Unit 7 Cognition

Unit 7 Layout Day 1 – Studying and Building Memory (Module 31) Day 2 – Systems of Memory (Modules 32 & 33) Day 3 – Thinking, Concepts, and Creativity (Module 34) + Vocab Quiz Day 4 – Problem Solving and Decision Making (Module 35) Day 5 – Thought and Language (Module 36) Day 6 – Review and Unit 7 CUA

Module 33 – Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement SWBAT describe information processing as relates to memory and encoding processes

Forgetting Two types of forgetting Two patients Anterograde amnesia An inability to form new memories (antero = forward in Latin) Retrograde amnesia An inability to retrieve old memories (retro = backward in Latin) Two patients Henry Molaison – 55 years after brain surgery, was intelligent, did crossword puzzles, but couldn’t remember who his neuroscientist was Jimmie – believed he was 19 years old, when shown a mirror of himself at 70, panicked until he was distracted and he forgot he saw himself

Forgetting as an Encoding Error Under this circumstance, the brain fails to encode properly

Forgetting as a Retrieval Error Under this circumstance, the brain fails to retrieve information properly

Retrieval Error Retrieval can be affected or interfered with Two types: Proactive interference: Old information interferes with recall of NEW information Proactive = forward acting Retroactive interference: New information interferes with recall of OLD information Retroactive = backward acting

Forgetting as Storage Decay The Ebbinghaus curve works in reverse, too: if learning increases rapidly and then levels off with repetition, so too does forgetting

Retrieval Failure “Motivated forgetting” Individuals will remember things in different ways in order to create self- serving histories After all, we rarely want to be the villains of our own story Sigmund Freud argued that we repress painful or unacceptable memories that harm our self-concept

Memory Construction Error Loftus memory study When you provide someone with a leading question they will tend to change their memory to accommodate the information from that question

Source Problems Source amnesia Déjà vu Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, hear about, read about, or imagined Creates false memories Déjà vu French for “already seen” We might feel “familiarity” (temporal lobe processing) before “detail” (hippocampus), causing a feeling of having lived this already3