❑The means by which we retain and draw on our past

experiences to use that information in the present

❑As a process, it refers to the dynamic mechanisms
associated with storing, retaining and retrieving
information about past experiences
❑3 common operations of memory:
1. Encoding
2. Storage
3. Retrieval
❑Recall – you produce a fact, a word or other item from
memory
❑Ex. Fill-in-the-blank and most essay tests
❑Recognition – you select or otherwise identify an item as
being one that you learned previously
❑Ex. Multiple choice and true-false tests
1. Serial recall – you recall items in the exact order in which
they were presented
2. Free recall – you recall items in any order you choose
3. Cued recall – you are first shown items in pairs, but
during recall you are cued with only one member of
each pair and are asked to recall each mate
❑Explicit memory – participants engage in conscious
recollection
❑They might recall or recognize words, facts or pictures from a
particular prior set of items
❑Ex. Tests of recall and recognition
❑Implicit memory – we use information but are not consciously
aware that we are doing so
❑Everyday you engage in many tasks that involve your
unconscious recollection

❑Priming – the facilitation of your ability to utilize missing

information
1. Sensory store/memory – capable of storing relatively
limited amounts of information for very brief periods
2. Short-term store/memory – capable of storing
information for somewhat longer periods but also of
relatively limited capacity
3. Long-term store/memory – capable of storing
information of very large capacity for very long periods,
perhaps even indefinitely
R. Atkinson
❑Atkinson and Shiffrin, the proponents of
the model, were not suggesting that the
three stores are distinct physiological
structures. Rather, the stores are
hypothetical constructs.
❑Hypothetical constructs – concepts
that are not themselves directly
measurable or observable but that
serve as mental models for
understanding how a psychological
R. Shiffrin

phenomenon works
❑Sensory store – the initial repository of much information
that eventually enters the short- and long-term stores
❑Iconic store – a discrete visual sensory register that holds
information for very short periods
❑It holds memories for matters of seconds and
occasionally, up to a couple of minutes
❑Holds not only a few items. It also has available some
control processes that regulate the flow of information to
and from the long-term store.
❑Here we keep memories that stay with us over long
periods, perhaps indefinitely
❑We hold in it information we need to get us by in our day-
to-day lives
❑Mnemonist – someone who demonstrates extraordinarily
keen memory ability, usually based on using special
techniques for memory enhancement
❑Mnemonists translate arbitrary, abstract, meaningless
information into more meaningful or more sensorially
concrete information
❑Hypermnesia – a phenomenon which is a process of
producing retrieval of memories that would have seem to
have been forgotten
❑A severe loss of explicit memory

❑Retrograde amnesia
❑Individuals lose their purposeful memory for events prior
to whatever trauma induces memory loss
❑Mild forms can occur fairly commonly when someone
sustains a concussion
❑The memories that return typically do so starting from
the more distant past. They then progressively return up
to the time of the trauma. Often events right before the
trauma are never recalled.
❑Infantile amnesia
❑The inability to recall events that happened when we
were very young
❑Generally, we can remember little or nothing that has
happened to us before the age of about 5 years
❑It is extremely rare for someone to recall many
memories before age 3 years
❑The few reports of childhood memories that are
recorded usually involve memories of significant events
❑Anterograde amnesia
❑The inability to
remember events that
occur after traumatic
event

H. M.
❑Explicit memory is typically impaired in amnesia
❑Implicit memory, such as priming effects on word-
completion tasks and procedural memory for skill-based
tasks, is typically not impaired
❑Studies of amnesia victims have revealed much about the
way in which memory depends on the effective functioning of
particular structures of the brain
❑When studying cognitive processes in the brain,
neuropsychologists frequently look for dissociations of function
❑In dissociations, normal individuals show the presence of a
particular function (e.g., explicit memory). But people with
specific lesions in the brain show the absence of that particular
function. This absence occurs despite the presence of normal
functions in other areas (e.g., implicit memory).
❑By observing people with disturbed memory function, we
know that memory is volatile. A blow to the head, a
disturbance in consciousness, or any number of other injuries to
or diseases of the brain may affect it
❑A disease of older adults that causes
dementia as well as progressive
memory loss
❑Dementia – a loss of intellectual
function that is severe enough to
impair one’s everyday life
❑Typically recognized on the basis of
loss of intellectual function in daily life

Alois Alzheimer
❑Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed when memory is
impaired and there is at least one other area of
dysfunction in the domains of language, motor, attention,
executive function, personality or object recognition
❑The symptoms are of gradual onset and the progression is
continuous and irreversible
❑Biological structure- Tangles and plaques in the brain
tissues(fMRI)
❑Early-onset Alzheimer’s disease – a special kind of
Alzheimer’s disease that is familial. It has been linked to a
genetic mutation.
❑It results in the disease exhibiting itself early, often before
even 50 years of age and sometimes as early as the 20s
❑Late-onset Alzheimer’s disease – appears to be
complexly determined and related to a variety of possible
genetic and environmental influences, none of which
have been conclusively identified
❑Hippocampus – play an important role in storing explicit
memories and other declarative information (Squire & Zola-
Morgan, 1991)
❑Its main function appears to be in the integration and
consolidation of separate sensory information
❑Most important, it is involved in the transfer of newly
synthesized information into long-term structures supporting
declarative knowledge
❑Cerebral cortex – stores visual, spatial and olfactory sensations
discretely, thus appearing to play an important role in storing
long-term memory (Zola & Squire, 2000)
❑Acetylcholine, norepinephrine and serotonin enhance neural
transmission associated with memory
❑Acetylcholine are highly concentrated in the hippocampus
among normal people but low concentration among people
with Alzheimer’s disease
❑Korsakoff’s syndrome – a devastating form of anterograde
amnesia, caused by severe and prolonged abuse of alcohol,
disrupting the activities of serotonin
❑Amygdala – associated with emotional events
❑There also may be sex differences in the recall of emotional
memories.
❑There is some evidence that women recall emotionally
changed pictures better than men (Canli & associates, 2002)
❑Basal ganglia – seem to be the primary structure controlling
procedural knowledge (Mishkin & Petri, 1984)
❑Cerebellum – seems to play a key role in classically
conditioned responses and contributes to many cognitive tasks
in general (Cabeza & Nyberg, 1997; Thompson, 1987)