 The first systematic exploration of memory is

credited to Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German

psychologist of late nineteenth century (1885).
 He carried out many experiments on himself
and found that we do not forget the learned
material at an even pace or completely.
 Initially the rate of forgetting is faster but
eventually it stabilises.
 Frederick Bartlett (1932) who contended that
memory is not passive but an active process.
 With the help of meaningful verbal materials
such as stories and texts, he demonstrated that
memory is a constructive process.
 That is, what we memorise and store undergoes
many changes and modifications over time. So
there is a qualitative difference in what was
initially memorised by us and what we retrieve
or recall later.
Free Recall and Recognition (for measuring facts/episodes
related memory) :
In free recall method, participants are presented with some
words which they are asked to memorise and after some time
they are asked to recall them in any order. The more they are
able to recall, the better their memory is
In recognition, instead of being asked to generate items,
participants see the items that they had memorised along
with distracter items (those that they had not seen) and their
task is to recognise which one of those they had learnt. The
greater the number of recognition of ‘old items’, better is the
memory
Priming (for measuring information we cannot report
verbally) :
We store many kinds of information that we can’t report
verbally – for instance, information necessary to ride a
bicycle or play a sitar. Besides we also store information
that we are not aware of, which is described as implicit
memory. In priming method, participants are shown a
list of words, such as garden, playground, house, etc.
and then they are shown parts of these words like gar,
pla, ho, along with parts of other words they had not
seen.
Participants complete parts of seen words more quickly
than parts of words they had not seen.
When asked, they are often unaware of this and report
that they have only guessed.
Materials that survive the capacity and duration limitations of the STM
finally enter the long-term memory (abbreviated as LTM)which has a
vast capacity.
It is a permanent storehouse of all information that may be as recent as
what you ate for breakfast yesterday to as distant as how you
celebrated your 18th birthday.
It has been shown that once any information enters the long-term
memory store it is never forgotten because it gets encoded
semantically, i.e. in terms of the meaning that any information
carries.
What you experience as forgetting is in fact retrieval failure; for
various reasons you cannot retrieve the stored information.
 Attention to important
or novel information
Sensory input

Encoding

External Sensory Short-term Long-term

events memory memory memory

Encoding Retrieving
 Storing small amounts of information briefly
• Working Memory: Part of STM; like a mental
“scratchpad”
• Selective Attention: Focusing (voluntarily) on a
selected portion of sensory input (e.g., selective
hearing)
 Very sensitive to interruption or interference
• Capacity: 7 units, plus or minus 2.
• Duration of Storage: less than 30 seconds without
rehearsal.
• Reason for forgetting: storage failure (e.g., decay,
displacement).
 Storing information relatively permanently
 Stored on basis of meaning and importance
 Capacity: virtually unlimited.
 Duration of Storage: up to a lifetime.
 Reason for forgetting: retrieval failure (e.g.,
interference).
1. Declarative memory refers to knowledge of events,
facts, and concepts (knowing what).
 Semantic Memory: Impersonal facts and everyday
knowledge- Thar Desert in Rajasthan
 Episodic memory: Personal experiences linked with
specific times and places- favorite film
2. Non declarative memory refers to skills
and related procedural knowledge (knowing how).
 Procedural memory: Long-term memories of
conditioned responses and learned skills, e.g., driving
 Organization eases retrieval process
• Grouped into categories

• Associative network: memories linked together

through experience- - they are a massive network of
associated ideas and concepts.
• Spreading activation model: representations of
concepts and their characteristics are activated
 Closeness of association affects retrieval time – distant
associations take longer
 When we read, listen we do not encode word
for word- rather encode the gist- arrive at
themes

 Schemas- a mental framework – an organized

pattern of thought- about some aspect of the
world.
 Multiple cues facilitate recall
 Distinctiveness facilitates recall
 Emotional arousal

 Three ways to test retrieval

• Recall method: cues or hints used for recall

• Recognition method: select correct from alternative

information (ie: multiple choice)
• Relearning method: relearn previous learned information
 Memories created during times of personal
tragedy, accident, or other emotionally
significant events
• Where were you when you heard that terrorists had
attacked?
 Includes both positive and negative events
 Not always accurate
 Great confidence is placed in them even
though they may be inaccurate
 Bartlett (1932) experiment:
 Participants read War of the Ghosts
 Over time – retelling of story became more
inaccurate
 reproductive memory – accurate
 reconstructive memory –act of filling in missing
elements
 Loftus and Palmer (1974)
 Participants witness a film of a car accident.
 Participants divided into 3 groups:
 How fast was the car going when it _____ the
other car?
 1. hit
 2. smashed
 3. control group - not asked any questions
 Loftus & Palmer (1974)
 participants viewed car accident
35
Proportion reporting
30
broken glass
25
20
15
10
5
0 1 2 3

control hit smashed

 Research on eyewitness information

• Can be potent source of distortion

 Interviewer questions can contain cues that influence retrieval

 Reconstruction theory of forgetting – people remember something that

did not occur because it seemed consistent with the event

 Perceived expertise of interviewer may bias informational response

 Eyewitness testimony frequently inaccurate

• Children, adolescents are particularly suggestible when interviewed by

adults

 Sometimes describe what never happened

 Neutral questions get best results
 Eyewitnesses who look but do not see

• Some things processed in shallow ways due to inattentiveness or lack of

importance attached
 Allport: memories distorted by prejudices

• Research in US – common African American names more stereotyped

with criminality when memories fit personal schemas of prejudice

 Inaccurate recall due to characteristics of the eyewitness

• Being tired, upset, intoxicated may effect recall

• Drunk eyewitness: visual recall may be accurate in some circumstances

 The tendency for recall
of first and last items
on a list to surpass
recall of items in the
middle of the list.
Decay
Replacement
Interference
Cue-dependent Forgetting
Psychogenic Amnesia
 Decay Theory: The theory that information in
memory eventually disappears if it is not
accessed; it applies more to short-term than to
long-term memory.
 Herman Ebbinghaus
tested his own memory
for nonsense syllables.
 Forgetting was rapid at
first and then tapered
off.
 Marigold Linton tested her
own memory for personal
events over a period of
several years.
 Retention fell at a gradual
but steady rate.
 Retroactive Interference: Forgetting that occurs when recently
learned material interferes with the ability to remember similar
material stored previously.

 Proactive Interference: Forgetting that occurs when previously

stored material interferes with the ability to remember similar,
more recently learned material.
 Cue-Dependent Forgetting: The inability to retrieve
information stored in memory because of insufficient
cues for recall.
 State-Dependent Memory: The tendency to
remember something when the rememberer is in the
same physical or mental state as during the original
learning or experience.
 The partial or complete loss of memory (due to
nonorganic causes) for threatening information
or traumatic experiences.
 Childhood Amnesia: The inability to remember
events and experiences that occurred during the
first two or three years of life.
 Cognitive explanations:
• Lack of sense of self
• Impoverished encoding
• A focus on the routine
• Different ways of thinking about the world