Memory
Chapter 6
Part I
William G. Huitt
Last revised: May 2005
Summary
• A human being is inherently
– biological
– conditioned by the environment
– gathering data about the world through the
senses and organizing that data
– emotional
– intelligent
The Cognitive System
Cognition can be defined as
"the act or process of knowing in the
broadest sense; specifically, an
intellectual process by which
knowledge is gained from perception or
ideas” (Webster's Dictionary).
The Cognitive System
Central to the development of psychology as
a scientific discipline
• Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory (1879)
• Dominate approach within psychology today
• Can be compared/contrasted with
• Behavioral view
• Psychoanalytic view
• Humanistic view
• Social Cognition view
The Cognitive System
The cognitive learning theory is represented as an
S-O-R paradigm. The organism is treated as an
active processor of information.
Stimulus
Organism
Response
(S)
(O)
(R)
The Cognitive System
In the behavioral model, an external stimulus either
• elicits a naturally occurring response;
• is associated with a response as a result of
conditioning; or
• changes the probability a voluntary response
will occur again.
The Cognitive System
In the cognitive model, the learning process
begins when an external stimulus activates a
sensory receptor cell.
This model shows an external stimulus
activating a sensory receptor cell that results in
the generation of a “sensory memory.”
Memory
• Psychologists think of memory as involving
three processes
– Encoding
• Transforming information into a form that can be stored in
short-term or long-term memory
– Storage
• The act of maintaining information in memory
• Consolidation
– A physiological change in the brain that must take
place for encoded information to be stored in memory
– Retrieval
• The act of bringing to mind material that has been stored in
memory
Stages of Memory
• Atkinson-Shiffrin model
– Consists of three different, interacting memory
systems
• Sensory memory
• Short-term memory
• Long-term memory
Stages of Memory
Stages of Memory
Sensory Memory
• Sensory memory is affiliated with the
transduction of energy.
• The memory system that holds information
coming in through the senses for a period
ranging from a fraction of a second to several
seconds
– Visual sensory memory--less than ½ second
– Auditory sensory memory--lasts 2 to 3 seconds
Short-term Memory
• Also called working memory--the mental
workspace a person uses to keep in mind
tasks being thought about at any given
moment
• Limits
– 5 + 2 units (earlier thought to be 7 + 2
– 15-30 seconds without rehearsal
• Chunking
• Grouping information to make it easier to
remember
Short-term Memory
• Getting information into STM
– Attention
• Keeping information in STM
– Organization (advance organizer)
– Repetition (maintenance rehearsal)
– An interruption to repetition can cause information to
be lost in just a few seconds
• Displacement
– The event that occurs when short-term memory is
holding its maximum and each new item entering
short-term memory pushes out an existing item
Long-term Memory
• The relatively permanent memory system
with a virtually unlimited capacity
• Elaborative rehearsal
– A technique used to encode information into
long-term memory by considering its
meaning and associating it with other
information already stored in long-term
memory
Methods of Elaboration
There are several examples of elaboration
that are commonly used in the teaching/
learning process:
Imaging
Creating a mental picture
Methods of Elaboration
There are several examples of elaboration
that are commonly used in the teaching/
learning process:
Method of
loci-(locations)
Ideas or things to be
remembered are connected
to objects located in a
familiar location
Methods of Elaboration
There are several examples of elaboration
that are commonly used in the teaching/
learning process:
Pegword
method
Ideas or things to be
remembered are connected
to specific words (e.g., onebun, two-shoe, three-tree,
etc.)
Methods of Elaboration
There are several examples of elaboration
that are commonly used in the teaching/
learning process:
Rhyming
(songs,
phrases)
Information to be
remember is arranged in a
rhyme (e.g., 30 days hath
September, April, June and
November, etc
Methods of Elaboration
There are several examples of elaboration
that are commonly used in the teaching/
learning process:
Initial
letter
The first letter of each word
in a list is used to make a
sentence (the sillier, the
better)
Long-term Memory
• Some experts believe that there are two
main subsystems within long-term
memory
– Declarative memory
– Nondeclarative (procedural) memory
Long-term Memory
• Declarative memory
– The subsystem within long-term memory that stores
facts, information, and personal life experiences
– Two types of declarative memory
• Semantic memory
– The subpart of declarative memory that stores general
knowledge; a mental encyclopedia or dictionary
– Brain-imaging studies show that the range of activity
for semantic memory is larger in the left than in the
right hemisphere
Long-term Memory
• Declarative memory
– The subsystem within long-term memory that stores
facts, information, and personal life experiences
– Two types of declarative memory
• Episodic memory
– The subpart of declarative memory that contains
memories of personally experienced events
– Researchers have demonstrated that some people
who have suffered selective damage to their long-term
semantic memory can still learn and remember using
episodic memory
Long-term Memory
• Nondeclarative memory (also called implicit
or procedural memory)
– The subsystem within long-term memory that
consists of skills acquired through repetitive
practice, habits, and simple classically conditioned
responses
Long-term Memory
• Eidetic imagery
– The ability to retain the image of a visual stimulus
several minutes after it has been removed from view
– Some studies show that about 5% of children
apparently have something akin to photographic
memory
– Virtually all children with eidetic imagery lose it
before adulthood
Long-term Memory
• Flashbulb memories
– An extremely vivid memory of the conditions
surrounding one’s first hearing the news of a
surprising, shocking, or highly emotional event
– Pillemer
• Argues that flashbulb memories do not constitute a
different type of memory altogether
• Suggests that all memories can vary on the dimensions of
emotion, consequentiality, and rehearsal
Long-term Memory
• Flashbulb memories
– Neiser and Harsch
• Questioned university freshmen about the Challenger
disaster the following morning
• When the same students were questioned again 3 years
later, one-third gave accounts that differed markedly from
those given initially, even though they were extremely
confident of their recollections
Levels-of-Processing Model
• Proposed by Craik and Lockhart
• A model of memory as a single system in
which retention depends on how deeply
information is processed
– With the shallowest levels of processing, a person is
merely aware of the incoming sensory information
– Deeper processing (elaboration) takes place only
when the person does something more with the
information, such as forming relationships, making
associations, attaching meaning to a sensory
impression, or otherwise engaging in active
elaboration on new material
Levels-of-Processing Model
• Craik and Tulving
– Had participants answer yes or no to questions
asked about words just before the words were
flashed to them for 1/5 of a second
– Participants had to process the words visually,
acoustically, or semantically
– The test required shallow processing for the first
question, deeper processing for the second
question, and still deeper processing for the third
question
– Later retention tests showed that the deeper the
level of processing, the higher the accuracy rate of
memory
Remembering
• Three kinds of memory tasks
– Recall
• A measure of retention that requires a person to remember
material with few or no retrieval cues, as in an essay test
• Trying to remember someone’s name, recalling items on a
shopping list, memorizing a speech or a poem word for
word, and remembering
• May be made a little easier if cues are provided to jog
memory
• Sometimes serial recall is required; that is, information
must be recalled in a specific order
• Research suggests that, in free recall tasks, order
associations are more resistant to distractions than
meaningful associations
Remembering
• Three kinds of memory tasks
– Recognition
• A measure of retention that requires a person to identify
material as familiar, or as having been encountered before
• Multiple-choice, matching, and true/false questions are
examples of recognition test items
• The main difference between recall and recognition is that
a recognition task does not require you to supply the
information but only to recognize it when you see it
• Recent brain-imaging studies have discovered that the
hippocampus plays an extensive role in memory tasks
involving recognition, and the degree of hippocampal
activity varies with the exact nature of the task
Remembering
• Three kinds of memory tasks
– Relearning
• Measuring retention in terms of the percentage of time or
learning trials saved in relearning material compared with
the time required to learn it originally; also called the
savings method
• Savings score
– The percentage of time or learning trials saved in
relearning material over the amount of time or number
of learning trials required for the original learning
– College students demonstrate the relearning method each
semester when they study for comprehensive final exams
Nature of Remembering
• Memory as a reconstruction
– Elizabeth Loftus
• Believes that what a person normally recalls is not an exact
replica of an event
• Rather, a memory is a reconstruction
– Reconstruction
• A memory that is not an exact replica of an event but has
been pieced together from a few highlights, using
information that may or may not be accurate
Nature of Remembering
• Distortion in memory
– Occurs when people alter the memory of an event
or an experience in order to fit their beliefs,
expectations, logic, or prejudices
– The tendency to distort makes the world more
understandable and enables people to organize
their experiences into their existing systems of
beliefs and expectations
– Bahrick and others
• Found that 89% of college students accurately remember
the A’s they earned in high school, but only 29% accurately
recall the D’s
Nature of Remembering
• Sir Frederick Bartlett
– Studied memory using rich and meaningful material
learned and remembered under more lifelike
conditions
– Concluded that people systematically distort the
facts and the circumstances of experiences
– Information already stored in long-term memory
exerts a strong influence on how people remember
new information and experiences
Nature of Remembering
• Schemas
– The integrated frameworks of knowledge and
assumptions a person has about people, objects,
and events, which affect how the person encodes
and recalls information
– Schemas influence what people notice and how
they encode and recall information
– When we encounter new information or have a new
experience related to an existing schema, we try to
make it fit or be consistent with that schema
– To do this, we may have to distort some aspects of
the information and ignore or forget other aspects
Nature of Remembering
• Memory and culture
– Cognitive psychologists found that we more easily
remember stories set in our own cultures than those
set in others
– In one study, researchers told women in the United
States and Aboriginal women in Australia a story
about a sick child
• Participants were randomly assigned to groups for whom
story outcomes were varied
• Aboriginal participants better recalled the story with the
native healer, while U.S. women were more accurate in
their recall of the story in which a physician treated the girl