Memory - Yorktown



Memory

Are you you without Memory?

Learning is worthless without memory

Cognitive psychologist now view memory as similar to computer information processing: encoding, storage and retrieval.

Cognitive Psych: the Psychology of thinking

Flashbulb Memories: a short visual image of an extremely important scene: where you were when the Challenger exploded; Kennedy assassinated;

Even these can be extremely inaccurate.

Sensory Memories

The initial, fleeting, photographic encoding of spoken or visual sensations. Last about 4 to 5 seconds.

Visual is called iconic memory.

Auditory is called echoic memory.

First step in encoding.

Encoding of New Information

Sensory data is first sent to the hippocampus (HIPPOS NEVER FORGET); a way station for memories to either be shifted to Long-Term memory or discarded (forgetting as lack of encoding).

Short-Term hold 7 items plus or minus 2. (Can be expanded by chunking items together).

Encoding: LTM

Long term memory holds and almost infinite amount of images, words, smells and sounds.

Long term memory is stored throughout the brain. If part of the brain is damaged, only parts of long-term memory is lost. This is why you see a slow deterioration in Alzheimer’s and stroke patients.

Encoding: Automatic Processing

Enormous amounts of info about space, time and frequency is encoded without thinking about it at all. Where did you park your car today? What friends have you talked to since last night?

Encoding: Effortful

Other encoding requires rehearsal/repetition for encoding to occur. Names of people, principles of Psychology, most school work.

Effortful encoding requires attention and repetition to learn.

Ebbinghaus Curve

Ebbinghaus is to memory what Skinner was to Operant conditioning and Pavlov to Classical.

Worked with nonsense syllables to determine how people can most efficiently work effortfully to encode new information.

Principles of Remembering (encoding)

The more repetition one day the less required to relearn: The amount of remembered depends on the amount of time spent learning.

Overlearning: continued learning passed the point we know information increases the amount we retain later.

Principles of Remembering (encoding)

Information learned just before we fall asleep is poorly remembered.

Spacing effect: spacing our learning of a subject over a long period of time aids in long term remembering. The longer the space between practice session, the better the recall. NO CRAMMING!

Principles of Remembering (encoding)

Serial Position Effect: We trying to remember long lists of items, we tend to remember the first and last items the best.

We will remember the first item the best of those two Primacy effect.

Mnemonic devices: organizing for better memory

Peg words:association known words/images with new words or numbers to remember.

Method of loci: placing ideas to remember around a familiar location.

Chunking: grouping ideas into chunks to reduce the number of items to encode.

Using the letters of items to be remembered to form a sentence to give you retrieval cues: Every Good Boy Does Fine; Roy G. Biv.

Mnemonic devices: organizing for better memory.

Hierarchies: Organizing information around major principles: outlines, webbing

Principle Learning

Read them the story, 1/2 cover your eyes….

It’s about making a Kite!!!

How We Encode

Semantic: we encode best things that make sense: Learning meaningful material requires about 1/10th the effort of meaningless.

So, both context and principle learning help us remember information.

How we encode

Visually: Next most powerful.

Acoustically

Two codes are better than one: so if you can see and understand you will remember more easily.

People don’t remember that tanning and smoking will damage your skin…but if you show them…

Short term memory

+ or minus 7 items for a short period, rapid decay of unrehearsed information 12 seconds.

This is our on screen display or selective attention, what we are focusing on at any time.

Information may stay in Hippocampus longer and then either be discarded or sent to Long term memory.

Long Term Memory

Virtually limit-less.

Decentralized; data is stored in the area that processes it. Visual in occipital; auditory in temporal. Etc.

After three years of forgetting about 65% of foreign language vocab, you retain the rest a lifetime. Matches the Ebbinghaus curve.

Memory is Synaptic Change

New memories cause physiological changes in the brain making networks easier to fire by adjusting the dendrite/neurotransmitters system. The easier to fire, the easier linked memories or concepts are to remember.

This stored ability for a circuit to fire is called: Long Term Potentiation (LTP).

Stress hormones help create LTP, allowing for more automatic encoding.

Implicit vs. Explicit Memories

Explicit memories (declarative, things you can say) are decentralized throughout the brain: events (episodic), people, facts, school learning.

Implicit memories:(non-declarative things you do) knowing how to do something, are centralized in the cerebellum (little brain). This explains infantile amnesia, learning to swim or ride a bike. Those with hippocampus damage can still learn how to do things.

Memory Retrieval

To retrieve a memory you must first have some kind of retrieval cue, that Primes the neural network or schema. Those cues can be visual, auditory, or other sensations or internal thoughts.

Memory is retrieved into the hippocampus, which acts as a working memory.

Retrieval

Activating one strand of a schematic memory is called Priming. Mnemonic devices prime our memory so that we link difficult to remember memories with something easier or more familiar.

Serial Position Effect

If asked to remember a list of things, you will more likely remember the first and last item in the list.

If you only remember one part, it will be the part at the beginning: Primacy Effect

Forgetting as Retrieval error.

If we cannot remember something, it could be that we never encoded it, or that we are having difficulty retrieving it. Interference of other memories are common retrieval errors.

Forgetting as Retrieval error.

Proactive interference: this is when something similar you learned in the past interferes with something new you are trying to encode. Say you studied French for three years and then decided to take Spanish in college. You may find yourself retrieving French words or pronouncing Spanish words with a French accent.

Forgetting as Retrieval error

Retroactive Interference: This is when a newly learned memory goes back and interferes with an old one. Say you’ve been driving for a while and then decide to learn a stick shift. Then when you start driving an automatic, you slam on the break with your left foot thinking it is a clutch.

Memory Construction is like a mosaic with decentralized bits all over brain.

Our memories are what we encode as well as how we retrieve them. Remember we encode information semantically, for meaning, and may fill in the blanks with details that aren’t correct, or color the memory by the mood we are in.

Memory Contruction: like a mosiac

Déjà vu is often caused by the firing of network by a cue that makes you believe you’ve experienced the whole picture before, when really it was only one part that was familiar.

Retrieval

Context effect: Putting yourself back into the context where a memory was formed may trigger that memory. Going by an old house, a smell of perfume from a former girlfriend, or the smell of autumn football, may bring back a flood of memories. If you learn a list underwater, you will remember it better underwater.

Retrieval

State dependent memory: the state we are in influence the memories that are retrieved. When sad, happy, drunk whatever, these become a retrieval cue.

Memory is also mood congruent, it goes both ways: when sad we are likely to remember events as being sadder than we thought at the time or happier if happy.

Source Amnesia

Where we got a memory from, the source, is one of our weakest areas of memory.

People often believe an event occurred when really the event was a story they had heard (Ronald Reagan), or a dream, or a story told to them by their parents about when they were little that didn’t occur the way they remember.

Eyewitness Memory

Because of source amnesia and misinformation effect, eyewitness memories are notoriously bad. Recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse are also becoming called into question because of unwittingly planting false memories through the process of recovery.

Misinformation Effect

Similarly, we can encode a false memory if we are led to believe something occurred that didn’t. That memory will become just as real as memory of an event that actually occurred. Similarly, we fill in the gaps when retrieving memories, so the retrieval cues offered can change the memory as it comes out.

Repression or Motivated forgetting

Whether or not repression (burying a traumatic memory to a level you cannot retrieve) exists is being called into question. People to seem to purposefully forget things (motivated forgetting), but many repressed memories that are recovered seem to been planted, usually unknowingly. However, it is just as true that some recovered memories have been proven correct. So the answer seems to be: not as many as are thought, but some.

Review List (p.23)

Rank your memory on the following scale:

4 I’m sure I heard it. 3 I think…2 I think the word is new 4 I’m sure the word is new.

Eye pain prick

pin thimble sharp

point haystack sewing

hurt thread injection

syringe needle knitting

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