•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Cognitive Psych: the Psychology of thinking
Flashbulb Memories: a short visual image of an extremely important scene: where you
were when the Challenger exploded; Kennedy assassinated;
Even these can be extremely inaccurate.
Memory
Cognitive psychologist now view memory as similar to computer information
processing: encoding, storage and retrieval.
Encoding of New Information
Sensory data is first sent to the hippocampus (HIPPOS NEVER FORGET); a way
station for memories to either be shifted to Long-Term memory or discarded
(forgetting as lack of encoding).
Short-Term hold 7 items plus or minus 2. (Can be expanded by chunking items
together).
Encoding: LTM
Long term memory holds and almost infinite amount of images, words, smells and
sounds.
Long term memory is stored throughout the brain. If part of the brain is damaged, only
parts of long-term memory is lost. This is why you see a slow deterioration in
Alzheimer’s and stroke patients.
Encoding: Automatic Processing
Enormous amounts of info about space, time and frequency is encoded without
thinking about it at all. Where did you park your car today? What friends have you
talked to since last night?
Encoding: Effortful
Other encoding requires rehearsal/repetition for encoding to occur. Names of people,
principles of Psychology, most school work.
Effortful encoding requires attention and repetition to learn.
Ebbinghaus Curve
Ebbinghaus is to memory what Skinner was to Operant conditioning and Pavlov to
Classical.
Worked with nonsense syllables to determine how people can most efficiently work
effortfully to encode new information.
Principles of Remembering (encoding)
The more repetition one day the less required to relearn: The amount of
remembered depends on the amount of time spent learning.
Overlearning: continued learning passed the point we know information increases the
amount we retain later.
Principles of Remembering (encoding)
Information learned just before we fall asleep is poorly remembered.
•
•
•
Spacing effect: spacing our learning of a subject over a long period of time aids in
long term remembering. The longer the space between practice session, the
better the recall. NO CRAMMING!
Principles of Remembering (encoding)
Serial Position Effect: We trying to remember long lists of items, we tend to
remember the first and last items the best.
We will remember the first item the best of those two Primacy effect.
Read them the story, 1/2 cover your eyes….
• It’s about making a Kite!!!
How We Encode
•
•
Semantic: we encode best things that make sense: Learning meaningful material
requires about 1/10th the effort of meaningless.
So, both context and principle learning help us remember information.
How we encode
• Visually: Next most powerful.
• Acoustically
• Two codes are better than one: so if you can see and understand you will remember
more easily.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mnemonic devices: organizing for better memory
Peg words:association known words/images with new words or numbers to
remember.
Method of loci: placing ideas to remember around a familiar location.
Chunking: grouping ideas into chunks to reduce the number of items to encode.
Using the letters of items to be remembered to form a sentence to give you retrieval
cues: Every Good Boy Does Fine; Roy G. Biv.
Mnemonic devices: organizing for better memory.
Hierarchies: Organizing information around major principles: outlines, webbing
Principle Learning
Sensory Memories
•
•
•
•
The initial, fleeting, photographic encoding of spoken or visual sensations. Last about
4 to 5 seconds.
Visual is called iconic memory.
Auditory is called echoic memory.
First step in encoding.
Short term memory
•
+ or minus 7 items for a short period, rapid decay of unrehearsed information 12
seconds.
•
•
•
•
This is our on screen display or selective attention, what we are focusing on at any
time.
Information may stay in Hippocampus longer and then either be discarded or sent to
Long term memory.
Long Term Memory
Virtually limit-less.
Decentralized; data is stored in the area that processes it. Visual in occipital; auditory
in temporal. Etc.
•
After three years of forgetting about 65% of foreign language vocab, you retain the
rest a lifetime. Matches the Ebbinghaus curve.
Memory is Synaptic Change
• New memories cause physiological changes in the brain making networks easier to
fire by adjusting the dendrite/neurotransmitters system. The easier to fire, the easier
linked memories or concepts are to remember.
• This stored ability for a circuit to fire is called: Long Term Potentiation (LTP).
• Stress hormones help create LTP, allowing for more automatic encoding.
Implicit vs. Explicit Memories
• Explicit memories (declaritive, things you can say) are decentralized throughout the
brain: events (episodic), people, facts, school learning.
• Implicit memories:(non-declaritive things you do) knowing how to do something, are
centralized in the cerebellum (little brain). This explains infantile amnesia, learning
to swim or ride a bike. Those with hippocampus damage can still learn how to do
things.
Memory Retrieval
• To retrieve a memory you must first have some kind of retrieval cue, that activates the
neural network or schema. Those cues can be visual, auditory, or other sensations or
internal thoughts. Déjà vu is often caused by the firing of network by a cue that makes
you believe you’ve experienced the whole picture before, when really it was only one
part that was familiar.
Retrieval
• Activating one strand of a schematic memory is called Priming. Mnemonic devices
prime our memory so that we link difficult to remember memories with something
easier or more familiar.
Retrieval
•
Context effect: Putting yourself back into the context where a memory was formed
may trigger that memory. Going by an old house, a smell of perfume from a former
girlfriend, or the smell of autumn football, may bring back a flood of memories. If
you learn a list underwater, you will remember it better underwater.
Retrieval
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
State dependent memory: the emotional state we are in influence the memories that
are retrieved. When happy, sad, depressed we are likely to remember happy, sad or
depressing things.
Memory is also mood congruent: when sad we are likely to remember events as
being sadder than we thought at the time or happier if happy.
Forgetting as Retrieval error.
If we cannot remember something, it could be that we never encoded it, or that we are
having difficulty retrieving it. Interference of other memories are common retrieval
errors.
Forgetting as Retrieval error.
Proactive interference: this is when something similar you learned in the past
interferes with something new you are trying to encode. Say you studied French for
three years and then decided to take Spanish in college. You may find yourself
retrieving French words or pronouncing Spanish words with a French accent.
Forgetting as Retrieval error
Retroactive Interference: This is when a newly learned memory goes back and
interferes with an old one. Say you’ve been driving for a while and then decide to
learn a stick shift. Then when you start driving an automatic, you slam on the break
with your left foot thinking it is a clutch.
Memory Construction
Our memories are what we encode as well as how we retrieve them. Remember we
encode information semantically, for meaning, and may fill in the blanks with details
that aren’t correct, or color the memory by the mood we are in.
Misinformation Effect
Similarly, we can encode a false memory if we are led to believe something occurred
that didn’t. That memory will become just as real as memory of an event that actually
occurred. Similarly, we fill in the gaps when retrieving memories, so the retrieval cues
offered can change the memory as it comes out.
Source Amnesia
Where we got a memory from, the source, is one of our weakest areas of memory.
People often believe an event occurred when really the event was a story they had
heard (Ronald Reagan), or a dream, or a story told to them by their parents about when
they were little that didn’t occur the way they remember.
Eyewitness Memory
Because of source amnesia and misinformation effect, eyewitness memories are
notoriously bad. Recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse are also
becoming called into question because of unwittingly planting false memories
through the process of recovery.
A last thought
• Whether or not repression (burying a traumatic memory to a level you cannot retrieve)
exists is being called into question. People to seem to purposefully forget things, but
many repressed memories that are recovered seem to been planted, usually
unknowingly. However, it is just as true that some recovered memories have been
proven correct. So the answer seems to be: not as many as are thought, but some.