Modules 26-30 (Myers)



How does information get into memory?
How is information maintained in memory?
How is information pulled back out of
memory?
The Analogy
Figure 7.2 Three key processes in memory







Mrs. Haltli memorizes the license plate of her car
during a family vacation, because she knows that the
clerk at the hotel will ask for it at the reception desk.
Explain the roles of the following memory concepts in
her task using Atkinson and Shiffrin’s modified threestage processing model of memory (Myers, 327).
Sensory Memory
Attention
Encoding
Working/short-term memory
Long-term memory
Retrieval
(The purpose of FRQ #1 is to summarize the STAGES of
the entire MEMORY PROCESS including encoding,
storage, and retrieval).

Step #1: Pay attention


After we see, hear, touch, etc. something, we
unconsciously decide whether or not it’s important. If
it is, we pay attention and encode it into memory.
Step #2: Filter out unimportant info
This takes place constantly!
 Filtering happens twice

1.
2.

a
Immediately after sensory detection and before
meaning recognition EX. React without knowing it
Immediately after meaning recognition and before
response selection EX. You hear your name from across
the room, even though you were not aware you were
listening

1.
2.
3.
While and after you are encoding memory, it is stored according to it purpose
in one, two, or all three different cognitive warehouses:
Sensory Memory: from raw sense date; sensory store is about ¼ sec.
Attention moves it into short-term/working memory. Evidence: afterimages,
Sperling’s experiment (pg. 336)
Short-term/working memory: from filtered sensory data; this store is limited
to 20-30 sec. max and 7+ or – 2 chunks of information. In order to maintain
information, you must rehearse (repeat) it. Also has a visual, acoustic,
organizational, and syncing features. Evidence: Miller’s experiment on the
“Magic Number,” Ebbinghaus’ study on decay without rehearsal (pg. 353),
Baddeley’s working memory model
Long-term memory: passed on by short-term/working memory; thought to
be infinite in capacity; organizes information; decays overtime and may be
altered by interference at time of retrieval. Evidence: Synaptic changes and
long-term potentiation (pg. 340), role of hippocampus and cerebellum (pg.
344), flashbulb memory and stress hormone studies (pg. 341)
Figure 7.7 The
Atkinson and
Schiffrin model of
memory storage
Baddeley’s expansion
on STM called
“working memory
Information-processing
theories
• Subdivide memory
into 3 different
stores
• Sensory, Shortterm/working,
Long-term

Baddeley (1986) – 4 components of working memory
 Phonological rehearsal loop:
 represented ALL of STM in the original model
 is active when one uses recitation to temporarily hold on to information.

Visuospatial sketchpad:
 allows temporary holding and manipulation of visual images
 E.g mentally rearrange the furniture in your bedroom

Executive control system:
 handles the limited amount of information juggled at one time as people engage in
reasoning and decision making
 E.g. weigh pros and cons of something, like should I go to Five Guys or Arby's?

Episodic Buffer:
 a temporary, limited capacity store that allows the various components of working
memory to integrate information
 serves as an interface between working and LTM.
Getting information back out of memory so you can use it. This
mostly relates to long-term memory, though some of the
phenomena are also found in short-term/working memory.
Here’s what helps us retrieve:
1. Retrieval cues (priming). Absence of Cues=Tip-of-the-tongue
phenomenon
2. Context
3. Proper mood to retrieve mood-congruent memories
We don’t know much else about retrieval, but we have learned
why people forget.
1. Storage decay
2. Interference at the time of retrieval (proactive and
retroactive)
3. Motivated forgetting, repression, and false recovered
memories
4. Misinformation and imagination effects
1. Loftus’ study on car crashes (pg. 358)
2. source monitoring incidents

Mrs. Haltli is trying to memorize the names of all ten
of her future-husband’s siblings in order to impress
him while they are dating. What role will automatic
processing have in this task (Myers, 327)? What role
will effortful processing have in this task (Myers, 328)?
As part of your answer, be sure to comment on




Rehearsal
Spacing effect
Serial position effect
Additionally, how can each of the following levels of
processing aid her in her task, and how effective is
each in memory encoding (Myers, 331)?



Visual encoding
Acoustic/phonemic encoding
Semantic encoding
(The purpose of FRQ #2 is to study LEVELS OF
ENCODING/PROCESSING and their effectiveness)

Automatic: without knowing it, you memorize
Space: structural encoding; memorize the place on the page
where information resides
 Time: unintentionally note the sequence of the day’s events
 Frequency: you unconsciously keep track of how many
times you did something today
 Well-learned information: you see the word “Taxi” on a car.
You read it, but you don’t remember having read it.


Effortful: you memorize things on purpose by
Rehearsal: (see short-term/working memory)
 Spacing effect: You shouldn’t try to memorize too much at
once. Space out the material over a period of time.
CRAMMING DOESN’T WORK!
 Serial position effect: You’re most likely to remember items
at the beginning of the list and at the end. The middle gets
fuzzy.




Incoming information processed at different levels, and some are
more effective than others
Deeper processing = longer lasting memory codes
Encoding levels: each level has its own brain system
 Structural, or contextual= shallow
 Location on page? Upper or lower case? Word length? Color?
 EX. You an see in your mind where the in information you
needed was on the textbook page.
 Acoustic/Phonemic = intermediate
 The encoding of sound, especially the sound of words
 EX. What sobriety conceals, alcohol reveals
 Visual= deep
 The encoding of picture images
 EX. I can picture the view of the Pecos from Santa Fe Baldie.
 Semantic = deep
 The encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words
 EX. I remember the word “cosecha,” because when I learned it
in Spanish class, it was early spring and I was planting a garden
Figure 7.4 Levels-of-processing theory
Figure 7.5 Retention at three levels of processing






Mrs. Haltli wants to memorize all of the lyrics for The
Lord of the Rings soundtrack, including the two dialects
of Elvish. Explain how the following encoding
strategies could benefit her in completing this task
(Myers, 332).
Imagery
Mnemonics
Self-reference effect (self-referent encoding) (pg. 332)
Chunking
Hierarchies
Note: This is
not Mrs. H’s
arm! Too manly.
(The purpose of FRQ #3 is to study ENCODING
TECHNIQUES and some LTM CONCEPTS)
Visual Techniques
 Imagery = creation of visual images to represent
words to be remembered

Easier for concrete objects: Easier to remember “metaphor”
or “door” when these words are flashed onto a screen?

Dual-coding theory----Semantic codes + visual
codes= better memory
Acoustic/Phonemic Techniques
 Mnemonics = memory aids, especially those
techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational
devices
Greek orators used them to help them retrieve lengthy
memorized passages and speeches.
 Both visual and acoustic codes used.
 EX. of Acoustic: Peg-word system requires you to
memorize a jingle, “One is a bun; two is a shoe; three is a
tree; four is a door; five is a hive; six is sticks; seven is
heaven; eitht is a gate; nine is swine; ten is hen.” Soon, you
can remember the words without numbers (Bugelski et al.,
1968).
 EX. of Visual: Method of Loci requires you to do a
“memory walk,” or memorize an image to represent each
component of what you’re trying to remember. In a

political speech: The basement is the introduction of
my speech, the lobby is my welcome of guests, the
elevator is my evidence on healthcare fraud, the
second floor is my analysis of healthcare fraud, the
staircase is my evidence of . . .
Semantic Techniques

Elaboration = linking a stimulus to other information at the time of
encoding


Thinking of examples like, “A phobia is an irrational fear. Oh, it’s like the
common fear of spiders!”
Self-Referent Encoding



Making information personally meaningful
E.g. Do you remember every street you pass every day?
Do you remember the street your house is on?
Organizational Techniques

Chunking = organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often
automatic (not effortful)



EX. TW-ACIA-F-BILD-SAT-TYM-CA
EX. TWA-CIA-FBI-LDS-ATT-YMCA
Hierarchies= linear organization of concepts that interrelate; use once you
develop expertise in a subject and are adding information; used for
encoding subprinciples

(see example on next slide)
Leno
O’Brien
Carson







Clustering and Conceptual Hierarchies:
Clustering is the tendency to remember similar or related items in
groups (pg. 272)
Conceptual hierarchies are multilevel classification systems based on
common properties among items (pg. 273).
Democrat
Republican
Independent
Semantic Networks:
Semantic networks consist of nodes representing concepts, joined together
by pathways that link related concepts
E.g. thinking of butter makes bread easier to remember (see next slide).
Schema: This is a classroom. What would you expect to
find that you don’t, and what do you find that you usually
don’t?






Group 1 will give their FRQs to Group 2
Group 2 will give their FRQs to Group 3
Group 3 will give their FRQs to Group 1
Group 1, grade FRQ 1, underlining key words and
concepts. Give them a grade 1-10 at the bottom and
write a short explanation justifying your grade.
Group 2, grade FRQ 2, underlining key words and
concepts. Give them a grade 1-10 at the bottom and
write a short explanation justifying your grade.
Group 3, grade FRQ 3, underlining key words and
concepts. Give them a grade 1-10 at the bottom and
write a short explanation justifying your grade.
You and a partner will work to be able to verbally
summarize and become adept at explaining the
discovery of these major storage theorists. Use
imagery, mnemonics, self-reference effect
chunking, clustering, hierarchies and other deep
encoding methods to commit them to memory.
1.
Atkinson and Schiffrin (1968): sensory, short,
long (pg. 327)
2.
Sperling (1960): experiments on sensory memory
(pg. 336)
3.
G. Miller (1956): experiments on limited capacity
of short-term memory (pg. 337)
4.
Baddeley (1986): Working Memory (look up on
web)
5.
Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve. Decay. Recall vs
recognition (pg. 353)
(MYERS MODULE 27-30)
EXTRA INFO TO ENHANCE THE BASIC
KNOWLEDGE THAT YOU GAINED FROM THE
FRQ ACTIVITY

Information-processing theories

Subdivide memory into 3 different stores
 Sensory, Short-term, Long-term
Figure 7.7 The Atkinson and Schiffrin
model of memory storage
Characteristics:
 Is brief preservation of information in
original sensory form
 Allows the sensation to linger briefly after
the sensory stimulation is over in the visual
form of an afterimage.
 Auditory/Visual SM – approximately ¼
second
Sensory Memory
Auditory/Visual
SM –
approximately ¼
second
-George Sperling
(1960)
-Classic
experiment on
visual sensory
store
-illustrating how brief the
sensory store actually is…his
experiment is depicted in the
following figure.
Figure 7.8 Sperling’s (1960) study of sensory memory

Limited duration – about 20 seconds without
rehearsal

Rehearsal – the process of repetitively verbalizing or
thinking about the information
How quickly is information lost
without rehearsal?
Miller


Definition: a limited-capacity store that can
maintain unrehearsed information for up to about
20 seconds.
Miller’s Limited capacity – magical number
7 plus or minus 2
Fact: The average person can hold 5-9 chunks of
information in STM.
 Chunking – grouping familiar stimuli for storage
as a single unit
 Open to pg. 269 for an example.
 E.g. 8 -6- 7- 5- 3- 0- 9 can be thought of as 7
individual numbers or they can be chunked
together in groups of 2, 3, etc.


Baddeley (1986) – 4 components of working memory
 Phonological rehearsal loop:
 represented ALL of STM in the original model
 is active when one uses recitation to temporarily hold on to information.

Visuospatial sketchpad:
 allows temporary holding and manipulation of visual images
 E.g mentally rearrange the furniture in your bedroom

Executive control system:
 handles the limited amount of information juggled at one time as people engage in
reasoning and decision making
 E.g. weigh pros and cons of something, like should I go to Five Guys or Arby's?

Episodic Buffer:
 a temporary, limited capacity store that allows the various components of working
memory to integrate information
 serves as an interface between working and LTM.
Figure 7.17 Recognition versus recall in the measurement of retention


Study 16: “Thanks for the Memories” by Loftus
Directions: After reading the above study, identify and write down each of the
following for 1 of the 4 experiments. READ ALL 4.





Hypothesis
Dependent and Independent Variables
Experimental Design
Results
Implications
Of course, there’s a lot of overlap between studies on
remembering and studies on forgetting. Go through slides
35-46 on the class website homepage and write down at
least 3 things you didn’t already know about forgetting.
 Poor Cues
 Interference





High Emotion and Flashbulb Memories
Ineffective Encoding




divided attention
superficial encoding (no semantic)
Decay
Amnesia



Pro and retroactive interference
Source and reality monitoring (misattributions)
misinformation
Retrograde
Anterograde
Connectionist Networks and PDP Models

Retrieval cues:

Recalling an event
The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon shows
that recall is often guided by partial information about a
word…retrieval cues.
 The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon – a failure in retrieval

Context cues: Memories can also be reinstated by context
cues…easier to recall long-forgotten events if you return after a
number of years to a place where you used to live.

Interference theory: The negative impact of competing
information on retention

Proactive: previously learned information interferes with the
retention of new information

Retroactive: new information impairs the retention for
previously learned information

Reconstructing memories occurs during retrieval,
but sometimes things go wrong

Misinformation effect: Elizabeth Loftus’s car crashes
Figure 7.19 Retroactive and proactive interference
THE KEY IS TO FOLLOW THE ARROW!
 Source monitoring, reality
monitoring



“I told ‘em that a chain
link fence would never
hold rhinos! No, wait! I
meant to tell ‘em!


The misinformation effect is explained in
part by the unreliability of source
monitoring
Source monitoring: the process of
making attributions about the origins of
memories
People make decisions at the time of
retrieval about where their memory is
coming from. E.g. Cryptomnesia is
inadvertent plagiarism that occurs when
you think you came up with it but were
really exposed to it earlier.
Reality monitoring : a type of source
monitoring involving determining
whether memories are based in actual
events (external sources) or your
imagination (internal sources)
E.g. Did I pack my lunch, or did I only
think about packing it?

Flashbulb memory


Details of strong, emotional memories are often wrong, and
they become more wrong over time.
Due to stress hormones at time of encoding. Flashbulb
memories decay more rapidly.

Ineffective Encoding:

Decay theory:
primarily due to (1) lack of
attention or (2) phonemic or structural encoding instead of
semantic encoding
forgetting occurs because memory traces
fade with time. Remember Ebbingaus, Sperling, and Miller?
Remember flashbulb memories?





Authenticity of repressed memories?
Motivated forgetting of painful or unpleasant memories.
Surge of reports of repressed memories of child sexual abuse.
Empirical studies that show that it is not at all hard to create false memories
and that many recovered memories are actually the product of suggestion.
Memory illusions- Roediger and McDermott (2000)
(1) Participants are asked to learn a list of words, (2) Another target
word that is not on the list but is strongly associated with the learned
words is presented
 Results: The subjects remember the non-presented target word over
50% of the time…on a recognition test, they remember it about 80% of
the time.

 Controversy
 Research clearly shows that memories can be created by suggestion
This issue becomes quite emotionally charged.
 Lack of data to estimate what proportion of recovered memories of abuse
are authentic and what proportion are not.





Crews, Frederick. The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute (*). New York
Review Books. 1995. Basically consists of two lengthy and famous articles on
Freud and the recovered memory controversy written originally for the New York
Review. Crews argues that Freud was wrong in general and particulars because he
was not a good or even honorable scientist and that the recovered memory
movement is thereby built on a shaky foundation. Includes also letters to the
editor mostly highly critical of Crews and supportive of Freud, psychoanalysis,
and recovered memories. For a more extended and even harsher critique of Freud
and believers in psychoanalysis, see Malcolm Macmillan's Freud Evaluated: The
Completed Arc (North-Holland, 1991)
Franklin, Eileen, & Wright, W. Sins of the Father. Crown, 1991. The notorious case
of Ms. Franklin who recovered a repressed memory that her father killed her
childhood friend over twenty years before. Her testimony was the only evidence
used to convict her father. For suggestions that the memory probably was
fabricated see Loftus, and Ofshe & Watters below and MacLean, Harry, Once Upon
a Time (HarperCollins, 1993).
Fredrickson, Renee. Repressed Memories. (*) Fireside, 1992. An impassioned plea for
the existence of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse and guidelines for
how to deal with them.
Freyd, Jennifer. Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Harvard
University Press, 1996. A distinguished cognitive psychologist presents the case
for repressed and recovered memories of childhood abuse.
Figure 7.22 The prevalence of false memories observed by Roediger and McDermott (1995)




Retrograde Amnesia: you can’t remember
memories before the incident, but new memories
can still be created.
Anterograde Amnesia: you can’t remember most
memories created after the incident, while longterm memories from before the event remain
intact.
Both can occur together in the same patient.
Memory storage is still a theory, so it’s hard to tell
what’s going on physically. We do know that the
regions involved are certain sites in the temporal
cortex, especially in the hippocampus and
associated regions






Connectionist Networks and PDP Models
Parallel distributed processing (or PDP) models of memory suggest that the
connections between units of knowledge are strengthened with experience.
Tapping into any connection (via a memory process) provides us with access
to all the other connections in the network.
Specific memories correspond to specific patterns of activation in these
networks.
Example: Zoë's knowledge that the term neonate means "newborn" is linked
to her memory of seeing a premature infant taken to a neonatal unit. Both
neonate and neonatal are connected to her memory that neo means "new."
When Zoë thinks of neonate, an image of her nephew as a newborn is also
readily accessible. This background made it easier for her to understand
that a neofreudian is a person who developed a new version of Freud's
theory (Bernstein).
Long-term Potentiation
The physical version of connectionist networks and PDP models. Neurons
connect to form memories. When memories are retrieved OFTEN, synaptic
relations INCREASE. When memories are retrieved SELDOM, synaptic
relations DECREASE. “Potentiation” refers to the action potentiation that
travels down a neuron’s axon.
Encoding Specificity:

closer a retrieval cue is to the way
we encode the info, the better we are able to remember.
E.g. How do you remember the Pythagorean Theorem? Do you
have a semantic link that you used to encode it? If so and you
use the same link to retrieve it, you’ll likely remember it.

Transfer-Appropriate Processing:

memory
retrieval will be improved if the encoding method matches the
retrieval method

E.g. Samantha studied for an auto mechanics test by spending many weekends with
her head under the hood of a car. However, much to her surprise, when it came time
to take the test, the professor handed out a multiple-choice exam. Samantha, who felt
that she had really learned the material, scored poorly. According to the transferappropriate processing model, Samantha did not do well because she encoded the
material by applying what she had learned from the text, but the exam asked her only
to retrieve specific facts. Samantha's encoding process wasn't appropriate for the
retrieval process required by the exam.





Take an index card that has declarative,
procedural, semantic, episodic, prospective,
retrospective memory written on it.
Research the term that is on your card.
Find five different people who have researched
the other five kinds of independent memory.
Creatively find a way to schematically connect
all six types of independent memory visually on
a piece of butcher paper using the cards. You
may mark the paper.
Resources: Myers pgs. 342-343, Weiten pgs. 290293
Independent Memory Systems
Prospective=
remembering to do
something that hasn’t
happened yet
Retrospective:
remembering an event
from the past.
Go to this website for additional information: http://www.humanmemory.net/types_long.html

Myers 365-366. Look through these pages and
plan on how to use at least three of these
techniques to improve your memory in the near
future. Write them down. You have 10 minutes.
1994
8. When rehearsal of incoming information is prevented, which of the following will most likely
occur?
A.
The information will remain indefinitely in short-term memory
B.
There will be no transfer of the information to long-term memory
C.
The sensory register will stop processing the information
D.
Retrieval of the information from long-term memory will be easier
E.
Information already in long-term memory will be integrated with the incoming information
28. A teenager would most likely draw upon which of the following to recall her tenth birthday
party?
A.
Episodic memory
B.
Semantic memory
C.
Echoic memory
D.
Eeidetic imager
E.
State-dependent learning

A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
33. Elena is presented with a list of 20 numbers. When asked to recall this list, she remembers
more numbers from the beginning than from the end of the list. This phenomenon
demonstrates which of the following types of effects?
Mnemonic
Primacy
Recency
Secondary
Clustering
1999
13. According to the information-processing view of memory, the first stage in memory processing
involves
A.
Retrieval
B.
Storage
C.
Rehearsal
D.
Encoding
E.
Transfer
20. When a list of words is learned in order, the words most likely to be forgotten are those that are
A.
At the beginning
B.
At the end
C.
In the middle
D.
Hardest to pronounce
E.
Easiest to spell
28. An individual’s ability to remember the day he or she first swam the length of a swimming
pool is most clearly an example of which of the following kinds of memory?
A.
Semantic
B.
Flashbulb
C.
Procedural
D.
Priming
E.
Episodic
2004
6. The ability to choose specific stimuli to learn about, while filtering out or ignoring other
information, is called
A.
Selective attention
B.
Subliminal perception
C.
Time-sharing
D.
Masking
E.
Shadowing
38. A schema can be described as
A.
An outer layer of the eye
B.
A mental construct
C.
A fissure between lobes of the brain
D.
An optical illusion
E.
A fixed response to a particular stimulus
51. Which of the following is an example of retrograde amnesia?
A.
Ty cannot recall the face of the thief he saw running from the scene of the crime
B.
Cassie’s vivid memory of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger is not corroborated by
those she was with at the time
C.
Alberto is unable to remember anything since the accident that destroyed portions of his
hippocampus
D.
Katie attributes her poor performance on a standardized test to the fact that she took the
exam in a room other than the one in which she learned the material
E.
Alyse cannot remember any details of what happened right before her car accident
2004
73. Remembering how to roller skate involves which of the following kinds of
memory?
A.
Semantic
B.
Episodic
C.
Priming
D.
Procedural
E.
Prospective

77. Material that an individual cannot remember but is on the “tip of the tongue” is
A.
In episodic memory, but not in semantic memory
B.
In sensory memory, but not in iconic memory
C.
In short-term memory, but not in long-term memory
D.
Available, but not accessible
E.
Retrieved, by not encoded
86. When Shelly first had cable television service installed, PBS was on channel 9. Her
cable company then switched PBS to channel 16. Shelly now has trouble
remembering that PBS is on channel 16 and not on channel 9. This memory
problem represents
A.
Memory decay
B.
Retrograde amnesia
C.
Reconstruction errors
D.
Retroactive interference
E.
Proactive interference
2007
7. A moviegoer who cannot identify the name of a film star remembers the name when a friend
reviews a list of starts. This incident illustrates which two concepts in human memory?
A.
Rehearsal and chunking
B.
The primacy effect and the recency effect
C.
Constructive and reconstructive memory
D.
The sensory register and short-term memory
E.
Recall and recognition
13. Two groups of participants in a study are presented a list of 20 words. The first group is told to
count the number of capital letters in the words and the second group is told to think of the
definition of each word. When both groups are asked to recall the word lists, which of the
following is most likely to occur?
A.
Each group will recall the same number of words.
B.
The first group will recall more words than the second group
C.
The first group will rehearse the words, but the second group will not
D.
The second group will recall more words than the first group
E.
Both groups will recall all of the words

A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
31. An example of episodic memory is the memory of
One’s high school graduation
The capital of a state
What the musical note C sounds like
How to type
A mood that is triggered by the experience of a particular scent
2007
73. Long-term potentiation is best described as the
A.
Interference effect of old memories on the formation of new memories
B.
Disruptive influence of recent memories on the recall of old memories
C.
Tendency of people to recall experiences that are consistent with their
current mood
D.
Increased efficiency of synaptic transmission between certain neurons
following learning
E.
Superior ability of older adults to recall events from their childhood
76. The process of remembering several pieces of information by mentally
associating an image of each with a different location is a mnemonic
device known as
A.
The key-word method
B.
The method of loci
C.
The peg word system
D.
The link method
E.
Chunking
1994

8. B

28. A

33. B
2004 CTD

73. D

77. D

86. E
1999

13. D

20. C

28. E
2007

7. E

13. D

31. A

73. D

76. B
2004

6. A

38. B

51. E