Survey of Modern Psychology
Memory and Learning
Memory
We will discuss:
• Types of memory
• Memory storage
• Memory retrieval
• Factors that influence memory
Types of Memory
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Implicit
Explicit
Episodic
Semantic
Short term memory
Long term memory
Flashbulb memory
Types of Memory
• Implicit
– Memory that is not consciously recalled
– For example, motor memory (typing, piano
playing)
• Explicit
– Memory that needs to be consciously/purposely
recalled
Types of Memory
• Episodic
– Memories of specific events
– Personal memories
– These involve the frontal lobe
• Semantic
– General knowledge/factual knowledge
Types of Memory
• Short term memory
– Working memory
– Memory that is used in the present
• Long term memory
– Memory of past events
– Comparable to a hard drive
Metamemory – awareness of one’s own memory
Types of Memories
Flashbulb memories
• High level of importance, high affective
response, distinctive
• Increase in amount of information that’s
recalled
• May also incorporate outside details
Memory Storage/Aids
• The short term memory can hold 7 +/- 2 items
• Chunking – grouping items together to
remember them
• Rehearsal – practicing or repeating the item to
be remembered
• Dual coding – storing a memory in more than
one modality
– Ex. The word “hat” and a mental image of a hat
Memory Aids - Rehearsal
• Maintenance rehearsal involves simple
repetition
• Elaborative rehearsal is more complex, and
uses the meaning to better understand the
information
• Elaborative rehearsal is more effective
Effects in Memory
• Primacy effect – tendency to remember an
earlier item
• Recency effect – tendency to remember a
later (more recent) item
Memory Retrieval
Recognition
i.e., multiple choice
vs.
Recall
Free recall
vs.
Serial recall
Memory Retrieval Theories
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Spreading activation
Feature lists
Cognitive economy
Typicality effect
Schema
Spreading Activation
• Semantic memory as nodes in a network (set
of related concepts)
• Every node is connected, issue of how direct
or indirect the route is
– Ex. table is easily connected to chair, but less
immediately connected to Yorkshire terrier.
• The connection between table and Yorkie might be
“things that have four legs”
Feature Lists
• Each concept is a list of features, simple
characteristics of the concept
– Defining features are stored near the top of the
list
• “Furniture” is a defining feature of “table”
• Feature comparison
– For true/false statements, feature lists are
compared for overlap
Cognitive Economy
• Challenged other theories of memory storage
and retrieval
• Said that memories should contain as little
redundant information as possible
• Inheritance – the members of a category
contain/inherit the properties of the category
itself
– Anything true of “animals” is true of dogs, cats,
etc.
Typicality Effect
• Degree to which an item is seen as typical or a
central member of a category
– Typicality effect: in “yes or no” tasks, a more
typical member of a category is judged faster
– Ex. “is an ape a mammal” is judged faster than “is
a platypus a mammal?”
Schema
A stored framework or body of knowledge about
a topic
• E.g., we have a schema of what happens when
we go to a restaurant
• We sometimes use these to reconstruct a
memory
Schemas - Research
• One group read a passage about a fictional
character “Gerald Martin’s seizure of power”
• A second group read the same paragraph, but
with the name “Adolf Hitler”
• After a waiting period, participants were
shown a list of sentences and had to indicate
whether each sentence was exactly the same,
nearly the same, or very different from the
original story.
Schemas - Research
• Participants who read the paragraph with the
name Hitler rated sentences as “the same” more
frequently when the sentence matched their
existing knowledge about Hitler, even when the
original passage did not include that information
– E.g., “Hitler was obsessed by the desire to conquer
the world”
• The effect grew stronger after more time passed
The Seven Sins of Memory
(Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft)
1. Transience
The tendency to lose access to information across time,
whether through forgetting, interference, or
retrieval failure
The Seven Sins of Memory
(Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft)
2. Absent Mindedness
Everyday memory failures in remembering information
and intended activities, probably caused by
insufficient attention or superficial, automatic
processing during coding
The Seven Sins of Memory
(Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft)
3. Blocking
Temporary retrieval failure or loss of access, such as
the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon, in either
episodic or semantic memory
The Seven Sins of Memory
(Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft)
4. Misattribution
Remembering a fact correctly from past experience but
attributing it to an incorrect source or context
The Seven Sins of Memory
(Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft)
5. Suggestibility
The tendency to incorporate information provided by
others into your own recollection and memory
representation
The Seven Sins of Memory
(Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft)
6. Bias
The tendency for knowledge, beliefs, and feeling to
distort recollection of previous experiences and to
affect current and future judgments and memory
The Seven Sins of Memory
(Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft)
7. Persistence
The tendency to remember facts or events, including
traumatic memories, that one would rather forget.
Failure to forget occurs because of intrusive
recollections and rumination.
False Memories
A false memory is a memory of something that
did not happen
Examples of False Memories
Research
• Study in which participants studied a list of
words including “bed,” “rest,” “awake,” and
“pillow” (words highly associated with
“sleep”)
– In immediate free recall, 40% of participants
recalled seeing the word “sleep,” and were
confident that it had been on the list
Examples of False Memories
Research
Researchers obtained a group of participants and
asked the participants’ families for stories about 3
real childhood events and one false one about being
lost in a mall.
– The families were instructed to make the false story
seem plausible; for example, by using the name of a
local mall
Examples of False Memories
Research
• Participants were asked to write more details
about the events that they remembered
– They wrote further details about all 4
• Later on, participants were told that one of the
four stories was made up, and asked to guess
which one that was
– 80% did guess correctly, but until that time, with no
coercion, they believed that the event had happened
– However, clarity was lower for this memory than the
real events
Memory in Eye Witness Testimony
The use of leading questions:
Leading questions hint at what the answer
should be rather than what it really is
Research on Eye Witness Testimony Loftus
• Showed participants a video of a car accident
and asked them to estimate the car’s speed
– Participants were asked how fast the cars were
going when they hit each other.
– Other groups had the word “hit” replaced with
“smashed,” “collided,” “bumped,” or “contacted”
Eye Witness Testimony - Loftus
• Participants who read more extreme verbs
(smashed) estimated the speed as being
higher
• In subsequent studies, participants who read
the word “smashed” also recalled more
damage
Factors Influencing Accuracy
People’s recollections are less influenced by
leading questions if they are forewarned that
interrogations can cause memory bias
Factors Influencing Accuracy
When the passage of time allows memories to
fade, people are more likely to misremember
Factors Influencing Accuracy
Each time a memory is retrieved, it is
reconstructed and then restored; this
increases the chances of error
Factors Influencing Accuracy
Age – young children and adults over 65 may be
more susceptible to influence and
misinformation in their efforts to recall
Factors Influencing Accuracy
Confidence does not mean accuracy. People can
be very confident in false memories
Interference in Memories
• Retroactive Interference
– New information interfering with old information
• Proactive Interference
– Old information interfering with the learning of
new information
Flaws in Memory
Memory impairment
“A genuine change or aberration in memory of an
experienced event as a function of some later
event”
Flaws in Memory
Misinformation acceptance
– Accepting additional information as being part of
the earlier experience without actually
remembering the information
– The memory becomes stronger over time
Flaws in Memory
Overconfidence in memory
• Source memory – we have difficulty
distinguishing where the information came
from
– Can be influenced by our general knowledge of
the situation
– We might remember blowing out birthday candles
even if it didn’t actually happen because it fits
with our idea of what a birthday involves
Flaws in Memory
Processing fluency
– How easily the information comes to mind
• In the study with sleep related words, the word “sleep”
came to mind very easily, and therefore one would feel
that it happened too easily and quickly for it to have
been imagined
Flaws in Memory
Recovered memories
• There’s an idea that a traumatic memory is
too harmful to remember, and therefore it’s
“blocked out”
– In reality, traumatic memories are likely to play
over and over in one’s mind
– PTSD
Biases in Memory
Mood
• Our mood changes how we interpret what’s
around us and form memories
• Depressed people are more likely to have
negative memories, and are more likely to
retrieve negative events
Biases in Memory
Expectancy
• We remember events as being congruent with
our expectations
– May be influenced by schemas
Biases in Memory
Self consistency
• We remember ourselves as being more
consistent than we are
• In successful relationships, people will
remember their initial evaluations of their
partners as being more positive
Amnesia
Anterograde amnesia
• Inability to form new memories
• Research suggests that implicit memory is not
affected, only explicit
– In studies, participants with anterograde amnesia
have been given tasks to solve, such as mazes
– Although they do not remember having
completed the maze before, they solve it more
quickly with each trial
Amnesia
Retrograde amnesia
• Inability to access old memories
– This generally applies to episodic memory rather
than semantic memory
– A person with retrograde amnesia might cover for
their memory loss by using schemas
Learning
Conditioning
• Habituation
– We are less likely to respond to a stimulus when it
becomes familiar
• Ex. getting used to the sounds of traffic or a light bulb
humming
Classical Conditioning
Pavlov
• Noticed that dogs would salivate when they
heard the sounds associated with their
feeding
• Began ringing a bell immediately before
feeding
• Dogs then learned to salivate when the bell
rang
Conditioning
Terms
• Unconditioned stimulus (US) and unconditioned
response (UR)
– Ex. stimulus might be a loud noise, response is
flinching
– Flinching is an innate response, and therefore
unconditioned
• Conditioned stimulus (CS) and conditioned
response (CR)
– Learned response
– The CS begins as neutral and does not initially cause
the CR
Conditioning
• Pairs the US and CS to elicit the CR
– i.e., pairing the US (food) with CS (bell) yielded the
CR of salivation
Conditioned Emotional Response
I participated in a study where I was hooked up
to a sensor monitoring heart rate and a
mechanism to give electric shocks
• Shocks were given when specific (neutral)
pictures were shown
• Over time, seeing the picture induced an
anxious response because I (or other
participants) was expecting the painful shock
Extinction
If the CS is repeatedly given without the US, the
CR will disappear
i.e., Bell but no food
Instrumental/Operative Conditioning
• Given a reward with a proper response
– Ex. animal training – the dog gets a treat when it
sits
The idea behind operant conditioning is that
there are consequences for a behavior
Shaping
Shaping – only giving the reward when the
behavior comes closer to a desired result
– First reward an animal for walking to a specific
corner of a cage
– After it stays there all the time, reward it only
when facing a specific direction
– Add that the animal needs to stand on its hind
legs to get the reward
Partial Reinforcement
Fixed ratio schedule
Vs.
Variable ratio/partial reinforcement
Fixed Ratio Schedule
• Reward only after action is performed X
number of times
• Ex. every three times you perform the chore
of cleaning the bathroom, you get a new CD
Variable Ratio/Partial Reinforcement
• Reward comes after multiple attempts, but
this is not a set number
• On average, the reward might come every 10
times, but that might mean the activity is
performed 5 times one day but 15 times the
next
Variable Ratio/Partial Reinforcement
• Behavior will be repeated because it is
uncertain how many times you need to
perform the activity for the reward
This is the idea behind slot machines – the
reward is big and unpredictable
Aversive Conditioning
• Response causes an unpleasant stimulus
– Ex. punishment
– Escape response – makes the unpleasant stimulus
stop
– Avoidance response – stops stimulus from
happening
Learned Helplessness
Seligman
Conducted studies with dogs
• Dogs were divided into group A and group B
• Both groups received shocks, and group A
could make them stop for both groups by
pressing a button
– Group B learned that they had no control over the
situation
Learned Helplessness
Seligman
• Both groups of dogs were later given an
avoidance learning task where they had to
jump from one compartment to another to
avoid shocks
– Group A learned quickly, group B put in less effort
to learn to avoid the shocks and became passive
• Group B had learned previously that they could not
control their environments and became passive –
believing there was no point in trying