Chapter 7 Memory

Chapter 7 Memory

1. Memory

   • Encoding: How Memories are former
     • Attention: Focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events. To focus on having a conversation we have to be selective with our attention and tune out things that are around us
       • Some Psychologists believe we have an attention filter and debate whether it screens information we are not paying attention to either earlier or later in the process
       • The cocktail Party Phenomenon
         • This shows that we can talk to one person in a room filled with other conversations but tune out most ever thing unless we hear our own name. Hear our name will instantly grab our attention.
       • Effortful processing is intentional listening to remember inforation
       • Automatic Processing is remembering something without intending to.
     • Level of Processing Theory: deeper levels of processing results in being able to remember longer
       • Structural Encoding is the shallow processing
       • Phonemic Encoding is intermediate processing
       • Semantic Encoding is deeper processing
     • Enriching Encoding
       • Elaboration linking the to-be-remembered information to some other information at the time of encoding
       • Visual Imagery: Creating mental or actual pictures to represent the information you want to remember. Visual imagery is very powerful memory tool, particularly when colour is used
       • Self-referent encoding: involves deciding how or whether information is personally relevant.
       • Other Sensory Imagery: Memory can also be enhanced by using all of our 5 senses.
     • Dual coding theory
       • Memory is enhanced by using two or more encoding strategies because it provides multiple pathways for retrieval
   • Storage: How memories are kept over time
     • in our long term memory can remember consistent things, but it can take longer to remember more random everyday actions. Like if you put your keys in a new spot everyday.
     • Multi-stores Models of Memory
       • Sensory memory: Capacity to preserve sensory information in its original form for 1/4 of a second
       • Short Term Memory: Limited-capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for up to 20 seconds.
         • Chunking: Storing information into meaningful or familiar units
         • Rehearsal: repeating words over and over or thinking about the information
           • Maintenance rehearsal this is just done to keep it in the memory
           • Elaborative rehearsal- think more about it so you are more likely to remember
       • Long-term Memory: Unlimited capacity store that can hold information for days, weeks or years. Can be permanent
         • Flashbulb Memories are vivid and detailed recollections of momentous events These may not be permanent or accurate overtime. They are special because people are influenced by emotion and are more attached to these.
   • Retrieval: How Memories are recovered and translated into performance
     • The tip of the tongue phenomenon is the temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that it is just out of reach.
     • Hypnosis often increases the subject's tendency to report incorrect information.
     • The misinformation effect involves 3 stages. 1) subjects view an event 2) Subjects are exposed to information about the original event, some is misleading. 3) subjects are later tested about what they remember about the original event.
     • Source Monitors and Reality Monitoring
       • Source Monitoring refers to making decisions about the origin of memories. (Where did I hear that?)
       • Reality monitoring is a subtype of source monitoring. It is a memory from external or internal sources. (looking at the clock before taking a pill)
   • Memories can be distorted by giving people misleading or biased information
   • Memory is nothing like a camera or video-recorder

2. Forgetting

   • Measures of forgetting/ Retention
     • Retention is the proportion of material retained. The retention intervail is the length of time between when the subject is given the materials to remember and the time forgetting is measured.
     • Why do we forget?
       • Ineffective coding is when someone does not actually remember something. Meaning it has never been encoded.
       • Decay has to do with storage. Decay theory proposes that forgetting occurs because memory traces fade with time.
       • Interference is when a subject tries to remember something but then some other information in the meanwhile the new information can interfere with remembering the original information.
       • Retrieval failure is when a person has trouble with the retrieval process. So basically when we remember something later that we couldn't think of earlier.
       • Motivated forgetting Comes from Frued's ideas and refers to forgetting things things you don't want to think about.
   • Repressed memories- people under hypnosis are easily suggestible and may come to believe things are true that are only suggested to them by the hypnotherapist.
     • Hypnotic Pseudomemory- in study in text experimenters implanted memories in people under hypnosis and found that they were highly susceptible to hypnosis, they were likely to report the implanted memories as true.