Memory
• Scientific Frontiers Memory Videos
• How Does Memory Work (1-5)
How Many Objects Can You
Remember?
Memory
• The persistence of learning
over time through the storage
and retrieval of information
–Your memory is your mind’s
storehouse, the reservoir of
your accumulated learning
Information Processing Theory
• Encoding – the processing of
information into the memory
system
• Storage – the retention of
encoded information over time
• Retrieval – the process of getting
information out of memory
storage
ENCODING
• Encoding is the processing of
putting information into the
memory system – the first step of
building a memory is sensory
input
• Sensory input can occur in two
ways: it is either an automatic
process, or an effortful process
• Automatic Process – some
sensory information is
encoded without any
conscious effort or awareness
at all –…..you didn’t have to
do anything at the time you
were doing these things in
order to remember them later
• Effortful Processing – while
some sensory information is
gathered rather simply and
without effort, some sensory
information gathering requires
both your attention and a
conscious effort
• Two effortful practices
that may help to gather
(encode) sensory
information include
rehearsal and spacing
• Rehearsal – the conscious
repetition of information
• Spacing Effect – rehearsing
information repeatedly, over time.
Spaced studying beats cramming.
Rehearse a bit, take a break,
begin rehearsing as you start
forgetting things, take a break,
rehearse again as you begin to
forget, etc.
•Serial Position
Effect – Our
tendency to recall
best the last and
first items in a list
• Semantic Encoding – the
encoding of words, definitions,
meanings, names, dates,
events
• Acoustic Encoding – the
encoding of sounds
• Visual Encoding – the
encoding of picture images
• Flashbulb Memories –
a clear memory of an
emotionally significant
moment or event
• Flashbulb Memories – Do you
remember:
–Your first day of high school?
–Your ____ th birthday?
–Your first kiss?
–Your first sports accomplishment
(homerun, perfect “10”, goal)
–Any other singular event?
Mnemonics
Memory Shortcuts
How to Improve Your Memory
• Chunking – Organizing
items into smaller, more
familiar and manageable
units
• Who’s coming to the party? Sally,
Dave, Sean, Barry, Cindy,
Melissa, Rebecca, Tim……
–How to make it easier? Make the
list alphabetical. Group the names
by gender.
• Barry, Cindy, Dave, etc.
• Sally, Rebecca, etc…..Dave, Barry,
etc.
•Encode these 16
numbers?
–1,4,9,2,1,7,7,6,1,8,1,
2,1,9,4,1
• Much easier if it was
1492, 1776, 1812, 1941
• Acronyms – Organizing items by
creating words or sentences from the
first letters of the words to be
remembered, or making words from
each letter of the word to be
remembered
• Need to learn the names
of North America’s five
“Great Lakes”?
– Huron, Ontario, Michigan,
Erie, Superior - HOMES
• National Basketball Association –
NBA
• Self Contained Underwater
Breathing Apparatus – SCUBA
• How does a doctor diagnose Depression?
DEAD SWAMP:
Depressed mood most of the day
Energy loss or fatigue
Anhedonia
Death thoughts (recurrent), suicidal ideation or attempts
Sleep disturbances (insomnia, hypersomnia)
Worthlessness or excessive guilt
Appetite or weight change
Mentation decreased (ability to think or concentrate, indecisiveness
Psychomotor agitation or retardation
•Can’t remember how
to spell Arithmetic?
–A Rat In Toms House
Might Eat Toms Ice
Cream
Acrostics/First Letter Technique
•Take the first letter of
each word in a group
and form a new, more
manageable sentence
–My Dear Aunt Sally mathematical order of
operations: Multiply and Divide
before you Add and Subtract
–Kings Phil Came Over for the
Genes Special -(Kingdom,
Phylum, Class, Order, Genus,
Species)
• Try to remember the following:
–Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune,
Pluto
–Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue,
Indigo, Violet
– Frontal, Parietal, Temporal,
Occipital
Substitution Technique
• Letters are used to replace
numbers, or vice versa
• Want to buy a mattress? 1800-628-8737
• Want love? 1-976-438-5683
–Or, 1-800-MATTRES (leave the
last S off for “Savings”)
–Or, 1-976-GETLOVE
Acoustic Mnemonics
• Acoustical encoding may also
enhance the processing of
other information by applying
rhyme schemes, stories,
songs, etc. to the information.
• Trying to remember the concept that
alcohol lowers inhibitions and
encourages socialization?…..”What
sobriety conceals, alcohol reveals”.
• “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must
acquit,” is easily remembered by
jurors when a lawyer is fighting for his
client’s innocence.
• Fifty Nifty States
• Thirty days has September; April, June,
and November; When short February is
done, All the rest have thirty-one.
• In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue.
• "i" before "e," except after "c," or in
sounding like "ay" as in "neighbor" or
"weigh."
Visual Mnemonic
• Visual encoding may also
enhance the processing of other
information. For example, if you
are trying to remember a list of
grocery items, you may mentally
picture a grocery store and place
the items in the store (Method of
Loci).
Memory
Storage: Retaining Information
• Remembering Everything Part I
• Remembering Everything Part II
• Woman Who Cant Forget
Information Processing Theory
• Atkinson and Shiffrin’s “ThreeStage Processing” Model
• Memories are stored in a
three-step process of sensory
memory, short-term
memory, and long-term
memory
• Sensory Memory – the immediate, initial
recording of sensory information; fleeting,
temporary information
• Short-Term Memory – activated memory
that holds a few items briefly, such as the
seven-digits of a phone number while you
are dialing, and then the information is
either stored, or forgotten
• Long-term Memory – the relatively
permanent and limitless storehouse of
memories
Sensory Memory
• Sensory memory retention is only
fleeting and momentary; it is less than
a second
• Sensory memory retention allows us
to remember small, quick bits of
information for a very short period of
time, though it is not generally
encoded
• Iconic Memory: Our
fleeting photographic
memory
• Echoic Memory: Our
fleeting memory for
auditory sensations
Short-Term Memory or
Working Memory
• Short-term memory has two important
characteristics. First, short-term memory
can contain at any one time seven, plus or
minus two, "chunks" of information.
• Second, items remain in short-term
memory around ten to thirty seconds.
• The ability to hold and manipulate
information over a brief period of time.
Forgetting can occur rapidly, especially if
distracted.
Long-Term Memory
• A system in the brain that can store vast
amounts of information on a relatively
enduring basis
• The information can be facts you learned a
few minutes ago, personal memories that
are decades old, or skills learned with
practice.
There are three types of Long Term
Memories
• Episodic Memory – Memories of
specific events, stored in a
sequence
• Semantic Memory – General
knowledge of the world, stored as
facts, meanings, or in categories
• Procedural Memory – Memories
of skills and how to perform them
Long Term Memories can be….
• Explicit Memory – Conscious
memories of facts or events we
actively tried to remember
• Implicit Memories – Memories
that are unintentional and are
brought to consciousness
inadvertently
• The average adult has more than
a billion bits of information in
memory
• Storage capacity of long-term
memories has been estimated at
million times that (1,000,000 X
1,000,000,000)
Storing Memories in the Brain
• The hippocampus is relevant to short-term
memory especially, like a holding cell until
memories can be transferred into longterm memory – especially explicit memory
• The cerebellum is primarily responsible for
implicit memory storage
• The amygdala stores many memories tied
to emotions
The Hippocampus and Memory
Memory
Retrieval: Getting Information Out
• Retrieval is the process
of getting information out
of memory storage
• Recall – memory is the ability to
retrieve exact information learned at
an earlier time
– IE. Fill in the blank test.
– IE. Columbus sailed in the year
________. 6 x 6 = _____. Define
retrieval ______.
My Social Security
number is _______.
Recall Memory
• Recognition – a measure of memory
in which a person only needs to
identify items previously learned
– IE. A multiple-choice test.
– IE. Of the following choices, which is
the correct answer to 6 x 6 ____. You
can’t remember the names of all 400
kids you graduated high school with, but
if I show you pictures of them you can
remember who you went to school with
and who you didn’t.
• Relearning – the principle that if
you’ve learned something and forgot
it, you probably will learn the material
more easily the second time –
therefore, retrieval is easier and
quicker as well
– IE. Learned to play the guitar and
played for five years. Haven’t played in
10 years, but you pick up a guitar and
play a few tunes, and with a few lessons
you play as well as you did before.
l
• Primers – the activation of particular
associations in memory, by a keyword or
some other type of sensory input
– Can’t remember a word? Here’s the first
letter
– Can’t remember a song? Here’s the first few
notes
– Seeing the color red brings back memories
of…
– Smelling suntan lotion brings back memories
of….
• Context Effects – the tendency
to remember information better
and more accurately when you
are in a physical setting that is
similar to the one that you
learned the information in the
first place
• State-Dependent Theory – what
we learn in one emotional or
physical state – happy or sad,
drunk or sober – is sometimes
more easily recalled when we are
again in that same emotional
state
• Mood-Congruent – our moods bias
our past memories
– IE. You had a fantastic wedding, happy
and jovial. Five years later, in the
middle of a bad divorce, all that you
remember is how hectic the day was,
how uncomfortable it was, how stressed
you were, how annoying your wife-to-be
was leading up to the day…….
• déjà vu – “Already Seen” (French)
– The eerie sense that “I’ve been in this
exact situation before”
– Paranormal Explanation – Precognition
or Reincarnation?
– Memory Explanation – If a situation is
loaded with clues that are similar to
ones already in memory, your brain
makes similar associations between
them
Memory
Forgetting, Memory Construction, and
Improving Memory
Why do we forget?
• Age - The older we get, the less
responsive the brain areas associated with
encoding and retaining memory are.
Therefore, long-term memory is especially
hindered.
• Absent-Mindedness – inattention to detail
leads to poor encoding, trivial storage, and
often failed retrieval
– AbM Test
• Transience–Ebbinghaus’ “Forgetting Curve”
states that much of what we learn
we forget rather quickly if it’s not
used – we forget about 35% of what
we learn within five (5) days, but
then we retain the rest for a rather
long period of time
• Decay Theory –
– forgetting is due to normal
metabolic processes that occur
in the brain over time
– if memories are unused over a
long period of time, they begin
to naturally fade away
• Pro-active Interference – occurs
when something you learned
earlier (an old memory) disrupts
your ability to create a new
memory
–IE. You buy a new car and want to
switch on the headlights, but
instead you keep turning on the
windshield wipers.
• Retro-active Interference – occurs
when new information makers it
harder to recall something you
learned earlier
–IE. Your new phone number
interferes with remembering your
old phone number.
• Repression - a basic
defense mechanism that
banishes from
consciousness anxietyarousing thoughts, feelings,
and memories
• Tip-Of-The-Tongue
Experience – the inability to
get a bit of information that
you’re absolutely certain is
stored in your memory – the
information is very close, but
just out of reach
• Source Confusion – arises when the
true source of a memory is forgotten,
so you create details to fill in the gaps
• Misinformation Effect – a person’s
existing memories can be altered if
the person is exposed to misleading
information or questions
– Eyewitness Testimony…How reliable is
it?
• The Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony
Part I
• The Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony
Part II
• Amnesia – sever memory loss
• Retrograde Amnesia – especially due to
injury, patients lose most of their memory
of past events, especially most recent
events
• Anterograde Amnesia – the inability to
form new memories
• Alzheimers – as plaques build in the brain
and interfere with neural transmissions,
memories cannot be formed or retrieved
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Alzheimer’s Treatment
Blocking Memories, Medically
Life Without Memory I
Life Without Memory II