Psychology Chapter 4, Memory

Copyright 2004 Prentice Hall 1
Psychology
Memory
by
Cynthia K. Shinabarger Reed
& butchered by Professor Carney

Reflect on your own Personal Beliefs
Regarding Memory
 What does it mean to say you
"remember" or "can't remember"?
 Where do memories go when you can’t
remember something?
 How do they reappear?
 Why is it that we have so few memories
before about the age of 3 years?

 Do we register every single thing we come
into contact with?
 Memories like videos?
 If yes, then why can't we remember all of these
things?
 Accurate reflections of reality?
Reflect on your own Personal
Beliefs regarding Memory Cont.

Memory & the Law by British
Psychological Society 2008 (book)
 Guidelines for legal system
 Memories of witnesses are flawed
 Marred by gaps or imagination
 Should not be relied upon in court
 Memories are record of people’s
experiences of events
 Not a video of those events

 ‘People “remember” events that they
have not in reality experienced &
such recollections could – if heavily
relied upon – lead to wrongful
convictions.’
 Recommends
Courts use memory experts to help
juries to evaluate memory-based
evidence where, for instance, given by a
child or elderly person.

 “Older adults are more prone to false
memories because of an overreliance on the
gist of an event.”
 Witnesses’ memories of events might be
influenced by the way they were questioned

You Can’t Trust A Witness’s Memory,
Experts Tell Courts
7/11/08, Cont.
 Memories dating from below age of 7
cannot be relied upon without
independent evidence.
 Memories of specific events after the
age of 10 can be
 Highly accurate
 Highly inaccurate
 Wholly false

Memory
 The ability to retain & retrieve what you
have learned.
 Brain's capacity to remember
 One of the least understood areas of science.
 Memory is a process that occurs constantly
& in varying stages.

Initial Studies
Ebbinghaus
 Hermann
Ebbinghaus
 German
 Pioneering
research on
memory 1879

Ebbinghaus
Major Contributions
 Developed 1st scientific approach
 Study of process of memory
 1st to use nonsense syllables
 1st to describe “learning curve”

Initial Studies
Ebbinghaus
 Serial learning (ordered recall)
 Learning in which material that has been
learned must be repeated in the order in which
it was presented.
 Cat, dog, mouse, elephant, hamster, frog
 Nonsense syllables
 No meaning
 How associations between stimuli formed?
 Example: DAX, BOK & YAT


Initial Studies
Ebbinghaus
 Serial position effect
 Tendency for items at beginning & end of a list
to be learned better than items in the middle.
 Cat, dog, mouse, elephant, hamster, frog

Free Recall
 Material that has been learned may be repeated
in any order.
 Free Recall test:
http://www.dushkin.com/connectext/psy/ch07/fr
eerec.mhtml

Paired-associate Learning
 Items to be recalled are learned in pairs.
 Cloud-Nep
 Bag-Llue
 Door-aley
 During recall, 1 of pair is presented
 Other is to be recalled.
 Cloud?
 Nep
 Learn foreign language

Paired-associate Learning
 Conclusion
 Learners remember the word pair as a unit
 More affective, not as a stimulus that leads to
response.
 Learn
 Cloud-Nep together

Initial Studies
 Important finding of Ebbinghaus’s
research is the curve of forgetting.

Distributed Practice
 Best study frequently
 Why?

Initial Studies
 Recognition test
 Pick out items previously viewed
 Longer list also contains unfamiliar items.
 Test my brain
 http://www.testmybrain.org/

Recognition Test
 Mouse
 Chair
 Rat
 Bowl
 Tub

Recognition Test
Which words from the previous list do you
remember?
 Baby
 Home
 Chair
 Purse
 File
 Rat
 Mouse
 Bowl
 Cabinet
 Clock
 Tub
 Boss

Initial Studies
 Relearning test
 Test of retention
Compares time or trials required to
learn material a 2nd time with time or
trials required to learn material the 1st
time.

Ebbinghaus
Practical Application to Studying
 Make information meaningful to you
 Easier to memorize material
 Learning curve
 Increasing amount of material to be
learned
 Dramatically increases time it takes to learn it.

Ebbinghaus
 Relearning easier than initial learning
 It takes longer to forget material after each
subsequent re-learning.

Ebbinghaus
 Learning is more effective when it is spaced
out over time rather than crammed into a
single marathon study session.
 Forgetting happens most rapidly right after
learning occurs & slows down over time

3 Stages of Memory
1. Input or encoding stage
2. Storage stage
3. Retrieval stage

Stages of Memory
 Encoding
 Getting information into your brain from your
sensory receptors.
 Storing
 Retaining the information in your brain.
 Retrieval
 Getting information back out of your brain.

1. Encoding stage
 Getting information into your brain
 Can occur through automatic processing.
 Effortless
 Read a word and you already know what it means.
 Effortful Processing
 Encoding that requires effort & conscious
processing.
 Calculus homework
 Stuff information into your brain.

1. Encoding stage
 Number of ways to encode (stuff
information into your brain)
 Rehearsal
 Repeating the information.
 Visualizing
 Imagery
 Making a mental picture

1. Encoding stage
 Socks
 monster
 Encode
 Toilet
 Jargon
 Toes
 Believe
 Easier to remember
 You can form a mental
picture of them.
 Abstract
 You can’t form a
mental image.

1. Encoding stage
 Must organize information to make it easier
for your memory to hang onto it.
 You can organize encoded information by
chunking it.
 Chunking
 Organizing material into familiar manageable units.
 Business phone numbers
 1-800-the-law2
 Easier to remember than a string of numbers

1. Encoding stage
 Hierarchy
 Like an outline
 Organize
 Understand
 Recall information

2. Storage Stage
 Encoded information must be stored in the
memory system if we plan to retain it for
any length of time or use it more than once.

3. Retrieval Stage
 When we recall or bring a memory into
consciousness, we have retrieved it.

Models of Memory Eidetic
Imagery
 Photographic memory
 Can look at a written page, person, slide, or
drawing & then later mentally see that
image.
 Appears to be rare
 Images last for up to 4 minutes
 Once image has faded the memory seems no
better than others memories.

Models of Memory Stages-of-
Memory Model
 Also called traditional model
 Memory can be processed in different ways.
 There are 3 types of memory: sensory, short-term,
and long-term.

Models of Memory
 Sensory memory
 Very brief
 Lasting 1/2 to 1 second
 Extensive memory for sensory events.
 Short-term memory (STM)
 Limited in capacity compared to sensory
memory
 Lasts longer (10 to 20 seconds).

Models of Memory
 The initial 10- to 20-second STM period
often leads to a second phase, working
memory, during which attention and
conscious effort are brought to bear on the
material at hand.

Long-term Memory
 (LTM) is the memory
stage that has a very
large capacity & the
capability to store
information relatively
permanently.

Models of Memory
 The stages-of-memory model stresses the
importance of rehearsal or practice in this
transfer.
 Items that are rehearsed seem more likely
to be transferred than unrehearsed items.
 Memories may not be retrievable from
LTM because they have faded or because of
interference by other memories.

Models of Memory
 We use maintenance rehearsal when we
want to save or maintain a memory for a
short period.
 Participants who are instructed to
remember a list use elaborative rehearsal,
which adds meaning to material that we
want to remember.

Models of Memory
 Proactive interference occurs when old
material interferes with the retrieval of
material learned more recently.
 .

Models of Memory
 Retroactive interference occurs when
recently learned material interferes with the
retrieval of material learned earlier

Other Approaches To Memory
 The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon is a
condition of being almost, but not quite, able to
remember something; used to investigate the nature
of semantic memory.
 Episodic memory is memory of one’s personal
experiences.
 Flashbulb memories are detailed memories of
situations that are very arousing, surprising, or
emotional.
 The study of flashbulb memories has provided
information about episodic memory.

Techniques for Improving Memory
 Mnemonic devices
 Procedures for associating new information
with previously stored memories.
 If you create and use mental pictures or
images of the items you are studying, you
will remember them better.

 Since the time of the 1st experiment on
grouping, psychologists have consistently
found that we tend to group or chunk items
when we recall them.
 Items that are not very meaningful or
relevant to the learner are not learned as
well or as easily as more meaningful or
relevant items.

During Reading
 Predicting
 Predict what will happen next in reading
material, etc.
 Ask questions based on titles to improve
comprehension.
 Example
 Pink Collar Jobs
 What is a pink collar job?
 Do I know anyone that has a pink collar job?

 Create special codes to help learn material
that lacks relevance.
 Code less relevant material in a meaningful
form & then remember the coded items.
 Acronyms & acrostics are 2 popular coding
techniques.

 An acronym is a word formed by the initial
letter(s) of the items to be remembered.
 Acrostic
 Verse or saying (often unusual or humorous) in
which the first letter(s) of each word stands for
a bit of information.
 Humor has a tendency to stick in people’s mind

Acrostic Example Using the Word
Peace
 People need love care and friendship.
 Every word that we let slip.
 All the prayers that come from our heart
 Could be the sign for peace to start
 Everyone must play their part .

Psychology Chapter 4, Memory

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