Memory
•   Memory: persistence of learning over time via the storage and retrieval of information.
•   Gives us our sense of self and connects us to past experiences.

What would it be like to live without memory?
Clive Wearing
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y)

If you didn ’ t succeed in retrieving all seven, you are in good company. Most people can ’ t do this task easily. And that ’ s very helpful because we can use the results to demonstrate some important features of remembering and forgetting.
A simplified model of remembering involves a three-stage process:
1. ENCODING
To become a memory, information must first be registered in sensory memory – it must stand out among a variety of stimuli and be selected for further processing.
2. STORAGE
When we rehearse short-term memories sufficiently, we encode them for placement in long-term memory.
3. RETRIEVAL
We seek information from long-term memory storage.

Three Stage Processing Model of Encoding
•   Stage One: The initial recording of sensory information in the memory system is referred to as sensory memory.
•   Stage Two: sensory memories are processed into short term memory your activated memory which can only hold a minimal amount of information.
•   Stage Three: short term memories are encoded into long-term memory , the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse from which we retrieve.

Sensory  Memory:    refers  to  the  ini+al  recording  of  sensory   informa+on  in  the  memory  system.    All  informa+on  is  held   here  briefly  (1/2  to  4  seconds)
Sensory  Memories  include  both:
1.
Iconic  Memory:      a  momentary  sensory  memory  of  a   visual  s9muli .    Memory  only  lasts  for  a  few  tenths  of  a   second.
2.
Echoic  Memory:     a  momentary  sensory  memory  for   auditory  s9muli .    Sound  memories  can  usually  last  up  to
3  or  4  seconds.
Sensory  memory  is  very  hard  to  measure  since  it  fades  as  we   try  to  measure  it.

George Sperling ’ s Experiment to
Measure Iconic Memory
•

•   Sensory memories disappear unless you focus your selective attention on the information.
•   Attention causes information to be further processed.
•   What does this say about subliminal messages?

Sensory Memory Becomes Short-Term
Memory
•   What are characteristics of Short-Term
Memory?
•   Only through rehearsal do short-term memories become long term memories.

Encoding
Effortful Automatic

•   Automatic Processing
–   unconscious encoding of incidental information
•   space
•   time
•   frequency
–   well-learned information
•   word meanings
–   we can learn automatic processing
•   reading backwards

Automatic Processing: Reading
Backwards
•   Reading backwards requires effort at first but after practice becomes automatic.
•   .citamotua emoceb nac gnissecorp luftroffE
•   Automatic processing allows us to do multiple things at once and re-illustrates the concept of parallel processing.

•   Effortful Processing: type of encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.
•   Ex: Learning new vocabulary terms, memorizing historical events/chronology, etc.
•   Encoding can be aided by maintenance rehearsal: simple rote repetition of information in consciousness or even more successfully by elaborate rehearsal: processing of information for meaning which can more easily help produce long term memories.

King of Memory Experiments is
Hermann Ebbinghaus
•   Wanted to research capacity of verbal memory.
•   Looked to study to see capacity of peoples ’ memories to study strings of non-sense syllables.
•   Ex: JIH, FUB, YOX, XIR,

Findings of Ebbinghaus
1. Practice makes perfect.
The more rehearsal he did on day 1, the less rehearsal it took to learn the syllables again on day 2. Overlearning increased retention.
2. The Spacing Effect: the tendency for studying over a long period of time produces better long term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice. SPACED STUDYING BEATS
CRAMMING!!!

If  I  asked  you  to  list  all  the  U.S.  Presidents  in   order,  how  would  you  do?
If  I  made  a  line  graph  that  charted  how  many   students  in  the  room  knew  each  President,  what   would  the  graph  look  like?

3. Serial Position Effect: our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list. Ex:
Presidents

Explaining the Serial Position Effect
•   Primacy Effect: explains how we remember concepts at the beginning of a list since these are often the terms we have seen the most when reviewing.
•   Recency Effect: explains how we remember concepts at the end of the list a since these are the terms we have seen most RECENTLY.
•   MIDDLE IS FORGOTTEN MOST OFTEN.

•   Semantic Encoding: encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words … .yields best memory.
•   Acoustic Encoding: the encoding of sound, especially the sound of words … .usually the least effective.
•   Visual Encoding: the encoding of picture images.

•   ROY G BIV
•   Every Good Boy Does Fine
•   HOMES
•   Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

practice saying and writing the words over and over --- but, of course, the most effective rehearsal is distributed

The magic number is 7+or –2
In other words, the most we can hold in our short term stores is just 5-9 items!
But what if you have to remember more than that?

group like things together
How do you remember a phone #?
9528295379

make it
So when you see the word
“ humanism ” I tell you to think about:
I want you to remember:
HUMANISM
– a psychological approach that focuses on free will
Free Willy!

•   Imagine the route from your room to the front door of your house
•   Place people / events along the way
George Washington is in my bedroom
John Adams is right outside my bedroom door
Thomas Jefferson is in the bathroom
James Madison is at the top of the stairs

make it
•   Whose phone numbers do you remember? Why?
•   Make all kinds of material meaningful.
Experiment - making meaning – try this at home. Go to this website:
(http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/droodles)

make it
•   “ Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue in
1492 ”
•   The helping verbs
•   “ The THALAMUS is a grand station, it sends and receives information.
”

•
•   The Memoriad!
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vsYCSmBcM0)

•   Are you a reliable eyewitness?

Are you a reliable eyewitness?
( http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/wig/index.html)

•   Sherlock Holmes: “ I consider that a man ’ s brain is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose … It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.
Depend upon it, there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something you knew before.
”
•   Is this true?

•   Long Term Potentiation (LTP): refers to the longlasting strengthening of the connection between 2 neurons. Is believed to be the neural basis for learning and memory.
•   Process occurs naturally when we learn through association … after learning has occurred, neurons involved in process become more efficient at transmitting the signals.
•   Drugs that block LTP affect learning drastically.
•   Strong emotions make for stronger memories
–   Stress hormones boost impact on learning.

•   Amnesia refers to the loss of memory.
•   Amnesiac patients typically have losses in explicit memory.

•   Anterograde Amnesia: type of memory loss where patients are UNABLE TO FORM ANY NEW
MEMORIES. Can ’ t remember anything that has occurred AFTER a traumatic head injury.
•   Retrograde Amnesia: type of memory loss where patients are UNABLE TO REMEMBER PAST
EVENTS. May forget everything that happened
BEFORE a traumatic head injury.

•   Explicit Memory (declarative memory): memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and declare.

•   Hippocampus: neural center located in limbic system that helps process explicit memories for storage … .left and right hippocampus have different effects.

•   Other type of memory storage is known as
Implicit Memory
(Procedural or Skill
Memory): retention of things without conscious recollection.

•   Cerebellum: helps facilitate associate learning responses ie classical conditioning.
•   Cutting pathway to the cerebellum makes rabbits unable to learn conditioned responses.

Prospective Memory: remembering  to  do  something  in   the  future
Ex. I need to remember to get my wife an anniversary gift.
Retrospective Memory: remembering  you  already  did   something  in  the  past
Ex. I already got my wife an anniversary gift

Types of long-term memories
Explicit
(declarative)
With conscious recall
Implicit
(nondeclarative)
Without conscious recall
Facts-general knowledge
(“semantic memory”)
Personally experienced events
(“episodic memory”)
Skills-motor and cognitive
Dispositions- classical and operant conditioning effects

•   Recall: a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier.
•   Ex: Fill in the Blank.

•   Recognition: a measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned.
•   Ex: Multiple Choice

•   Priming: activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations of memory.

•   Context Effects Memory Retrieval : able to retrieve information better when you are in the same context you learned it in.
•   Emotional/Mood Impact of Memory:
–   State-Dependent Memory: information is most easily recalled when in same “ state ” of consciousness it was learned in.
–   Mood Congruent Memory: tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one ’ s current mood.