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7A: Memory
 Example: computer
 Our memories are less literal and more fragile
 The Brain is slower, but can does many things at once
Connectionism
 Modern Memory model
 We first record to be remembered info as fleeting: sensory
memory
 From there we process info into short-term memory, where we
encode it through rehearsal
 Information than moves onto long-term memory for later
retrieval
Modified three-stage processing
 External events (sensory input)->Sensory memory
(Encoding)/Important info)->Working/Short-term
memory (Encoding and Retrieving)->Long-term memory
 Short-term: last about a minute (#)
 Working memory: memories that last for days or weeks
(stays longer) but not permanently (studying)
Working Memory
 Concentrates on active processing of info
 People’s working memory capacity differs
How we Encode
 Automatic Processing: unconscious encoding of information
 Ex: Where you ate dinner yesterday?
 Parallel Processing: doing many things at once
 Effortful Processing: encoding that requires attention and
conscious effort
 Ex: What is standard deviation?
Automatic Processing
• Space: example when studying you often encode the place on
a page and if struggling will try to visualize
• Time: unintentually note the sequence of today’s events
• Frequency: keep track of how many times things happen
• Well-learned information: register words with meaning
Effortful Processing
• Durable and accessible memories
• We can boost our memory through rehearsal
• The amount remembered depends on the time spent learning
• Overlearning-additional rehearsal increases retention
(practice is key)
Effortful Processing
 Spacing effect: we retain information between when
rehearsal is distributed over time
 Mass practice (cramming) can produce speedy short-term
learning and confidence but distributed study time produces
better long-term recall
Effortful Processing
 Spreading out learning (over a semester) helps not only on
final exams but also retaining that information for a lifetime
(testing effect)
 Spaced study and self-assessment beats cramming
Effortful Processing: Serial Effect
• Our tendency to recall the first best the last and first items in
a list
• Primacy (first): Remembered items at the beginning of the
list
• Recency (recent): Remembered items come at the end of the
list/most recent
• Von Restorff effect: exception: when information is list is
unique (president example)
Levels of Processing
 Visual encoding-picture/images
 Acoustic encoding-sound
 Semantic encoding-meaning
 Processing a word deeply by its meaning produces better
recognition later than does shallow processing such as
appearance or sound

Self-reference effect: good recall of information when it is meaningful to us
Visual Encoding
 Imagery-mental pictures, powerful aid to effortful processing
especially when combined with meaning
 Mnemoic: memory aids
 Can also help organize material for later retrieval
Organizing information for Encoding
 Chunking: organizing items into familiar units (occurs
automatically)
 Hierarchies: composed of a few broad concepts divided and
subdivided into narrower concepts and facts
Encoding: selective attention
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
Storage: retaining information
 Sensory memory
 Iconic memory: momentary memory of visual stimuli
 Fleeting photographic memory
 Echoic memory: momentary memory of auditory stimuli
 Linger for 3 to 4 seconds
 Both have helped the initial recording of sensory info
Working/Short-term Memory
 Limited in duration and capacity
 Short-term memory better for random digits than random
letters
 At any given moment we can consciously process only a very
limited amount of info
Long-term Memory
 Our capacity for storing long-term memories is essentially
limitless
Storing Memories in the Brain
 We don’t store information in discrete precise locations
 Ex: Rats in maze
Synaptic Changes
 Memory trace?
 Nerve cells must communicate through their synapses/ Thus
to understand the basis of memory we have to look how
neurons communicate with one another via their
neurtransmitter messangers
Synaptic Changes
 We know experience (age) does increase neural
interconnections to form or strengthen
 Increased synaptic efficiency makes for more efficient neural
circuits. The sending neuron now needs less prompting to
release its neurotransmitter and the receiving neuron’s
receptor sites may increase
Long-term potentiation
 Prolonged neural firing provides a neural basis for learning
and remembering
 Rats given a drug that enhances LTP learned a maze with half
the usual # of mistakes
LTP
 Pharamceutical companies competing to develop memory-
boosting drugs
 One approach is developing drugs that boost production of
the protein CREB
 Thus lead to increased production of proteins that help reshape
synapses and consolidate short-term into long-term memory
LTP
 Drugs that boost glutamate, a neurotransmitter that enhances
synaptic communication
 Most effective, safe, and free memory enhancer…….
LTP
 After LTP has occurred, passing an electric current through
the brain won’t disrupt old memories, but will wipe out very
recent memories
 Ex: Blow to the head (football players)
Stress Hormones and Memory in Brain
 Stronger emotional experiences make for stronger, more
reliable memories
 People given a drug that blocks the effects of stress hormones
will have trouble remembering the details of an upsetting
story
 Ex: rape victim
 Video clip on Stress and Memory-AP Collins
Limits to stress-enhanced
remembering
 Sustained abuse or combat: can shrink the hippocampus
 When stress hormones are flowing older memories may be
blocked
 Ex: Stressed rats have harder time finding their way out of the
maze
Storing implicit and explicit memories
 Anmesia: unable to form new memories
 Destroyed conscious recall not unconscious capacity
 Implict: “how to do something”
 Motor skills, bike ridind
 Explicit: People may not be able to explain how they know to do
something
Hippocampus
 Damage to this area disrupts memory
 Left: trouble remembering verbal information
 Right: trouble recalling visual designs or locations
 Active when we sleep: loading dock while the brain register
and temporarily holds the episode
 Simultaneous activity between the brain while sleeping
 Once stored, we activate various parts of the frontal and
temporal lobes
The Cerebellum
 The brain region at the rear of the brainstem, which forms
and stores the implicit memories created by classical
conditioning
 When damaged, people cannot develop certain conditioned
reflexes
 Eye test: puff of air
Retrieval: Getting Information Out
 Recall: the ability to retrieve information not in conscious
awareness
 Ex: 5 minute clip you have seen before, fill in the blank
 Recognizing: person identifies previously learned material
 Ex: unit test (multiple choice)
 Relearning: Amount of times saved when learning material
for a second time
Retrieval Cues
 Memories are stored in a web of associations
 Anchor points you can use to target information you want to
retrieve later
 Mneomic Devices
 Best come from associations we form at the time we encode
the memory (5 senses)
Retrieval Cues-Priming
 “Wakening of associations”
 Invisible memory without explicit remembering
 Behaviors can be primed in social situations
Context Effects
 Putting yourself back in the context where you experienced
something can prime your memory retrieval
 Ex: pencil, desk
 Déjà vu: being in a similar context to one we’ve been in
before may trigger the experience
 The current situation may be loaded with cues that
unconsciously retrieved an earlier similar experience
 Don’t pay attention to the details around us
Moods and Memory
 State-dependent memory what at we learn in one state may
be more easily recalled when we are again in that state
 Emotions become retrieval cues
 When happy we recall happy events, see the world as a happy
place, thus prolongs our good mood
 When depressed, we recall sad events, which darkens our
interpretation of current events
Forgetting
 Three sings of forgetting
 Absent –mindedness-in attention to details leads to encoding
failure (our mind is elsewhere)
 Transience-storage decay over time (unused info fades)
 Blocking-inaccessibility of stored information (retrieval failure)
Forgetting
 Three sins of distortion
 Misattribution-confusing the source of info (dream)
 Suggestibility-lingering effects of misinformation
 Bias-belief colored recollections (feelings )
Forgetting
 One sin of intrusion
 Persistence-unwanted memories (sexual assault)
Encoding Failure
 Age can affect encoding efficiency
 Helps age-related memories decline
 Without effort, many memories never form
 Penny example
Storage Decay
 Forgetting Curve: the course of forgetting is initially rapid
then levels off with time
 Why?
 It is a gradual fading of the physical memory trace
 Accumulation of learning that disrupts our retrieval
Occurs when the retrieval process does not produce a complete response but produces
parts. Forgetting as a result of retrieval failure rather than encoding or storage failure
Retrieval Failure
 Contribute to the occasional memory failures of older adults
who are frustrated by the tip-of-the-tongue forgetting
 Interference and Motivated Forgetting
Retrieval Failure: Interference
 Proactive interference: occurs when something you learned
earlier disrupts your recall of something you experience later
 Retroactive interference: occurs when new information
makes it harder to recall something you learned earlier
 Information presented in the hour before sleep is protected
from retroactive inference because the opportunity for
interfering evens is minimized
 When should you study?
Proactive or retroactive?
 I’ve used my locker combination for years. One day I had to
learn a new one for just one day. Now I can’t remember my
old one.
 I keep calling my new girlfriend by my old girlfriend’s name!
Retrieval Failure: Motivated
Forgetting
 People unknowingly revise their own histories
 Sigmund Freud: he proposed that we repress painful
memories to protect our self-concept and to minimize
anxiety
 Many people disagree saying that its extremely hard to forget
emotional memories or traumatic experiences
Video clips-AP Collins
Memory Construction
 We infer our past from stored information plus what we later
imagined, expected, saw, and heard
 Eye witness testimony
Memory Construction: Misinformation
and Imagination effects
 Misinformation effect: after exposure to subtle
misinformation, many people misremember
 Hard to discriminate between real and suggested events
 The more vividly we can imagine things, the more likely we
are to inflate them into memories
Memory Construction: Source
Amnesia
 We retain the memory of the event, but not of the context in
which we acquired it
 Ex: Rumor mill
Memory Construction: Discerning
True and False Memories
 Much as perceptual illusions may seem like real perceptions,
unreal memories feel like real memories
 Memories we derive from experience have more detail than
memories we derive from imagination
 Why memories are so fallible: Our imagination and
expectation are very powerful
Memory Construction: Discerning
True and False Memories
 Memories of imagined experiences are more restricted to
the gist of the supposed event-the associated meaning and
feelings
 Because gist memories are durable, children’s false memories
sometimes outlast their true memories especially as children
mature
Memory Construction: Children’s
Eyewitness Recall
 Interviewers who ask leading question can plant false memories
 Children can testify if they have not talked with the involved
adult prior to the interview and when their disclosure is made in
a first interview with a neutral person who ask non-leading
questions
Repressed or Constructed
Memories of Abuse
 Sexual abuse happens: no characteristic “survivor syndrome”
 Injustice happens: some innocent people have been falsely

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convicted
Forgetting happens: both negative and positive
Recovered memories are commonplace: cued by a remark or
an experience
Memories before the age of 3 are unreliable: infantile
amnesia
Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or the influenced of
drugs are especially unreliable
Memories whether real or false can be emotionally upsetting
Elizabeth Loftus: main issues that
occupy researchers
 People are prone to mis-information when time allows the
original memory to fade
 Young people are susceptible to the misinformation effect
 Some have argued that the original memory traces are
changed by post-event information
 Misleading info can turn a lie into memory’s truth
Elizabeth Loftus and Impossible
Memories
 To show that reconstructed memories are not just
amalgamations of actual experiences
 Video clip on AP Collins
Improving Memory
 SQ3R-Survey, Question, Read, Rehearse, Review-Unit 1
 Study repeatedly: exercise memories, wait time
 Make the material meaningful: form images, understand and
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
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organize info, relate to what you already know
Activate retrieval cues: re-create the situation and the mood
in which your original learning occurred
Use mnemoic devices: chunk items, rhymes
Minimize interference: study before sleeping
Sleep more
Test your own knowledge-self-assessment