MEMORY

MEMORY

1. Structure

   • Memory is the retention of learning or experience
   • Types
     • Procedural - Long term memory for skills, e.g how to enter a sim into a mobile phone
     • Semantic - Long term memory for facts & meanings, e.g. definitions
     • Episodic - Long term memory for life events, e.g. family holiday
   • Stages
     • Long term memory (LTM) - a permanent memory store which encodes information based on it's meaning
     • Short term memory (STM) - temporary memory store, which encodes information on the bases of sound, also known as working memory
       • Duration - length of time a memory store can retain information before being forgotten
       • Capacity - how much information can be held in a memory store at one time
     • Sensory memory (SM) - information is stored in SM just long enough to be transferred to STM
   • Processes
     • Encoding - Taking new information into memory
       • Visually - appearnce
       • Semantically - meaning
       • Acoustically - sound
     • Storage - The process of maintaining information over time
       • Length of time it is stored
       • Amount of information that is stored
       • The way the information is organised within the stores
     • Retrieval - Accessing stored information and bringing it back to mind when needed
       • Recognition - by retrieving a memory, able to identify something or someone, previosly known to you in some way
       • Relearn - Knowledge picked up through education, experience. making associations or observing others
       • Recall - to bring information or past experiences back into one's mind

2. Models of Memory

   • Multi store model
     • Suggest information passes through a series of memory stores via attention and rehearsal.
     • Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968)
   • Serial position curve
     • Murdock (1962)
     • Serial position effect - Recall in list of words which the words at both the beginning and of the list are recalled well but those in the middle are not. This effect demonstrates that the likelihood of recall of a word depends on its position in the list.
       • Recency effect - Most recent information is recalled rather than earlier information
       • Primacy effect - More of the first information that is received can be recalled than later information
   • Reconstructive model
     • 'War of the Ghosts'
       • Sir Frederick Bartlett (1932)
     • The process of remembering doesn't involve passively taking in information but is an active process of making connections with existing schemas
       • Schema - A mental framework of what we already know and believe about the world around us. Based on previous information or experiences, helping us to understand and organise new information that we receive.
       • Additions - added new material to help it make more sense to them.
       • Subtractions - forgot sections that they had not understood
       • Transformation to familiar - changed to make more similar to what they are used to
       • Preservation of detached detail - unusual details were recalled, not always in right order
   • Levels of processing model (LoP)
     • Group A - Visual - 15%
     • Group B - Acoustic - 50%
     • Group C - Semantic - 80%
     • Fergus I. M. Craik & Endci Tulvig (1975)

3. Factors affecting memory

   • State - It is easier for people to remember something when they are in the same physical state as when they first learned. This applies to both mood and the consumption of drugs such as alcohol and caffiene
   • Timing - information is forgotten over time. However this is not always a bad thing - a time delay and a period of forgetting makes a later revision activity more effective. This is called the 'spacing effect'.
   • Interference - information is forgotten because it gets mistaken with other information. Events and concepts that are unusual and distinctive are better remembered.
   • Context - it is easier to remember things in the same context that we first learned them. Visiting the place where something was learned can act as a cue to retrieval

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