General Psychology

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General Psychology

• Chapter 6
• Memory

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Memory

• Put into Maintain
  Recovery
• Memory in Memory from Memory

ENCODING
STORAGE
RETRIEVAL
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Sensory Memory

• Iconic
• Sensory store associated with vision

• Echoic
• Sensory store associated with hearing

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Short-Term Memory

• STM Level or store in human memory with limited
  capacity and, without benefit of rehearsal, of
  brief duration (about 15-20 sec)
• Information from sensory memory or from long-term
  memory can be moved into STM, where we can work
  with it, (also called Working Memory)

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Duration of STM

• Rehearsal is repeating information over and over
• Maintenance rehearsal in STM is the simple
  repetition of information already in STM

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Capacity of STM

• Capacity of 7, ( or 2), chunks of information

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Long-Term Memory (LTM)

• Memory for large amounts of information that is
  held for long periods of time
• Not known how long information remains stored in
  LTS

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Long-Term Memory (LTM)

• Elaborative rehearsal in LTM refers to thinking
  about, organizing, and forming images or
  information to make it meaningful, or relating it
  to something already in LTS

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Types of Long-Term Memory

• Declarative memory includes semantic and episodic
  from which information can be intentionally
  recalled
• Vocabulary, concepts, language rules, and facts
  are stored in SEMANTIC memory.
• In episodic memory, life events and personal
  experiences are stored (time-related experiences
  are stored in chronological order).

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Types of Long-Term Memory

• Nondeclarative or procedural memory involves the
  acquisition of, retention and retrieval of,
  performance skills, like a tennis stroke or a
  golf swing

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Figure 6.1 A simplified model of human memory.
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Accuracy of LTM

• According to Bartlett, people tend to form
  features of what is experienced
• Reconstructive memory features are retrieved
  and reconstructed to form a report of what was
  encoded and stored
• Sometimes, reconstruction process results in
  inaccurate reports of what is in memory

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Accuracy of LTM

• Repressed memory so disturbing that a person
  has pushed it into the unconscious where it is no
  longer readily available for retrieval
• Compromise memory blending of conflicting
  information in memory so that an averaged
  version of information will be recalled.

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Table 6.1 Statements and observations about
eyewitness testimony on which experts in the
field agree (from Kassin, et al., 2001).
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Does Gender Affect Memory?

• No gender differences in semantic memory or
  memory associated with general intelligence
• Significant differences in encoding and retrieval
  for episodic and/or autobiographical memory
• At both encoding and retrieval, the amygdala of
  women shows more activity for episodic memories

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How are Memories Formed?

• Most human memories are stored in the cerebral
  cortex
• The hippocampus seems most necessary for memory
  formation

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Amnesia

• Retrograde amnesia loss of memory for events
  that occurred before the onset of amnesia

• Anterograde amnesia loss of memory for events
  that occur after the onset of amnesia

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When and How are Memories Formed in the Brain?

• Changes at synapse
• With experience, flow of impulses becomes easier.
• Neurotransmitter, glutamate, causes ion balance
  so that neuron is more easily stimulated.
• Research claims that changes in postsynaptic
  neuron matters.

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How We Measure Retrieval

• Recall person is asked to produce information
  to which he or she has been previously exposed
• Free recall
• Serial recall
• Cued recall

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Recognition

• Person asked to identify previously experienced
  material
• Person must first RETRIEVE information stored in
  memory
• Person must then match the memory with material
  to be recognized and decide whether the material
  was seen before

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Figure 6.2 Differences in retrieval scores for
the memory of nonsense syllables over a two-day
period.
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Indirect Measures of Memory

• Relearning change in performance that occurs
  when one is required to learn material for a
  second time
• Almost always requires fewer trials than the
  original learning
• Procedural memory

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How We Encode Information

• Encoding specificity principle how we retrieve
  information depends on how it was encoded in the
  first place
• State-dependent memory retrieval depends on the
  extent to which a persons state of mind at
  retrieval matches the persons state of mind at
  encoding

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Flashbulb Memory

• Memories that are unusually clear and vivid

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The Usefulness of Meaningfulness

• Meaningfulness extent to which new information
  evokes associations with information already in
  the LTM
• Meaningfulness resides in the learner, not in the
  material to be learned

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Figure 6.3 Fifteen drawings of the head of a
penny.
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Mnemonic Devices

• Narrative chaining unorganized material is
  woven into a meaningful story
• Key-word method using imagery during encoding
  to aid retrieval
• Method of loci taking a well-known place and
  visually placing material to be recalled in
  various places

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Figure 6.4 Percent correct recall for words from
12 lists learned under two study conditions.
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Figure 6.5 An illustration of how the key word
method can be used to help foreign language
retrieval.
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Schemas

• Schema organized mental representation of the
  world that is adaptive and formed by experience
• Person scheme helps us organize information
  about the characteristics of people
• Role scheme information and expectations about
  how people in certain roles should behave
• Event scheme ideas about how events should occur

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Scheduling Practice

• Overlearning practicing or rehearsing material
  over and above what is needed to learn it
• Massed-practice no break between learning
  trials
• Distributed-practice rest intervals are
  interspersed among the learning trial

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Figure 6.6 Idealized data showing the short-term
and long-term advantages of overlearning.
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Figure 6.7 Improvement in performance as a
function of the distribution of practice time.
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Interference

• Retroactive interference occurs when
  interfering activities come after the learning
  that is to be remembered or retrieved
• Proactive interference occurs when previously
  learned material interferes with the retrieval of
  material learned later

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Table 6.2 Designs of experiments to demonstrate
retroactive interference and proactive
interference.
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Figure 6.8 These groups illustrate how activity
following learning can interfere with the
retrieval of the learned behavior or materials.