EXPERIMENTAL

PSYCHOLOGY
MEMORY & FORGETTING
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 Sensory memory is the perception of sight,
MEMORY hearing, smell, taste, and touch information
entering through the sensory cortices of the
brain and relaying through the thalamus. It
lasts only milliseconds and is mostly outside
conscious awareness.

Short-term memory, or working memory—the

ability to hold information in our minds for a
brief time and work with it (e.g., multiplying 24
x 17 without using paper would rely on
working memory)

Long-term memory refers to the memory

process in the brain that takes information
from the short-term memory store and creates
long lasting memories.
 Declarative memories - facts or memories of
MEMORY past events that can be 'declared' rather than
performed.

Nondeclarative memory which covers our

memory capacities that support skill and habit
learning, which are expressed through
performance rather than recollection.

Episodic memory refers to the conscious

recollection of a personal experience that
contains information on what has happened
and also where and when it happened.

Semantic memory is a category of long-term

memory that involves the recollection of ideas,
concepts and facts commonly regarded as
general knowledge.
Three stages in the learning and memory process

• Encoding is defined as the initial learning of information;

• Storage refers to maintaining information over time;

• Retrieval is the ability to access information when you need it.

• Two types of errors : Forgetting and Misremembering

• Meeting someone for the first time in a party

• All three stages depend on one another.

Three stages in the learning and memory process
Encoding

• Encoding refers to the initial experience of perceiving and learning

information.
• Eg. Various stimuli in the environment
• Principles of encoding
• encoding is selective: we attend to some events in our environment and
we ignore others.
• encoding is prolific; we are always encoding the events of our lives—
attending to the world, trying to understand it. Eg. Campus walk
Encoding
• Distinctive experience - having an event stand out as quite different from a background
of similar events. – becomes a key to remembering events.

• Strong emotional content - terrorist attacks, death. Primary and Secondary experience -
flashbulb memory –
• can be retrieved with exceptional clarity
• unusual details – color, exact positions
• High confidence with the memory details. How reliable?

• i.e. Even though people may have great confidence in what they recall, their memories
may not as accurate
Encoding
• That is because
• The process of encoding always involves recoding—that is, taking the information from the form it is
delivered to us and then converting it in a way that we can make sense of it. Eg. Rainbow colors

• Recoding strategies - meaning and association – imagining – repetition – make it distinctive

• But, Recoding can also introduce errors—when we accidentally add information during encoding,
then remember that new material as if it had been part of the actual experience

• Task

• Because humans are creative, we are always going beyond the information we are given:
we automatically make associations and infer from them what is happening
pane ledge window

air open frame door arm

shade phone bottle screen

brown see fresh

Encoding

Encoding—the initial registration of information—is essential in the learning and

memory process. Unless an event is encoded in some fashion, it will not be successfully
remembered later. However, just because an event is encoded (even if it is encoded
well), there’s no guarantee that it will be remembered later.
Storage
Storage is the creation of a permanent record of information

Storing away in a long- term store for later use.

Storage = Memory

In order for a memory to go into storage (i.e., long-term memory), it has to pass through three distinct stages:

Sensory Memory, Short-Term Memory, and finally Long-Term Memory.

These stages were first proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968). Their model of human
memory, called Atkinson-Shiffrin (A-S), is based on the belief that we process memories in the same way that a
computer processes information.
 Storage
Every experience we have changes our brains.

… within the structures of the nervous system, making new impressions in the process.

• Psychologists (and neurobiologists) say that experiences leave Memory traces or Engrams
An engram is a unit of cognitive information imprinted in a physical substance, theorized to be the means by which
memories are stored as biophysical or biochemical changes in the brain or other biological tissue, in response to
external stimuli.
- Physical change in the nervous system that represents our experience.
• Eg. A child was screamed at by her mother for cutting some of the roses in the mom's garden. As an adult, this
woman gets a headache every time she smells roses, leading her to conclude she must be allergic to the scent.
• Memories have to be stored somewhere in the brain, so in order to do so, the brain biochemically alters itself and its
neural tissue. Just like you might write yourself a note to remind you of something, the brain “writes” a memory trace,
changing its own physical composition to do so.
Storage
Memory traces are not perfect little packets of information that lie dormant in the brain, waiting to be called
forward to give an accurate report of past experience.

• Thus, memory is a construction of what you actually recall and what you believe happened. E

• Remembering is reconstructive (we reconstruct our past with the aid of memory traces) not reproductive (a
perfect reproduction or recreation of the past).

• This may depend upon the Retention Interval.

• Memories can consolidate during that time,

aiding retention. However, experiences can also
occur that undermine the memory.

• Retroactive interference vs Proactive inference

Storage
• Retroactive interference refers to new activities (i.e., the subsequent lunches) during the retention interval (i.e.,
the time between the lunch 17 days ago and now) that interfere with retrieving the specific, older memory (i.e.,
the lunch details from 17 days ago).

• Proactive interference is when past memories interfere with the encoding of new ones. Eg. Foreign language
Retrieval
• Endel Tulving argued that “the key process in memory is retrieval”

• Psychologists distinguish information that is available in memory from that which is accessible.

• What factors determine what information can be retrieved from memory?

• One critical factor is the type of hints, or cues, in the environment. Eg. You may hear a song on the radio
that suddenly evokes memories of an earlier time in your life, even if you were not trying to remember it
when the song came on. Nevertheless, the song is closely associated with that time, so it brings the
experience to mind.

• encoding specificity principle - specific ways of encoding information. Eg., take the song on the radio:
perhaps you heard it while you were at a terrific party, having a great, philosophical conversation with a
friend.

• the encoding specificity principle states that, to the extent a retrieval cue (the song) matches or overlaps the
memory trace of an experience (the party, the conversation), it will be effective in evoking the memory.
Retrieval
• Experiment - encoding specificity principle had participants memorize a set of words in a unique setting.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMPIWkFtd88

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsn9iKmOJLQ
Sensory Memory
The sensory register is a memory system that works for a very brief period of time that stores a record of
information received by receptor cells until the information is selected for further processing or
discarded.
A. The sensory memory register is specific to individual senses:
• Iconic memory for visual information
• Echoic memory for auditory information
B. Duration is very brief:
• 150-500 msec for visual information
• 1-2 sec for auditory information
C. The capacity of the sensory register is believed to be large.
D. Information in store is meaningless unless it is selected for further processing by being attended to in
an effortful way.
E. The purpose of sensory memory is to give the brain some time to process the incoming sensations, and
to allow us to see the world as an unbroken stream of events rather than as individual pieces.
Sensory Memory
Visual sensory memory / Iconic memory
• Original research was conducted by psychologist George Sperling (1960) on “Measuring Iconic Memory”

1. Whole report versus partial report method:

a. When required to report the whole matrix,

participants could recall only three or four
items.

b. When required to report one random line,

participants could report nearly all the items in
that line, regardless of which line was selected,

suggesting that the capacity of the visual sensory

register is large but remains present for only a short
duration.
Sensory Memory
Visual sensory memory / Iconic memory
• Original research was conducted by psychologist George Sperling (1960) on “Measuring Iconic Memory”

2. Delaying the cue in the partial report method:

a. Participants who were cued to report a single row of letters immediately after the disappearance of
the matrix could report nearly all of the items in the matrix.

b. However, when investigators lengthened the time between the offset of the matrix and the onset of
the cue (that is, they lengthened the inter-stimulus interval, or ISI), participants showed a diminished
ability to report items. When the delay, or ISI, reached one second, performance on the partial-report
task was no better than that on the full-report task.

c. The longer the delay, the fewer items participants could recall, suggesting the information in the
sensory register gradually decays over time.
Visual sensory memory / Iconic memory
• Original research was conducted by psychologist George Sperling (1960) on “Measuring Iconic Memory”

2. Delaying the cue in the partial report method:

a. However, when investigators lengthened the

time between the offset of the matrix and the
onset of the cue (that is, they lengthened the
inter-stimulus interval, or ISI), participants
showed a diminished ability to report items.
b. The longer the delay, the fewer items
participants could recall, suggesting the
information in the sensory register gradually
decays over time.
 Auditory sensory memory / Echoic memory
Using a physical cue versus a semantic cue a. participants were trained to link different
auditory tones (high, medium, and low) with
different lines in the matrix (top, middle,
bottom), so they knew to report the top line
when they heard a high tone.
b. With this type of physical cue, participants were
very successful in reporting all of the letters in
one row.
c. However, when the cue given to participants
required they process the items in the row
before responding (e.g., report all the vowels),
participants were not successful in reporting the
items.
These findings indicate
(1) participants hold items in the sensory register in a raw form, and
(2) processing the items for meaning takes time. As the sensory register is available for a short time only, the
time it takes to process for meaning results in information no longer being available in the sensory register.
 Working Memory
• Working memory (WM) is a short-term memory system we use to store and process
information we are currently thinking about.

• Whereas the capacity of sensory memory is large (e.g., everything in your visual field is stored in
iconic memory, or everything that is sufficiently loud is stored in echoic memory), the capacity
of WM is much smaller.

• Typically, some of the information in iconic memory is selected for further processing in WM.
While sensory memory operates preattentively (unconsciously), WM has been defined by some
as the current contents of consciousness.
Characteristics of Working Memory

A. Storage capacity of working memory is small: around 7 plus or minus 2 items. Zip
codes, phone numbers, and most passwords are consistent with 7+/-2 items.

• Original work was done by George Miller (1956) (Magical Number 7 +/- 2).
Characteristics of Working Memory
B. Duration of working memory is limited (about 2-18 seconds).

Original work was conducted by Brown (1958) and Peterson and Peterson (1959) (now called
Brown–Peterson paradigm). When people cannot rehearse (practice), information dissipates
from working memory in about 18 seconds.

C. Information is typically encoded acoustically (by sound) in working memory.

Early work by Conrad (1964), Wickelgren (1965), and others demonstrated the phonological
similarity effect: It is more difficult to remember items that sound alike (e.g., T, C, B, V, E) than
items that do not sound alike (e.g., T, L, X).
 Characteristics of Working Memory
D. Information can be chunked in working memory to increase capacity.

1. Chunking is the organization of items into familiar or manageable units or chunks.

2. Chase and Simon (1973) showed that when people are given 5 seconds to view the
arrangement of pieces in a chess game, chess experts remember nearly all the pieces while
non-experts remember on average only 9 of 32 pieces.

- However, when the chess pieces are randomly arranged on the board, chess experts and
non-experts do not differ in their memory for the pieces. The chess experts remember
groupings or chunks of meaningful units; when the pieces lose meaningful groupings, the
experts’ working memory capacity is similar to that of others.
 Baddeley’s model of Working Memory
A. The phonological loop is a short-term verbal store that holds verbal material in a buffer. The information
can be kept active through subvocal rehearsal.

B. The visuospatial sketchpad is a short-term store for visual and spatial material. It is believed to be
essential for mental imagery and spatial reasoning.

C. The episodic buffer is a temporary store that integrates information from the phonological loop, the
visuospatial sketchpad, and long-term memory.

D. The central executive is the master component that coordinates activities among the phonological loop,
the visuospatial sketchpad, and the episodic buffer. The central executive is believed to allocate
attention and direct cognitive efforts. It is believed to be mediated by the frontal lobes of the brain. -
directing attention, maintaining task goals, decision making, and memory retrieval
Interaction between Working Memory & Long-term Memory

A. Serial position effect is the effect an item’s position on a list has on how well
it is recalled.
Eg. when participants are given a long list of items to remember in an immediate memory
task,

• they tend to remember best the items listed first on the list (primacy effect) and

• the items listed last on the list (recency effect).

Interaction between Working Memory & Long-term Memory
1. The primacy effect is the concept that the first items in a list receive a great deal of rehearsal,
and are, thus, more likely to be transferred into long-term memory. The primacy effect is
diminished when list items are presented at a fast rate. The primacy effect is not affected by a
distractor task (a task not related to the task currently taking place) presented after the list is
presented.

2. The recency effect is the concept that people tend to report the last items of a list first while
those items are still in their working memory. The recency effect is not affected by the rate of
speed a list is presented. The recency effect can be eliminated if a distractor task is presented
immediately after the list is presented and before recall is required.

Eg. Testing Queen who met Dave

Interaction between Working Memory & Long-term Memory
B. Prospective memory is the memory for tasks to be completed in the future (e.g., sending
an email, paying a bill, taking medication).

1. Prospective memory requires working memory because the intended action must enter
consciousness at the appropriate time in order to be executed.

a) Successful retrieval of an intention into working memory does not guarantee that a
person will perform it, however.

b) For example, most of us have failed to include an attachment in an email, even when the
sole purpose of the email was to send the attachment. In this case, we retrieved the
intention into conscious awareness but then failed to control our attention and maintain
the intention in awareness during the writing of the cover note.
Interaction between Working Memory & Long-term Memory

c) It turns out that retrieved intentions are susceptible to disruptions (and particularly so
for older adults); thus, the recommendation is to perform an action as soon as you think
of it (e.g., to attach the attachment first and then write the cover note).

2. Prospective memory requires long-term memory because a person must not only
remember that she or he must complete a task, but also remember what that task is.
 Long Term Memory : Interference & 2 Factor Theory
Interference theory refers to the idea that forgetting occurs because the recall of certain items
interferes with the recall of other items. In nature, the interfering items are said to originate
from an overstimulating environment.
1. Proactive Interference- Previously acquired information interferes with the new information.

Older memories are often more strongly encoded in long-term memory because the individual has had more
time to revisit and rehearse them. As a result, they are easier to recall than memories that were made more
recently.

Research has shown that one way to reduce proactive interference is to rehearse the new information through
testing or recitation.

Eg. New year Dates, New Language , rules of tennis – squash

 Long Term Memory : Interference & 2 Factor Theory

2. Retroactive Interference - Newly acquired information makes it more difficult to

remember previously acquired information.

Eg. New theories interfere with the old ones .

Methods of Retention

1. Paired Associate Learning

• “associative memory requires remembering of the relationship between items, such as pairs of words”

• Remembering newly associated pairs comprise what Pengyun, Juan, Huijie, and Shouzi called A DOUBLE
PROCESS

• “One is acquiring items that have not yet been learned well enough to be retrieved. The other is
consolidating items that have already been acquired”

• Therefore, the individual has to first recognize and encode the information acquired, which in this case
would be the word pair. Second, the individual has to be able to reclaim and restate the information,
which in this case includes restating and identifying the missing word once presented with one of the
words in the pair.
 Methods of Retention

2. Serial Learning

• Serial learning is usually conceived of psychologically as the acquisition of a chain of S-R

units: each item in the series is the stimulus for each succeeding item

• Time interval between the S-R

• Serial Anticipation Method

3. Recognition
 Methods of Retention
4. Free Recall

1. The primacy effect is the concept that the first items in a list receive a great deal of rehearsal,
and are, thus, more likely to be transferred into long-term memory. The primacy effect is
diminished when list items are presented at a fast rate. The primacy effect is not affected by a
distractor task (a task not related to the task currently taking place) presented after the list is
presented.

2. The recency effect is the concept that people tend to report the last items of a list first while
those items are still in their working memory. The recency effect is not affected by the rate of
speed a list is presented. The recency effect can be eliminated if a distractor task is presented
immediately after the list is presented and before recall is required.

Eg. Testing Queen who met Dave (Serial Position Effect)

 Strategies to Improve Retention
• Overlearning the material
• Make the information more meaningful
• Use colour coding – image based techniques
• Space out study subjects
• Practice whole vs part learning
• Recite the material
• Use a study System
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Forgetting
Definitions

Aristotle – Forgetting is fading of original experience with passage of time. It arises due to
disuse.

Goddard – Retention may be viewed as either positive or negative aspect and forgetting is
the negative aspect of forgetting.

Drever - Forgetting means failure at any time to recall an experience, when attempting to do
so or to perform an action previously learned.
 Types of Forgetting
1. Natural/Normal/Passive & Morbid/Abnormal/Active Forgetting
• Normal - Forgetting occurs in a normal way without making effort/attempt

• Morbid - Person deliberately forgets and consciously represses the unpleasant and painful material

2. General & Specific Forgetting

• General – a total loss of previously learnt material

• Specific – a partial loss of a specific parts of learnt material

3. Physical/Organic & Psychological Forgetting

• Physical – certain physical illness, age, accidents, defects in nervous system or brain

• Psychological – due to stress, anxiety, conflicts, emotional & psychological disorders

The Trace Decay Theory of Forgetting
• Edward Thorndike came up with the theory of trace decay in 1914.

• This theory is based on the early studies conducted by Hermann Ebbinghaus on early memory.

• The trace decay theory of forgetting states that - our memory will fade away with time if we
don’t access it regularly.

• Neurochemical changes, known as memory traces, occur in an individual’s brain when they learn
new information.

• Memory retrieval depends on the time between encoding and the recall of that information.
Forgetting Curve
Hermann Ebbinghaus developed the Forgetting Curve in 1885 during his research on Memory.

Shows - How our brain retains or rejects the information over time
Forgetting Curve
Although the forgetting curve is a natural process, the
process itself can be disrupted.

• The blue line shows where the forgetting curve

actually starts— around 75%.

• The green line shows the hypothetical place where

the forgetting curve would start if we had the
ability to “remember everything after a lecture.”

• Red line shows a dramatic increase in memory if

students review material.
Forgetting Curve

• While an initial review of material will help

remember in the short term, reviewing material
multiple times and at different intervals will help
retain it for much longer.

• Every time the material is reviewed much more

information is retained, and the forgetting curve
steadies out at a much higher level.

• Research indicates that the minimum amount of

review is three.
The Interference Theory of Forgetting
Interference theory refers to the idea that forgetting occurs because the recall of certain items
interferes with the recall of other items. In nature, the interfering items are said to originate
from an overstimulating environment.

1. Proactive Interference- Previously acquired information interferes with the new information.
Older memories are often more strongly encoded in long-term memory because the individual has had more
time to revisit and rehearse them. As a result, they are easier to recall than memories that were made more
recently.

Research has shown that one way to reduce proactive interference is to rehearse the new information through
testing or recitation.

Eg. New year Dates, New Language , rules of tennis – squash

The Interference Theory of Forgetting

2. Retroactive Interference - Newly acquired information makes it more difficult to remember

previously acquired information.

Eg. New theories interfere with the old ones .

 Factors affecting Forgetting
• Rate of original Learning – Learning with speed: forgetting will be slow | slow learning speed: quick forgetting

• Periodic Reviews

• Over Learning – Practice that continues after a perfect recall has been scored. Overlearning is essential for
improving retention eg. Nursery rhymes, multiplication tables

• Interference – can hamper memorization and retrieval.

• Meaningfulness – meaningful material is less forgotten.

• Intention to learn – when we deliberately try to learn.

• Emotion – vivid autobiographical memories tend to be emotional events. Are remembered more often and
with detail and clarity
Zeigarnik Effect
• The Zeigarnik effect refers to the tendency for interrupted tasks, in some
circumstances, to be recalled better than completed tasks.

• Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik observed the effect of interruption on memory

processing in 1927.

• Whilst studying at the University of Berlin, her professor, Kurt Lewin, had
noted how waiters in a cafe seemed to remember incomplete orders more
efficiently than those that had been paid for and were complete.

• This appeared to suggest that the mere completion of a task can lead to it
being forgotten, whilst incomplete tasks, such as serving guests a table who
had not yet finished their meal, helped to ensure the waiter remembered
their order.
• Zeigarnik decided to test this hypothesis in an experimental setting, and published her findings in
“On Finished and Unfinished Tasks” in 1927.

• In the EXPERIMENT, she asked each participant to complete a series of separate tasks, such as
solving a puzzle or assembling a flat-pack box.

• Half of the assignments, participants were subtly interrupted by the experimenter , whilst the
remaining tasks were allowed to complete.

• Following the experiment, Zeigarnik interviewed each participant, asking them to recall details of
each task that they had attempted.

• The results were surprising, but appeared to confirm Lewin’s initial observation of the effect of
interruption on waiters’ memory retention.
• Zeigarnik’s initial findings revealed that participants were able to recall details of
interrupted tasks around 90% better than those that they had been able to complete
undisturbed. (Zeigarnik, 1927).

• These results suggest that a desire to complete a task can cause it to be retained in a
person’s memory until it has been completed, and that the finality of its completion enables
the process of forgetting it to take place.

• If accurate, this supports our understanding of memory function, in that the

active rehearsal of information enables its retention, whilst information that is not
rehearsed is more likely to be discarded
• British Psychologist John Baddeley with Graham Hitch, who would later develop the
Working Memory Model, carried out an experiment in 1963 in which participants were
asked to solve a set of anagrams, each within a set time frame.

• Were they unable to solve the anagram in time, they would be given the solution. When he
asked participants to recall the word solutions, he found that participants were more likely
to remember the anagrams that they had not solved than those that they had completed,
supporting the case for the Zeigarnik effect (Baddeley, 1963).
• Zeigarnik effect when attempting to memorise a detailed piece of information, such as a

long phone number, or whilst revising a subject, might be to avoid trying to remember it in

its entirety in one sitting.

• Take a look at the information, familiarise yourself with it, then ‘interrupt yourself’

- look away from where it is written for a few moments and

think of something else, before returning a few more times to remember chunks

of the number. Finally, put these chunks together and attempt to recall the number

in its entirety.
• The effect is especially well suited for helping overcome procrastination.

• We often put off big tasks that seem overwhelming.

• However, the Zeigarnik effect suggests that the key to overcoming procrastination is to just get
started.

• The first step could be something small and seemingly insubstantial.

• In fact, it’s probably best if it’s something fairly easy.

• The key, though, is that the task has been started, but not completed.

• This will take up psychological energy that will lead the task to intrude on our thoughts.

• It’s an uncomfortable feeling that will drive us to complete the task, at which point we can let go
and no longer keep the task at the forefront of our minds.
• The Zeigarnik effect also points to reasons people may experience mental health problems.
For example, if an individual leaves important tasks incomplete, the intrusive thoughts that
result can lead to stress, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and mental and emotional depletion.

• On the other hand, the Zeigarnik effect can improve mental health by providing the
motivation needed to finish tasks. And completing a task can give an individual a sense of
accomplishment and promote self-esteem and self-confidence. Completing stressful tasks,
in particular, can lead to a feeling of closure that can improve psychological well-being.
Bender Visual Motor
Gestalt Test
(4 - 84 years)
• The original Bender Visual Motor Gestalt test was developed in 1938 by
psychiatrist Lauretta Bender.
• There are several different versions of the Bender-Gestalt available today
• The Bender-gestalt Test;
• Modified Version Of The Bender-gestalt Test For Preschool And Primary School Children
• The Hutt Adaptation Of The Bender-gestalt Test
• The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test For Children
• The Bender-gestalt Test For Young Children
• The Watkins Bender-gestalt Scoring System
• The Canter Background Interference Procedure For The Bender-gestalt Test
• All Use the same basic test materials, but vary in their scoring and interpretation methods.
Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test
• The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt test is a psychological assessment used to evaluate:

• Neurological disorders - brain impairment (brain damage)

• visual-motor functioning

• visual-perceptual skills

• Individuals who have suffered a traumatic brain injury as part of a battery of neuropsychological
measures, or tests.

• emotional disturbances in children and adults ages three and older

• screen children for developmental delays - motor function, cognitive, play

• Personality deviations - sometimes used in conjunction with other personality tests to

determine the presence of emotional and psychiatric disturbances such as schizophrenia
Brain Areas associated

• The parietal cortex is the part of the brain that is responsible for processing and
integrating somatosensory, visual, and auditory information and plays an important role
in producing planned movements.

• The cerebellum, brainstem, and frontal lobe are also involved in visual-motor abilities.

• Association cortex

• Limbic System – emotional disturbances