROKEN ARM THEN THEY WERE 10– TEACHERS NAME

Table of Contents

Quiz Question

Memory of facts is to ________ as memory of skills is to ________.

A. brainstem; hippocampusB. Explicit memory; implicit memoryC. Automatic processing; effortful processingD. Short-term memory; long-term memoryE. Iconic; echoic

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

93. Memory for automatic activities, such as bike riding and handwriting, is known as (A) declarative (B) semantic (C) sensory (D) procedural (E) repressed

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents