Psy-402

Cognitive
Neuroscience
Topic 5.3
Long-Term Memory
Grand Canyon University
Chris M. McBride, Psy.D.
Memory
 Psychologists often divide memory into
two basic categories
 Working Memory
 Long-Term Memory

 In general working memory is fragile

and time limited

 Long-term memory has a very high

capacity and can retain material for
many decades
Long-Term Memory
 Long-term Memory
A high-capacity storage system that
contains a person’s memories for
experiences and information that has
accumulated throughout the lifetime
 Information can last for a few minutes or
many decades
Long-Term Memory
 Typically information is said to be stored
in the long-term memory if it is not lost
or otherwise discarded by your working
memory system

 Many psychologists are not fully

convinced there is a distinct difference
between working and long-term
memory
 The division does aid in research however
Long-Term Memory
 Psychologists often divide long-term
memory into three specific categories
 Episodic
 Semantic
 Procedural
Episodic Memory
 Episodic Memory
 Focuses on a person’s memory of events

 Consider what did you do for your last

birthday?
 What did you do for your 18th birthday?
 What did you do for your 10th birthday?

 The memories you have of these events

are episodic
Semantic Memory
 Semantic Memory
 Organized knowledge about the world,
including words and other factual
information

 Name the past four presidents

 Give another word that means “good”.
 How many eggs are in a dozen?

 These items represent some semantic

memories
Procedural Memory
 Procedural Memory
 Refersto knowledge of how to do things
 Organized in motor-based sequences

 Consider how you

 Ride a bike
 Write the letter “R” on a scrap of paper
 Tie your shoes
Working vs. Long-term
Memory
 In order to preserve information,
working-memory maintains series of
sounds in the phonological loop or basic
visual information in the visuospatial
sketchpad

 Long-term memory, in contrast, appears

to store information based on meaning
 This suggests that encoding information is
more efficient if the information is
meaningful
 This may explain why rote memorization is
a poor strategy for learning new material
Encoding and Retrieval
 During encoding information is
processed and represented in the
memory

 During retrieval information is located

and accessed from storage

 Note: These two processes cannot be

tested separately, failures in memory
can be due to problems from either
encoding or retrieval
Encoding
 Three important questions are asked
when studying encoding
 Are you more likely to remember items that
you processed in a deep, meaningful
fashion, rather than items processed in a
shallow, superficial fashion?
 Are you more likely to remember items if
the context at the time of encoding
matches the context at the time of
retrieval?
 How do emotional factors influence memory
accuracy?
Memorize this List
 The
 Strange
 Out
 Syllable
 Liver
 Off
 I
 Coy
 Heavy
 Pen
Produce the Previous List
Memorize this List
 To
 Sit
 In
 Solemn
 Silence
 On
 A
 Dull
 Dark
 Dock
Produce the Previous List
Levels of Processing
 Levels-of-processing approach
 Deep, meaningful processing of information
leads to more accurate recall than shallow,
sensory kinds of processing
 Also called depth of processing approach

 In general people achieve a deeper level

of processing when they extract more
meaning from a stimulus
Levels of Processing
 Primary hypothesis suggests that deeper
levels of encoding produce better recall

 The deeper processing increases recall due

to distinctiveness and elaboration

 Distinctiveness
 Stimulus is different from other memory traces

 Elaboration
 Richerprocessing that encourages meaning and
interconnected concepts
Levels of Processing
 Semantic encoding encourages richer
processing

 More elaborate, more detailed information

produces more accurate recall

 In one study, people were asked to either

to judge the honesty of a person’s face or
the width of a person’s nose.
 In
a follow-up they were asked to recognize
photos they saw, those that had looked for
honesty, had a better memory for the faces
Self-Reference Effect
 Self-Reference effect
 People remember more information when
they relate it to themselves
 Self-reference tasks tend to encourage
especially deep processing

 Consider, when you last gave a gift to a

person, do you remember what it was?
 Doyou remember what other gifts they
received at the same time from others?
Self-Reference Effect
 Self-reference tasks require organization
and elaboration

 People tend to recall far more items

when they utilize self-reference
techniques rather than other methods

 With this in mind would we expect

narcissists to have a stronger or weaker
long-term memory?
Self-Reference Effect
 Three cognitive factors contribute to the
self-reference effect
 The self produces an especially rich set of
cues
 Elaboration leads to more accurate retrieval
of information
 Information is rehearsed more frequently if
a person associates it with themselves

 Given this information, what may be a

good technique for studying in the
future?
Encoding-Specificity
Principle
 Encoding-specificity principle
 Recall is better if the context during
retrieval is similar to context during
encoding
 When the two contexts do not match, a
person is more likely to forget items

 Consider, when grocery shopping, how

difficult it is to remember items from
your list at home when you arrive to the
store without list in hand. Why is this
difficult?
Encoding-Specificity
Principle
 Encoding-specificity is relatively easy to
demonstrate in real life but is difficult to
replicate in the lab

 This difficulty may be due to two

potential explanations
 Different kinds of memory tasks
 Physical versus mental context
Encoding-Specificity
Principle
 Different kinds of memory tasks
 Recall tasks demand participants to
reproduce items they had learned earlier
 Recognition tasks ask participants to judge
whether they had experienced certain types
of stimuli previously

 Real life situations usually demand recall

 Laboratory tasks usually demand

recognition
Encoding-Specificity
Principle
 Physical versus Mental Context
 Researchers often manipulate the physical
context of settings but this may not be as
important as the participant’s mental
context
 The principle may depend on how the
environments feel, rather than how they
look
Levels of Processing AND
Encoding Specificity
 As it turns out encoding specificity appears to
be more powerful than levels of processing

 Deep semantic processing is effective only if

the retrieval conditions also emphasize those
deeper more meaningful features

 What does this mean?

 When studying, get yourself in a state of mind
similar to when you will use the material, and
elaborate what you learn, especially if you can
reflect it on your own experience.
Read the following
 Picture
 Fellow
 Commerce
 Number
 Advice
 Motion
 Horse
 Dozen
 Village
 Custom
 Flower
 Vessel
 Amount
 Kitchen
 Window
 Bookstore
Retrieval
 Retrieval
 The processes that allow a person to locate
information that is stored in the long-term
memory, and have access to that
information

 Retrieval is often divided into explicit

and implicit memory tasks
Which of the following
appeared on the original list?
 Woodpile
 Fellow
 Leaflet
 Fitness
 Number
 Butter
 Motion
 Table
 People
 Dozen
 Napkin
 Picture
 Kitchen
 Bookstore
 Horse
 Advice
Explicit Memory
 Explicit Memory Task
 Previouslylearned information is
intentionally retrieved

 The most common explicit memory task

is recall

 Another common memory task is

recognition
Complete the words from
these fragments
 V_s_e_
 L_t_e_
 V_l_a_e
 P_a_t_c
 M_t_o_
 M_n_a_
 N_t_b_o_
 C_m_e_c_
 A_v_c_
 T_b_e_
 F_o_e_
 C_r_o_
 H_m_w_r_
 B_o_s_o_e
Implicit Memory
 Implicit Memory Task
A memory task that assesses your memory
indirectly

 Implicit tasks often show how the effects

of previous experience influence
behavior automatically, without
conscious effort
Implicit Memory
 Repetition Priming Task
 Recent exposure to a word increases the
likelihood that a person will think of that
particular word when presented with a cue that
could evoke many different words

 A variety of studies indicate that adults often

cannot remember stimuli explicitly, but are
often accurate on implicit memory tasks

 This suggests people often remember more

than they can actually recall
Amnesia
 Amnesia
 Memory loss and deficits as the result of brain
damage caused by surgery, disease, physical
trauma or psychological trauma

 Anterograde amnesia
A loss of the ability to create new memories

 Retrograde amnesia
A loss of memories from events prior to the trauma
 Losses follow a temporal gradient (Ribot’s Law)
 Losses are greatest for the most immediate events prior
to trauma
Amnesia
 Most famous case of anterograde
amnesia was the case of H.M.
 H.M. had his hippocampus removed in order
to treat epilepsy
 Following the surgery, H.M. could not longer
create explicit long-term memories
 He was able to learn some new procedural
memories, in spite of the fact he was
unaware of having learned anything new

 Those with and without amnesia, tend to

score similarly on implicit memory tasks
Expertise
 Expertise
 Exceptional performance on representative tasks
in a particular area

 The key to developing expertise is deliberate,

intensive practice on a daily basis

 Experts in an area actually do not tend to

have above average memory skills or above
average intelligence
 Incontrast they tend to have deeply constructed
focused experience
Experts vs. Non-experts
 Experts possess a well-organized,
carefully learned knowledge structure,
which assists in encoding and retrieval

 Experts are more likely to reorganize the

new material that hey must recall,
forming meaningful chunks, in which the
material is grouped together

 Typically have more vivid visual images

for the items they must recall
Experts vs. Non-experts
 Work hard to emphasize the
distinctiveness of each stimulus

 Rehearse in a more strategic fashion

 Better at reconstructing missing potions

of information

 Are more skilled at predicting the

difficulty of a task and at monitoring
progress on a task
Autobiographical Memory
 Autobiographical Memory
A person’s memory about themselves
 Usually includes a verbal narrative
 Also includes imagery about events,
emotional reactions, and procedural
information

 Autobiographical memory is a vital part

of the identity as it shapes personal
history and self-concept
Autobiographical Memory
 Although errors occur, our memory is often
accurate for a variety of information

 When mistakes are made they typically

concern peripheral details and specific
information about commonplace events,
rather than central information about
important events

 Our memories often blend together

information from a variety of sources we
actively construct into a unified memory at the
time of retrieval
Schema
 Schema
 General knowledge or expectations distilled
from past experiences
 Take a moment to consider the schema of a
basic plot from a typical sitcom

 Schemas guide our recall, we often

show a consistency bias
 We exaggerate the consistency between
our past feelings and beliefs to our current
viewpoint
Source Monitoring
 Source Monitoring
 The
process of trying to identify the origin of a particular
memory

 Individually, people do not often make source

monitoring mistakes, believing the ideas of others
had been generated by themselves

 Source monitoring error is more common at the

societal level (e.g., we should regularly check the
origin and accuracy of data)

 In reality monitoring, people try to identify whether

an event was real or imagined
Flashbulb Memories
 Flashbulb Memory
 Memory for the circumstances in which a
person first learns about a very surprising,
emotionally arousing event
 Many people believe they can accurately
recall all the minor details about what they
were doing at the time of the event

 For many people, their most salient

flashbulb memory tends to be 9/11
 You
may have more recent Flashbulb
memories of some of the recent mass
shootings
Flashbulb Memories
 Brown and Kulik (1977) suggested that
people’s flashbulb memories are more
accurate than memories of less surprising
events

 Later studies revealed these memories to have

significant errors even though they claimed
the memories for these events were very vivid

 These memories may be somewhat stronger

due to the use of rehearsal, distinctiveness,
and elaboration
Eyewitness Testimony
 People’s long-term memory is
reasonably accurate with regard to the
gist of the information

 Eyewitness testimony in contrast often

demands people to remember specific
details about people and events
Eyewitness Testimony
 Post-event misinformation effect
 Afterwitnessing an event, people are given
misleading information about the event, then
later the recall the misleading information

 Proactive Interference
 Problems recalling new information due to
interference from previously learned material

 Retroactive Interference
 Problems recalling old information due to
interference from newly learned material
Eyewitness Testimony
 Constructivist approach
 People construct memories by integrating
new information with what they already
know
 This makes the information more coherent
and sensible (even if the information was
not sensible to begin with)

 Memory does not consist of facts, it is

the blending of information from a
variety of sources
Factors Affecting
Eyewitness Testimony
 Eyewitnesses make more errors when
 They saw a crime committed during
stressful circumstances
 There is a long delay between the original
event and the time of the testimony
 The information is plausible
 There is social pressure
 Testimony is more accurate when people are
allowed to report an event in their own words,
when given sufficient time, and are allowed to
respond, “I don’t know”
 Someone has provided positive feedback
Memory Confidence and
Memory Accuracy
 Research reveals that participants are
almost as confident about their
misinformation based memories as they
are about their genuinely correct
memories

 Jury members are more likely to believe

a confident witness than an uncertain
one
Emotions and Memory
 Emotion vs. Mood
 Emotion is a reaction to a specific stimulus
 Mood refers to a more general, long lasting
experience

 Psychologists generally describe Mood

as the Climate, and Emotion as the
Weather
Emotions and Memory
 Pollyanna Principle
 Pleasantitems are usually processed more
accurately and efficiently than unpleasant items

 When a stimulus is neutral, it is more likely

to be remembered accurately when paired
with a pleasant experience
 Angerand violence typically reduce memory
accuracy

 Over time, unpleasant memories fade more

than pleasant memories
Anxiety and Explicit
Memory Tasks
 Anxiety disorders can modulate performance
on retrieval tasks
 Disorders studied include generalized anxiety
disorder, posttraumatic stress, and social phobia

 In some studies people with anxiety disorders

remember threatening words very accurately
compared to those without such disorders

 Highly anxious people were less likely to

remember neutral and pleasant words than
non-anxious people
Recovered Memories
 There have been very strong contrasting opinions
as to whether memories can be repressed and
recovered later on

 According to the recovered memory perspective,

some individuals can repress traumatic memories
for years and have them retrieved later

 According to the false-memory perspective, most

of these recovered memories are constructed
stories about events that never occurred
 The majority of research supports the latter position at
this time
Reference
Matlin, M. W. (2013). Cognition, (8th ed.).
United States of America: Wiley.