Chapter 7: Human Memory

Three Key Processes in Memory

Encoding: You may not remember a given piece of information because you never encoded it or didn’t encode it well. Encoding is affected by many factors such as item meaningfulness, imagery value, and personal relevance. Storage: Your memory problem may result from a storage problem. Perhaps information was encoded, but you did not work at storing it away. Maybe you stored it in isolation rather than relating it to other information you had already stored and didn’t take advantage of you organized memory system. Retrieval: Perhaps you encoded the information well and stored it in an efficient manner but can’t bring it out of your memory, a failure of retrieval. Many experts believe that memories do not actually disappear if they were originally stored but that we lose access to them and they become irretrievable. Retrieval failure can also occur because other memories interfere.

Encoding Debate: Do we filter information out early during sensory input or later after the brain has processed the meaning or significance of the input? “Cocktail Party Phenomenon”- suggests that attention involves late selection, based on the meaning of input. Most agree that the filter may be different at different times. If you are involved in a high-load task selection seems to happen early.

Multi-tasking can be dangerous Multi-tasking can be dangerous! You are really just switching your attention back and forth among tasks, rather than processing them simultaneously

Levels of Processing

Enriching Encoding Elaboration- linking the information to something you already know. Imagery- Creation of visual images to represent words Self- referent encoding- Is the information personally relevant? Motivation to Remember- When MTR is high people are more likely to exert extra effort to attend to and organize the information in ways that facilitate future recall.

Storage Sensory Memory: consists of the immediate, initial recordings of information. Only lasts a fraction of a second. Short-Term Memory (STM): a limited capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for about 10-20 seconds.

Short Term Memory How can you make information last in your short-term memory? Rehearsal- repetitively verbalizing or thinking about the information. Short term memory is limited in the number of items it can hold. George Miller (1956) said the magic number is 7 plus or minus two. If STM is filled to capacity, the insertion of new information bumps out some of the information currently in STM. Chunking helps people to remember things for longer periods of time.

Long-Term Memory Is an unlimited capacity store that can hold information over lengthy periods of time. Flashbulb Memories: Memories that are very clear and vivid. Ex- (9/11/01) Most researchers do not even think LTM is permanent. Even flashbulb memories become less detailed and complete with time.

How do we store information? Clustering: People organize information into categories for storage in memory. Conceptual Hierarchy: a multi-leveled classification system based on common properties among items.

Schemas: an organized cluster of knowledge about a particular object or event abstracted from previous experience with the object or event.

Semantic Networks: when people think about a word, their thoughts naturally go to related words

Retrieval Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon- the temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that its just out of reach Retrieval cues- stimuli that help gain access to memories. Context cues- helps facilitate retrieval by putting you back into a certain place where the memory occurred Reality monitoring- refers to the process of deciding whether memories are based on actual events (external source) or one’s thoughts and imaginations (internal source) Source monitoring- making attributions about the origins (source) of memories. Source monitoring error- occurs when you remember the wrong source. Your friend told you a story but you are confident you read it in your psychology book. In some eyewitness testimony, witnesses insist that they remember seeing something when in reality someone verbally suggested to them that they saw something. Destination memory- Did I tell you that story?

Look at the following list of words Cake Pie Sour Tooth Bitter Candy Honey Nice

Now write the words you remember How many of you had the word sweet?

Misinformation effect- occurs when participants’ recall of an event they witnessed is altered by introducing misleading post event information.

Hermann Ebbinghaus Why do we forget? Look at the forgetting curve below…..that’s depressing! When we remember more meaningful information the forgetting curve is not as steep…..DON”T WORRY! Hermann Ebbinghaus

Measures Of Forgetting To study forgetting empirically, psychologist need to be able to measure precisely. The three principle methods used to measure forgetting are recall, recognition and relearning. Recall- Who is the current U.S. secretary of state? This requires subjects to reproduce information on their own without any cues. Ex- Essay questions Recognition- requires subjects to select previously learned material from an array of options. Ex- Multiple Choice tests. Relearning Measure- requires a subject to memorize information a second time to determine how much time or how many practice trials are saved by having learned it before.

The capital of Washington state is 1. Seattle 2. Spokane 3. Tacoma 4. Olympia The capital of Washington state is 1. London 2. NY 3. Tokyo 4. Olympia

Why we forget. Pseudoforgetting- We did not pay attention to the material in the first place. Remember our penny experiment from last class. Decay- Memory traces fade with time. Interference- people forget information because of competition from other material.

Repression- People forget because they want to. Child Abuse victims

Memory loss due to injury Retrograde amnesia- cannot remember things prior to injury Anterograde amnesia- loss of memories for events that occur after the injury

Types of Memory