Chapter 7

Chapter 7

1. Encoding: How memories are formed.

   • Storage: How memories are kept over time
     • Retrieval: How memories are recovered and translated into performance.

2. Structural encoding: shallow processing. eg: word flashed on a screen, you may only recall if it was in capital letters or a short word.

   • Phonemic encoding: Intermediate processing. (saying word silently or about loud)
     • Semantic encoding: deep processing (learn the meaning of something so you have to think about it

3. Sensory memory: the capacity to preserve sensory information in its original form for 1/4 of a second. (after image)

   • Partial report: aka sperling, classic experiment on visual sensory store. Tone cues participants which row to report. (tone comes after the array is gone)

4. Short term memory: limited capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for up to 20 seconds.

   • George Miller: number of items that can be recalled from STM, in order, on half of the tested memory trials is 7 plus or minus 2.
   • Maintenance Rehearsal: just done to keep it in memory (phone number.
     • Elaborative Rehearsal: think more about it so you are more likely to remember it longer.

5. Long term memory: unlimited capacity store that can hold information over lengthy periods of time. (your name)

   • Flashbulb memories: usually vivid and detailed recollections of momentous events. May not be permanent or accurate, because they become less detailed over time, and are influenced by emotion that is attached to the memories.
   • Wilder Penfields electronic stimulated brains of people having surgery but what they "recalled" was not necessarily an actual experience.

6. Organized memory

   • Cluster: remembering similiar items in groups
     • Conceptual Hierarchies: multilevel classification system
       • Schemas: An organized cluster of knowledge about a particular object or event which we understand from previous experience.
         • Semantic networks: Nodes represent concepts and are joined to related concepts.

7. Retrieval: how memories are recovered and translated into performance.

   • Tip of tongue phenomenon: temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that is out of reach.
     • Memories will be jogged by retrieval cues. A type of retrieval cue is a context cue. Reinstating the context. Hypnosis, however often increases the subjects tendency to report incorrect information.

8. Forgetting

   • Hermann Ebbinghaus: The first person to conduct scientific studies of forgetting. He studied himself, and wanted to make sure that memory would not be affected by anything he had learned previously so he invented numerous nonsense syllables. He memorized 420 lists of syllables and tested his memory after various time periods.
     • The forgetting curve graphs retention and forgetting over time. After the first few hours, he could remember less than he did right afterwards. Forgetting occurs right after learning something. Subjects learn meaningful information, the forgetting curve is not nearly as sharp. Depends on what measure is used.
   • Why?
     • Ineffective coding: A lot of forgetting is not actually forgetting. People may think they forget but really it has never been remembered. It has never been encoded. This is called pseudo forgetting,and usually happens due to lack of attention.

9. Implicit memory: remembering something you didn't have the intention to memorize. People with memory loss have been shown a list of words that they don't remember seeing afterwards. However, when they asked to fill in the blanks, the first word that comes to mind will be one seen on the list.

   • Explicit memory: intentionally remembering something. May be handled by different memory systems because explicit memory, but not memory is affected by amnesia, age, alcohol and interference.

10. Declarative memory system: handles factual information like definitions of words, math concepts, faces, and dates. Likely handled by the medial temporal lobe and parts of the cortex it communicates with.

    • Semantic: general facts
      • Episodic: personal facts and experiences
    • Prospective: refers to recalling something you must do in the future.
      • Retrospective: referes to remembering past events or facts.

11. Mneumonic memory: methods to increase the recall of information.

    • Over learning: continuing to rehearse and learn information you think you already know
      • Serial position effect: easy to learn things at the beginning and end of a lost but not in the middle.
        • Distributed practice: don't try and remember something all at one time. (cramming)

12. Seven sins of memory

    • 1. Transience: decreasing accessibility of memory over time. Decay or damage to the hippocampus, and temporal lobe can cause this. Normal with again.
      • 2. Absent mindedness: lapses of attention and forgetting to do things. Operates when memory is formed and when memory is accessed.
        • 3. Blocking: temporary inaccessibility of stored information, such as tip of the tongue syndrome.
          • 4. Suggestibility: incorporation of misinformation into memory due to leading questions, deception and other causes.
            • 5. Bias: retrospective distortions produced by current knowledge and beliefs. Present feelings skew our memory for past events.
              • 6. Persistence: unwanted recollections that people can't forget, such as post traumatic stress disorder.
                • 7. Misattribution: attribution of memories to incorrect sources of believing that you have seen or heard something that you really haven't.