Chapter Seven

Section One

 The process by which we recollect prior experiences and information and skills learned in the past

1. Episodic: a memory of a specific event o Example: what you wore to school yesterday o When we can remember specific details, it is called a flashbulb memory

2. Semantic or Generic: the general knowledge that we remember although we do not know when we first learned the material o Includes historical facts and the ABCs 3. Implicit or Procedural: includes the skills we have learned o For example, riding a bike

Section Two

 Regardless of the process we use, most include three basic steps: encoding, storing, and retrieving the information.

 How we put the information into a form it can be stored in  Visual Codes: remembering by creating a picture in your mind  Acoustic Codes: remember by repeating the information to yourself  Semantic Codes: remembering the information by creating some type of order out of it; creating a phrase out of the letters

 How we maintain the information over time so we don’t lose it  Maintenance Rehearsal: repeating information over and over again  Elaborative Rehearsal: make the information meaningful by relating it to something we already know  Organizational Systems: we organize information just as though our memory was a large file cabinet  Filing Errors: everyone has breakdowns in memory at various times and for various reasons

 Returning stored information to conscious thought

 Memory retrieval depends on the situation in which we first remembered the information  One study suggests if you study in the room where you take a test, you do better than those that studied elsewhere

 There is thought that our mood influences our memory  We will remember information when we are in the same mood that we first remembered it in

 There are instances in which we know the information but cannot bring it out  Often we will say words that may be similar to try to trigger our memory  When I cannot think of a person’s name, I go through the alphabet…when I hit the letter of the first name, I usually remember it!

Section Three

 Stage One  What we sense—see, hear, taste, feel, or smell, is only kept for a fraction of a second  The ability to have eidetic imagery (a photographic memory) declines with age

 Stage Two  Also called working memory  What we’re trying to actively remember is stored in our short-term memory  We have to rehearse the information to keep it in our short term memory

 The third and final stage  We have to take steps to put stuff in our long- term memory  Mechanical repetition: maintenance rehearsal  Relating information to stuff we already know: elaborative rehearsal  Psychologists are unaware of limits to our long- term memory

Section Four

1. Recognition: the easiest task, identifying that we have remembered something in the past 2. Recall: not only recognizing that we have come into contact with some information, but actually being able to call the information back into our mind 3. Relearning: we are often able to remember something we thought we forgot after a brief lesson (like speaking a foreign language)

1. Interference: old memories are replaced by new ones 2. Decay: when a memory fades away 3. Repression: pushing certain memories out of our consciousness 4. Amnesia: severe memory loss caused by injury, shock, fatigue, illness, or repression; infantile amnesia refers to the fact that we don’t remember things from when we were infants

1. Drill and Practice: go over the information to be remembered over and over again 2. Relate the information to something you already know 3. Form Unusual Associations: sometimes a strange association will trigger our memory 4. Construct links between what you are having trouble remembering and something that is more easily remembered 5. Use Mnemonic Devices