Human Memory

Human Memory

1. Encoding: Getting Information into Memory

   • Role of Attention: Attention involves focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events. Selective attention is critical to everyday functioning.
   • Levels of Processing: Levels of processing theory proposes that deeper levels of processing result in longer-lasting memory codes.
   • Enriching Encoding:
     • Elaboration: Elaboration is linking a stimulus to other information at the time of encoding.
     • Visual Imagery: According to Paivio, imagery facilitates memory because it provides a second kind of memory code, and two codes are better than one. His dual coding theory holds that memory is enanced by forming semantic and visual codes, since either can lead to recall.
     • Self-Referent Encoding: Involves deciding how or whether information is personally relevant.

2. Storage: Maintaining Information in Memory

   • Sensory Memory: It preserves information in its original sensory form for a brief time, usually only a fraction of a second.
   • Short-Term Memory:
     • IIs a limited-capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for up to about 20 seconds
     • Rehearsal - the process of repetitively verbalizing or thinking about the information
     • A chunk is a group of familiar stimuli stored as a single unit.
   • Short-Term Memory as "Working Memory"
     • Working memory capacity refers to one's ability to hold and manipulate information in conscious attention.
     • Working memory is a limited capacity storage system that temporarily maintains and stores information by providing an interface between perception, memory, and action.
   • Long-Term Memory
     • Is an unlimited capacity store that can hold information over lengthy periods of time.
     • Flashbulb memories, which are unusually vivid and detailed recollections of momentous events
   • Clustering and Conceptual Hierarchies:
     • Clustering - the tendency to remember similar or related items in groups.
     • A conceptual hierarchy is multilevel classification system based on common properties among items.
   • A schema is an organized cluster of knowledge about a particular object or event abstracted from previous experience with the object or event.
   • Semantic Networks consists of nodes representing concepts, joined together by pathways that link related concepts.
   • Connectionist, or parallel distributed processing models assume that cognitive processes depend on patterns of activation in highly interconnected computational networks that resemble neural networks

3. Retrieval: Getting Information Out of Memory

   • The tip-of-the tongue phenomenon -the temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that its just out of reach.
   • The misinformation effect occurs when participants' recall of an event they witnessed is altered by introducing misleading postevent information
   • Source Monitoring and Reality Monitoring
     • Reality Monitoring Refers to the process of deciding whether memories are based on external sources (one's perceptions of actual events) or internal sources (one's thoughts and imagination|)
     • Source monitoring involves making attributions about origins of memories.
       • A source monitoring error occurs when a memory derived from one source is misattributed to another source
     • Destination memory involves recalling to whom one has told what

4. Forgetting: When Memory Lapse

   • Measures f Forgetting
     • Retention refers to the proportion of material retained (remembered)
     • A recall measure of retention requires subjects to reproduce information on their own without any cues.
     • A recognition measure of retention requires subjects to select previously learned information from an array of options
     • A releaning measure of retention requires a subject to memorize information a second time to determine how much time or how many practice trials are saved by having learned it before
     • Why We Forget?
       • Decay: Decay theory proposes that forgetting occurs because memory traces fade with time
       • Interference: Proposes that people forget information because of competition from other material
         • Retroactive interference occurs when new information impairs the retention of previously learned information.
         • Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information inteferes with the retention of new information
         • The encoding specificity principle states that the value of a retrieval cue depends on how well it corresponds to the memory code
         • Transfer-appropriate processing occurs when the initial processing of information is similar to the type of processing required by the subsequent measure of retention
       • Motivated Forgetting
         • Repression refers to keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious

5. In search of the Memory Trace: The physiology of Memory

   • The Anatomy of Memory
     • Retrograde amnesia involves the loss of memories for events that occurred prior to the onset of amnesia
     • Anterogade amnesia involves the loss of memories for events that occur after onset of amnesia.
     • Consolidation is a hypothetical process involving the gradual conversion of information into durable memory codes stored in long term memory

6. Systems and Types of Memory

   • Implicit versus Explicit Memory
     • Implicit memory is apparent when retention is exhibited on a task that does not require intentional remembering
     • Explicit memory , which involves intentional recollection of previous experiences
   • Declarative versus Procedural Memory
     • The declarative memory system handles factual information
     • The no declarative or procedural memory system houses memory for actions, skills, operatives, and conditioned responses.
   • Semantic versus Episodic Memory
     • Episodic memory system is made up of chronological or temporally dated, recollections of personal experiences
     • The semantic memory system contains general knowledge that is not tied to the time when information was learned
   • Prospective versus Retrospective Memory
     • Prospective memory involves remembering to perform actions in the future
     • Retrospective memory involves remembering events from the past or previously learned information

7. Putting it In Perspective

   • Mnemonic devices are methods used to increase the recall of information
   • The serial-position effect occurs when subjects show better recall for items at the beginning and end of a list than for items in the middle
   • The link method involves forming a mental image of items to be remembered in a way that link them together
   • The method of loci involves taking an imaginary walk along a familiar path where images of items to be remembered are associated with certain locations
   • A keyword method, in which you associate a concrete word with an abstract word and genartae an image to represent the concrete word
   • The hindsight bias is the tendency to mould our interpretation of the past to fit how events actually turned out.