Storage Decay Retrieval Failure Forgetting Encoding Failure Storage Decay Retrieval Failure

Encoding Failure

Test Your Memory Which is the real penny?

Encoding Failure Penny activity: “Don’t encode what we don’t need.” No encoding / no LTM.

Storage Decay Memory storage decays over time Lack of rehearsal accelerates decay Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve Bahrick’s Spanish vocabulary study- memory loss leveled off after three years

Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve

Retrieval Failure The memory encoded, stored, but can’t access the memory.

Types of Retrieval Failure Proactive Interference The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information. (New info messed up by old info) If you call your new girlfriend your old girlfriend’s name.

Types of Retrieval Failure Retroactive Interference The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information. (old info messed up by the new) “Positive transfer” When you finally remember this years locker combination, you forget last years.

Motivated Forgetting One explanation is REPRESSION: Why does it exist? psychoanalytic theory- Freud’s theory of repression Contradicts theory that emotions / stress hormones strengthen memories

Forgetting

My Trip To Cheesecake Factory You go to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. You are seated at a table with a white tablecloth. You study the menu. You tell the female server you want Avocado Egg Rolls, extra sauce, Roadslide Sliders, Thai Lettuce Wraps, and Chino-Latino Steak (medium). You also order a Cherry Coke from the beverage list. A few minutes later the server returns with your Avocado Egg Rolls. Later the rest of the meal arrives. You enjoy it all, except the Chino-Latino Steak is a bit overdone.

Cheesecake factory How did you order the steak? Was the red tablecloth checkered? What did you order to drink? Did a male server give you a menu?

Memory Construction “To remember our past is to revise it.” We sometimes alter our memories as we encode or retrieve them. Your expectations, schemas, environment may alter your memories.

Misinformation Effect Elizabeth Loftus (over 200 experiments) Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event. IOW: Our memory is influenced by the language of the question… Huge implications for questioning eyewitnesses, or retrieval of memory in abuse cases… Youngest and oldest (around 5 and 75) are most susceptible

Misinformation Effect Leading Question: About how fast were the vehicles going when they smashed into each other? Or… When they ran into each other?

Source Amnesia Source attribution Forgetting, or attributing the wrong source to an experience, or memory One of the frailest parts of our memory 3-5 years old- source memory develops (prefrontal cortex) Where have I seen that person before..? Who told me about that…?

Discerning True and False Memories Experienced memories recalled with more detail Imagined memories recall the gist (main idea) Basic questions (gist) run risk of eliciting imaginative memories (therapists, investigators) Can’t judge a memory by how real it feels… … or by persistence of memory.

Types of Amnesia Anterograde Amnesia Retrograde Amnesia Post-accident amnesia (remember the old, but not the new) Often TBI (part of brain?) Retrograde Amnesia New memory but not the old Pre-accident amnesia