Memory
Memory: the storage, retention and recall of events,
information and procedures.
I. Early Research on Memory: Ebbinghaus
A. Nonsense Syllables: REK, JIB, MOF, QON
B. Memory Interference: the retention of older material
makes it harder to retain new material and vice versa.
1) Proactive Interference: when old material interferes
with new material.
2) Retroactive Interference: when new material interferes
with old material.
II. Tests of Memory
A. Free Recall: to produce an open-ended response from
memory.
B. Cued Recall: the person being tested gets hints about the
correct answer.
C. Recognition: the person being tested is offered several
choices and then asked to select the correct one.
D. Savings method: compares the rate at which someone
relearns material as opposed to learning something new.
1) original learning time – relearning time = memory
III. Explicit Memory versus Implicit Memory
A. Explicit Memory: involves the recall of knowledge and
events in which a person deliberately retrieves the answer
and recognizes it as a correct one.
1) Declarative Memories: memories we can readily
state in words.
B. Implicit Memory: an experience influences something
you say or do even though you might not be aware of the
influence.
1) Procedural Memories: memories of motor skills.
C. Priming: activating particular associations in memory.
IV. InformationProcessing Model
of Memory:
information enters
the system, is
processed and
coded in various
ways, and is then
stored for later
retrieval.
A. Sensory Store (iconic memory): the very brief storage of
sensory information and is the first stage of memory processing.
B. Short-Term Memory: the temporary storage of recent
events.
1) Attention: in reference to memory, the process that moves
information from the sensory store to short-term memory.
C. Long-Term Memory: a relatively permanent storage of
mostly meaningful information.
1) Semantic Memory: memory of general principals.
2) Episodic Memory: memory for specific events in a
person’s life.
D. Capacities of Short-Term and Long-Term Memory
E. Decay of Short-Term and Long-Term Memory
F. Chunking: grouping items into meaningful sequences or
clusters.
G. Working Memory: a system for processing or working with
current information.
1) Phonological loop: stores and rehearses auditory
information.
2) Visuospatial Sketchpad: stores and manipulates visual
and spatial information.
3) Central Executive: governs shifts of attention.
4) Episodic Buffer: retrieves information from long-term
memory that influences one’s experience with incoming
auditory and visual information.
V. Long-Term Memory Storage and Retrieval
A. Recognition: the ability to identify a previously encountered
stimulus.
B. Recall: the ability to reproduce material from memory.
C. Retrieval Cue: associated information that aids in memory
retrieval.
D. Levels-of-Processing Principal: how easily we can
retrieve a memory depends on the number and types of
associations we form.
1) Rehearsal: repeat over and over again until memorized.
2) Organization: categorizing material to be remembered.
Hawk, Oriole, Tiger, Timberwolf, Blue Jay, Bull
E. Encoding Specificity Principal: the associations you form
during the time of learning are the most effective retrieval cues.
F. Mnemonic Device: any memory aid that is based on
encoding each item in a special way.
G. Elaboration: a mnemonic strategy of making mental
associations involving items to be remembered.
1) Method of Loci: you memorize a series of places and
then using a vivid image, you associate each of these
locations with something you want to remember.
H. The Serial-Order Effect: the tendency to remember the
beginning and end of a list better than the middle.
1) The Primacy Effect: the tendency to remember the beginning of a list.
2) The Recency Effect: the tendency to remember the end of a list.
I. State-Dependent Memory: when you remember something
better if you are emotionally or physically in the same condition
during recall as you were during learning.
J. Flashbulb Memories: when you experience something so
emotionally shocking that you remember the event, but as time
goes by, you forget the details.
K. Context-Dependent Memories: when you think of what you
want to do somewhere, but forget what you were going to do
when you arrive at that location… by returning to the place
where you had the original thought, you are able to remember.
L. Memory Reconstruction: during an event, we construct a
memory. When we try to retrieve the memory, we reconstruct an
account based partly on surviving memories and partly on
expectations of what must have happened.
M. Recovered Memories: reports of long lost memories,
prompted by clinical techniques.
N. False Memory: a report that one believes to be a memory
but that does not correspond to actual events.
1) Déjà Vu: the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed
or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances
of the previous encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined.
O. Repression: the process of moving an unbearably
unacceptable memory or impulse from the conscious mind to
the unconscious mind.
P. Dissociation: a stored memory that cannot be retrieved.
VI. Amnesia: a severe loss or deterioration of
memory or the inability to store or retrieve
memory.
A. Anterograde Amnesia: the inability to store new long
term memories.
B. Retrograde Amnesia: loss of memory for events that
occurred shortly before brain damage.
C. Infantile Amnesia: the inability to remember events
experienced within the first two to three years of life.
D. Old Age Amnesia: the progressive loss of memory or the
inability to retrieve memories due to old age.
E. Dementia: deterioration in cognitive and behavioral
functioning due to physiological causes resulting in amnesia.
F. Korsakoff’s Syndrome: a form of dementia leading to
memory loss that results from a deficiency of vitamin B1,
typically brought on by chronic alcoholism.
1) Symptoms include… Apathy, Confusion, Retrograde Amnesia,
Anterograde Amnesia, and…
2) Confabulation: wild guessing mixed in with correct information,
generated in an effort to hide gaps in memory.
G. Alzheimer’s Disease: a progressive, degenerative brain
disorder characterized by irreversible deterioration in memory,
intelligence, awareness, and control of bodily functions,
eventually leading to death.