Chapter 7: Human Memory

Chapter 7: Human Memory

1. 1) Encoding: Getting Info into Memory

   • The Role Of Attention
     • Attention involves focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events.
     • Attention is often linked to a filter that screens out most potential stimuli while allowing a select few to pass through into conscious awareness.
     • Wherever filtering occurs. It is clear that people have difficulty if they attempt to focus their attention on two or more inputs.
   • Levels of Processing
     • Attention is critical to the encoding of memories. But not all attention is created equal.
     • Structural encoding is relating shallow processing that emphasis the physical structure of the stimulus.
     • Levels of processing theory proposes that deeper levels of processing result in longer lasting memory codes.
   • Enriching Encoding
     • Elaboration is linking a stimulus to other information at the time of encoding.
     • Dual encoding theory holds that memory is enhanced by forming semantic and visual codes, since either can lead to recall.
     • Self referent encoding involves deciding or whether info is personally relevant.

2. 2) Storage: Maintaining Info in Memory

   • Sensory Memory
     • Sensory memory preserves information in its original sensory form for a brief time, and usually only a fraction of a second.
     • Take advantage of sensory storage immediately because it docent last long.
     • Memory trace in the visual sensory store decays about 1/4 of a second.
   • Short-Term Memory
     • Short -term memory is limited capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for up to about 20 seconds.
     • Rehearsal- the process of receptively verbalizing or thinking about the information.
     • A chunk is a group of familiar stimuli stored as a single unit.
     • Working Memory is a limited capacity storage system that temporarily maintains and stores info by providing an inference between perception, memory and action.
   • Long-Term Memory
     • Long-term memory is an unlimited capacity store that can hold information over lengthy periods of time.
     • Flashbulb memories are unusually vivid and detailed recollections of momentous events
     • There is no convincing evidence that memories are stored away permanently that forgetting is all a matter of failure.
     • Clustering is the tendency to remember similar or related items in a group.
   • How is Knowledge Represented and Organized in Memory?
     • A conceptual hierarchy is multilevel classification systems based on common properties amount items.
     • A schema is an organized cluster of knowledge about a particular object or event abstracted from previous experience with the object or event.

3. 3) Retrieval: Getting Info Out of Memory

   • Using Cues to Aid Retrival
     • The tip-of-the-lounge phenomenon the inability to remember something by a feeing that its just out of reach.
     • Tip-of-the0tounge clearly constitutes a failure of retrieval
   • Reinstating the Context of an Event
     • Although it is widely believed by the general public that hypnosis can help people remember things that they would not normally recall.
     • Extensive research has failed to demonstrate that hypnosis can enhance revival.
   • Reconstructing memories and the Misinformation Effect
     • Reality monitoring refers to the process of deciding whether memories are based on external sources or internal sources.
     • A source monitoring error occurs when memory derived from one source is misinterpreted to another source.
     • Source monitoring involved making attributions about origins of memories

4. 5) In Search of the Memory Trace: The Physiology of Memory

   • The Neural Circulatory of Memory
     • Reflex learning in the sea slug procedures changes the strength of specific synaptic connections by enhancing the availability and relate of neurotransmitters at these synapses.
     • Long term potentiation is a long lasting increase in neutral excitability at synapse along a specific near pathway
   • The Anatomy of Memory
     • Retrograde amnesia involves the loss of memories for events that occurred prior to the onset of amnesia
     • Anterograde amnesia involves the loss of memories for events that occur after the onset of amnesia

5. 4) Forgetting: When Memory Lapse

   • How Quickly do we Forget?
     • Forgetting curve graphs retention and forgetting over time.
   • Measures of Forgetting
     • Retention refers to the proportion of material retained.
     • A recall measure of retention requires subjects to reproduce info on their own without any cues.
     • A recognition measure of retention requires subjects to select previously learned info from an array of options.
   • Why We Forget?
     • decay theory proposes that forgetting occurs because memory traces fade with time.
     • interference theory proposes that people forget information because competition from other material
     • Retroactive interference occurs when new info impairs the retention of previously learned info.
   • The Repressed Memories Controversy
     • Recovered memories of abuse is complex and difficult to sort out.
     • Psychologists and psychiatrists further assert that it is common for people to bury traumatic incidents in there unconsciousness
   • How Memories Goes Wrong
     • Transience is the simple weakening of a memory over time
     • Absentmindedness refers to a memory failure that is often due to failure to pay attention because the are perhaps preoccupied with other things

6. 6) Systems and Types of Memory

   • Implicit vs. Explicit Memory
     • implicit memory is apparent when retention is exhibited on a task that does not require intentional remembering
     • Explicatory memory, which involves international recollection of previous experiences.
   • Declarative vs. Procedural Memory
     • The declarative memory system handles functional info
     • The nondeclaritive or procedural memory houses memory for actions, skills, operations, and conditioned responses,
   • Semantic vs Episodic Memory
     • Prospective memory involves remembering to preform actions in the future.
     • Retrospective memory involves remembering events from the past or previously learned information
   • Prospective vs. Retrospective Memory
     • The episodic memory system is made up of chronological or temporarily dated recollections of personal experiences
     • The semantic memory system contains general knowledge that is not lead to the time when the information was learned.