Chapter 7- Memory – Flashcards

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Encoding
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-This is the first step of memory in which we are converting sensations into a format that can be stored in memory. This involves taking information from the environment and converting it so when you attend to something, you store that information in memory at least temporarily -Sometimes encoding occurs automatically, sometimes it's effortful. When its effortful you are trying to get information into your memory i.e. studying and other times it' s automatic i.e. what you ate -Levels of processing (Craik and Lockhart): how well we remember something depends at least in part on how deeply we processed the information at the time of encoding. When you are trying to imagine the two together, you are processing the information more deeply than just repeating information. Deeper processing tends to produce better memory -The deeper you process, the more elaboration is involved, more associations between the new material and existing memories. In general, when possible, visualization is very effective because it requires creativity. This helps explain why personal information is easier to remember because it's meaningful events that effect us directly are going to be elaborated more than events that don't effect us directly.
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Atkinson and Shiffrin's Transfer and Storage Model (Stage 1 of memory)
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-Sensory memory (sensory register): designed to hold an exact copy of the sensory experience. We retain that copy just long enough for us to locate and focus on the important bits of information. All senses have their own sensory registers: -Visual (iconic memory): Sperling- concluded that our iconic memory lasts for approximately a quarter of a second, but we can lengthen iconic memory up to two full seconds but that has to occur in a very pristine environment. -Auditory (Echoic memory): seeming to retain an echo of audible information for up to four seconds
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Atkinson and Shiffrin's Transfer and Storage Model (Stage 2 of memory)
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-Short-term memory: we transfer information from the sensory register to our short-term memory if we want to retain the information longer, but it's still only a temporary storage place. Information stored in short-term memory fades away in about and under 30 seconds unless it is renewed and you can renew it by rehearsal -Information can be stored in short-term memory in many forms, but in general humans prefer to transfer the information into sounds if possible. When people make errors in theses types of tests they tend to make errors between letters that sound similar and do not make errors between letters that look similar -Capacity: the duration of short-term memory is limited as well as the capacity. Short-term memory can retain the "Magic number of bits" which is 7 +/- 2 so most people cannot hold more than 5-9 bits of information in their short-term memory. -When you go over this displacement occurs which is where extra information coming in pushes out the first bits of information or you're working so hard to keep the first bit of information that there's no place to put the extra information -This can be caused by internal interference which occurs when you start thinking about something else or can be caused by external interference where someone else of something else intrudes on your consciousness -You can increase the amount of information being stored in short-term memory by chunking which is where you recode that information into groups of bits, putting more than one bit into a chunk which is why telephone numbers and SSN's come with dashed. they're pre-chunked -Working memory: version of short-term memory, but this temporary space allows us to do more than simply temporarily store information, we use this memory to also process that information -Episodic buffer: allows you to integrate and manipulate information from the phonological loop (using sounds) and the visuospatial sketchpad (visualizing your thoughts in your head) as well as information from long-term memory. -Central executive: the component that manages and directs all the above processes, what to do when with all of this information
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Atkinson and Shiffrin's Transfer and Storage Model (Stage 3 of memory)
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-Long-term memory: the storehouse of information that has to be kept for long periods of time. It's not just a more durable version of short-term memory, it's a different kind of memory which seems to have an unlimited capacity. -Because it's unlimited, when looking for one little piece of information it's harder to find, so it has to be indexed and long-term memory is indexed using cues. We might use an intentional cue or an unintentional cue (i.e. when you here a song that reminds you or someone or some event, odors are very strong unintentional cues). only the relevant information is retrieved from long-term memory. Organization in long-term memory is critical, everyone organizes differently but the more organized the information is the easier it is to retrieve from memory. -Our ability to retrieve from long-term memory is going to depend in part on how we encode into long-term memory. There are three ways of encoding: -Verbal code: using symbols to recode concrete objects into words i.e. see a desk and come up with the word desk -Imaginal (sensory) code: we are trying to store the sensory "image" of the experience i.e. taking a test and you know right where the information is in your notes -Motor code (similar to muscle memory): involves representations of physical activities and skills i.e. how to ride a bike -Often it is difficult if not impossible to translate one code into another -Long-term memory systems: -Explicit memory systems (aka declarative memory systems): Knowledge that can be brought into conscious awareness and verbalized. It requires intentional remembering, consciously bringing up information into memory. This includes semantic memory (memory for general knowledge and facts) and episodic memory (memories for events that you experienced. -Implicit memory: These are memories that typically cannot be verbalized, at the very least they are very difficult to verbalize but they can be expressed behaviorally. This does not require intentional remembering and involves procedural memory like the memory for how to do things. It is stored primarily in motor code and also includes memory that is involved with classical conditioning.
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Retrieval
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-Types of remembering: -Recall: the ability to reproduce information on your own without any cues or help. Ex: writing essays on an essay exam. -Recognition: the ability to select previously learned information from an array of options. Note that if you study for recognition, your recall might be very poor. If you study for recall, you will be able to recall and recognize. Ex: police lineups and multiple choice exams. -Serial Position Effects: The principle that recall for an item on a list typically depends on what part of the list that item appears in. -Recency effect: concerns information at the end of the lists, where information learned at the end of the list tends to be remembered more than information that precedes it. This seems to be a function of short-term memory. If recall is delayed by some distraction, then the recency effect pretty much disappears, the new information has entered short-term memory and displaced information from the list. -Primacy effect: opposite of the recency effect where information presented early in the list is more likely to be recalled later than subsequent information which seems to be a function of rehearsal, greater rehearsal for that early information. Might also be a function of better long-term memory where even that minimal rehearsal gets that item further into your shallow long-term memory. Support for this: primacy effect can be very long-lasting i.e. first impressions. -Encoding specificity hypothesis: things that occurred during encoding can very much have an effect on your ability to recall information. When you experience or learn something, you encode the specific aspects of that thing, but you also encode contextual information. When you go to retrieve the information that you learned, your ability to retrieve it is going to be better when your retrieval cues tap into that contextual information. -State-dependent memory: when memory for information is better if we're in the same state that we're trying to remember it in as when we learned it i.e remembering dreams. State helps serve as a cue to guide you to things you learned in a similar state. -Mood congruence effect: memory is better for information that is consistent with your current mood. When you are depressed, it's easy to remember why you should be depressed and other depressing memories. When you're happy, it's easy to recall those other happy memories than more depressing ones. -Retrieval from semantic memory: semantic memory is memory for bits of information and knowledge in your long-term memory. Typically, retrieval for any given piece of information from semantic or long-term memory is quick and that's due in large part to the organization that is involved with long-term memory. -Schemas: a concept or mental structure that organizes knowledge about a certain stimulus, or a generic representation of a certain stimuli i.e. we have schemas for objects, groups of people (stereotypes). They are organized in networks of association in a hierarchical structure. Your ability to remember one schema will depend on how strongly it is connected to recently remembered or activated schemas. If you have recently activated a particular schema, then your ability to recall other related things is going to be better than those that are less similarly related. This is called priming, you can prime certain memories by having you recall or by showing you a schema that is related to those memories. This occurs because of spreading activation, once you activate one schema, the other ones strongly connected to it are going to be activated as well, but just not as strongly as that central one.
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Role of schemas in memory
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- Schema features: the elements that make up the object or person or event. The typical attributes of the thing that describe it. When we encounter a stimulus, we pull out an appropriate schema for it and we assign values to the features. This helps you identify the important information in that stimulus and helping you encode that information in an organized way. -These features have default values which are our best guess about the most likely value for that feature, the values we assign to a feature when the actual value hasn't been specified. -Schemas and encoding: schemas help you encode information in an organized way, but when we encode and store that information we are storing default values. As a result schemas can help explain errors in our memory i.e. we may store incorrect default values. -We have a tendency to ignore and not encode information that is inconsistent with our schema called intrusion. They are falsely remembered formation that is remembered because it is inappropriately stored during encoding, they tend to be schema consistent. We tend to forget schema-inconsistent information and falsely remember schema-consistent information. -Schemas and retrieval: we use our generic schema to guide our memory search. In the reconstruction of memory, we use that generic schema to fill in the blacks, the longer the amount of time between the event and recall, the more we rely on our schemas to fill in the blanks.
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Memory is malleable
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-Lots of evidence that eyewitness memories and testimonies tend to be quite poor. We tend to remember information that is consistent with our schema for that type of event. When we witness crimes in particular, that tends to increase our physiological arousal. We know from other research that arousal consumes cognitive resources so fewer resources to properly encode what's going on. Post-event information can color your memory and can introduce errors into your memory i.e. how a question is asked can influence your recall. -Research on recovered memories: people would accuse others of abuse based on previously repressed memories that had been "recovered" through therapies. We push our traumatic memories down into our subconsciousness without knowing- a Freudian concept. -However, these were not actually repressed memories that were recovered but false memories that had been created by well-intentioned therapists. Therapists, through hypnosis, pointed questions, and other techniques, would inadvertently implant these false memories. -Implanting memories can be created in a lab setting, people can be very confident about these memories and still be very wrong.
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Neuroanatomy of Memory
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-Engrams: historically researchers were looking for specific areas of the brain where specific memories are formed. They thought they were looking for physical bits of the brain for specific memories but a memory for a single event might be stored in a variety of areas in your brain -H.M. (Henry Molaison): he had brain surgery to relieve incapacitating epileptic seizures, and scientists followed him from the surgery in the 1950s to his death in 2008 and even after his death they sliced his brain for further study. After the surgery his short-term memory was fine, his long-term memory for experiences that occurred before the surgery was fine, but he lost his ability to transfer new experiences to long-term memory. His hippocampus seems to be most effected which is involved with memory consolidation. -There's a larger region of the brain with the hippocampus and adjacent areas called the medial temporal are which is one of the areas that deteriorates first in Alzheimer's patients. This area consolidates memories and sends it out to various areas in your brain -How are memories stored? -Long-term potentiation: a long-lasting change at a particular synapse which involves both the pre- and post- synaptic neurons. It appears to enhance the communication between those two neurons. The post-synaptic neurons are now primed to accept messaged from the pre-synaptic neuron -Memories may depend on particular neural circuits and pathways: memories may been seeded in particular long-term potentiation in particular localized areas. -Neurogenesis: previously under the impression that you were born with the number of neurons that you'll always have, however we do in fact grow new neurons through neurogenesis and now its thought that neurogenesis is correlated with advanced learning and that new neurons are more easily excited that older ones so they are more easily enlisted into a new neural circuit or memory. The age of the neurons involved with that memory may timestamp that memory.
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Forgetting
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-Forgetting is the loss in accessibility of previously stored information. For some reason it is no longer or not currently available. The memory may be totally lost and you brain has written over that neural circuit but sometimes we forget because sometimes we can't retrieve that information for some reason. -Ebbinghaus: Was one of the first psychologists to study forgetting. Studied how quickly we forget information and was his only subject. He came up with lists of nonsense syllables because they were stimuli that were not already stored in memory to minimize the influence prior knowledge might have on memory and came up with lists until he could perfectly recall them and then he tested himself after various time intervals. -Downward sloping curve with time on the x-axis and recall percentage on the y-axis . A steep curve early on but levels off relatively with about 30-35% of the material sticking around -Bahrick's work: there may be initial forgetting, but some memories seem to endure for a long time, achieving permastore (material that is very well learned is more likely to reach permastore). He criticized Ebbinghaus for using nonsense syllables because there's no way to elaborate on them, elaboration is very important, the more we elaborate the more likely we are to keep it in long-term memory. What's going to be in permastore is stuff we spend a long-time elaborating on. -Decay Theory: Not everything is going to reach permastore. We forget simply because of the passage of time, the physical changes that occur in the brain simply fade over time unless they are reactivated occasionally. Works pretty well with the sensory register and for short-term memory but does not really work for long-term memory because if decay was the reason behind forgetting in long-term memory, then what you do during that time passage shouldn't be an issue i.e. sleep helps with long-term memories -Interference: Other memories interfere with the retrieval for the material you are trying to recall, this is especially likely if those other memories are very similar to what you are trying to recall. -Proactive interference: When older memories interfere with the retrieval of newer memories, this interference is in a forward motion. Ex: when you move to a new address, you might have trouble remembering your new zip code because you're always pulling out your old zip code -Retroactive interference: occurs when newer memories get in the way of recalling older memories, the interference is in a backwards motion. Ex: After a while you may no longer be able to recall your old zip code. -Interference does occur in short-term memory. In long-term memory the memory is still there but is being blocked by other memories. We know its still there because we have different methods such as recognition tests or through implicit memory to check that these memories are still there.
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Motivated Forgetting
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-First suggested by Freud who called it repression: occurs when your conscious mind pushes unpleasant and threatening images into your unconscious mind outside of your awareness. By repressing memories, you can alleviate anxiety at the level of the conscious mind. -Is there scientific evidence to support this? No, everything else being equal, it is typically easier to remember pleasant events than unpleasant events but you can remember unpleasant memories particularly if your are depressed to being with. -Suppression: like repression, we are trying to push memories out of the conscious mind but unlike repression we are consciously trying to push those thoughts out of our conscious mind -White bear studies: why does suppression not work? If you're trying not to think about something, you have to have one part of your mind on the lookout for that thought. Even if you are deliberately trying to think about everything else, your mind is at the ready for the slightest thought of a white bear. If the deliberated rest of your mind gets distracted, then the monitor is going to go into overdrive. If you want to forget something, don't try to suppress it.
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Mnemonics- Memory aids
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-Method of Loci (Loci being Latin for location): Useful if you're trying to remember things in a particular order. How it works, commit to memory an ordered sequence of places then form an image that links the first item on your list to the first place on your journey. -Narrative Chaining: This involved chaining the things on your list together into a story. Remember the story, remember the items on your list. -Acrostics and Acronyms: -Acronyms: Use the first letter of each of the words on the list to create a new word i.e. HOMES for the names of the Great Lakes or PEMDAS -Acrostics: Take the first letter of items or keywords and then use those letter to create a sentence i.e. please excuse my dear aunt sally for PEMDAS. This is a little less effective because of the multitude of steps. -The best way to improve memory is to use elaboration in any way
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