Human Memory

Human Memory

1. Encoding: Getting Information into Memory

   • Attention: focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events. Selective attention is critical to everyday function.
     • Stimulus > Sensory Detection > Recognition of Meaning > Response Selection > Response
       • Semantic Encoding: Emphasizes the meaning of verbal input. It involves thinking about the objects, and actions the words represent.
       • Phonemic Encoding: Emphasizes what a word sounds like.
       • Structural Encoding: Processing the emphasizes the physical structure of the stimulus.
       • Levels of Processing Theory proposes that deeper levels of processing result in longer lasting memory codes.
         • Elaboration is linking a stimulus to other information at the time of encoding.
         • Dual-coding theory holds that memory is enhanced 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 preserves information in it's original sensory form for a brief time, usually only a fraction of a second. "Called an afterimage". Memory traces in the visual and auditory sensory store last less then a second.
     • Short term memory is a limited-capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for up to about 20 seconds.
       • Rehearsal is the process of repetitively 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 information by providing an interface between perception, memory, and action.
             • Working memory capacity refers to one's ability to hold and manipulate information in conscious attention.
     • 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 the tendency to remember similar or related items in groups.
           • A Conceptual hierarchy is a 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.
               • A Semantic network 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. When Memory Lapses

   • Measures of Forgetting
     • Retention refers to the proportion of material retained.
       • 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 relearning 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.
   • Decay theory proposes that forgetting occurs because memory traces fade with time
     • 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.
         • Repression refers to keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious.
   • Interference theory proposes tht peole 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 interferes with the retention of new information.

4. 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 it's just out of reach
     • The misinformation effect occurs when participants' recall of an event they witnessed is altered by introducing misleading postevent information.
       • Reality monitoring refers to the process of deciding whether memories are based on external sources or internal sources.
         • Source monitoring involves making attributions about the 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.

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

   • Long-term potentiation is a long-lasting increase in neural excitability at synapses along a specific neural pathway.
     • 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.
         • 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 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.
       • The declarative memory system handles factual information.
         • The nondeclarative or procedural memory system houses memory for actions, skills, operations, and conditioned responses.
           • The episodic memory system is made up of chronological, or temporally dated, recollections or personal experiences.
             • The semantic memory system contains general knowledge that is not tied to the time when the information was learned.
               • Prospective memory involves remembering to perform actions in the future.
                 • Retrospective memory involves remembering events from the past or previously learned information.

7. Semantic Memory; Memory for general information

8. Episodic Memory; Memory for personel events