Memory

1
Memory

• Chapter 5
• Psyc103019
• Jen Wright
• TR 1230-115

2

• Memory the ability to store and retrieve
  information over time.
• Encoding

3

• Memory the ability to store and retrieve
  information over time.
• Encoding ? Storage

4

• Memory the ability to store and retrieve
  information over time.
• Encoding ? Storage ? Retrieval

5
memory alternative views

• Memory as a passive recording device
• Tape-recorder, video-camera, copy machine
• Accurately and reliably records information from
  environment.
• Memory as an active process of construction (and
  re-construction)
• Influenced by prior knowledge.
• Influenced by future knowledge.
• Influenced by goals, interests, desires of
  rememberer.
• Influenced by emotions.

6
encoding

• Visual imagery encoding
• Storing information in visual (pictorial) form
• Elaborative encoding
• Semantic connections
• Categorical connections
• Conceptual hierarchy
• Other relationships

7
(No Transcript)
8
elaborative coding (contd)

• Historic connections (connections in time)
• Emotional significance
• Coding influenced by many aspects of the coder
  him/herself
• Including (possibly) gender!

9
(No Transcript)
10
storage

• Sensory store

11
storage

• Sensory store ? working STM

12
storage

• Sensory store ? working STM ? LTM

13
storage

• Sensory store ? working STM ? LTM
• Strategies for actively using WSTM
• Rehearsal
• Chunking

14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
(No Transcript)
23
(No Transcript)
24
(No Transcript)
25

• Long term memory
• Memory formation causes changes in hippocampus
• Formation of new synaptic connections
• Long-term potentiation
• Strengthening of synaptic connections
• Heightened activity in NMDA receptors

26
Types of memory
27

• Consider examples of these different types of
  memory
• Semantic memory
• Episodic memory
• Procedural memory
• What would life be like without these forms of
  memory?

28
amnesia

• Anterograde amnesia
• No memory forward
• Drug induced
• Brain damage (hippocampus)
• Declarative/episodic, but not procedural memory
• Retrograde amnesia
• No memory backward
• Brain injury
• Declarative and episodic memory procedural?

29
(No Transcript)
30
(No Transcript)
31
retrieval

• Retrieval cues
• Information associated with stored information
  that helps bring it to mind
• Trying to remember looks different from
  successfully remembering

32
retrieval cues

• Hints
• Semantic association
• Historic association
• Emotional state association
• Smells and sounds
• Psychological/physical state association
• Encoding specificity principle
• State-dependent learning

33
the role of priming

• Priming
• hippocampal region less active than other forms
  of memory
• frontal and occipital lobes active during initial
  exposure (priming) but less active on second
  exposure
• priming saves processing time?

34
Seven sins of memory

• Transience
• Forgetting things with the passing of time.
• Switch from specific memory to general memory
• fill-in-the-blanks
• Gist memories
• Gradual reconstruction (patch-work quilt)
• Interference
• Retroactive interference
• Proactive interference

35

• Absent-mindedness
• Lapse in attention that results in memory
  failure.
• Role of attention in memory formation
• Divided attention
• Lower frontal lobe activity
• Division in allocated resources
• Prospective memory
• Memory aides

36

• Persistence
• Intrusive recollection of memories we wish we
  could forget
• Flash-bulb memories

37

• Suggestibility
• The incorporation of misleading information into
  memory recollection.
• Confabulation
• Mere exposure

38

• Bias
• Distorting influences of present information to
  memory recollection.
• Consistency bias
• Change bias
• Egocentric bias

39
(No Transcript)
40
(No Transcript)
41

• Blocking
• Failure to retrieve information that is available
  in memory
• Tip-of-the-tongue phenomena
• Absence of appropriate retrieval cues
• Weak associative connections

42

• Memory misattribution
• Assigning memory/idea to the wrong source
• Source memory
• Late to develop
• False recognition
• Associative connections
• Historical overlap
• Serious implications eyewitness testimony

43
(No Transcript)
44
constructive nature of memory

• If constructive memory is so bad, then why do we
  have it?
• Constructive episodic simulation
• Being able to actively construct our past
• Allows us to actively imagine our future
• We need to learn to avoid future dangers by
  remembering past dangers
• But the future is never an exact replica of the
  past
• It would be a useful adaptation to be able to
  alter the past in ways that allow for an
  anticipation of possible future events

45
memory enhancing drugs

• Companies compete to find ways to improve memory
• E.g. increase NMDA/AMPA for LTP
• If they discover them, should they be made
  available to the general public?
• Question Is taking drugs to improve academic
  performance (through enhanced memory) any
  different than taking drugs to improve athletic
  performance?

46
erasing our memories

• Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind?
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v1GiLxkDK8sI
• If you could erase bad memories and/or create
  good ones would you?
• Nozicks experience machine