ENERAL MEMORY FUNCTIONS one agreed on by most psychologists, was used in y. Three distinct processes of memory have been fine These are an encoding process, a storage process, and a retrieval Fed is ehe process of receiving sensory input and transform- Fs: neo gle, which can be stored; storage is the process of RY OF Gl "a simple 0 0 Z refinicion 08 "O07 ingit ME 3 hg coded information into memory; and retrieval is the scl Pu ing access 10 stored, coded information when itis needed. noe hese three memory processes, imagine that on the way To illustrate ¢ s _qovjur car was bumped by a bus and slightly dented. You encoded work, visual impressions of the accident in a form that you could store in arn, Later, when you talk to the insurance adjuster, you will ” ‘eve what you stored. “This simple process theory helps explain why your memory of an accident may be inaccurate. ‘The encoding you do may be faulty, perhaps gue to the emotion and distress you experience at the time of the cident; important encoded information may not be well fixed in your memory, or it may be distorted by events occurring after the accident; your retrieval of the information stored in your memory may be biased; or, since the processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval are related, all thee memory processes may be faulty. Memory is seldom an accurate record of what was experienced. Application 5.1 illustrates this, and as the chapter proceeds you may have even more reason to agree with this statement about the inaccuracy of memory. ret INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORIES Imagine yourself a device something like a digital computer that takes items of information in; processes them in steps, or stages; and then Dduces an output (Figure 5.1). Models of memory based on this idea are {ils information procesing theories. A number of such models of memory ee i‘ proposed. We will use one of the most prominent and influen- Wiehe glese models—the information-processing theory developed by ard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968)—to guide our discussion. ue Figure 5.1 Scanned with CamScanner_ a In the Atkinson-Shiffrin theory, memory starts with a sensory i from the environment (Figure 5.2). This input is held for a eee) time—several seconds at most—in a sensory register associated with the sensory channels (vision, hearing, touch, and so forth). Information that is attended to and recognized in.the sensory register may be passed on to short-term memory (STM), where it is held for perhaps 20 or 30 seconds. Some of the information reaching short-term memory is processed by being rehearsed—that is, by having attention focused on it, perhaps by Figure 5.2 ‘An information- memory. (Based Shiffrin, 1968.) Memory output Attended to.and recognized material Retrival Sensory register Rehearsal Short-term memory (STM) (Holds only @ few items.) Long-term memory (LTM) (Holds a tremendous amount of information in organized categories.) Scanned with CamScannerbeing repeated over and over, oF perhaps by being processed in son. other way that will link it up with other information already stored jn memory. Information that is rehearsed may then be passed along to Jong term memory (LTM ); information not so processed is lost. When items of information are placed in long-term memory, they are organized int categories, where they may reside for days, months, years, or for lifetime. When you remember something, a representation of the itemis withdrawn, or refrieved, from long-term memory. There are some interesting parallels between this information: processing theory and some of the brain processes involved in memory (Inquiry 5.1). This model of memory also fits well with our subjective impressions when we are trying to remember something. Imagine yourself asking someone for a telephone number you do not know. (It’s in the other person’s long-term memory, but not in yours} Scanned with CamScanneraber (it was retrieved and restite ik [5 9 ae less you rehearse the numbey output), and off you a probably forget it soon after hearing ie over it mentally Yan your way to the telephones thus disruyihe something interup's Tr ply forget the number: Or imagine youre 1 yo rains to rehearse the names of the new you take P svomember them long. Without rehearsal, and wy a J caused by all the things happening at the ary, ory will not occur. ‘The person tel your rehearsal ava party. Unless you meet, you wi the information overload fer to long-term meme © ma transfer to | "I from long-term memory is also experienced subjectively Retrieval from lo : sey esjour bedroom was located in all ofthe houses oO ee lived in. As you do this, you will find yourse APE long-term memory, and you will probably deve searing Noe? chaps you will search chronologically ftom the fing seein member to later ones. You may then imagine the house an Jocate your bedroom in relation to the other rooms. If You cannot we member a bedroom using one search method, you may shift to another scarch strategy. In any ease, you will have the subjective impression of having searched through your storehouse of memories. The Sensory Register Information can be held for a very brief time in the sensory channels themselves. This storage function of the sensory channels is called the sensory register. Most of the information briefly held in the sensory register is lost; what has been briefly stored simply decays from the register. However, we pay attention to and recognize some of the information in the sensory register; when we do this, the attended-o information is passed on to short-term memory for further processing (Figure 5.2). Some ingenious experiments have shown that the visual sensory register holds information for up to about 1 second (Sperling, 1960), whi the auditory (hearing) register holds information somewhat longer——uj shout 4 or 5 seconds (Darwin et al., 1972). Studies with the visual sensory register have also shown that it can hold at least 11 to 16 items of information during the second before it loses the information, thro decay (Averbach & Sperling, 1961; Estes & Taylor, 1966). Furtherma in vision at least, the sensory storage seems to be i image. called an iconic image (from the Greek word meaning “liken which is'a ogpy of the visual input (Sperling, 1963). It is this iconic im thet Persist in the visual sensory register for a secon before it grad jecays, q fi in the form of a The sensory register holds some psychologists prefer to discuss it in connection with perc rather than memory. However, it is Part of the information-process model under discussion, and it is Is step that informa before it reaches short-teim memory, ee information for such a brief timsim memory as well as/several ofits otner features hort ce Fen, 1966) this experiment is known as free recall. ‘The bate eX shown lists of 15 nouns. Each noun exPtl second, with a 2-second interval between the suns had been presented, subjects were fer that came to mind (hence the ed in nique US eriment were pe veoh ubjeets ented <. Mer all 15 n¢ reed 0 recall the nouns in any ord im fre reall) In one con subjects Were ods as they could recall This resulted in € where the proportion 0 he word's position in and-so on. For example, e fifth noun on t dicion of the experiment—the zero (0) delay condi- ‘ked to write down, in any order, as many | mmediately after the liss7had been he curve labeled 0 (at the right in f correctly récalled nouns is he to-beéremembered list— in the 0 condition, the he list. was 0.35, oF 35 presented Figure 5-3), craphed against € first, second, third, proportion of recall for th percent. If you look a the nouns presented early tthe curve for the 0 condition, you will seé that peating late in the in the list and those api lis were recalled relatively well; recall for nouns in the middle ‘of ha listas rather poor! Thugrecall'dependson Wher” £5 item is ina series of items (its serial position). The role of setial position in free recall and in other memofy tasks, coo) is generally called the sertal- nition effet, ‘The better recall at the beginning of the list which pe statines (the gerial-position étTeceis known as che P/O, affect: ene encountered first are remembered relatively well, The batter teal cr the end ‘of the list is known’ a8 the recency ech items encountered most recently are remembered well. Bae curves marked 70 and JO in Figure 5.3 fepresent the asia delayed-recall conditions 1» the experiment. After a pe. list, subjects in these conditions waited either 10 oF fie eo beginning free recall. ‘The delay intervals were fee mental activity of counting. ni Figure 53 look at the 10-second and 30-second delay curves in Alesse will note that delays in recall, ifthe delay interval is A eos a liminare the recency, ut ‘acy, part of the serial-position curve- ‘portion correct z of delay of recall rtion of serial-posit ers at the right of fhe time in seconds f list presentation (From Glanz« cency Po! ‘The numl indicate ¢ the end of call. See text. Cuniwz, 1 Scanned with CamScannera sults have been obtained in a number otheg a Pea tie reason taually given PHC disappearahge of ghd 8% Eres furlelayre cat gon ee To SUH in shige) effect with delay is entation stops. ‘They have not Jet Been trang ussite I nd such transfer is, preventedh DY the mtd : clay interval. (We will hav af 1 during the delay interval. ( Il have Ynore activity occurring he next section.) The primacy effect remains ie Seen eke noes aa sds odie SAGINE to eEAIERE duality alo hy, very limited storage capacity. This capacity is estimated 10 be abou | items, plus or minus 2 (Miller, 1956). The storage capacity of hortter memory canbe increased, however, by a process knovsn a chung Moe of us have learned to combine several items into a “chunk 8 We receiv them; then we can retain several (7, plus or minus 2) of these * ‘chunks op information in our short-term memories. Telephone numbers, for in, stance, consist of 7 items (10, if the area code is included), arranged in? (or) chunks. With practice, most of us can easily hold 3 telephony numbers in short-term memory—21 items arranged in 6 chunks. ‘The World record, achieved only after prolonged practice, seems to be abon 80 items, grouped into a number of chunks (Ericsson & Chase, 1982), Nhat 1s the fate of information in short-term memory? Since the TaDaCity of this memory stage isso small, much information stored here & {ost because itis displaced by incoming items of information, Before itis lost, however, some of the information can be retrieved and used, Studies of terrieval from short-term memory (Sternberg, 1966, 1975) shar, that we rapidly scan through short-term memory when Searching for an item of information. A. surprising feature of this scanning process is that we cxamine everything in short-term memory when we an item from it; the scanning has been found to by Stopping when the searched-for item, is located, the continues until all of short-term memory has been exat item was found during the exhaustive scan, information in short-term me: along to the next memory sta to long-term memory ied. Then, if the itis retrieved. Some of the mory is neither lost nor retrieved but passed ige—long-term memory—through rehearsal -term to long-term memory (Rundus, 1971). In general, the more an item is reh ‘arsed, the more likely it is to become Par of long-term memory. However, in the lase few years, othet exper nents have indicated:that.the sheer amount ot rehearsal may be les oeeomant than the ways in which the information is rehearsed. Just goin fret and over what is to be' remembered (called maintenance does not nece; ‘rsal involves giving the material organiza jitd meaning as itis being rehearsed; ivis an sctine hey process Just the passive process of repetition, In claborative rehearsal, people be frecy (nat give meaning and organization to the mavetial so, that it be fitted in with existing organized long-term memories. Elabor Scanned with CamScannersal, although introduced here in the context of memory s ee aerate ‘conception of memory called the ieee aie ee pt oo relates 10 the organization of memory and to wh ere A geno Ths concepts will be described later oe 193 gal oe 19 later in this chi pot gg and POBE 196). apts Memory ‘M)_ The time span ove! te TM) ¢ time span over which information car red i” long-term memory, cannot be stated very pre I a ney last for days, months, yeas, oF even bttcdne Ale, e age. is . Alsc the storage capacity of long-term memory ie s Memory re nemorys ee ek ys etm short-rer” ee igome theorists believe that there is no true forgetting from lo memory: ‘according to this view, once information is stored in ae fem memory It'S ‘there for goods when we seem to forget, itis fas we have trouble retrievinBs or getting access to, what has been stored. In - Merwords, the saformation is still there; we just cannot get 0 it because jc has nor ech Moved in an organized fashion oF because we are nor “arching fr iin the right part of the memory storehouse, Other students FFmemory maintain that We forget because of the confusion and inter- ference produced by new things which have been learned and put into fener memory: (SEE PARE 205.) ory eontains words, sentences, ideas, cOnesPsy and Long-term me the life experiences we have had. As we shall see in more detail later ipuge 196), ewo different but related long-term memory scores are said (0 frist One, called semantic memory (che word, semantic refers to “mean. ing’), contains the mean f words and concepts and the rules for Es oF ising them in language; it 8 2 Vive network of meaningfully or items of information (Quillian, 1966)..The other, containing memories of specific things that have happened fo a person (reminiscences) spisodic memory (Tulving 1972). We shall come back 0 these ideas (and others) later when long-te! discussed in detail (Pages 195-203), rm memory i “This brief discussion of long" of the stages of memory. “Table 5.1 summarizes among the stages ganized Judes the discussion term memory cone] the major differences a LEVELS-OF-PROCESSI Dionspimssing wipe sot a Bemory process in terms oF discrete SeaBe ae Furthermore, information is eranferte of iti finally lodged in long-ter™ memory. A contr ‘Memory involves Pits Brey devels of processilf (Craik xl ou 1972), with, more recently, the idea ° ME jod to the level cessing framework (Craik & TuWVine an seeping rrothe levels-of processing idea, incom’ pee ported on at different levels of ‘analysis: HS, the better the memory. The si Scanned with CamScannera. ll a sory SHORT-TERM LONG.TERy SENSORY a MEM REGISTER On aaa to Up to about 30 Days, month: SEE ee ees -secotde but Ivana) te ea out 5 seconds. _ of factors. iarge—up Relatively small__up to Very lafge- APNE ne eeeat ie tors,” about 7 heme OPchutiG- ian oe aaa butprobably much under most conditions real: tes FER Atenton and Rel PROCESSES fecognton lens. appropiate ehearsed tended to and. mv fo long-term recognized move to memory. short-term memory. T of input Sounds, visual images, Primarily mean inronwarion, “O° nerds. ond sentences” sence a ‘STORED and concepts. images sean conn MAJOR Decay of trace. Displacement of old Faulty organization EASON ilgmiain by nconing. Renee a INFORMATION ae Ce rae Sost interference, stance, suppose a friend who is not very good at spelling. asks You to lok over a term paper for spelling errors. As you do this, you are processing fhe information only to the structural level. If your friend later asks Yor what you thought of some of the ideas in the paper, itis likely that you will remember few of them; you did not process the information deeply enough; thats, you did not process it to the meaning level Our example 4s for verbal, of word, information; but sounds, sights, and smells are abo said to be processed through these levels Thus good memory results from. dee; more elaborate proce: Per and, as we shall soon see put. Many times, however, iti mation deeply; it is enough! hold the inf on some structural feature ofit 1¢ happenings of daily life are it and then to discard it, Many of the routin Processed deeply. It is enough, the moment when driving to ‘work: details of our morning drive because there the information to the meaning level Rehearsal plays a role in the deg Per processing of information, 8! does in the stage theories of memory. Remember that rehearsal, roughl refers. to keeping information at the center of attention, perhaps: fepeating it over and over to yourself, But according to the Ie Processing view, simply repeating the inform: n— maintenance 2 {Page 192)—is not enough for good memory. All this does 6 information at a given level of depth; foaN Memory [Level 3: Meaning, or level Figure 5.4 A summary diagram of ee agamimary diagram of the relationships Among lerels of procesng, conte eg information, and memory. | cece i atm tact us shown by the shaded portion of the mount Of slaboration b figure. well tained. Rehearsal is thus seen as a process which gives meaning to information. ‘The idea of elaboration has been added to the levels-of processing theory, Elaboration refers to the degree to which incoming information is processed so that it can be tied to, or integrated with, existing memories. The greater the degree of elaboration given to an item of incoming information, the more likely it is that it will be remembered, At the risk (and it is a considerable risk) of making a complex siuation too concrete and simple, Figure 5.4 summarizes what has been ssid about levels of processing and elaboration. This figure shows that the amount remembered, indicated by the shading, depends on both the level of processing and’ the degree to which information is elaborated. The best memory is the result of processing to the meaning level, where the amount of elaboration is also greatest. Long-term memory: Us organization and process When we think about memory, it is usually long-term memory a Have in mind. Our reminiscences of past.eventsin, our lives ar2 fom long-term memory. Our sense of self and continuity 35 2h es Could hardly exist without Jongeverm. memory of what haPPEPE™ Yesterday, the day before, and so on back 10 our earliest YO Mould ye think aboue if we had no Jonge term meme ony mercy of momentary, short-lived sensory and PerPEPEN TiN bing the world around us, Imagine, if you cans, what BEM TE oocur NOUld be like withour a system to Keep sack OF EET ior and mony, especially of the long-term variety, is essen al life as we know m ORY THE ORGANIZATION OF LONG-TERM ie icd informa- og 8 long-term memory is not an unt gorize, and BSS we keep our memory store in order We OE iia asc Scanned with CamScannerfor with ing long-tenm memory. Note also that the words retrieved in the TO! example are part of our general store of knowledge about the world. ‘introduces us to the distinction between two kinds of long-term memo ‘organization, semantic memory and episodic memory. Semantic and Episodic Memory Much of what is in our long-tem™ memory consists of knowledge about what words mean, about the they ate related w one another, and about the rules for using communication and thinking, (See Chapter 6 and Chapter 2. P85 69-71). In short, it is this kind of memory which makes our Us language possible. It is called semantic memory (Quillian, 1966). Se™ memory is considered to be very stable; there is little forgetting meanings of the words of our language and the rules for | illustrate semantic memory more explicitly, here are a few examy the semantic memory of one of the authors. Jasify information in a umber of Was. LOMEAM MEMOTY ia bic classify inf h a good cross-indexing system. library with One way to study the ip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) Phenomenon : 4 1 through our library of experience to retrieve a memory, gy we search throug] . tring to retrieve @ person's name BUC YoU Cannot qui pose you are member it; the name is on the “tip of your tongue,” but you just cannge vomit It-we look at this ¢ip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon in Breate, detail, we find evidence for the organization of long-term memory (Brow, & McNeill, 1966), ‘The search through the memory store in the TOT state is. no random. If the name you are looking for is Martin, you may come uy with Mersin or Morton, but not Potsrebe. Brown and McNeill brough this phenomenon into the laboratory by reading aloud definitions of unfamiliar words that the subjects would probably recognize if they themselves were reading fairly difficult material but which they were not likely to recall spontaneously. Examples are apse, neporion, cloaca, ambergris, and sampan. When the subjects were in the TOT state, aroused by hearing the definition but not able to hit the “target” word, they tended to retrieve words from their long-term memories that (1) sounded like the target word, (2) started with the same letter as the target word, (3) contained the same number of syllables as the target word, and (4) had a meaning similar to thatof the target word. For instance, the definition of the target word sampan led the subjects to suggest Saipan, Siam, Cheyenne, saram, “sanching” (not a real word), and “‘sympoon” (not a real word) ‘These words are “sound-alikes,” with the same initial sound and the same number of syllables as the target word. The subjects also gave answers like barge, houseboat, and junk—words with meanings similar to sampan (Figure 5.5). The TOT phenomenon indicates that information is organized it I know the word thesaurus means “tteasury” synonyms. Bit mein operant conditioning. | ent is critical in Ope cl pein une js something like a combination of a sofa and a chair. a paise ‘ tion seems CO be stored in semantic memory in a highly Inform! For instance, some experiments (Collins & Quillian .d that information is stored in logical hierarchies that s to specific ones (Figure 5.6). Such organization make logical inferences from the information~ Other experiments (Rips et al., 1973) have organized into clusters of words very much as the TOT observations indicated. Tulving, 1972) consists of long-term memories of .d to us at particular times and places. Thus isodic memories are memories of episodes, long or short, in our own pe they are dated and have a biographical reference. In other words our sjemembrances of things past” make up our episodic memory. wee indicated th 1969) eneral catego ey ossible for us C0 06> emantic memory. a 3 2 8 = SI % " Rpisodic memory ( ific things that happene: When I was 21 years old, I joined the army. [ went fishing last week. I worked late in the laboratory last night. Thave just come from a memory experimen I remember that the nonsense syllables paired in the experiment. t done by a student, and “tov” and “yok” were Unlike semantic memory, with its network of meanings, episodic memory seems to be organized with respect to when certain events tappened in our lives. The episodes donot have to have a logical organization. Thus episodic memory is a record of what has happened to us and does not lend itself to the drawing of inferences. In addition, ees because it is less highly organized, episodic memory scems more usceptible to being forgotten than does semantic memory. ok, Se episodic and semantic memories are related. For exam- wledge pec may be incorporated in our network of general Memories: ee world and thus become a part of our semantic : ‘ rive our knowledge about the world from specific things Figu Ins Scanned with CamScannerRigure 5.7 that have happened to us. And items in semantic memory can ie part of our episodic memory. F or instance, you might remember thee ain time, you used some information from semantic memory, tat, NCODING AND STORING LONG-TERM MEMORIRg The importance of encoding for long-term memory is highlighteg encoding failures. Although we have all seen pennies countless time most of us do not have an accurate long-term memory image of what Re the “heads” side of a penny. Which of the pennies in Figure 5.7 ig the right one? Make a choice and check it. In one study of penny FeCOgnition less than half of the people in the study chose the right coin (Nickerson g Adams, 1979). Most of us do not pay attention to penny details because, after all, there is no need to; for all practical purposes, ‘it is enough t know that the only copper-colored United States coin is worth 1 cent, But the message is clear: Encoding for long-term storage Fequires special attention or strategies of some sort; just being exposed to something is usually not sufficient for long-term memory storage. \ The Role of Organization One strategy in remembering things well eo organize, or arrange, the input so that it fits into existing long-te1 memory categories, is grouped in some logical manner, or is arranged in some other way that makes “sense.” The organizational encoding may be inherent in the input itself or it may be supplied by individuals as they learn and remember new things. (See the later section of this chapter— “Improving Your Memory”’—for more on possible individual strategies of organization.) To see how inherent organization promotes good long-term mem ory, take a look at Figure 5.8, which gives an example of the way words were arranged in an experiment designed to see whether logical organiza tion of input leads to good memory (Bower et al., 1969). Memory of words arranged in logical hierarchies, such as the one in the figure, was much better than was memory of the same words learned without any inherent organization, Scanned with CamScannerput the things we learn are not usually inherenth veryday learning and memory, we must provide our evel imble of incoming information. In other words, we must do ofthe De nyzational encoding of incoming information. antsite en ei sot organization. Even when the materials i ntly arene ae imposed or subjective, organization occurs. One way to waa subjective organization is to see whether, in learning and recalling a list of unrelated words, certain stereotyped Patterns of recall emerge as learning and recall trials of the list are repeated (Tulving, 1962). In other words, de people tend to recall pairs of words and short strings of words together? They do, and such groupings, or subjective organization, lead to better memory. Our own organization The Role of Imagery The form in which informat important aspect of long-term memory. The organ given to verbal information are, promoting long-term retention. A: information is encoded by forming that have been most studied, “Image” 800d idea of exception of “pies of inp the head” jg ion is encoded is an ization and meaning as we have seen, quite influential in nother factor is whether the incoming images of it. Visual images are the ones is a hard concept to define in words. (Of course, we have a what images are like from our own experience.) With the iconic images (page 190), images do not seem to be literal ut. In the case of visual images, for example, the “picture in 3 not an exact copy of the input; it is not complete, and parts of ane “™Phasized while others are absent. Images are thus partial and altered representations of what is in the world around us. (See Chapter 6, Page 229 ) In spite of i ®t tough oye al 4d t6 do ficulties in defining what image is, it is possible to Measure of the degree to which imagery is aroused by words Y imagen morY Experiments in which incoming information i a of Bie To obtain a Tough measure of the image-arousing oa bes Visual i, PoOPIe Were asked to rate the difficulties they ba cc 1565, gees, on a scale from “very easy” to “very difficule fe ve Sled «,,})- The words for which viewal images were easily formed were termeg 7, While those that evoked very little visual Mneey Be ; ne tract — dsp (concrete) and mercy (abstract), for saree: oe . AB be agg MaB°TY bas been Sbeained, its effect on learning and 1 Scanned with CamScannerny experiments have been conducted on imagery ang we toa one using the pore asda tcbriqe, Paired Ieming is i ke learning foreign-language vocabulary eh forcign words with their English Equivalents. (Given a foreign won learn to associate the English equivalent with it.) In learning ang mene experiments, lists are made up of pairs of words (squirrel-calendary. and numbers (cbos-562), oF nonsense syllables ("tee-yor"), Tye element ofthe pair is called the stimulus; the second element i call rpome. Given the stimulus, you fatn to make the response thee been paired with it Using the paired-associate technique, the following ex shows the role of imagery in encoding (Paivio, 1965, 1971). Perimey Concrete words (boite) and abstract words (ruth) were pated y various ways on paired-associate lists. The stimulus could be gq. crete (C) or abstract (A), and so could the response. Equal numbey of all pair types (C-A, A-C, C-C, and A-A) were included in the lgg to be learned. ‘The res ults are shown in Figure 5.9. Having an item thy evokes imagery (a concrete word) in the stimulus position resulted in good recall (compare the C-C results with the A-C results and the C-A with the A-A results). Imagery evoked by the response tems also led to good recall (compare the C-C results with the C-A resuls and the A-C with the A-A results). Overall, however, the greatex effect of imagery on recall was found when the stimulus tems evoked concrete imagery. One interpretation of the importance of stimulus imagery in paireé associate experiments is that a concrete stimulus provides a conceptul Peg on which responses can be hung. Another way to express this ideals to say that the response can be incorporated into a concrete image. Ft instance, in a concrete-abstract pair like bottle-ruh, the concrete images) of the bottle may make it easy for a person to form an image of a bottk saying “truth serum.” Such use of concrete imagery is behind many ofthe schemes or systems designed to “improve memory.” (See pages 212 219.) P The Role of Constructive Processes During encoding, the to-be-remet™ bered information, especially if it is a complex life event or something yo have read, is modified. Certain details are accentuated, the material mi be simplified, or it may be changed in many other ways so that what! neoded and stored is far from a-literal copy of the input, (See Applicat 5.1, page 186), These modifications are called constructive process. One important constructive process is encoding only the gi meaning, of complex information such as what we have read Paper, magazine, or book. For example, many yeats ago the Bf Psychologist Sir Frederick Bartlett (1932) did some classic experim which people were asked to read a rather bizarre folktale. H obtained successive recalls of the story several hours or days al reading, He found thae the story was shortened and simplifies Mere omitted so that only the general outline, or gist, was I cases. Furthermore, the changes made in the story indicat subjects were using inferences in their encoding of the story- Scanned with CamScannerexperiments have focused on the use of inferences in ccene Sess (Bransford etal, 1972, for instance). Suppose ve Pref the car was sen drinking before he was involved Fae you would probably infer that drinking caused the cide mer the sentence as stating causation, although it does pean ee remember what was inferred at the time of encoding ns 8 are also made on the basis of the memory organizations ural of schema), that we have in semantic memory (page iI sorts of information about things, events, and their eh sGred in our semantic meme es I know, for instance, that ffice is in a building half a mile away. When he calls wate (P ‘We have @ or smyehe me wll be right over fo see Mes T assume that he is calling from he WH nference is strengthened when he arrives sweating and cause there isa steep hill between his office and mine: Also, air cook him to arrive was about right, I make the inference fom his office. But in fact, the professor had called me from was working out; he still had not quite cooled off when office. The time of arrival was about right, even though © to my office, because the professor had not quite fnated d alled. Later, if I need to recall this incident, T fotpember the inference I made when | encoded the telephone call; 1 vit emember that Professor Smythe called from his office. No wonder vittees in court who are trying to cell the truth may sell conflicting “idition to the factors deseribed in Application 5.1 (Page 186), ences about the to-be-remembered he came oem were fearived at MY the gum is quite cl0s essing when he ¢: sts; in a dey have not made the same infers event. RETRIEVAL FROM LONG-TERM MEMORY Infomation is encoded and stored in long-term memory, but it must be “read gut,” or retrieved, if it is to be used. Retrieval cues and recon snwtivé processes are important factors in the “‘read out” from memory. ced long-term memory Retrieval Cues Finding information in the organ sure is sided by reieval cues, or reminders, which direct the memory pees 1o the appropriate part of the long-term memory library. ‘A number i aa have shown that it is important to have the retrieval cues, “132” encoded along with the jnformation as it is put into long-term 15) eapetee (Tulving & “Thomson, 1973). As we saw carlier (Page alu ists erie auite good when conditions favor sich ifomation encoding, Perhaps the rich context into which an isem f ae embedded provides a nurnber of readily available rerrews wi their hen people leasn things, we have seen that they often provide P organization “subjective organisation—of what they are learning. Ovid Fal cteclare nocexalictlvipreasnui Ane: Ve de ous own rerrieval cues’ che time we encode information This is one of che ticks in having’a good memory. SUPPOS. for rds will, at the time You ate learni choad a learning, German, Some German We Grate them, be readily associated with English word: Hand, the 7 sd hound. When You jane 24 for “dog,” reminds you-of the Engl sh wol ba . NI sce the German word Hund, you can easily recall its English Scanned with CamScanner 201 Memor |meaning be use you generated the retrieval cue hound, Whie coded along with the target word Aund. (A later sectio “Improving Your Memory,” describes a number of stra retrieval cues along with to-be-remembered infor You 1 Of this chan ; a Cegies for eneogt! mation.) my What is called state-dependent memory (also known as State. learning) can also be looked at as lending support to the importance g having retrieval cues encoded with the to-be-remembered information, hh any case, state-dependent memory is a rather compelling demonstrato, of situational influences that affect retrieval from long-term Memory, [j people or animals encode and store information when they are in 4 particular emotional or drugged state, they may not be able to retrieve the or drugged state, the memory can be are told about alcoholics who were ul they hid a bottle; they forget where they put it when sober, but they remember when drunk again. The emotional or drugged state is part of the context within which a memory i: context, retrieval is poor; with it, ret fetrieved (Ho et al., 1978), Stories inder the influence of alcohol when Reconstructive Processes in Retrieval constructive processes are involved at the encoding stage of long-tem memory. In contrast, reconstructive Processes are modifications of already stored input. The distinction between constructive and reconstructive Processes is, however, often blurred; it may be difficult to tell whether Earlier (page 200), we saw that in the memory gaps during retrieval. Reconstructive processes are often seen in the answers to leading questions that bias the retrieval of whet was stored. Here is an experiment bearing on this point (Loftus & Palmer, 1974), The subjects in this experiment watched a Short film ef an auto mobile accident. Immediately after the fil ™m, they were given # Scanned with CamScannerstionnaire to fill out. Among the man 4 es 2 . S asked w eal ones: “About how fast were the ¢. . cre two fi .9 “ mashed into each other?” and “About ho: smas w fast were hen they hit each other?” wi ) the i One group of “a's going subjects had the “smashed” question; a second group had shes thins sosstona week later, the subjects were asked a number of other questions about the accident, the critical one being “Did you see any broken glass?” There was no broken glass in the film they had seen the week before. Subjects who had been given the ‘ “smashed” question originally were twice as likely to Teport that they remembered seeing broken glass as were those who had been given the “hit” question. (See Figure 5.11.) Forgetting Psychologists generally use the term forgetting to refer to the apparent loss of information already encoded and stored in long-term memory. Much is forgotten (Figure 5.12), but enough endures so that we have a sketchy record of our lives, (Inquiry 5.2 describes some lasting memories.) Much of what we think we have forgotten does not really qualify as “forgotten” because it was never encoded and stored in the first place. With information-processing theories (page 185) in mind, some informa- tion, due to lack of attention, may not have reached short-term memory from the Sensory register; or, due to inadequate encoding (pages 198-201) and rehearsal (page 192), the information may not have been transferred fa short-term to long-term memory. The levels-of-processing theory 8 193) would say that information was not stored in long-term mem- int en rehearsal Was not sufficiently elaborate. So if much ae pa fore being stored in long-term memory, is it any wonder that Ory record of life’s happenings is so incomplete? “often say we forget when memory does not match events as they sh i6 sl ‘ Scanned with CamScanneractually occurred. Constructive processes at work during the 5 e : Process of encoding (page 200) distort what is stored in memory and we Temembe; the distortions. For instance, we remember the gist, or meaning, of wha, we have read or heard in a conversation but not the actual words them. selves; we remember inferences constructed at the time the information was encoded for storage; or we encode only portions of the to-be-remem- bered information. Strictly speaking, such faulty remembering is not forgetting. In fact, we remember what was stored; we think we forget Scanned with CamScanner-member is not an accurate representation of what him to forget. ‘The answer will probably be ssage of time, I guess.” Press a little eye friend might SaY. “Well, as time passes, my impressions andl just decay and Bet weaker and weaker until they finally ds, he believes that the memory trace in the + In other wor walled the engram, decays with time. If there is any truth it certainly does not do justice ‘to the ferstand them. So why do we nd what cause “Oh, just the pa: and fometimes ¢ commor gerting, as psycho! nsense notion, logists now und pai, 8 seal co chi uses of 1 forget? INTERFERENCE Avast amount of experimental indicates that learning new thin, and everyday experience, too) evidence ( nemory of what we gs interferes with our J earlier and prior learning interferes with our memory of things For examples Suppose :YOu;£2 tO: 4 Party where you are ple. When the evening is over you will of many of the people you met. Your nemory of the names you heard earlier in the evening has been interfered with by the names you learned Jater. And.1cis also hard to remember the umes you heard larer in the evening because the names you learned catlier have interfered with your memory of the names learned at the end of the party ha . jechinicallyispealinee memory me after, or subsequent fo, the event It is called resroactive ¢ before the is due to events © learned leamed later, introduced to. many New Pcol probably have forgotten the names interference resulting from activities you are erying fo remember tpecause the interference terfering activit hat came before Be arpa interferenc > of events that cam the ei, on the other hand, pb temembered information ; eee looking at ways. in whi ¢ might be set UP ‘0 dee touctive and. proactive interference W ne definitions Beet the way an, experiment on retros srference might Scanned with CamScannerPerhaps some of the general memory principles described in this chapter have suggested ways in which you can improve your memory. You cay apply some of these general principles, but more specific aids to memory are available. MNEMONICS This strange-looking word (pronounced “nemoniks”) comes from the Greek word for “memory” and refers to specific memory-improvement techniques. People with super memories (Inquiry 5.3, page 213) some- umes use mnemonics, and we can also learn to do so, Most mnemonic techniques rely on the linking, or association, of to-be-remembered mate- rial with a systematic and organized set of images or words that are already firmly established in long-term memory and can therefore serve as re Scanned with CamScannerminder cues (page 201). With the analogy of a cloakroom in mind, the reminder cues are called memory pegs; the to-be-remembered items ar hung on these “pegs.” a Some simple, specific memory tricks will serve to illustrate the pee” idea. For example, the letters in the word Aomes can be used a “pegs” on which to hang the names of the Great Lakes—Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. The order of the colors in the spectrum can be remembered by associating each color with the name “Roy G. Biy’— red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Two more examples are given in Figure 5.16. et The Method of Loci. The word loci means “places.”’ The memory pegsi this system are parts of your image of a scene, The scene can be a street! building with rooms, the layout.of a college campus, a ech about anything that can be visualized cle numb ro ’ 5 arly and contains a discrete items in specific locations to Serve as memory pegs. . Scanned with CamScanner_ impressive if you can give a talk or remember a long list Jris always 1 eulting notes. Perhaps even more important for most ns without is remembering the points you wish to make on on readers pire pose, in a government course, for example, you think examination. POO to describe, in chronological order, five landmark cases sou il Of Mfreedom of the pre dean ng the method of loci to do this, start by “imagining” a building with er of rooms in it and several items of furniture in each room (Figure 5.17). Rehearse this image over and over until it is well estab- lished in your mind. (After you “‘have” the image, you can use it for other things you want to remember later—for example, the points in a sales desentation to a client—so your effort in forming this clear, distinct image will not be wasted on a single examination.) After you have formed sour image, associate the events you wish to remember with the rooms and items of furniture. For instance} ‘if the remember deals with the ri tial, “image” of ite! second case you want to ight of reporters to keep their sources confiden- a pile of papers marked “Top Secret” on a desk in the Second room in your mental tour of the building. The trick is to make oes with as many rooms and items of furniture as needed and © 4 mental tour of the rooms in order. y, a, nd Letter Peg Systems Like the method of loci, the main idea "Banizeg in your long-term memory, a well- i me is to establish, Bel tn adtazes fo ayhich. thearscbetrememhered treme be Num! ei a uM n ta est Systems, you form an image with each number. For Mk of wordy mee System can be used for the numbers 1 through 10. at thyme h the numbers—1 is a bun, 2 is a shoe, 3 is Scanned with CamScannera tree, 4 is a door, and so on. Now when you have a list to remember, yoy can associate the items on the list with your images of the numbers, Ifthe first item on a grocery list is coffee, imagine a steaming cup of coffee next f the second item is hamburger, you might see a giant shoe squashing hamburger into a patty; and so on through the list, s with what is to be remembered. Letter systems are similar. You can establish mnemonic pegs by forming strong, distinctive images of words that start with the sounds of the letters of the alphabet. ‘This will give you 26 pegs for association with what you want t remember. Other, more elaborate letter systems have been devised to extend memory-peg lists to hundreds of items. (See Suggestions for Further Reading at’the end of this chapter.) Mastery these extended systems allow one to do feats of memory that appeal astounding—such as remembering the 17th, 37th, and 49th cards after one pass through a shuffled deck—but are really based on the simple principle of linking what is to be remembered with retrieval cues, oF pegs: toa plate of bun associating the number imag, Stories You Tell Yourself If you have a list of unrelated items to © member, a useful mnemonic device is to relate the items in a made-UP story. ‘Dhe story starts with the first item on the list, and, in order, each succeeding item is worked in. Doing this gives coherence and meaning @ otherwise unrelated items; it is a form of elaborative encoding (page ! Suppose a person has been given the following li ber (Bower gg i gi lowing list to remem! a Scanned with CamScannerumberiack att skate hedge colony duck furniture rocking pillow mistess The made-up Story might go as follows: «4 LUMBERJACK DARTed out of the forest, SKA’ HEDGE past a COLONY of DUCKs, He tripped aH aT NITURE, tearing his STOCKING, while hastening toeani oes PILLOW where his MISTRESS lay.” BtaWard che: jonenbering Names and Faces It may not be important to have me Rumimiques t0 help us remember grocery lists, steps in a sequence of real reactions, and the like; afterall, we can almost always consult Gp notes. But the socially important business of associating names wi aes isa different matter; we have no notes to help us with this. As fax steps in establishing a good memory for names and faces, we should i) be sure we hear the name clearly when introduced, (2) repeat the time when acknowledging the introduction, and (3) if the name is {nusual, politely ask our new acquaintance to spell it. While we are taking sure we have heard and rehearsed the name, we should be paying lose attention to the individual’s face. The shape and size of the head dnd individual characteristics of the hair, forehead, eyebrows, eyelashes, tyes, cheekbones, nose, ars, lips, chin, and skin should all be focal points of attention. Voice quality may also be important. Almost every- body we meet will have one or several features that can be elaborated, cuaggerated, ot pethaps even caricatured as in a cartoon to form a dis- tnetve memory image that can be related to the person's name. Chusking This mnemonic technique, described in another context ear ler in this chapter (page 192), illustrates particularly well a general tharcterstic of mnemonic. techniques—systematic ways of encoding infomation. Suppose you want to remember your edited number 19141609001, for example. It will help if you break the number int hunks. In the example, the first four numbers may remind you of a ‘portant date in history (the date of the outbreak of World War 1), the "ext four numbers can also be “chunked” as a date, while the last three tubers form a chunk that is easy to remember by itself: If he a 2 temembered is 9798494185521, dates will not wok wel aa chunk ‘tieviee; but perhaps you can think of another way to form gr0UPs & eis that will be easy wo remember. Use your ingenvity: PENT ny ‘heen up into two telephone numbers, oF You Cn find way! umber that will work better for you: § my ING TO REMEMBER : “emonics are fun to use and ean be helpful in But if you want wo remember what you need (9 mmembering man now in courses © Scanned with CamScannerin your work, you will need to go beyond mnemonic techniques, Here ate First, study is work and takes time (Figure 5.18), so some hints on how to remember what you study. Plan a sty ide for the On Out of the led times, You levision later) schedule that you can stick to, During the time you set asi work at it instead of talking to friends or watching televisi comer of your eye. (If you study hard during your schedul will find that you have plenty of time for your friends and tel Second, we know that rehearsal is crucial for transferring information from short-term to long-term memory or, alternatively, for the deeper and richer processing of information that is necessary for good memory. Text books like this one are full of detailed information, most of which cannot be remembered from the kind of skimming you might give a newspaper, Maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal were distinguished ear. lier in this chapter (page 194), where it said that maintenance rehearsal consists of merely repeating information, while e/aborative rehearsal con sists of thinking about what is being rehearsed in an effort to relate ito other things that you know or are learning. Elaborative rehearsal is the Kind to use in studying. You should spend a great deal of your study time in claborative rehearsal: Ask yourself what you have just read, what the mew concepts and terms are, and how they relate to other things you know or are learning, Studies show that it is effective to spend at least halfof your study time in such rehearsal, Third, remember the importance of organization during encoding: As we saw earlier (pages 198-199), organization takes many forms. Text books like th: 's one are organized by headings to provide a kind of outline. As you rehearse elaboratively, you will be giving your own sue “reanization ‘© the material, and you will also be providing yourself Ww! Scanned with CamScannerex some feedback. If you study b epitts ec some feedback after a Bae ng aeeul esr studied and, using the headings as aap an tack ral under € ch heading. ‘Turn to the terms at te pe cer an ask yourself for definitions of the appropriate nd of ap | you both what you have file a and andes have finished a chapter, test yourself on it, and Me a are ve tweak spots. By testing yoursel, yu slllise be | skills. your retrieval fetnefore an examination. You will have forgotten many Fifth, TV" , feview ned. Use the organization of the text to test yourself vind go back over the things you have forgotten, relearning y you learned them in the first place. Key your review to the tamination. If the exam ation will be stressing recall, as in an Seay examinations spend a good deal of your time rehearsing major ideas fod the experiments that support them. Trying to think of what the questions will be ahead of time and practicing your answers to them is ofien a good idea Spend some time integrating the text with class notes ind tying co.geta DIB picture” of the subject how it relates to other topics in the course, for example. If the examination is to be multiple- tice, or some other objective tYPE of test, be sure you have mastered the definitions of the terms and can recognize the correct definitions when you see them. Of course, knowledge of terms is necessary for good performance on essay examinations (00, and concepts are often asked for on multiple-choice examinations. So do not neglect terms oF ideas for any examination; just give @ little more emphasis, depending on the type of examination, to one or the other. . Planning, rehearsal, organization, feedback, and revi through course examinations, but, 4% you well know, mo seaieres for an examination will be forgotten, of at pee a eee when you need to recall it later for another eat oe Ee lere the old adage “practice makes perfect” is applica! cae a eas the word overlearning: To reme! will need ia navies it pays to go beyon' thing, - bee you are satisfied that you know ane mal eIBiE after a few days and learn it again, Pio amount fi ies have shown that such “overlearning” Wor" arn how 1 ‘Mount forgotten. For instance, if ic takes you 2 hours © 1° AOR With. atraye 4 a spent ys in a programming language, . er 2 hours vetlearning” Re lost of the ti ing” the same material will stamp it 190 7 scems fo wha : a we will get them ae of ew will see you st of what you least hard to 19 memory: We'a ie not motivated strongly enough (© eter rt H remember» . Fee ely snes we realy nee a ee es for ‘4 em dvan: mo for “overlearning’ '" R member ko! eu “Scudying te 5. 19 summarizes this section 0” Scanned with CamScanner