Unit 9 Outline

 The Phenomenon of Memory 1. Memory is the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information.  Memory Loss and Memory Feats 1. Russian journalist Shereshevskii won the Russian memory Olympics and is remembered as the being able to repeat 70 digits or words and recalling the list 15 years later 2. Memory recall capacity is most apparent unique and highly emotional memories 3. Called flashbulb memory is a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.  Information Processing 1. Human memory like a computer 2. Get info into our brain encoding: processing of info into memory system 3. Retain info storage: retention of encoded info over time 4. Get it back later retrieval: process of getting into out of memory storage 5. The three-stages processing - First record to be remembered information as a fleeting sensory memory - Processed into short-term memory - We encode it for long-term memory and later retrieval 6. Working memory clarifies the short-term memory concept by focusing more on how to attend, rehearse, and manipulate information in temporary storage 7. It includes verbal and visual component- separate mental subsystems to process images and words simultaneously to storage.  Encoding: Getting Information In  How We Encode 1. Automatic processing: unconscious encoding of incidental info; occurs with little or no effort, without our awareness, and without interfering with our thinking of other things; space, time, frequency, welllearned info 2. Effortful processing: encoding that requires attention and conscious effort 3. After practice, effort processing becomes more automatic 4. Can boost memory through rehearsal: conscious repetition of info, either to maintain it in consciousness or to encode it for storage 5. Next-in-line effect: when people go around circle saying names/words,

6. Poorest memories are for name/word person said before them 7. Information received before sleep is hardly ever remembered are consciousness fade before processing able 8. Retain info better when rehearsal distributed over time phenomenon called spacing effect: tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through cramming 9. When given a list of items and ask to recall, people often demonstrate serial position effect: tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list  What We Encode 1. Rehearsal will not encode all info equally well because processing of info is in 3 ways - Semantic encoding: encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words - Acoustic encoding: encoding of sound, especially the sound of words - Visual encoding: encoding of picture images 2. Fergus Craik and Endel Tulving flashed a word to people, asking question that required processing either visually, acoustically, or semantically; semantic encoding was found to yield much better memory 3. Imagery: mental pictures; powerful aid to effortful processing, especially when combined with semantic encoding like how we can easily picture where we were yesterday, where we sat, and what we wore. 4. Mnemonic: memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices 5. Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically 6. We are able to remember info best when able to organize it into personal meaningful arrangements 7. We tend to remember concrete nouns better than abstract nouns because, we can associate both an image and a meaning with the object or noun, but only a meaning with process. 8. In hierarchies, we process information by dividing it into logical levels, beginning with the most general and moving to the most specific.  Storage: Retaining Information  Sensory Memory 1. Immediate, initial recording of sensory info in memory system 2. Have short temporary photographic memory called iconic memory: momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; photographic/picture-

image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a sec 3. Fleeting memory for auditory sensory images called echoic memory: momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; 4. If attention is elsewhere, sounds and word scan still be recalled within 3 or 4 sec; auditory = ear, which starts with e like echoic  Short-Term Memory 1. Without active processing, short-term memories have limited life 2. Short-term memory limited in capacity about 7 chunks of info; 3. At any given moment, can consciously process only very limited amount of info  Long-Term Memory 1. Capacity for storing long-term memories is practically limitless 2. Forgetting occurs as new experiences interfere with retrieval and as physical memory trace gradually decays  Storing Memories in the Brain 1. Karl Lashley removed pieces of rats cortex as it ran through maze 2. Found that no matter what part removed, partial memory of solving maze stayed 3. Concluded memories dont reside in single specific spot 4. Psychologists then focused on neurons 5. Long-term potential (LTP): increase in a synapses firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; believed to be neural basis for learning and memory 6. After long-term potential occurs, passing electric current through brain wont disrupt old memories, but wipe uprecent experiences;like how a football player with blow to head wont recall name of play before the blow 7. CREB can switch genes off or on. 8. Drugs that block neurotransmitters also disrupt info storage; drunk people hardly remembers previous evening 9. Stimulating hormones affect memory as more glucose available to fuel brain activity, indicating important event sears events onto brain; remembering first kiss, earthquake 10. The amygdale, an emotion-processing structure in the brains limbic system, arouses brain areas that process emotion. 11. These memories are processed in part by the cerebellum. 12. Explicit memories are processed in various sub regions of the hippocampus 13. The implicit and explicit memory systems are independent. 14. Hippocampus is a temporary processing site for the explicit memories.

15. The cerebellum stores the implicit memories created by classical conditioning. 16. Implicit memory formation requires the cerebellum 17. Damage to the hippocampus may destroy the ability to consciously recall memories, without destroying skills or classically conditioned responses. 18. Damage to the left hippocampus has trouble remembering verbal information. 19. Damage to the right hippocampus has trouble in recalling visual designs and locations. 20. Through scans, found that Hippocampus, neural center located in limbic system, helps process explicit memories for storage 21. When hippocampus removed from monkeys, lose recent memories, but old memories intact, suggesting hippocampus not permanent storag 22. Long-term memories scattered across various parts of frontal and temporal lobes  Retrieval: Getting Information Out 1. Recognition is the ability to identify items previously learned; a multiple choice question test recognition. 2. Recall is the ability to retrieve information not in conscious awareness; a fill-in-the-blank question tests recall. 3. Relearning is the ability to master previously stored information more quickly than you originally learned it.  Retrieval Cues 1. Retrieval cues are bits of related information we encode while processing a target piece information. 2. This process of activating associations is priming. Context Effects 1. The context in which we originally experienced and event or encoded although can flood our memories with retrieval cues, leading us to the target memory. Moods and Memories 1. Things we learn in one state (joyful, sad, drunk, sober, etc) are more easily recalled when in same state phenomenon called statedependent memory 2. Moods also associated with memory; easily recall memory when mood of that incident same as present 3. Mood-congruent memory: tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with ones current good or bad mood  Forgetting 1. Our memory can fail us through forgetting (absent-mindedness, transience, and blocking), through distortion (misattribution,

suggestibility, and bias), and through intrusion (persistence of wanted memories).  Encoding Failure 1. Without encoding, information does not enter our long-term memory store and cannot be retrieved.  Storage Decay 1. Ebbinghaus determined the forgetting curve because in his research he found that in over the course of forgetting is initially rapid. 2. Levels off with time; this principle became known as the forgetting curve.  Retrieval Failure 1. Learning some items may interfere with retrieving others 2. Proactive interference (forward-acting): disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new info 3. Retroactive interference (backward-acting): disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old info 4. Freud used repression: in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness 5. Increasing memory researchers think repression occurs rarely  Memory Construction  Misinformation and Imagination Effects 1. Incorporating misleading info into ones memory of an event; usually with exaggeration.  Source Amnesia 1. Attributing to the wrong source an event that we experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined  Discerning True and False Memories 1. Memories akin to perceptions 2. Judge persistence of memories 3. False memories created by suggested misinformation and misattributed sources may feel true, but temporal lobe is not activated and can tell the difference  Childrens Eyewitness Recall 1. Childrens recollection can be err because they are prone to suggestion 2. Especially credible with neutral adult with nonleading questions  Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse? 1. Traumatic events are sometimes forgotten, perhaps aided by the toxic effects of sustained stress 2. However, may remain vivid but dulled or blocked by repeated betrayal

3. Common ground: injustice happens, incest happens, forgetting happens, recovered memories are a commonplace, memories recovered from hypnosis or drugs are unreliable, memories of things before 3 are unreliable, memories can be upsetting no matter if true or false  Improving Memory 1. Concrete strategies to improve memory 2. Study repeatedly to boost long-term recall 3. Spend more time rehearsing or actively thinking about the material 4. Make the material personally meaningful 5. Remember a list of unfamiliar items, use mnemonic devices 6. Refresh memory through retrieval cues 7. Recall while fresh to not deal with misinformation 8. Minimize interference 9. Test own knowledge: rehearse and determine what needs to be known LIKE THIS!