Memory Notes
Monday, March 02, 2015
Announcements!
Shirts on sale through Friday only
 Please pay for your AP exams!
 Unit 6-9 Test- Next Wednesday, 3/11
Two weeks till Spring Break and the end of the 9 weeks…
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Memory- Unit 7
Clustering-the tendency to remember similar or related items in groups
 Ex. Grouping by leaders, battles, wars…
 Pinterest pin boards
 Lunch ideas
 Bathroom décor ideas
Schema- cluster of pre-conceived ideas
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 Help organize our knowledge so we can interpret new information
 We remember things that are consistent with our schemas
 If a person or event doesn’t fit, it is “unique”
Ex. People remember the vagrant pulling the knife, when in fact the business man did it
Scripts- organizes what people know about common activities
Roles, sequence of activity and results of the activity are predictable
 Ex. Restaurant Visit, Doctor Appointment, school day
Retrieval
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Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon
Source Monitoring Error- A memory derived from one source is actually from another
 Ex. The President tells an anecdotal story about a plumber named Joe Smith from Conroe, Texas during the
State of the Union speech. Reporters investigate and discover that there is no Joe the Plumber in Conroe, but
the President did hear a similar story somewhere else…
Cryptoamnesia- believing that you had an original thought, when in fact you were exposed to it earlier
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Another type of source monitoring error
 Ex. Vanilla Ice ripping off “Under Pressure” by Queen
Reality Monitoring
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Deciding if memories are real or imaginary
 Ex. Did I turn off the oven, or did I only think about it?
Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve
Most forgetting happens very rapidly after learning something
 Recall- you remember without prompting or clues
 Recognition- you will select the right one out of a list of options
Why Do We Forget?
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“Use it or lose it” Theory
Interference Theory- people forget because of competition from other information
Repression
Interference
 Proactive- old info impedes the retention of new info
 Ex. You can’t teach and old dog new tricks!”
 Retroactive- new info impairs the retention of older info