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Chapter 1
What is Memory?
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Psychological Theories
 Theories are comparable to maps, helping to:
 Summarize knowledge in a simple and structured manner
 Pose new, testable questions that advance further discovery

 Theories, like maps, can be specialized to address questions

on a variety of related levels of explanation, which can
sometimes inform other levels, through a process called
reductionism:
Awareness
Reductionism

Processes
Neurons
m

Molecules
The practice of explaining
complex phenomena in terms Atoms
of lower-level processes
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A Brief History of Learning and
Memory
Concurrent
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19th Century Germany

 Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
 Nonsense syllables
 PIM DAG ZOL CEK
 Learning curve – massed vs spaced practice
 Forgetting curve – forgetting occurs rapidly
 Overlearning – studying after something is learned
 Savings – decreased effort needed to relearn

 Bartlett (1886-1969) – a critic

 How does prior knowledge influence memory
 Reconstruction is guided by schemas (concepts)
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Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
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Importance of Practice

The more repetition (practice), the more likely

information is to be remembered later.
Slide 10/07/08
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Massed vs Spaced Study

Ebbinghaus, H. Memory: A contribution to

experimental psychology. New York:
Dover, 1964 (Originally published, 1885).

Keppel, Geoffrey. A Reconsideration of

the Extinction-Recovery Theory. Journal
of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior.
6(4) 1967, 476-486
+ Bartlett’s “War of the Ghosts”

 Bartlett
(1932) used multiple repetition of recalled material
to study distortions over time.
 Participants
were given a 328 word Native American folk
tale “The War of the Ghosts” to read twice and then
reproduce 15 minutes later and also hours to months later.
 Total recall declined.
 What was recalled was shaped by the need to form a coherent
understandable story in the context of their own cultural knowledge
(schemata – concepts).
 He considered memory an active process of construction.
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Contributions of Gestalt Psychology

 Gestalt movement (Kohler, Koffka, Wertheimer)

 The whole is different that the sum of its parts.
 Anti-reductionistic
 But they did acknowledge the importance of understanding the
components of thought.

 Memory is influenced by the configuration of elements

and context.
 Isomorphism of mental representation – material is
represented mentally in the same configuration as it exists
in the world.
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Behaviorism

 Behaviorism (Pavlov, Thorndike)

 Psychology should be the study of observable behavior not
structure of mind.
 Behaviorism is associated with the term “learning”.
 Later behaviorists (like Tolman) used mental explanations
and representations (e.g., cognitive maps).
 Classical
and operant conditioning both depend upon
memory – associations are remembered.
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Verbal Learning

 A behaviorist
approach to the learning of verbal
materials (words, sentences, stories).
 Developed from Ebbinghaus’s work.

 Memorization is the “attachment of responses to

stimuli.”
 Forgetting is the “loss of response availability.”
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Paired Associates Paradigms

 Pairedassociate learning – people memorize pairs

of items (BIRD-GLOVE):
A B
 A-B -- the first item (A) is the cue and the second item (B) is the
response
 A-B C-D paradigm (two lists are learned)
 A-B A-D paradigm (two associations learned to one cue)
 A-B A-B’ paradigm (B and B’ are synonyms)
 A-B A-Br paradigm (Br is a response previously associated with a
different cue – these recombinations are hard!)
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Sample Paired Associate Task

In the learning
phase subjects see
pairs of items.

In the test phase

subjects see one item
of the pair and must
identify the other.

Stimuli can be visual (like these) or verbal (pairs of words)

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Early Neuroscience -- Lashley

 Lashley(1890-1958) searched for the brain engram

(the physical memory trace).
 First, rats learned a maze.
 Next, Lashley progressively removed larger and
larger portions of rats brains from different
locations and tested them in the maze to see how
memory changed.
 Memory was affected more by the amount of brain
tissue removed, not the location.
+ Hebb’s Theory

 Hebb (1949) proposed that cortical organization occurs

through “cell assemblies” and “phase sequences.”
 Cell assembly -- a set of associated neurons that work together
because they are activated together.
 Phase sequences incorporate several cell assemblies. They
form systems involving multiple interconnected areas of the
brain.
 Repeated stimulation produces structural changes at the
synaptic level – Hebb’s rule: “What fires together wires
together”
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The Cognitive Revolution

 Thought is a valid subject for study

 Thisis the field of psychology associated with the
term “memory”
 Cognitive psychologists adopted the methodological
rigor of the behaviorists.
 Thecomputer metaphor
 hardware (brain) vs. software (thought processes)
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Three Definitions of Memory

1. The location where memory is stored.

2. The physical entity that holds the memory:
a) Trace
b) Engram

3. The processes used to acquire (learn), store

(encode) or remember (retrieve) information.
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Metaphors for Memory

 Recorder of experience
 Wax tablet  Interconnections
 Record player
 Switchboard
 Writing pad
 Network
 Tape recorder
 Video camera
 Jumbled Storage
 Organized storage  Birds in an aviary
 House  Purse
 Library  Junkdrawer
 Dictionary
 Garbage can
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Metaphors Emphasizing Specific
Aspects of Memory
 Temporal Availability  Forgetting of Details
 Conveyor belt  Leaky bucket
 Cow’s stomach
 Content Addressability
 Acid bath
 Lock and key
 Tuning fork  Active processing
 Workbench
 Reconstruction
 Computer program
 Rebuilding a dinosaur
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The Information Processing
Metaphor
 Like a computer, human memory consists of three
interacting components:
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Atkinson and Shiffrin's (1968)
Modal Model
 Unlike a unitary, associative memory system, the modal model
assumes multiple memory structures:
 Information from the external environment is perceived and then very briefly
stored in sensory memory, which is considered to be a perceptual, rather than
a purely mnemonic process
 Information is then passed to a limited-capacity, short-term memory store
 Finally, information can be encoded in the unlimited long-term store, more or
less permanently

 Evidence now suggests that the information flow is actually bidirectional

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Sensory Memory
 The perceptual system stores the most
recently acquired static image just long
enough to integrate it with the next, in
order to create apparent motion

 Sperling (1960) investigated the number

of items available for report in visual
memory by randomly sampling items from
a matrix of letters presented to
participants
 Recall decreases when:
 The delay between the original
presentation and the signal indicating
which items from the matrix to report is
increased
 A visual mask (e.g. a bright flash of light A medium auditory tone
or a contoured pattern) is presented signals subjects to report
following the matrix display, thereby letters on the middle line
interfering with the memory trace of the matrix.
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Iconic Memory

Estimated number of letters available using the partial report method,

as a function of recall delay. From Sperling (1963). Copyright © 1963
by The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission.
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Echoic Memory

Serial recall of a nine-item list when an additional item, the

suffix, is either the spoken word zero or a sound made by a
buzzer. From Crowder (1972). Copyright © 1972 Massachusetts
Institute of Technology by permission of the MIT Press.
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A Two-Step Process

Iconic
Memory

Peripheral Recognition
Visual Store Buffer

100 letters per second More durable but also

read out much slower
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Do Iconic and Echoic Memory
Function Similarly?
 Both forms of memory show interference by masking (lights or
extra sounds at the end of the presentation).
 Echoic memory is disrupted by a final speech sound but not a
buzzer.
 Iconic memory is disrupted by a final light mask but not a dark
mask, and by masks that interfere with perception.

 Iconicmemory shows a primacy effect whereas echoic memory

shows a recency effect – perhaps due to a precategorical
acoustic store important to speech perception.
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Short-Term Memory (STM) and
Working Memory (WM)
 Short-Term Memory (STM): The temporary storage of small
amounts of material over brief delays
 While initially thought to be primarily verbal in nature, STM can hold
material from almost any modality, including from the visuo-spatial
domains
 It is thought that rehearsal is often used to maintain items in the
short-term store

 Working Memory (WM): A mental workspace, linked to

attention, which provides a basis for thought and the symbolic
manipulation of items being held within this temporary store
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Multiple Memory Systems

 Memory is not unitary but consists of several

subcomponents (parts).
 Tulving’s Triarchic Theory:
 Episodic Autonoetic (self) Declarative
 Semantic Noetic (formal knowledge)
 Procedural Anoetic (automatic skills)

 Squire’s Implicit vs Explicit Theory:

 Implicit Unconscious
 Explicit Conscious
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Long Term Memory

Components of long-term memory as proposed by Squire

(1992a).

Slide 10/07/08
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Long-Term Memory (LTM)
 Explicit/Declarative Memory:
Long-term memory for facts and
events
 Episodic Memory: Memory for
specific events that can be vividly
recalled through what Tulving calls
“mental time travel”
 e.g. I celebrated my last
birthday in Madrid
 Semantic Memory: General
knowledge of the world and
society
 e.g.The capital of Spain is
Madrid
 Implicit/Non-Declarative or
Procedural Memory: Long-
term memory for information
that is reflected through
performance, rather than overt
remembering
 e.g. Motor skills like learning
to ride a bike, classical
conditioning, and priming
 Priming: An unconscious
tendency to recall a
previously seen or related
item
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Long-Term Memory
Amnesia

 One indication that long-term memory can be subdivided into

distinct systems comes from the study of people with amnesia.

 Amnesia is a memory disorder that can have psychological

(functional) or physical (organic) causes.

 Regardless of cause, amnesics typically:

 Have significant impairments in episodic encoding/retrieval
 Have difficulties forming new semantic memories
 This suggests that semantic memories are normally formed by
generalizing information first encoded episodically
 Have a preserved (unimpaired) ability to acquire and use implicit
memories
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Memory In and Out of the
Laboratory
 Researching in the Laboratory
 Pros:
 More experimental control
 Easier to develop and
rigorously test theories in
rapid succession
 Cons:
 Overrepresentation of
certain participant
populations (students)
 Reduced generalizability
of findings
 Less ecological validity
(not like real life)
 Researching in the Real World
 Pros:
 Validates theory by testing various
populations while advancing
therapeutic treatments
 Highlights important gaps in
current understanding and
advances future theory
development
 Cons:
 Less experimental control; more
confounding variables
 Harder to isolate causes of
observed phenomena
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Neuropsychological Studies of
Memory
 Disease-Related Studies
 Involves characterizing the
deficits and preserved abilities
in patients suffering from
specific diseases (e.g.
Alzheimer’s)
 Pros:
 Provides a direct route to
advancing diagnosis and
treatment of diseases
 Cons:
 Often difficult to separate
memory impairments from
other deficits related to the
disease
 Lesion Studies
 Involves profiling patients with
organic brain damage to
relatively focal regions (like
HM’s hippocampal lesions)
 Pros:
 Helps identify causal links
between brain and behavior
 Cons:
 Such cases are relatively
rare
 Lesions are almost never
entirely confined to a specific
region of interest and/or
patients’ deficits are not
entirely pure
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The Human Brain
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Electroencephalography (EEG)

 Since the early 1900s, researchers have used electrodes

placed on the scalp to record the electrical signals generated
by the brain’s neurons
 The characteristics of the continuous brainwaves can help identify
abnormal brain activity and different stages of sleep and arousal
 By dividing the continuous wave into segments called evoked
response potentials or event-related potentials (ERPs), each
beginning with a particular event, one can characterize the response
elicited by that particular occurrence
 Pros:
 Millisecond temporal resolution
 Relatively low cost to perform and non-invasive
 Cons:
 Inability to precisely locate the brain region generating the
recorded signal
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Neuroimaging Techniques
 The use of newly developed technologies that allow researchers to
study the structure and function of the brain by tracking indicators
of brain activity
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Current Issues

 Neurological bases for memory

 Impact and importance of emotion on memory
 Useof multiple memory sources (fuzzy trace
theories)
 Embodied cognition – how our grounding in the
world influences memory