UNIT 7A COGNITION: MEMORY.

UNIT 7A COGNITION: MEMORY

UNIT OVERVIEW The Phenomenon of Memory Information Processing
Forgetting Memory Construction Improving Memory

The Phenomenon of Memory

INTRODUCTION Memory Extremes of memory
Memory-learning that has persisted over time, information that has been stored and can be retrieved IF a memory was nonexistent, every person, song, event object would be obsolete With no memory—how would you answer the question—How are you today? With no memory—who would you be? How would your identify be affected? Phenomenon of Memory Memory is any indication that learning has persisted over time. It is our ability to store and retrieve information. Flashbulb memory A unique and highly emotional moment may give rise to a clear, strong, and persistent memory called flashbulb memory. However, this memory is not free from errors.

INFORMATION PROCESSING

INTRODUCTION: ATKINSON-SHIFFRIN THREE-STAGE MODEL
Encoding Storage Retrieval

INTRODUCTION Connectionism
Sensory memory Short-term memory Long-term memory Modified version of the three-stage processing model of memory

INTRODUCTION Modified version of the three-stage processing model of memory Information directly into long-term memory Working memory Information Processing—simple explanation for a very complex process To remember an event, we must get information into our brain (encoding), retain that information (storage), and later get it back (retrieval) Similar process to a computer, but human memory is less literal and more fragile than a computer’s Memories emerge from interconnected neural networks (connectionism) The complexity of neural networks allows for parallel processing. The more dendrites neurons have, the more complex the connections can be. This complexity gives us the ability to process many items at once, which is more efficient. Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin proposed we form memory in three ways: 1. Record to be remembered information as a fleeting sensory memory (immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system 2. We process information into a short-term memory where we encode it through rehearsal Activated memory that holds a few items briefly (seven digits of a phone number) while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten Lasts only about a minute or so 3. Finally information moves into long-term memory for later retrieval The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system (includes knowledge, skills and experience)

MODIFIED THREE-STAGE PROCESSING MODEL OF MEMORY

1. Record to be remembered information as a fleeting sensory memory (immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

2. We process information into a short-term memory where we encode it through rehearsal Activated memory that holds a few items briefly (seven digits of a phone number) while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten Lasts only about a minute or so

3. Finally information moves into long-term memory for later retrieval The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system (includes knowledge, skills and experience)

**Limited three step process Modified (see unconscious processing visual) Skips the first two stages and is processed directly and automatically into long-term memory, without our conscious awareness Working memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin’s second stage) concentrates on active processing of information in this intermediate stage We shine our attention on certain incoming stimuli (those that are important) We process these incoming stimuli, along with information we retrieve from long-term memory (in temporary working memory) People’s working memory capacity differs.

ENCODING: GETTING INFORMATION IN HOW WE ENCODE
Automatic Processing Parallel processing Automatic processing Space Time Frequency Well-learned information Encoding: to retain quick info like a friend’s cell phone # automatically or with effort Automatic processing: A large amount of multitasking goes on without your conscious attention Space-when studying the information on a page, you may use visual cues to remember where you left off Time-When talking about your day, you unintentionally note the sequence of events to retrace your steps if you left your keys somewhere Frequency-You effortlessly keep track of how many things happen (this is the fourth time I have run into him today) Well-learned information-See words or a catchy slogan on a truck, you register their meaning into your memory Learning to read takes time, but with practice, the meaning becomes more automatic

Effortful Processing Rehearsal (conscious repetition) Ebbinghaus curve Effortful Processing: More complex items we remember with effort & attention Produces durable and accessible memories Eventually becomes automatic with enough practice students can study more efficiently if they put in the effortful work in the beginning Learning vocab words; boost your memory through rehearsal (conscious repetition) German philosopher Hermann Ebbinghaus formed a list of all possible nonsense syllables by sandwiching one vowel between two consonants. Then randomly selected a sample of the syllables, practiced them and tested himself The amount remembered depends on the time spent learning Even after we learn material, additional rehearsal (overlearning) increases retention

Ebbinghaus curve The amount remembered depends on the time spent learning

Overlearning Spacing effect Massed practice Distributed practice Testing effect Even after we learn material, additional rehearsal (overlearning) increases retention Spacing Effect-we retain information better when our rehearsal is distributed over time Massed practice (cramming) can produce speedy short-term learning and feelings of confidence Distributed study time produces better long-term recall Spaced study & self-assessment beat cramming

Serial position effect Recency effect Primacy effect Serial position effect-you often are more able to remember the first and last items in a list than the words in the middle The last items are still in working memory, people often recall them especially quickly and well (recency effect) After a shift from the last items—the recall is best for the first items (primacy effect)

ENCODING: GETTING INFORMATION IN WHAT WE ENCODE
Levels of Processing Visual encoding Acoustic encoding Semantic encoding Self-reference effect What we Encode 1. Encode by images (visually by appearance) 2. Encode by organization 3. Encode by meaning **We usually encode verbal information by its meaning, associating it with what we already know or imagine We process words at one of three levels: 1. Visually (by appearance of the letters) 2. Acoustically (by sound of the word) 3. Semantically (by the meaning of the word) Processing a word deeply (by its meaning—semantic encoding) produces better recognition later then does shallow processing (appearance—visual encoding) or sound (acoustic encoding) The amount remembered depends both on the time spent learning and on your making it meaningful

ENCODING: GETTING INFORMATION IN
WHAT WE ENCODE

Visual Encoding Imagery Rosy retrospection Mnemonics Peg-word system Visual Encoding Our earliest memories involve visual imagery Vivid images are easily remember concrete words  through mental images (best or worst moments) Imagery is the heart of many mnemonic devices: helps to retrieve lengthy memorized passages and speeches Chunking can help people remember more pieces of information in a smaller segment First-letter technique—useful when the order of items is important (ROY G. BIV—colors of the rainbow) Substitution technique—letters are used to replace numbers (T for 1, N for 2)—then the letters are used to make up sentences Students who use mnemonic devices, chunking and spread out the time of their learning are more abt to have quality studying vs. just cramming

Organizing Information for Encoding Chunking acronym Organizing Information for Encoding We process information more easily when we can organize it into meaningful units or structures Chunking: we easily recall information when we can organize it into familiar, manageable chunks (often occurs so naturally that we take it for granted) HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior) Chunk info into a more familiar form by creating a word (acronym) from the first letters of the to-be-remembered items. Hierarchies-Process information composed of a few broad concepts divided and subdivided into narrower concepts and facts (helps to retrieve information efficiently)

Organizing Information for Encoding Chunking acronym

Organizing Information for Encoding Hierarchies

STORAGE: RETAINING INFORMATION SENSORY MEMORY
Sperling’s memory experiment Iconic memory Echoic memory Anything stored in long-term memory lies dormant, waiting to be reconstructed by a cue Sensory Memory: George Sperling flashed a group of letters similar to the box of letters for 1/20 th of a second—people could only recall about ½ of them Sperling noted that people could actually see and recall all of the letters, but only momentarily (iconic memory) Once the letters were shown in rows instead of the box, almost all were able to identify the letters Memory for auditory stimuli (echoic memory)—if you drift off in class thinking about your upcoming weekend, you can recover the teacher’s last few words from your mind’s echo chamber. Auditory echoes tend to linger for 3-4 seconds

STORAGE: RETAINING INFORMATION WORKING/ SHORT TERM MEMORY
Magic number Seven Plus or minus 2 The list of magic sevens Seven wonders of world Seven seas Seven deadly sins Seven primary colors Seven musical scale notes Seven days of the week Working/Short-term Memory: Our working memory needs to meaningfully encode or rehearse information to retain the information. Short-term memory is limited not only in duration, but also in capacity (storing about 7 bits of info—give or take 2 in either direction) George Miller enshrined this recall capacity as Magical Number Seven, plus or minus two Lloyd Peterson & Margaret Peterson asked people to remember three consonant groups (CHJ)—to prevent rehearsal, the researchers asked them to start at 100 and count aloud backward by 3s. After 3 seconds, only ½ of letters were recalled. After 12 seconds, hardly any were recalled. Short-term recall is slightly better for random digits (phone #) than for random letters Most of us can only retain four information chunks **At any given moment, we can consciously process only a very limited amount of information; the working memory can only retain about 20 seconds worth of information at a time.

STORAGE: RETAINING INFORMATION LONG TERM MEMORY
Unlimited nature of long-term memory Long-term Memory Our capacity for storing long-term memories is essentially limitless Ex: the Clark’s Nutcracker (during winter & early spring it can locate up to 6000 caches (hiding places) of pine seeds it had previously buried Some have performed remarkable memory feats, but some often wonder if there was genetic influence on human traits or parental influences to study words/numbers

STORAGE: RETAINING INFORMATION STORING MEMORIES IN THE BRAIN
Synaptic Changes Memory trace Long-term potentiation (LTP) Memory boosting drugs CREB glutamate Surgeons & memory researchers believed that flashbacks triggered by brain stimulation during surgery indicated that our whole past is “in there” in complete detail Elizabeth Loftus & Geoffrey Loftus (1980) analyzed the vivid “memories” triggered by brain stimulation and found that the flashbacks appeared to have been invented, not relived. Using rats, Karl Lashley demonstrated the memories do not reside in a single, specific spot—he trained rats to find their way out of a maze, then cut out pieces of their cortex and retested their memory. No matter which small brain section he removed, the rats retained at least a partial memory of how to navigate the maze. Synaptic changes Although the brain represents a memory in distributed groups of neurons, those nerve cells must communicate through their synapses Led to a study of the synaptic meeting places where neurons communicate with one another via their neurotransmitter messengers Eric Kandel and James Schwartz observed the sending neurons of the California sea slug—Aplysia (has 20,000 + nerve cells) Can be classically conditioned (with electric shock) to reflexively withdraw its gills when squirted with water When learning occurs, the slug releases more of the neurotransmitter (serotonin) at certain synapses Increased synaptic efficiency makes for more efficient neural circuits—leads to increased sensitivity for hours or weeks to come by rapidly stimulating the memory circuit connections The prolonged strengthening of potential neuron firing =long-term potentiation (LTP) LTP is a physical basis for memory and learning (rats given a drug that enhances LTP will learn a maze with half the usual number of mistakes)

Stress Hormones and Memory Emotions and memories Flashbulb memory Stress Hormones & Memory When we are excited/stressed, emotion-triggered stress hormones make more glucose energy available to fuel brain activity, signaling the brain that something important has happened After a traumatic event---a house fire, a rape, a robbery—vivid recollections of the horrific event may intrude over and over Weaker emotions = weaker memories Emotion triggered hormonal changes help explain why we long remember exciting or shocking events (first kiss/site of a severe accident) 95% of Americans can recall exactly where they were or what they were doing when they heard about 9/11—flashbulb memories (clear vivid memories)—however misinformation can seep into them over time

Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories Amnesia H.M. Studies A memory-to-be enters the cortex through the senses, then winds its way into the brain’s depths Some suffer from amnesia (which they are unable to form new memories) Ex: Clive Wearing-skilled musician who lived his life in the momentary present, experiencing fleeting realizations of his condition—played music as he went Eventually people suffering from amnesia may be able to learn and build their memories (How to find the bathroom, do a jigsaw puzzle); however they do all these things with no awareness of having learned them Anterograde amnesia After losing his hippocampus in surgery, patient Henry M. (HM) remembered everything before the operation but cannot make new memories. We call this anterograde amnesia. (i.e. 50 First Dates) HM is unable to make new memories that are declarative (explicit), but he can form new memories that are procedural (implicit). HM learned the Tower of Hanoi (game) after his surgery. Each time he plays it, he is unable to remember the fact that he has already played the game.

Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories Implicit memory (nondeclarative memory) Explicit memory (declarative memory) Hippocampus Cerebellum Implicit memory (learn how to do something/nondeclarative memory) Are typically impossible to explain—usually involve skills we learn--unconsciously Motor skills (bike riding, playing an instrument—procedural memory) Processed in other brain areas (cerebellum) Explicit memory (implicitly knowing how to do something—declarative memory) Typically easy to explain—memories that involve episodes we experience or facts we learn-consciously Having read a story once, people will read it faster twice showing implicit memory, state capitals, basic addition Processed in hippocampus (new explicit memories of names, images, and events are laid down via the hippocampus) Damage to the left-hippocampus people have trouble remembering verbal information, but they have no trouble recalling visual designs and locations Damage to the right-hippocampus –the problem is reversed Active in slow-wave sleep (memories are processed and filed for later retrieval) Cerebellum- Plays a key role in forming and storing the implicit memories created by classical conditioning With a damaged cerebellum, people cannot develop certain conditioned reflexes (basic blinking and hearing/feeling sensations) A conditioned response are those associated with a conditioned stimulus

Anterograde amnesia After losing his hippocampus in surgery, patient Henry M. (HM) remembered everything before the operation but cannot make new memories. We call this anterograde amnesia. (i.e. 50 First Dates) HM is unable to make new memories that are declarative (explicit), but he can form new memories that are procedural (implicit). HM learned the Tower of Hanoi (game) after his surgery. Each time he plays it, he is unable to remember the fact that he has already played the game. Cerebellum- Plays a key role in forming and storing the implicit memories created by classical conditioning With a damaged cerebellum, people cannot develop certain conditioned reflexes (basic blinking and hearing/feeling sensations) A conditioned response are those associated with a conditioned stimulus Infantile amnesia- The implicit reactions and skills we learned during infancy far reach into our future, yet as adults, we recall nothing (explicitly) for the first three years. As adults, our conscious memory of our first three years is blank because we index so much of our explicit memory by words that nonspeaking children have not learned; also because the hippocampus is one of the last brain structures to mature

RETRIEVAL: GETTING INFORMATION OUT
Recall Recognition Relearning Retrieval-getting information out of the memory bank Measures of Memory To most people--Memory is recall (the ability to retrieve information not in conscious awareness) We remember more than we can recall and need clues to help us remember facts, people, etc… To most psychologists—memory is any sign that something learned has been retained Recognizing or more quickly relearning information also indicates memory You can recognize people after seeing an image of the seven dwarfs than trying to recall all of them by memory The speed at relearned also reveals memory If you once learned something and forget it, you will have a faster time relearning it a 2nd time than the first

RETRIEVAL: GETTING INFORMATION OUT RETRIEVAL CUES
Mnemonic devices Priming Retrieval Cues—Memories are stored in a web of associations, each piece of information interconnected with others. When you encode into memory a target piece of information, you associate other bits of information with it (remembering where a friend’s house is—look for landmarks, interesting house structures, etc…) These are known as retrieval cues—anchor points you can use to access the target information when you want to retrieve it later Examples = tastes, smells, sights help to recall something Mnemonic devices (ROY G. BIV) provide us with handy retrieval cues Priming William James referred to the strands we activate to retrieve specific memory from its web of associations as priming (the wakening of associations—often without our awareness) “memoryless memory”—invisible memory without explicit remembering

PRIMING

RETRIEVAL: GETTING INFORMATION OUT CONTEXT EFFECTS
Déjà vu Context Effects Putting yourself back in the context where you experienced something can prime your memory retrieval If you forgot what you went downstairs—in a different context for (getting your check book), you will remember after you go back upstairs (retrace your steps) Scuba divers recall more words underwater if they learned the list underwater, while they recall more words on land if they learned that list on land (Godden & Baddeley, 1975). A familiar context can help activate memories After learning to move a mobile by kicking, infants most strongly respond when retested in the same context rather than in a different context (Rovee-Collier, 1993). Déjà vu Sometimes being in a similar context similar to one we’ve been in before may trigger an experience that one already has been in or seen 2/3 of us have experienced a déjà vu—happens most commonly to well-educated, imaginative young adults, especially when tired or stressed

RETRIEVAL: GETTING INFORMATION OUT
CONTEXT EFFECTS Scuba divers recall more words underwater if they learned the list underwater, while they recall more words on land if they learned that list on land (Godden & Baddeley, 1975).

RETRIEVAL: GETTING INFORMATION OUT: MOODS AND MEMORIES
State dependent memory Mood Congruent memory Moods & Memories Events in the past may have aroused a specific emotion that later primes us to recall its associated events What we learn in one state may be more easily recalled when we are again in that state (state-dependent memory) Emotions that accompany good or bad events become retrieval cues (mood-congruent) Happier mood = more vivid memories, world is a happy place Depressed mood = recall sad events, darkens our interpretations of current events People who suffer from depression help maintain a vicious, dark cycle

FORGETTING

INTRODUCTION Schacter’s sevens sins of memory Sins of Forgetting
Absent-mindedness Transience Blocking Forgetting An inability to encode, store, or retrieve new memories Seven “sins” of memory (Memory researcher Daniel Schacter)----not on the slides Three sins of forgetting Absent-mindedness—in attention to details leads to encoding failure (our mind is elsewhere when we put our cell phone somewhere) Transience—storage decay over time (after we part ways with former classmates, unused information fades) Blocking—inaccessibility of stored information (you remember someone’s name from seeing them before, but can’t spit it out)

INTRODUCTION Schacter’s sevens sins of memory Sins of distortion
Misattribution Suggestibility Bias Sin of intrusion persistence Three sins of distortion Misattribution—confusing the source of information (putting words in someone else’s mouth or remembering a dream as an actual happening) Suggestibility—the lingering effects of misinformation (a counselor suggesting an action or behavior taking place and then leading to a young child’s false memory) Bias—belief-colored recollections (current feelings toward a friend may color our recalled initial feelings) One sin of intrusion Persistence—unwanted memories (being haunted by images of a sexual assault)

ENCODING FAILURE Encoding failure Encoding Failure
What we fail to encode, we will never remember Age can affect encoding efficiency Brain areas when older adults encode new information is not as responsive as young adults Without effort—many new memories never form Examples: What is the color of the top stripe of the American flag? (red) Bottom stripe? (red) How many red and how many white stripes does it have (7 red, 6 white) Most wooden pencils are not round. How many sides do they typically have? (6) In what hand does the Statue of Liberty hold her torch? (Right) The White House is pictured on the back of a $20 bill. What is on the back of a $10 bill? (Treasury Building) A $5 bill? (Lincoln Memorial) A $1 bill? (The word “ONE”) What four words besides “In God We Trust” appear on most U.S. coins? (United State of America)

ENCODING FAILURE Encoding failure

ENCODING FAILURE

STORAGE DECAY Storage decay Ebbinghaus curve Storage Decay
Hermann Ebbinghaus learned more lists of nonsense syllables and measured how much he retained when relearning each list—from 20 minutes to 30 days later (see chart) Forgetting curve (gradual fading of the physical memory trace)—memory for information fades quickly, then levels out Harry Bahrick (1984) study for the vocabulary for Spanish vocabulary learned in school People 3 years out of college or high school had forgotten much of what they had learned. However, what people remembered then, they still remembered 25 years later (forgetting leveled off)—see chart

STORAGE DECAY Storage decay Ebbinghaus curve

EBBINGHAUS CURVE Ebbinghaus Curve

EBBINGHAUS CURVE Ebbinghaus Curve Storage Decay
Hermann Ebbinghaus learned more lists of nonsense syllables and measured how much he retained when relearning each list—from 20 minutes to 30 days later (see chart) Forgetting curve (gradual fading of the physical memory trace)—memory for information fades quickly, then levels out Harry Bahrick (1984) study for the vocabulary for Spanish vocabulary learned in school People 3 years out of college or high school had forgotten much of what they had learned. However, what people remembered then, they still remembered 25 years later (forgetting leveled off)—see chart

RETRIEVAL FAILURE Retrieval Failure
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon—On the tip of your tongue and just can’t remember? This occurs when the retrieval process does not produce a complete response but produces parts that must be constructed into a whole—it shows how forgetting may result from retrieval failure, rather than encoding or storage failure Retrieval problems contribute to the occasional memory failures of older adults, who more frequently are frustrated by the tip of the tongue forgetting Forgetting is not memories discarded, but memories unretrieved

RETRIEVAL FAILURE: INTERFERENCE
Proactive interference (forward acting) Retroactive interference (backward-acting) Interference Proactive interference (forward-acting) occurs when something you learned earlier disrupts your recall of something you experience later—you buy a new lock and your memory of your old combination may interfere Ex: The French you learned in 2nd grade is interfering with your recall of the Spanish you are learning now in high school Retroactive interference (backward-acting) occurs when new information makes it harder to recall something you learned earlier Ex: The French you learn as a 25 year old interferes with your recall of the Spanish you learned in high school Forgetting occurs more rapidly after being awake and involved in other activities (the less interference with a memory, the more likely it will be encoded after repetition) Retrieving 10 passwords, combinations, garage codes, etc…—we have difficulty remembering passwords because of proactive interference from irrelevant old information/passwords and retroactive interference from other newly learned passwords How to learn the new passwords? Duplicate it with other pins/codes, harness a familiar name/date that you will remember and secure a password which is unique…then rehearse it over and over An hour before sleep is a good time to commit information to memory—not the last few seconds though before you go to sleep

RETRIEVAL FAILURE: INTERFERENCE

RETRIEVAL FAILURE: MOTIVATED FORGETTING
Self-serving personal histories Repression Motivated Forgetting People unknowingly revise their memories from what they originally happened with something or someone Sigmund Freud proposed that we repress (push into the unconsciousness) painful memories to protect our self-concept and to minimize anxiety. But the submerged memory will linger to be retrieved by some later cue or therapy

Self-serving personal histories Repression

Self-serving personal histories Repression Why do we forget? Forgetting can occur at any memory stage. As we process information, we filter, alter or lose much of it Sensory memory retains information bits with great detail, where retrieval from long-term memory is minimal (see flowchart)

MEMORY CONSTRUCTION

MISINFORMATION AND IMAGINATION EFFECTS
Loftus memory studies Misinformation effect Memory Construction We often construct our memories as we encode them and we may also alter our memories as we withdraw them from our memory bank We don’t just retrieve memories, we reweave them (Daniel Gilbert, 2006)—we infer our past from stored information plus what we later imagined, expected, saw and heard Misinformation Effect Elizabeth Loftus has shown how eyewitnesses reconstruct their memories when later questioned (from watching an accident video---the more the eyewitnesses’ heard “smashed” the worse the accident was described as) After exposure to subtle misinformation, many people misremember the events. Sometimes these events are so misinformed, it is nearly impossible to discriminate between our memories of real and suggested events. **Young children are most susceptible to the misinformation effect Imagination Inflation (Effect) Repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories (actually thinking they did an action/behavior) Occurs because visualizing something and actually perceiving it activate similar brain areas The more vividly we can imagine things, the more likely we are to inflate them into memories

SOURCE AMNESIA Source amnesia (source misattribution) Source Amnesia
Source is the most difficult aspect of memory (we may recognize someone, but have no idea where we have seen them) Source amnesia = source misattribution=we retain the memory of the event, but no the context in which we acquired it Contributes to spreading rumors—once you hear a story and tell it to someone else, it is often misinterpreted and the source may be misattributed to the actual events—negative effects of events that truly did not occur Jean Piaget was told by his nurse (nanny) that he was almost kidnapped as a child. She made up all of the scratches she received and her heroism to make sure Jean was not kidnapped. She later revealed the truth when Jean was 15 years old and she returned a watch she was given for her bravery.

DISCERNING TRUE AND FALSE MEMORIES
Memory studies Eye witness testimony Discerning True & False Memories Unreal memories can feel like real memories Memories are perceptions of the past Memories derived from experience have more detail than memories derived from imagination SLEEP word identification—listing lots of words aloud to the class relating to sleep, but not sleep 79% out of 200 convicts had been misjudged based on faulty eyewitness identification  Donald Thompson being falsely accused of rape because the victim has watched an interview of Thompson on TV and confused his face with source amnesia with the rapist’s Detectives use retrieval cues for witnesses to visualize the scene and then goes into detail everything that happened. Then the detectives follow-up about the suspect’s appearance. Innocence Project—since January 2010 have exonerated 249 prisoners who were falsely accused of crimes through eyewitness testimony (innocenceproject.org)

CHILDREN’S EYEWITNESS RECALL
Children’s memories of abuse Suggestibility Children’s Eyewitness Recall When given prompted cues about an event, children are more likely to recall objects or events which truly did not happen Child psychologists have a difficult time separating false memories from real memories When doing an investigation, it is best to talk to a child to recall events before an adult has spoken with them and the interview is with a neutral person who asks non-leading questions. In cases of sexual abuse, this tactic suggests a lower % of reported abuse.

REPRESSED OR CONSTRUCTED MEMORIES OF ABUSE?
Areas of agreement Sexual abuse happens Injustice happens Forgetting happens Recovered memories are incomplete Memories before 3 years are unreliable Hypnotic memories are unreliable Memories can be emotionally upsetting Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse The average therapists estimates that 11% of the population—some 34 million people—have repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse In another survey, 7 out of 10 British & American therapists said they had used hypnosis techniques or drugs to help clients recover suspected repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse Patients exposed to these techniques of source amnesia or misinformation effect may form an image of a threatening person Several worldwide psychologists and researchers committed to protecting the wrongly accused about sexual abuse agree to the following: Sexual abuse happens Injustice happens (falsely convicted) Forgetting happens (forgetting isolated events—negative and positive) Recovered memories are commonplace (cued by a remark or experience, we can recover long-forgotten events…the debate---whether these memories are the actual events or forcibly repressed experiences which can be retrieved by therapist-aided techniques Memories of things happening before age 3 are unreliable (infantile amnesia—many psychologists double the reliability of memories of child abuse before the age of 3. The older a child’s age when suffering sexual abuse, and the more severe it was, the more likely it is to be remembered Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or the influence of drugs are especially unreliable (hypnosis incorporates suggestions into their memories of “past lives” Memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting—people knocked unconscious in unremembered accidents have later developed stress disorders after being haunted by memories from photos, news reports and family/friends’ accounts **Research shows that memories of terrible, tragic events (9/11, witnessing a murder) are often encoded as flashbulb memories, vividly recalled at a later time. Often people report not only remembering chronological events, but the details related to their senses (sounds, sights, smells, tastes and tactile sensations)

REPRESSED OR CONSTRUCTED MEMORIES OF ABUSE?
Loftus studies with children Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues have done work with the “impossible memories”—the more you tell a person about an event and people involved in the event, the more they will reconstruct their memories (Disney World trip) If a child has been told about being lost in a shopping mall, drowning as a child or being viciously attacked by an animal, children can construct (fabricate) false memories about these events—even vividly Critics have charged that clinicians who use “memory work” such as “guided imagery” are accused of ripping families apart Infants’ nervous systems are not yet fully formed, making memory formation during infancy and toddlerhood difficult, if not impossible

IMPROVING MEMORY

IMPROVING MEMORY TECHNIQUES
Study repeatedly Make the material meaningful Activate retrieval cues Use mnemonic devices Minimize interference Sleep more Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to help determine what you do not yet know Improving Memory Study repeatedly (spaced practice—separate study sessions), lots of rehearsing in different times Make the material meaningful—take notes in your own words to make a connection, form associations with things going on in your own life Activate retrieval cues—mentally re-create the situation and the mood in which you learned something Use mnemonic devices—Make up a story which uses vivid images of the text, chunk information into acronyms, create rhymes Minimize interference—study before sleeping, don’t schedule back-to-back study times for topics that are likely to interfere with one another (French & Spanish) Sleep more—during sleep, the brain organizes and consolidates information for long-term memory—sleep deprivation deprives the brain of this Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to help determine what you do not know yet—using the learning objective questions throughout the chapter

UNIT 7A COGNITION: MEMORY.

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