Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools



Chapter 9 Memory: the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information.

Flashbulb Memory: a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Encoding: the processing of information into the memory system (i.e., getting information into memory).

Storage: the retention of the encoded information over time.

Retrieval: the process of getting information out of memory storage.

                     

Information Processing

External events are first recorded in fleeting sensory memory.  If we pay attention to this information, it will be encoded into short-term memory.  With further encoding and rehearsal, the information will be recorded in long-term memory.

Sensory Memory: the immediate, initial recording of sensory information in the memory system (iconic = visual sensory memory; echoic = auditory sensory memory). 

Short-term Memory: activated memory that holds a few items (7 + or - 2) briefly (about 30 seconds), such as the 7 digits of a telephone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten.

Long-term Memory: the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system.

           

ENCODING: GETTING INFO IN

Automatic Processing: effortless, unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings.

Effortful Processing: encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Rehearsal: the conscious repetition of information, either to maintain it in consciousness or to encode it for storage.

Ebbinghaus' Retention Curve: Ebbinghaus found that the more times he practiced a list of nonsense syllables on day 1, the fewer repetitions needed to relearn them on day 2.  In other words, the more time we spend learning new information, the better we retain it. Spacing Effect: the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice (i.e., cramming doesn't work well).

Serial Position Effect: our tendency to recall best the first and last items in a list.  More specifically:

       Recency Effect: When asked to recall items immediately, we remember items at the end of the list best.

       Primacy Effect: When asked to recall items at a later time, we remember items at the beginning of the list best.

                 

How We Encode Information

Visual Encoding: the encoding of picture images.

Acoustic Encoding: the encoding of sounds, especially the sound of words.

Semantic Encoding: the encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words.

*NOTE: Processing a word deeply--by its meaning (semantic encoding)--produces better recognition of it at a later time than does shallow processing of its appearance (visual encoding) or its sound (acoustic encoding).

Imagery: mental pictures; a powerful aid to effortful processing, especially when combined with semantic encoding.

Mnemonics: memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

            

STORAGE: RETAINING INFO

Sensory Memory

       Iconic Memory: a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second (this phenomenon was studied by Sperling).

       Echoic Memory: a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled with 3 or 4 seconds.

Short-term Memory: temporary memory storage.  Most people can hold about 7, plus or minus 2, bit of information in STM.  Depending on the type of info, it won't remain in STM much longer than about 10-30 seconds.

Types of Long-term Memory

|Explicit |Implicit |

|(Declarative) |(Non-declarative) |

|Requires conscious effort |Does not require conscious effort |

|Involves the Hippocampus |Involves the Cerebellum |

|Semantic Memory |Episodic Memory |Procedural |Dispositional |

| | |Memory |Memory |

|Retention of facts and general |Retention of personal experiences |Retention of skills--motor and |Retention of conditioned associations |

|knowledge |(it’s like a diary) |cognitive (e.g., riding a bike, |learned through operant or classical |

|(it’s like an encyclopedia) | |driving a car, or reciting your "A|conditioning (e.g., fearing snakes, |

| | |B C’s") |feeling good when you earn an "A") |

Long-term Memory: relatively permanent and limitless memory storehouse.  Both serotonin and stress hormones have been found to be important in the formation of memories.

       Long-term Potentiation (LTP): an increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation.  Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.

1.  Implicit Memory (non-declarative): recall of information that does not require conscious effort.

        a) Procedural Memory: Memory for skills (cognitive and motor), such as riding a bicycle or saying the alphabet. These skills become almost automatic with time.

        b) Dispositional Memory: all of the behaviors learned through classical and operant conditioning.

**Implicit memories are processed by the cerebellum.

2.  Explicit Memory (declarative): memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare".

        a) Episodic Memory:  Memory of personal experiences; it is like your memory "diary".

        b) Semantic Memory: Memory of facts and general knowledge; it is like your memory "encyclopedia".

**Explicit memories are processed by the hippocampus.

         

RETRIEVAL: GETTING INFO OUT

Recall: a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier (e.g., fill-in-the-blank test)

Recognition: a measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned (e.g., multiple-choice test.

Relearning: a memory measure that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for a second time.

Priming: the activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory.

Context Effects: memory is better for information that is retrieved in the same (or similar) context in which it was learned (e.g., words memorized underwater are best recalled underwater). Mood-congruent Memory: the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood.

                             

FORGETTING

1. We may not remember information simply because we never encoded it.

2. We also lose information simply due to the passage of time, this is called decay.

3. We also lose information due to interference.

        a) Proactive Interference: the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.

        b) Retroactive Interference: the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.

4. Through motivated forgetting, we may alter or rearrange our memories to make ourselves feel better (e.g., forgetting that you ate 10 cookies in a sitting while on a diet).

        Repression: A form of motivated forgetting.  In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Misinformation Effect: incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event (studied extensively by Elizabeth Loftus).

Source Amnesia: attributing something we have heard about, read about, or imagined to the wrong source (often believing we personally experienced it). 

**Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories.

Remember: overall, eyewitness memories are quite fallible...especially children's recollections of events.  Additionally, when "repressed" memories of abuse are "recovered" through the use of hypnosis, there is a high probability that the memories are false (false-memory syndrome)

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One interesting aspect of memory is that we can believe we remember something that never actually happened. These types of “memories” are referred to as constructive memories. The notion of constructive memories are particularly relevant in the courtroom, where the defense can argue that a witness’s hazy memory of an event may be constructed.

Researchers have found several ways that construction of memory may occur. Sometimes, it may be that a person cannot recover all of the pieces of a memory. For correct recollection of a memory to happen, one must remember all of its main features and be able to link them in a way that makes sense. If one can only remember a few features, then the final product that one scrabbles to come up with may be distorted.

One also might construct a memory by using retrieval cues that are too broad. A set of retrieval cues might match more than one experience, so the memories of several experiences might get muddled up. One might not just be remembering a number of experiences, but general ideas of an experience and/or fantasies as well.

Sometimes suggestion results in constructed memories. It may be that the suggestion of an occurrence leads an individual to believe that such an occurrence actually happened. For instance, refer back to the example of the car crash mentioned in the schematic representations section. When individuals were asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed” into each other, they then “remembered” the cars going very quickly and causing much damage to each other. However, in reality the cars had been going much more slowly and had only bumped each other.

|___ 1. |The three steps in memory information processing are: |

|A) |input, processing, output. |C) |input, storage, retrieval. |

|B) |input, storage, output. |D) |encoding, storage, retrieval. |

|___ 2. |The process of getting information out of memory storage is called: |

| |A) encoding. B) retrieval. C) rehearsal. D) storage. |

|___ 3. |Which of the following is the best example of a flashbulb memory? |

|A) |suddenly remembering to buy bread while standing in the checkout line at the grocery store |

|B) |recalling the name of someone from high school while looking at his or her yearbook snapshot |

|C) |remembering to make an important phone call |

|D) |remembering what you were doing on September 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers |

|___ 4. |The three-stage processing model of memory was proposed by: |

|A) |Atkinson and Shiffrin. |C) |Loftus and Palmer. |

|B) |Herman Ebbinghaus. |D) |George Sperling. |

|___ 5. |The first thing Karen did when she discovered that she had misplaced her keys was to re-create in her mind the day's events. That she had little |

| |difficulty in doing so illustrates: |

|A) |automatic processing. |C) |state-dependent memory. |

|B) |effortful processing. |D) |priming. |

|___ 6. |Information is maintained in short-term memory only briefly unless it is: |

| |A) encoded. B) rehearsed. C) iconic or echoic. D) retrieved. |

|___ 7. |The spacing effect means that: |

|A) |distributed study yields better retention than cramming. |

|B) |retention is improved when encoding and retrieval are separated by no more than 1 hour. |

|C) |learning causes a reduction in the size of the synaptic gap between certain neurons. |

|D) |delaying retrieval until memory has consolidated improves recall. |

|___ 8. |According to the serial position effect, when recalling a list of words you should have the greatest difficulty with those: |

|A) |at the beginning of the list. |C) |at the end and in the middle of the list. |

|B) |at the end of the list. |D) |in the middle of the list. |

|___ 9. |Experimenters gave people a list of words to be recalled. When the participants were tested after a delay, the items that were best recalled were |

| |those: |

|A) |at the beginning of the list. |C) |at the end of the list. |

|B) |in the middle of the list. |D) |at the beginning and the end of the list. |

|___ 10. |Although you can't recall the answer to a question on your psychology midterm, you have a clear mental image of the textbook page on which it |

| |appears. Evidently, your ________ encoding of the answer was ________. |

| |A) semantic; automatic B) visual; automatic C) semantic; effortful D) visual; effortful |

|___ 11. |Darren was asked to memorize a list of letters that included v, q, y, and j. He later recalled these letters as e, u, i, and k, suggesting that the|

| |original letters had been encoded: |

| |A) automatically. B) visually. C) semantically. D) acoustically. |

|___ 12. |Craik and Tulving had research participants process words visually, acoustically, or semantically. In a subsequent recall test, which type of |

| |processing resulted in the greatest retention? |

|A) |visual |

|B) |acoustic |

|C) |semantic |

|D) |Acoustic and semantic processing were equally beneficial |

|___ 13. |To help him remember the order of ingredients in difficult recipes, master chef Giulio often associates them with the route he walks to work each |

| |day. Giulio is using which mnemonic technique? |

| |A) peg-word system B) acronyms C) the method of loci D) chunking |

|___ 14. |Memory techniques such as the method of loci, acronyms, and the peg-word system are called: |

|A) |consolidation devices. |C) |encoding strategies. |

|B) |imagery techniques. |D) |mnemonic devices. |

|___ 15. |One way to increase the amount of information in memory is to group it into larger, familiar units. This process is referred to as: |

| |A) consolidating. B) organization. C) encoding. D) chunking. |

|___ 16. |Textbook chapters are often organized into ________ in order to facilitate information processing. |

| |A) mnemonic devices B) chunks C) hierarchies D) recognizable units |

|___ 17. |When Gordon Bower presented words grouped by category or in random order, recall was: |

|A) |the same for all words. |

|B) |better for the categorized words. |

|C) |better for the random words. |

|D) |improved when participants developed their own mnemonic devices. |

|___ 18. |Visual sensory memory is referred to as: |

| |A) iconic memory. B) echoic memory. C) photomemory. D) semantic memory. |

|___ 19. |In Sperling's memory experiment, research participants were shown three rows of three letters, followed immediately by a low-, medium-, or high |

| |tone. The participants were able to report: |

|A) |all three rows with perfect accuracy. |C) |only the middle row of letters. |

|B) |only the top row of letters. |D) |any one of the three rows of letters. |

|___ 20. |Echoic memories fade after approximately: |

| |A) 1 hour. B) 1 minute. C) 1 second. D) 3 to 4 seconds. |

|___ 21. |Our short-term memory span is approximately ________ items. |

| |A) 2 B) 5 C) 7 D) 10 |

|___ 22. |Brenda has trouble remembering her new five-digit zip plus four-digit address code. What is the most likely explanation for the difficulty Brenda |

| |is having? |

|A) |Nine digits are at or above the upper limit of most people's short-term memory capacity. |

|B) |Nine digits are at or above the upper limit of most people's iconic memory capacity. |

|C) |The extra four digits cannot be organized into easily remembered chunks. |

|D) |Brenda evidently has an impaired implicit memory. |

|___ 23. |It is easier to recall information that has just been presented when the information: |

|A) |consists of random letters rather than words. |

|B) |is seen rather than heard. |

|C) |is heard rather than seen. |

|D) |is experienced in an unusual context. |

|___ 24. |Lashley's studies, in which rats learned a maze and then had various parts of their brains surgically removed, showed that the memory: |

|A) |was lost when surgery took place within 1 hour of learning. |

|B) |was lost when surgery took place within 24 hours of learning. |

|C) |was lost when any region of the brain was removed. |

|D) |remained no matter which area of the brain was tampered with. |

|___ 25. |Studies demonstrate that learning causes permanent neural changes in the ________ of animals' neurons. |

| |A) myelin B) cell bodies C) synapses D) all of the above |

|___ 26. |Kandel and Schwartz have found that when learning occurs, more of the neurotransmitter ________ is released into synapses. |

| |A) ACh B) dopamine C) serotonin D) noradrenaline |

|___ 27. |Long-term potentiation refers to: |

|A) |the disruptive influence of old memories on the formation of new memories. |

|B) |the disruptive influence of recent memories on the retrieval of old memories. |

|C) |our tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with our current mood. |

|D) |the increased efficiency of synaptic transmission between certain neurons following learning. |

|___ 28. |The disruption of memory that occurs when football players have been knocked out provides evidence for the importance of: |

|A) |consolidation in the formation of new memories. |

|B) |consolidation in the retrieval of long-term memories. |

|C) |nutrition in normal neural functioning. |

|D) |all of the above. |

|___ 29. |During basketball practice, Jan's head was painfully elbowed. If the trauma to her brain disrupts her memory, we would expect that Jan would be |

| |most likely to forget: |

|A) |the name of her teammates. |

|B) |her telephone number. |

|C) |the name of the play during which she was elbowed. |

|D) |the details of events that happened shortly after the incident. |

|___ 30. |Memory for skills is called: |

| |A) explicit memory. B) declarative memory. C) prime memory. D) implicit memory. |

|___ 31. |Studies of amnesia victims suggest that: |

|A) |memory is a single, unified system. |

|B) |there are two distinct types of memory. |

|C) |there are three distinct types of memory. |

|D) |memory losses following brain trauma are unpredictable. |

|___ 32. |Elderly Mr. Flanagan, a retired electrician, can easily remember how to wire a light switch, but he cannot remember the name of the president of |

| |the United States. Evidently, Mr. Flanagan's ________ memory is better than his ________ memory. |

| |A) implicit; explicit B) explicit; implicit C) declarative; procedural D) explicit; declarative |

|___ 33. |Amnesia patients typically experience disruption of: |

| |A) implicit memories. B) explicit memories. C) iconic memories. D) echoic memories. |

|___ 34. |After suffering damage to the hippocampus, a person would probably: |

|A) |lose memory for skills such as bicycle riding. |

|B) |be incapable of being classically conditioned. |

|C) |lose the ability to store new facts. |

|D) |experience all of the above changes. |

|___ 35. |Amnesia victims typically have experienced damage to the ________ of the brain. |

| |A) frontal lobes B) cerebellum C) thalamus D) hippocampus |

|___ 36. |Which area of the brain is most important in the processing of implicit memories? |

| |A) hippocampus B) cerebellum C) hypothalamus D) amygdala |

|___ 37. |Which of the following is not a measure of retention? |

| |A) recall B) recognition C) relearning D) retrieval |

|___ 38. |Which of the following measures of retention is the least sensitive in triggering retrieval? |

| |A) recall B) recognition C) relearning D) They are equally sensitive. |

|___ 39. |Complete this analogy: Fill-in-the-blank test questions are to multiple-choice questions as: |

|A) |encoding is to storage. |C) |recognition is to recall. |

|B) |storage is to encoding. |D) |recall is to recognition. |

|___ 40. |In an effort to remember the name of the classmate who sat behind her in fifth grade, Martina mentally recited the names of other classmates who |

| |sat near her. Martina's effort to refresh her memory by activating related associations is an example of: |

| |A) priming. B) déjà vu. C) encoding. D) relearning. |

|___ 41. |In a study on context cues, people learned words while on land or when they were underwater. In a later test of recall, those with the best |

| |retention had: |

|A) |learned the words on land, that is, in the more familiar context. |

|B) |learned the words underwater, that is, in the more exotic context. |

|C) |learned the words and been tested on them in different contexts. |

|D) |learned the words and been tested on them in the same context. |

|___ 42. |Walking through the halls of his high school 10 years after graduation, Tom experienced a flood of old memories. Tom's experience showed the role |

| |of: |

|A) |state-dependent memory. |C) |retroactive interference. |

|B) |context effects. |D) |echoic memory. |

|___ 43. |The eerie feeling of having been somewhere before is an example of: |

| |A) state dependency. B) encoding failure. C) priming. D) déjà vu. |

|___ 44. |Being in a bad mood after a hard day of work, Susan could think of nothing positive in her life. This is best explained as an example of: |

| |A) priming. B) memory construction. C) mood-congruent memory. D) retrieval failure. |

|___ 45. |When he was 8 years old, Frank was questioned by the police about a summer camp counselor suspected of molesting children. Even though he was not, |

| |in fact, molested by the counselor, today 19-year-old Frank “remembers” the counselor touching him inappropriately. Frank's false memory is an |

| |example of which “sin” of memory? |

| |A) blocking B) transience C) misattribution D) suggestibility |

|___ 46. |According to memory researcher Daniel Schacter, blocking occurs when: |

|A) |our inattention to details produces encoding failure. |

|B) |we confuse the source of information. |

|C) |our beliefs influence our recollections. |

|D) |information is on the tip of our tongue, but we can't get it out. |

|___ 47. |Which of the following terms does not belong with the others? |

| |A) misattribution B) blocking C) suggestibility D) bias |

|___ 48. |Which of the following best describes the typical forgetting curve? |

|A) |a steady, slow decline in retention over time |

|B) |a steady, rapid decline in retention over time |

|C) |a rapid initial decline in retention becoming stable thereafter |

|D) |a slow initial decline in retention becoming rapid thereafter |

|___ 49. |At your high school reunion you cannot remember the last name of your homeroom teacher. Your failure to remember is most likely the result of: |

| |A) encoding failure. B) storage failure. C) retrieval failure. D) state-dependent memory. |

|___ 50. |When Carlos was promoted, he moved into a new office with a new phone extension. Every time he is asked for his phone number, Carlos first thinks |

| |of his old extension, illustrating the effects of: |

|A) |proactive interference. |C) |encoding failure. |

|B) |retroactive interference. |D) |storage failure. |

|___ 51. |After finding her old combination lock, Janice can't remember its combination because she keeps confusing it with the combination of her new lock. |

| |She is experiencing: |

|A) |proactive interference. |C) |encoding failure. |

|B) |retroactive interference. |D) |storage failure. |

|___ 52. |Jenkins and Dallenbach found that memory was better in subjects who were: |

|A) |awake during the retention interval, presumably because decay was reduced. |

|B) |asleep during the retention interval, presumably because decay was reduced. |

|C) |awake during the retention interval, presumably because interference was reduced. |

|D) |asleep during the retention interval, presumably because interference was reduced. |

|___ 53. |Which of the following sequences would be best to follow if you wanted to minimize interference-induced forgetting in order to improve your recall |

| |on the psychology midterm? |

|A) |study, eat, test |C) |study, listen to music, test |

|B) |study, sleep, test |D) |study, exercise, test |

|___ 54. |Repression is an example of: |

| |A) encoding failure. B) memory decay. C) motivated forgetting. D) all of the above. |

|___ 55. |Lewis cannot remember the details of the torture he experienced as a prisoner of war. According to Freud, Lewis's failure to remember these painful|

| |memories is an example of: |

| |A) repression. B) retrieval failure. C) state-dependent memory. D) flashbulb memory. |

|___ 56. |Which of the following illustrates the constructive nature of memory? |

|A) |Janice keeps calling her new boyfriend by her old boyfriend's name. |

|B) |After studying all afternoon and then getting drunk in the evening, Don can't remember the material he studied. |

|C) |After getting some good news, elated Kareem has a flood of good memories from his younger years. |

|D) |Although elderly Mrs. Harvey, who has Alzheimer's disease, has many gaps in her memory, she invents sensible accounts of her activities so |

| |that her family will not worry. |

|___ 57. |Studies by Loftus and Palmer, in which people were quizzed about a film of an accident, indicate that: |

|A) |when quizzed immediately, people can recall very little, due to the stress of witnessing an accident. |

|B) |when questioned as little as one day later, their memory was very inaccurate. |

|C) |most people had very accurate memories as much as six months later. |

|D) |people's recall may easily be affected by misleading information. |

|___ 58. |The misinformation effect provides evidence that memory: |

|A) |is constructed during encoding. |

|B) |is unchanging once established. |

|C) |may be reconstructed during recall according to how questions are framed. |

|D) |is highly resistant to misleading information. |

|___ 59. |Research on memory construction reveals that memories: |

|A) |are stored as exact copies of experience. |

|B) |reflect a person's biases and assumptions. |

|C) |may be chemically transferred from one organism to another. |

|D) |even if long term, usually decay within about five years. |

|___ 60. |Hypnotically “refreshed” memories may prove inaccurate—especially if the hypnotist asks leading questions—because of: |

|A) |encoding failure. |C) |proactive interference. |

|B) |state-dependent memory. |D) |memory construction. |

|___ 61. |Memory researchers are suspicious of long-repressed memories of traumatic events that are “recovered” with the aid of drugs or hypnosis because: |

|A) |such experiences usually are vividly remembered. |

|B) |such memories are unreliable and easily influenced by misinformation. |

|C) |memories of events happening before about age 3 are especially unreliable. |

|D) |of all of the above reasons. |

|___ 62. |Which of the following was not recommended as a strategy for improving memory? |

|A) |active rehearsal |C) |speed-reading |

|B) |distributed study |D) |encoding meaningful associations |

MEMORY Answer Key

|1. |D |

|2. |B |

|3. |D |

|4. |A |

|5. |A |

|6. |B |

|7. |A |

|8. |D |

|9. |A |

|10. |B |

|11. |D |

|12. |C |

|13. |C |

|14. |D |

|15. |D |

|16. |C |

|17. |B |

|18. |A |

|19. |D |

|20. |D |

|21. |C |

|22. |A |

|23. |C |

|24. |D |

|25. |C |

|26. |C |

|27. |D |

|28. |A |

|29. |C |

|30. |D |

|31. |B |

|32. |A |

|33. |B |

|34. |C |

|35. |D |

|36. |B |

|37. |D |

|38. |A |

|39. |D |

|40. |A |

|41. |D |

|42. |B |

|43. |D |

|44. |C |

|45. |D |

|46. |D |

|47. |B |

|48. |C |

|49. |C |

|50. |A |

|51. |B |

|52. |D |

|53. |B |

|54. |C |

|55. |A |

|56. |D |

|57. |D |

|58. |C |

|59. |B |

|60. |D |

|61. |D |

|62. |C |

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