Pages 349-393
A TRUE STORY
In my mind I’ve returned to that scene many times, and each time the memory gains
weight and substance. I can see the cool pine trees, smell their fresh tarry breath,
feel the lake’s algae-green water on my skin, taste Uncle Joe’s iced tea with freshsqueezed lemon. But the death itself was always vague and unfocused. I never saw
my mother’s body, and I could not imagine her dead. The last memory I have of my
mother was her tiptoed visit the evening before her death, the quick hug, the
whispered, “I love you.”
It was some thirty years later that Elizabeth began to remember the details surrounding her mother’s
death. While at her Uncle Joe’s ninetieth birthday party, Elizabeth learned from a relative that she
had been the one to discover her mother’s body in Uncle Joe’s swimming pool. With the realization,
memories that had eluded Elizabeth for decades began to come back.
The memories began to drift back, slow and unpredictable, like the crisp piney smoke
from the evening campfires. I could see myself, a thin, dark-haired girl, looking into
the flickering blue-and-white pool. My mother dressed in her nightgown, is floating
face down. “Mom? Mom?” I ask the question several times, my voice rising in
terror. I start screaming. I remember the police cars, their lights flashing, and the
stretcher with the clean, white blanket tucked in around the edges of the body. The
memory had been there all along, but I just couldn’t reach it.
As the memory crystallized, it suddenly made sense to Elizabeth why she had always felt haunted by
her vague memories of the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death. And it also seemed to
partly explain why she had always been so fascinated by the topic of memory.
However, several days later, Elizabeth learned that the relative had been wrong—it was not Elizabeth
who discovered her mother’s body, but her Aunt Pearl. Other relative confirmed that Aunt Pearl had
been the one who found Elizabeth’s mother in the swimming pool. Yet Elizabeth’s memory had
seemed so real.
The Elizabeth in this true story is none other the Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who is nationally
recognized as the leading expert on the distortions that can occur in the memories of eyewitnesses.
Even though Loftus is an expert on memory distortions and false memories, she wasn’t immune to the
phenomenon herself. Loftus experienced firsthand just how convincing a false memory can be. In
retrospect, Loftus can see how she actively created information in her own mind that corresponded to
the inaccurate information that she had been the one to discover her mother’s body. As Loftus
writes, “That elaborate but completely fabricated memory confronted me with its detail and precision,
its utter lack of ambiguity.” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994).
The Phenomenon of Memory
Objective1: Define memory, and explain how flashbulb memories differ from other
memories.

Memory:

Types of Memory
o Episodic Memory:

Flashbulb Memory:
o Semantic/Generic Memory:
o Procedural Memory:
Many activities require all three types of memory.
For example: Playing the game of tennis
Semantic Memory: Knowing the official rules of how many sets are needed to win a match
Episodic Memory: Remembering who served last or remembering the score
Procedural Memory: Knowing how to lob or volley
Now you come up with your own example…
Information Processing
Objective 2: Describe Atkinson-Shiffrin’s classic three-stage processing model of
memory, and explain how the contemporary model of working memory differs.

Encoding:

Storage:

Retrieval:
Analogy
A library, for example, must have some ways of acquiring and cataloging information
(encoding), retaining it (storage), and making it available to the users (retrieval).
Another good analogy is a computer. Now you come up with your own example…

Sensory Memory:

Short-Term Memory (Working Memory):

Long-Term Memory:
(See diagram on the next page)
Encoding: Getting Information In
How We Encode
Automatic Processing
Objective 3: Describe the types of information we encode automatically.

Automatic Processing:
o Space:
o Time:
o Frequency:
Effortful Processing
Objective 4: Contrast effortful processing with automatic processing, and discuss the
next-in-line effect, the spacing effect, and the serial position effect.


Effortful Processing:
Rehearsal:
o Ebbinghaus:
o Maintenance Rehearsal:
o Elaborative Rehearsal:

Spacing Effect (distributed practice vs. massed practice)

Serial Position Effect:
o Primacy Effect:
o
Recency Effect:
What We Encode
Encoding Meaning
Objective 5: Compare the benefits of visual,, acoustic, and semantic encoding in
remembering verbal information, and describe a memory-enhancing strategy related to
the self-reference effect.

Visual Encoding:

Acoustic Encoding:

Semantic Encoding:

Transfer-Appropriate Process:

Levels of Processing Model:
Visual Encoding
Objective 6: Explain how encoding imagery aids effortful processing, and describe
some memory-enhancing strategies that use visual encoding.

Imagery:

Mnemonic Devices:
o Method of Loci:
o Peg-Word System
Organizing Information for Encoding
Objective 7: Discuss the use of chunking and hierarchies in effortful processing.

Chunking:
Storage: Retaining Information
Sensory Memory
Objective 8: Contrast two types of sensory memory.

Iconic Memory:

Echoic Memory:
Working/Short-Term Memory
Objective 9: Describe the duration and working capacity of short-term memory
Long-Term Memory
Objective 10: Describe the capacity and duration of long-term memory.
Storing Memories in the Brain
Synaptic Changes
Objective 11: Discuss the synaptic changes that accompany memory formation and
storage.

Long-term potentiation (LTP):
Stress-Hormones and Memory
Objective 12: Discuss some ways stress hormones can affect memory.
Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories
Objective 13: Distinguish between implicit and explicit memory, and identify the main
brain structure associated with each.


Amnesia:
o Retrograde Amnesia:
o Anterograde Amensia:
Implicit Memory:

Explicit Memory:

Hippocampus

Cerebellum:
Retrieval: Getting Information Out
Objective 14: Contrast the recall, recognition, and relearning measures of memory.

Recall:

Recognition:

Relearning:
Retrieval Cues
Objective 15: Explain how retrieval cues help us access stored memories, and describe
the process of priming.

Priming:
Context Effects
Objective 16: Cite some ways that context can affect retrieval.

Context Effects:

Déjà vu:
Mood and Memories
Objective 17: Describe the effects of internal states on retrieval.

State-Dependent Memory:
Forgetting
Objective 18: Explain why we should value our ability to forget, and distinguish three
general ways our memory fails us.



Three sins of forgetting:
o Absent-mindedness:
o Transience:
o Blocking:
Three sins of distortion:
o Misattribution:
o Suggestibility:
o Bias:
One sin of intrusion:
o Persistence:
Encoding Failure
Objective 19: Discuss the role of encoding failure in forgetting.
On explanation for forgetting is that we fail to encode information for entry into our memory
system. Without effortful processing, much of what we sense we never notice or process.
In the space below draw the front side of a penny.
How accurate were you? Why is this a difficult task even though you have
probably looked at thousands of pennies in your life?
Storage Decay
Objective 20: Discuss the concept of storage decay, and describe Ebbinghaus’
forgetting curve.

According to Ebbinghaus
Retrieval Failure
Retrieval failure can occur if we have too few cues to summon information from long-term
memory.
Interference
Objective 21: Contrast proactive and retroactive interference, and explain how they
can cause retrieval failure.

Proactive interference:

Retroactive interference:
Motivated Forgetting
Objective 22: Summarize Freud’s concept of repression, and state whether this view is
reflected in current memory research.

Repression:
Memory Construction
Memories are not stored as exact copies, and they certainly are not retrieved as such. Rather,
we construct our memories, using both stored and new information. In many experiments
around the world, people have witnessed an event, received or not received misleading
information about it, and then taken a memory test. Results show that people often
misremember.
Misinformation and Imagination Effects
Objective 23: Explain how misinformation and imagination can distort our memory of
an event.

Misinformation effect:
Source Amnesia
Objective 24: Describe source amnesia’s contribution to false memories.

Source Amnesia (source misattribution):
Discerning True and False Memories
Objective 25: List some differences and similarities between true and false memories.
Unreal memories feel like real memories. Neither the sincerity nor the longevity of a
memory signifies that it is real. The most confident and consistent eyewitnesses are often not
the most accurate.
Memories of imagined experiences are usually limited to the gist of the supposed event—the
meanings and feeling we associate with it. True memories contain more details than
imagined ones.
Children’s Eyewitness Recall
Objective 26: Give arguments supporting and rejecting the position that very young
children’s reports of abuse are reliable.
A supporting argument is that even very young children can accurately recall events if a
neutral person talks to them in words they can understand, asks nonleading questions, and
uses the cognitive interview technique. A challenging argument is that preschoolers are more
suggestible than older children or adults, and they can be induced, through suggestive
questioning, to report false events.
Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse?
Objective 27: Discuss the controversy over reports of repressed and recovered
memories of childhood sexual abuse.
Improving Memory
Objective 28: Explain how an understanding of memory can contribute to effective
study techniques.

Overlearn:

Use elaborative rehearsal:

Rehearse actively:

Use mnemonic devices:

Capitalize on context effects and mood congruence:

Study the material as close to when you learn it as possible:

Be able to not only recognize the information but to also recall it:

Remember the primacy and recency effect: