NAME THE SEVEN DWARVES
Turn your paper over
NOW PICK OUT THE SEVEN DWARVES.
Grouchy Gabby Fearful Sleepy Smiley
Jumpy Hopeful Goofy
Sleazy
Shy
Droopy Moody
Hoppy
Dopey Sniffy
Wishful Puffy Ren
Dumpy Sneezy
Pop Grumpy Cheesy
Bashful Cheerful
Teach Snorty Nifty Itchy
Happy Doc
Wheezy Stubby Poopy Diddy Stimpy
SEVEN DWARVES
Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy, Happy, Doc and Bashful
MEMORY
MEMORY FEATS
5
WHAT IS MEMORY?
Definition: Learning that has persisted over
time; The ability to retain knowledge
Adaptive Advantage?
 Allowed animals to use information from the past to
respond quickly to immediate challenges
HERMANN EBBINGHAUS
 Memorized series of nonsense syllables( TUV, YOF, GEK)
 More times he practiced the list on day 1, the fewer
repetitions he required to relearn it on day 2
 Retention Curve
INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL
 The human memory system is often compared to
that of a computer
 Information has to be encoded (getting information
to our brain)
 Then stored (retained)
 And finally retrieved (getting in out of the memory
system)
THREE STAGE PROCESSING MODEL
 Proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin
 See pg 187
Rehearsal
Sensory
Input
Forgetting
Forgetting
ENCODING
AUTOMATIC V. EFFORTFUL PROCESSING
 Automatic Processing: Unconscious encoding of
incidental information such as space, time, and
frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word
meanings
 Space – we often encode the place on the page where material
appears
 Time – we unintentionally note the sequence of a day’s events
 Frequency – we effortlessly keep track of how many times things
happen (I ran into you four times today!)
 Well-learned information – reading billboards, the writing on a truck
 Effortful Processing: Encoding that requires attention and
conscious effort
 Often produces durable and accessible memories
EFFORTFUL PROCESSING: REHEARSAL &
SPACING EFFECT
Rote Rehearsal: Repeating information over
and over
 Boosts memory
Spacing Effect: Distributed v. Massed
Rehearsal
 Distributed practice yields better long-term retention
than is achieved through massed study/practice
 Repeated quizzing also helps
 “Testing is a powerful means of improving learning, not
just assessing it.” – Henry Roediger and Jeffrey
Karpicke
REHEARSAL: SERIAL POSITION EFFECT
 Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list
 Primacy Ef fect: Enhanced recall for items at the beginning of
the list
 More time to practice
 Recency Ef fect: Enhanced recall for the last items on a list
 Still in working/short-term memory
 Presidents, names, word lists, etc.
WHAT WE ENCODE
 Visual: Encoding of picture images (imagery)
 Acoustic: Encoding of sound (the sound of words)
 Semantic: Encoding of meaning (meaning of words)
 Which yields the best memory of verbal information?
 Fergus Craik and Endel Tulving
 Flashed a word at people
 Then asked a question that required participants to process the
word visually, acoustically, or semantically
 Is the word in capital letters?
 Does the word rhyme with train?
 Would the word fit into this sentence? The girl put the ______on the
table.
T YPES OF ENCODING: RESULTS
ORGANIZING INFORMATION FOR ENCODING
Chunking: Organizing items into familiar,
manageable/meaningful units; often occurs
automaticall y; Helps you fit more into your STM
 Could be a single letter, a name, or a concept
 FBIIRSCIAEPA
 FBI IRS CIA EPA
Hierarchies: Composed of a few broad concept
divided and subdivided into narrower concepts
ENCODING: MNEMONIC DEVICE
A memory trick or technique for
remembering specific facts
“Every good boy does fine” to
remember the notes on the lines of the
scale
“People say you could have odd lots
of good years” as a way to remember
how to spell “psychology”
MNEMONIC DEVICES
Loci Method: A person associates
items to be remembered with places
Peg-Word: A person associates items
to remember with a list of peg words
already memorized
Goal is to visualize the items to remember
with the items on the pegs
PEG WORD SYSTEM
STORAGE
SENSORY MEMORY/SENSORY REGISTERS
 First stage of storage that holds large amounts of
incoming data for very brief amounts of time
 Just long enough for it to be screened for importance
 Iconic Memory: Momentary sensory memory of visual
stimuli
 A photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than
a few tenths of a second
 Echoic Memory: Momentary sensory memory of
auditory stimuli
 If attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be
recalled within 3 or 4 seconds
 Can hold up to 12 bits of information
SENSORY MEMORY
EXPERIMENT
Sperling (1960)
R G T
F M Q
L Z S
“Recall”
RTMZ
(44% recall)
50 ms (1/20 second)
The exposure time for the stimulus is so small
that items cannot be rehearsed.
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PARTIAL REPORT
S X T
J R S
P K Y
Low Tone
Medium Tone
High Tone
“Recall”
JRS
(100% recall)
50 ms (1/20 second)
Sperling (1960) argued that sensory memory capacity
was larger than what was originally thought.
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SENSORY MEMORIES
The duration of sensory memory varies for the
different senses.
Iconic
0.5 sec. long
Echoic
3-4 sec. long
Hepatic
< 1 sec. long
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WORKING MEMORY (SHORT-TERM)
 A tiny amount of information from your sensory
registers will move to short term memory
 Conscious, activated memory which holds information briefly
before it is stored or forgotten
 Stays in as long as you can rehearse it
 Slightly better for what we hear than what we see
 Small capacity; 20-30 second duration
 Can hold the “magic number 7 plus or minus 2” –
George Miller
 Can increase it by chunking
 Also called working memory
WORKING MEMORY
 Actively manipulating information
 Everything entering consciousness does so through
WM
 Make experiences meaningful by blending them with
info from long-term memory
 Mental workspace where you think about memories
pull from long-term storage
FROM SHORT TERM TO LONG TERM
Information moves to long term as a result of
rehearsal
Rote or…
Elaborative Rehearsal: linking new material to
things you already know
LONG TERM MEMORY
Capacity is limitless
Estimates on capacity range from 1000
billion to 1,000,000 billion bits of
information (Landauer, 1986)
T YPES OF LONG TERM MEMORIES
 Explicit (Declarative): Memories for information we can readily
express in words and that we are aware of having; Can be
intentionally retrieved from memory
 Semantic: Facts and concepts not liked to a particular time; Like a
dictionary or encyclopedia
 Episodic: Personally experienced events
 Processed by hippocampus (active during deep sleep), not stored here
 Implicit (Nondeclarative): Memories for information that we
cannot readily express in words and may not be aware of
having
 Procedural: motor skills and habits
 Emotional Memories: learned emotional responses to various stimuli
(usually through classical conditioning)
 Processed by the cerebellum
 Flashbulb memories
TO SUMMARIZE….
WARNING
 Memories are not stored in one “spot” in the brain
 Working memory is processed in the prefrontal
cortex and temporal lobe
 Long-term semantic memories are located in the
frontal and temporal lobes
 Episodic memories are stored in the frontal and
temporal lobes
NEURAL BASIS FOR MEMORY
 Experience does modify the
brain’s neural network
 Increased activity in a
particular pathway causes
neural interconnections to
form or strengthen
 Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)
 An increase in a synapse’s firing
potential after brief, rapid
stimulation
 Basis for learning
STRESS AND MEMORIES
In stressful situations
 Emotion-triggered stress hormones make more
glucose energy available for brain activity (brain is
getting ready for something to happen!)
 Boost in amygdala activity (processes memories that
have strong emotional associations)
 Result: Arousal can sear certain events into the brain
 Weaker emotion = weaker memories
Sudden stress hormones can block older
memories (class presentation?)
RETRIEVAL
Recall v. Recognition: We
remember more than we recall
During retrieval, information flows from longterm memory back to working memory
Mind reconstructs a memory out of the stored
bits
Retrieved information is blended with the new
content currently present in the working
memory
 Prone to change
 Future retrievals will bring up the modified file !
CUES: STIMULI THAT HELP YOU ACCESS
TARGET INFORMATION
 Memories are held in a storage by a web of
associations (info is interconnected with other bits)
 Those other memories then serve as retrieval cues
 Most effective cues are those we generate ourselves
 Elaborative rehearsal
 The more retrieval cues, the more likely you are to
remember
 Priming: The activation, often unconsciously, of
particular associations in memory
CONTEXT/MOOD CONGRUENT MEMORY
 Context Congruent Memory: Enhanced ability to
retrieve information when you are in an environment
similar to the one in which you encoded the information
 More similar to your retrieval circumstances are to your
encoding circumstances, the more likely you are to remember
the information
 Retracing your footsteps
 Revisiting the scene of a crime
 Mood Congruent Memory: The tendency to recall
experiences that are consistent with one’s current
good or bad mood
FORGETTING
WHY DO WE FORGET?
Daniel Schacter
 Three Sins of Forgetting
 Absent-mindedness: inattention to details leads to encoding
failure
 Transience: storage decay over time
 Blocking: inaccessibility of stored information
 Three Sins of Distortion
 Misattribution: confusing the source of information
 Suggestibility: the lingering effects of misinformation
 Bias: belief-colored recollections
 One Sin of Intrusion:
 Persistence: unwanted memories
ENCODING FAILURE
Most of what we sense, we never notice
If you don’t encode it, you can’t retrieve it
Slower encoding with age
STORAGE DECAY
Hermann Ebbinghaus’
“Forgetting Curve”
 We forget a lot right away,
but then it levels off!
Result: Some
memories do “decay”
Explanation?
 Fading of the memory
traces in our brains?
RETRIEVAL FAILURE
 Forgetting is often a result of not being able to get out
the memories we have stored
 Why?
 Proactive Interference: Something you learned earlier
disrupts your recall of something you learn later
 Forward-acting
 Retroactive Interference: Occurs when new information
makes it harder to recall something you learned earlier
 Backward-acting
 Information that is presented in the hour before sleep is
protected from retroactive interference
 But not in the few minutes before sleep!
MOTIVATED FORGETTING
 We unknowingly revise our memories
 People who were told the benefit of tooth-brushing recalled
having frequently more brushed their teeth in the preceding
two weeks then people who were not told the benefit of tooth brushing
 Memory is often self-serving
 Sigmund Freud and Memory
 We repress (banish from the conscious) painful memories to
protect our self-concept and to minimize anxiety
 “Submerged” memories will linger and can be retrieved by
some later cue or during therapy
 Many psychologists think repression is rare
 We might actually be more likely to remember emotional
memories
MEMORY CONSTRUCTION
 We infer our past from stored information plus what we later
imagined, expected, saw, or heard
 Elizabeth Loftus
 Misinformation Effect: After exposure to subtle misinformation, many
people misremember
 We alter and save the new file
 False Memories: One experiment showed people digitally altered
photos depicting themselves (from childhood) taking a hot air balloon
ride three times over two weeks. Half of the participants
“remembered” the experience.
 It is then hard for us to discriminate between these altered
and real memories
 Source Amnesia (misattribution): attributing to the wrong
source an event we have experienced, heard about, read
about, or imagined
 You recall events, but are not sure how you learned about them
 Rumors!
SOURCE AMNESIA EXAMPLES
 For example, your friend told you about his bike trip to
Wisconsin. A year later, you recall details about the trip,
however, you are not sure about how you learned about the
details. You may falsely conclude that you have traveled to
Wisconsin. You may reason that you recall things so clearly, you
must have been there yourself. The source of the information your friend - is forgotten, and the second -hand information is
integrated in your memory.
 Or maybe your friend told you that apples are bad for you
because they are high in fat. You may later recall the fact, and
wonder how you learned about it. You conclude that you learned
it from T V or the news paper article. You may avoid eating apples
believing that they are high in fat. (In reality, apples contain no
fat). You give the knowledge more weight if you believe you
learned about it from credible media instead of an unreliable
friend.
CHILDREN AND EYEWITNESS RECALL
 Children’s memories are extremely susceptible to
suggestibility
 Experiments
 Researchers asked 3-year-olds to show on anatomically correct dolls
where a pediatrician had touched them; 55% of children who had not
received genital examinations pointed there.
 Preschoolers overheard a false comment that a magician’s rabbit
had gotten loose in their classroom. Later, when suggestively
questioned, 78% recalled actually seeing the rabbit.
 Children chose cards from a deck of possible happenings and an
adult read the card followed by, “Think real hard, and tell me if this
ever happened to you. Can you remember going to the hospital with a
mousetrap on your finger?” After 10 weekly interviews, with the
same adults repeatedly asking children to think about several real
and fictitious events, a new adult asked the same question. 58%
produced false, often vivid, stories regarding one or more events they
had never experienced.
SUGGESTIONS FOR CHILDREN’S
TESTIMONY
Use a neutral person
Do not ask leading questions
Keep children from involved adults before
questioning them
RECOVERING REPRESSED MEMORIES
 Can clinicians help their patients “recover” memories
of childhood abuse?
 How can we interpret therapists who use “memory
work” techniques like guided imagery, hypnosis, and
dream analysis?
AGREED UPON FACTS REGARDING
REPRESSED MEMORIES
 1.
 2.
 3.
 4.
Sexual abuse happens
Injustice happens
Forgetting happens
Recovered memories are commonplace
 Do our minds forcibly repress painful experiences?
 5. Memories of things happening before age 3 are
unreliable
 6. Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or the
influence of drugs are especially unreliable
 7. Memories, whether real or false, can be
emotionally upsetting
T YPES OF AMNESIA
 Anterograde Amnesia: Cannot recall events that
happen after the onset of the amnesia
 Damage to hippocampus
 Retrograde Amnesia: Cannot recall events before the
amnesia set in
 Disease, brain injury
 Infantile Amnesia: Most people cannot remember
events prior to the age of 3
 Immaturity in parts of the brain
 Lack of language development