HUMAN MEMORY

1
HUMAN MEMORY?

• Miikka Poutiainen
• Simona Schimanovich
• Juha Rantanen
• Karoliina Talvitie-Lamberg
• University of Art and Design Helsinki, Medialab
  2002

2
WHAT IS MEMORY?

• Human Memory is a system for storing and
  retrieving information - which is acquired
  through our senses.
• It consists not of one but of many systems which
  range in
• Storage duration from fractions of a second up
  to a lifetime and in
• Storage capacity from tiny buffer stores to the
  long-term memory system

3
INFORMATION PROCESS MODEL
Right kind of information processing is more
important than intentional goal of learning.
4
COMPONENT PROCESS

• Who am I? - autobiographical memory
• record of the experiences of a lifetime that go
  together to create myself as a person.
• What do I know? - semantic memory
• How do I learn?
• General information about the world
• Best method of efficient retrieval depends on how
  material is stored.

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PERCEIVING REMEMBERING

• SENSORY MEMORY
• Visual, hearing, smell, taste, touch
• The storage of sensory information provides a
  microcosm of the memory system as a whole.
• It begins with the systems of iconic and echoic
  memory that store visual and auditory information
  over a matter of milliseconds, as part of the
  processes involved in perception. Both of these
  appear to have characteristics that allow the
  initial stimulus to be prolonged, probably so as
  to ensure that adequate later processing is
  possible.

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SENSORY MEMORY

• VISUAL MEMORY
• Iconic memory
• Short-term visual memory
• Flashbulb memory
• Long-term visual memory
• AUDITORY MEMORY
• Echoic memory
• Short-term auditory memory
• Long-term auditory memory

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VISUAL MEMORY

• ICONIC MEMORY
• Visual persistence
• 100 milliseconds
• Short-time visual trace Icon (Neisser)
• Features such as color, shape and direction can
  be stored
• Brightness-masking
• Pattern-masking

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VISUAL MEMORY

• FLASHBULB MEMORY
• Phenomenon of vivid memories of important events
• Not necessarily accuratewhat we typically
  recall in such situations is not what we
  experience but what we abstract from that
  experience (i.e. Eyewitness testimony,
  Recognition of faces).

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AUDITORY MEMORY

• ECHOIC MEMORY
• Persistence of audition
• Capable of storing sequences of at least
• 250 milliseconds and possibly more
• Masking sound

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AUDITORY MEMORY

• SHORT-TERM AUDITORY MEMORY
• Double take effect
• Evidence for 2 short-term auditory stores, one
  operating over a timescale of 150-350
  millise-conds and the other one lasting somewhere
  between 2 and 20 seconds.
• Modality effect advantage to spoken terms
• Recency effect enhanced recall of the most
  recently presented items

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AUDITORY MEMORY

• LONG-TERM AUDITORY MEMORY
• Mostly involves language stored more in terms of
  its meaning than its sound.
• Memory for music both contour and pitch interval
  information is retained.
• (i.e. Mozart - Allegris Miserere, Toscanini)
• Memory for voices voice recognition of a
  familiar person is reasonably good, but that of a
  stranger likely to be poor -even under optimal
  conditions(i.e. caution with voice
  identification/testimony).

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SHORT TERM MEMORY (working memory)

• 5-2 Chunks of memory can be kept in mind at a
  time and combined to make a decision.
• The size of the chunk varies greatly between
  experts and novices.
• Experts can combine many memory units to a whole
  (e.g master chessplayers perceive the positions
  of pieces as constellations of a series of moves
  in the same way as we perceive combinations of
  letters to words.)

Rauste - von Wright von Wright 1994. Oppiminen
ja koulutus 81-85
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ORGANIZING SHORT TERM MEMORY

• The most usual way to organize short term memory
  chunks to bigger chunks is hierarchy.

8.2
1
4.2
3
( Experts can access chunks storaged in long-term
memory by retrieval cues.)
Rauste - von Wright 1994. http//cogsci.soton.
ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/ericsson.long.html
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MEMORY UNITS
STM Short term memory
WM Working memory
LTM Long term memory
5 to 7 chunks
20 units
units
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LONG TERM MEMORY

• Long-term memory is intended for storage of
  information over a long time.
• Long-term memory has unlimited capacity.
• There are two types of long-term memory episodic
  memory and semantic memory.
• Episodic memory represents our memory of events
  and experiences in a serial form.
• Semantic memory is a structured record of facts,
  concepts and skills that we have acquired.

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SHORT TIME VS LONG TIME MEMORY

• Working memory based on temporary storage
• Question how can skilled activities be
  interrupted and later resumed?
• Most types of accessible information in working
  memory STM will remain in LTM during an
  interruption and can be easily reinstated by
  reactivation.
• Models of working memory have focused on the
  availability of information in STM which has
  limited capacity.

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STANDARD MEMORY TASKS VS COMPLEX COGNITIVE
PERFORMANCE

• Complex tasks fundamentally different from
  standard memory tasks.
• Working memory does not consist of a single
  general capacity, but rather consists of several
  subsystems - various types of tasks.
• Working memory in a specific skilled activity
  increases as one aspect of acquired skill.
• Large differences between experts' memory
  performance and that of novices (f.ex chess,
  music, dance).

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EXPERTS VS. NOVICES MEMORY

• With practice and the acquisition of memory
  skills, subjects can improve their recall
  performance on a specific memory task with a
  particular type of stimulus material by 100 to
  1000.
• Due to increased ability to store information in
  LTM the association of presented information
  with retrieval cues that allow reliable retrieval
  from LTM at the time of recall.
• For discussion increased working memory is
  limited to the specific skilled activity in
  question. The acquired nature of LT-WM implies
  differences between tasks and in addition
  potential individual differences in the
  implementation of LT-WM for a given task.

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FORGETTING

• One characteristic of human memory is that humans
  forget.
• Forgetting is actually a very useful attribute of
  the human memory system.
• Forgetting happens if learned messages havent
  been transfered to the long-term memory.
• With hypnosis it is possible to retrieve things
  that have been forgotten.

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FORGETTING

• During the process of forgetting important
  features are filtered out and preserved, while
  irrelevant or predictable detail is either
  destroyed, or stored in such a way that it is not
  readily accessible in its original form.
• One obvious benefit of forgetting is the way in
  which it softens emotional pain or grief Time
  heals all wounds - but it also represents a
  distortion of our recollection of the past.