MEMORY

PSI 1002 Introduction to Psychology

 Types of Memory
• Memory = retention of information
Ebbinghaus’s Pioneering Studies
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
• The longer a list of nonsense syllables, the more
slowly he memorized it
– He measured how much longer it took to memorize a
longer list of nonsense syllables
 Memory for Lists of Items
• Unlike Ebbinghaus, current memory
researchers use meaningful words

• Primacy effect:
– tendency to remember well the first items
• Recency effect:
– tendency to remember the final items
 Methods of Testing Memory
• Memory is not an all-or-none thing:
– Depends on testing method
– Tip-of-the-tongue experience
 Methods of Testing Memory
1. Free Recall:
– To say what you remember
2. Cued Recall
– To receive significant hints about material
3. Recognition:
– To select the correct ones among several choices
4. Savings Method (relearning method)
– To compare speed of original learning to speed of
relearning
 Methods of Testing Memory
5. Implicit Memory:
– Explicit (direct) memory Vs. Implicit (indirect)
memory
– Priming: reading/hearing a word temporarily
increases the chance that using it, even if you are
not aware of influence
Methods of Testing Memory
 Methods of Testing Memory
Procedural memories:
– memories of motor skills
Declarative memories:
– memories we can readily state in words
 Information-Processing View of Memory

• Human memory resembles

a computer:
– Information that enters the
system is processed, coded
and stored
Information-Processing View of Memory
 Information-Processing View of Memory

Sensory Store:
• Momentary storage of sensory
information
• Iconic memory
• Echoic memory
 Information-Processing View of Memory

Sperling (1960);
– Demonstrated
the capacity of
sensory store for
visual
information
 Information-Processing View of Memory

Short-Term Memory:
• Temporary storage of recent events
– fades within seconds
• Small, easily measured capacity
– George Miller (1956) “magical number seven
plus or minus two”
• Chunking: grouping items into meaningful
sequences or clusters
Information-Processing View of Memory
 Information-Processing View of Memory

Long-Term Memory
• relatively permanent store
– a well-learned memory can last a lifetime
• vast, hard-to measure capacity
• depends on retrieval cues:
– associated information that might help regain the
memory
• Source amnesia:
– forgetting where or how you learned something
Information-Processing View of Memory

Long-Term Memory
• Semantic Memory
– memory of general principles and facts
• Episodic Memory
– memory for specific events in person’s life.
– episodic memories are more fragile
• older people are likely to forget specific episodes
while retaining semantic memories
 WORKING MEMORY
• Working memory:
– A system for working with current information
– Four major components (Baddeley, 2001)
 WORKING MEMORY
Phonological Loop:
– stores and rehearses speech information
Visuospatial Sketchpad:
– stores and manipulates visual and spatial information
 WORKING MEMORY
Central Executive:
– governs shifts of attention
– hallmark of a good working memory is the ability to shift
attention as needed among different tasks
Episodic Buffer:
– binds together the various parts of a meaningful experience
 Long-Term Memory
Levels-of-processing principle (Graik ve Lockhart, 1972)
– How easily you retrieve a memory depends on the
number and types of associations you form
 Long-Term Memory
Encoding Specifity Principle (Tulving ve Thomson,1973)
– The associations you form at the time of learning
will be the most effective retrieval cues
– State-dependent memory: the tendency to
remember something better if your body is in the
same condition during recall as it was during the
original learning
Long-Term Memory
 Long-Term Memory
Emotional Arousal and Memory Storage:
• People usually remember emotionally arousing
events;
• Flashbulb memories
– intense, detailed
but not always accurate
 Long-Term Memory
Emotional Arousal and Memory Storage:
• For a list of words, people recall emotional word
better than neutral words
– 1. Emotional arousal increases the release of cortisol
and epinephrine
• moderate increases stimulate brain areas that enhance
memory storage
• when emotional arousal verges on panic, memory is less
reliable
– 2. Emotion increases confidence that the memory
must be right
 Long-Term Memory
Mnemonic Devices:
• Any memory aid that relies on encoding each item
in a special way
 Long-Term Memory
Mnemonic Devices:
 Long-Term Memory
Mnemonic Devices:
• Method of loci (method of places)
 Memory Retrieval and Error
Retrieval and Interference
• Ebbinghaus forgot more
than half of each list
within the first hour
• However most college
students remember nearly
90% of a list
• Interference from all the
previous lists he had
learned
 Memory Retrieval and Error
Retrieval and Interference:
• Proactive interference;
– the old materials increase forgetting of the new
materials
– short-term memories fade fast because of proactive
interference from similar materials
• Retroactive interference;
– the new materials increase forgetting of the old
materials
Memory Retrieval and Error
 Memory Retrieval and Error
Reconstructing Past Events:
• During an original experience, we construct a
memory. When we try to retrieve that memory,
we reconstruct an account based on ;
– surviving memories
– expectations of what must have happened
• filling the gaps based on logical inferences
 Memory Retrieval and Error
Reconstruction and Inference in List Memory:
• If people read a list of related words and try to
recall them, they are likely to include closely
related words that were not on the list.
– They have remembered the gist and reconstructed
what else must have been on the list.
 Memory Retrieval and Error

List A: sleep
List B: sweet
List C: fate
 Memory Retrieval and Error
Reconstructing Stories:
• Someone who tries to retell a story after
memory of details had faded ;
– rely on the gist
– leave out some details that seemed irrelevant
– add or change other facts to fit the logic of the story
 Memory Retrieval and Error
Hindsight Bias:
• People often revise their memories of what they
previously expected, saying that how events
turned out was what they had expected all
along.
– “I knew that was going to happen”
 Memory Retrieval and Error
Hindsight Bias:
• Most people
overestimate how soon
other people will
recognize the image
 Memory Retrieval and Error
Recovered Memory Vs. False Memory:
Recovered Memory:
– reports of long-lost memories, prompted by clinical
techniques
– Repression
– Dissociation
False Memory:
– someone believes to be a memory but that does not
correspond to real events
 AMNESIA
Amnesia = loss of memory
• H.M.
• damage to hippocampus
– normal short-term,
procedural and implicit
memories
– difficulty storing new long-
term declarative memories
 AMNESIA
• Anterograde amnesia:
– inability to store new long-term memories
• Retrograde amnesia;
– loss of memory for events that occured shortly before the
brain damage
 AMNESIA
Amnesia After Damage to Prefrontal Cortex:
• Damage to the prefrontal cortex also produces
amnesia:
– receives extensive input from the hippocampus
 AMNESIA
Amnesia After Damage to Prefrontal Cortex:
• Confabulations:
– Attempts to fill in the gaps in their memory
– Out-of-date information
• replacing current reality with something more pleasant
from the past
• Intact performance on implicit memory tests
 AMNESIA
Alzheimer’s Disease:
• A condition occuring mostly in old age, characterized
by increasingly severe memory loss, confusion,
depression, disordered thinking and impaired
attention
 AMNESIA
Alzheimer’s Disease:
• gradual accumulation of
harmful proteins in the
brain and deterioration
of brain cells, leading to
a loss of arousal and
attention
 AMNESIA
Alzheimer’s Disease:
• Areas of damage include both hippocampus
and prefrontal cortex
– anterograde and retrograde amnesia
– confabulations
– much better implicit memories than explicit ones
– overall decrease of arousal and attention
 AMNESIA
Infant / Childhood Amnesia:
• Scarcity of early declarative memories

1. Sigmund Freud “repression”

2. Hippocampus is slow to mature
3. Permanent memory requires “sense of self”
4. After relying on language, losing access to memories
encoded earlier
5. Infant amnesia relates to encoding specificity
– we don’t have enough of the right retrieval cues to find
those infant memories