Download Chapter 3 Memory - Chadwick School

Memory
Memory is our brain’s ability to store, retain & recall
information and experiences.
Memory has 3 processes
▪ Sensory Memory
▪ Short-Term
▪ Long-Term
Our Brain’s have 5 types of
Memory
▪ Episodic▪ Semantic▪ Working Memory▪ Procedural “body” –
▪ Implicit –
Our Brain’s have 5 types of
Memory
Episodic- comprised of reconstruction of past
experiences, including sensations, emotions. They
usually unfold like movies and are experiences by one’s
point of view
People are usually able to associate particular details with an episodic
memory, such as how they felt, the time and place, and other
particulars. It is not completely understood why we remember certain
instances in our life while others go unrecorded in our episodic
memories. It is believed that emotion plays a key role in our formation
of episodic memories.
Examples of episodic memory
▪ Where you were and the people you were with when you
found out about the 9/11 attacks
▪ Your skiing vacation last winter
▪ The first time you traveled by airplane
▪ The details about how you learned of a relative’s death
▪ Fearing water because you were knocked over by a wave at
the beach as a child
▪ Your first day at a new job or school
▪ Attending a relative’s 75th birthday party
▪ Neighbors on the block where you grew up
Our Brain’s have 5 types of
Memory
Semantic- is non-personal, factual knowledge that stands alone
Examples of semantic memory
▪ Knowing that grass is green
▪ Recalling that Washington, D.C., is the U.S. capital and
Washington is a state
▪ Knowing how to use scissors
▪ Understanding how to put words together to form a
sentence
▪ Recognizing the names of colors
▪ Remembering what a dog is
▪ Knowing how to use the phone
▪ Knowing that President John F. Kennedy was shot on Nov.
22, 1963
Semantic memory vs. episodic memory
▪ Episodic memory and semantic memory are two
major types of memories that make up part of your
long-term memory; together they are known
as declarative memory.
▪ While episodic memory is an individual’s unique
take on a particular episode — which will vary from
the recollection of others who were at the same
event — semantic memory is just the facts.
Our Brain’s have 5 types of
Memory
Working Memory- the capacity to hold information long enough to use it
Our Brain’s have 5 types of
Memory
Implicit – we don’t know that we have it, they affect our actions in
subtle ways like; you may dislike a new person because they remind
you of someone else.
▪ Implicit memory is sometimes referred to as unconscious memory
or automatic memory. Implicit memory uses past experiences to
remember things without thinking about them. The performance of
implicit memory is enabled by previous experiences, no matter how
long ago those experiences occurred.
▪ A subset of implicit memory, procedural memory, enables us to
perform many everyday physical activities, such as walking and
riding a bike, without having to give it thought. A large majority of
implicit memories are procedural in nature. Procedural memory
primarily involves learning new motor skills
Examples of implicit memories
▪ Recalling the words to a song when someone sings the first few words
▪ Riding a bike
▪ Performing simple cooking tasks, such as boiling water for pasta
▪ Driving a car
▪ Taking a familiar route each day, such as commuting to work or the store where you
shop frequently
▪ Buttoning a shirt
▪ Completing tasks that are a routine part of a familiar job, such as sanding for a carpenter
or chopping onions for a chef
▪ Recalling the rules of a simple and familiar game, such as tag or solitaire
▪ Dialing a phone
▪ Brushing your teeth
▪ Typing on a keyboard
Our Brain’s have 5 types of
Memory
Procedural “body” – comprised from
learning actions like: walking,
swimming, riding a bike
How Accurate is Memory
▪ Most people think that a memory is like a nonfiction book or movie.
Scientists have found that human memory changes constantly.
Memories lose detail & become distorted as time passes. They are
shaped and reshaped by people’s beliefs, expectations and views of
themselves. People modify their memories to include newly learned
information-even if the facts are wrong.
▪ Painful memories lost and found, are harder to find the truth
especially when it comes to victims of child abuse. Between 8 and
38% of women in surveys thought they had suffered some kind of
sexual abuse as a child. So
▪ Memories are distributed throughout our brains so if one part of an
experience is lost, another part of it remains, example: If a memory
of someone's name is lost, the memory of their face is not.
Memory (Lisa Yount-Lucent Overview Series)
Sensory Memory
The ability to look at an item for a second and then remember
what it looked like.
It is processed approximately 200-500 milliseconds after an
item is perceived.
Short-Term Memory
Is where memory is recalled without practicing, something
that happened recently.
Short-Term Memory is dependent on the regions of the
Frontal & Parietal Lobes
It is believed to rely mostly on an acoustic code for storing
information.
Test 1: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/stm0.html
Test 2: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/puzmatch.html
Long-Term Memory
Is the ability to store more information
for long periods of time (life times) like
phone numbers, names and address’
from when we were kids
The penny test
http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/common_cents/index.html
Memory Glossary
▪ Flashbulb Memories- are Vivid, detailed memories of events associated with strong emotions.
▪ Eidetic Memory- The ability to remember information and its surroundings in great detail: sometimes
called photographic memory.
▪ Episodic Memory- Memory for events in a person’s past: a form of explicit memory
▪ Implicit Memory- The system of memories that do not enter conscious awareness, including memories
for learned skills, habits, and conditioning
▪ Long-Term Memory- Explicit memory that lasts for more than a few minutes
▪ Perceptual Memory- A form of memory in which sense perceptions are recorded in the brain for a few
seconds
▪ Anterograde Amnesia- the inability to form new long term memories
▪ Acetylcholine-a neurotransmitter used by some nerve cells, including those destroyed by Alzheimer’s
disease
▪ Korsakoff’s Syndrome- A kind of amnesia that usually affects alcoholics who eat a diet lacking vitamin B
▪ Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)- A disorder sometimes suffered by people who have suffered
terrifying experiences; it can include nightmares and vivid memory “flashbacks”.
Memory (Lisa Yount pg 102-104)
F.Y.I
▪ Only experiences giving rise to unusually prolonged and/or
intense neural activity become encoded as memories.
▪ The Hippocampus encodes new memories & helps recall
others
▪ PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition where
people have vivid memories (flashbacks) of traumatic
experiences. Emotionally traumatic experiences are more
likely remembered because emotion amplifies experience.
▪ It is said that, Memory does not comprise a single unitary system, but
rather an array of interacting systems, each capable of encoding or
registering information, storing it and making it available by retrieval.
Without this capability for information storage, we could not perceive
adequately, learn from the past, understand the present, or plan for the
future.
▪ In the case of the psychological study of memory, there is considerable
agreement that it can broadly be divided into: sensory memory, shortterm or working memory, and long-term memory.
Essentials of Human Memory ( Alan D. Baddeley)
Some causes of Memory Loss
Poor Health especially lack of Vitamin B
Severe Stress & unhappiness can interfere with Memory
Alcohol slows down the nervous system and can block
storage of new memories
Traumatic experiences, Head injury, Addiction
(Memory-Lisa Yount)
Memory assignment
▪ Remember as far back as you can write a one page
paper about your oldest memory.
▪ What is the memory?
▪ When did it happen?
▪ How well do you remember it?
▪ Why do you think you remember it so well, or not
so well?
▪ Which of the 5 types of memory is this memory?