MEMORY

● is the process involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli,
images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present

TASKS IN MEASURING MEMORY

RECALL
● producing a fact, a word, or other item from memory

3 MAIN TYPES OF RECALL TASKS USED IN EXPERIMENTS

● SERIAL RECALL
○ recall items in the exact order in which they were presented
● FREE RECALL
○ recall items in any order you choose
● CUED RECALL
○ recalling first shown items in pairs, but suring recall you are cued with only one
member of each pair and are asked to recall each mate.

RECOGNITION
● selecting or identifying an item that you have been exposed to previously

RELEARNING
● the number of trials it takes to learn once again items that were learned in the past

EXPLICIT MEMORY
● participants engage in conscious recollection

IMPLICIT MEMORY
● participants use information from memory but are not consciously aware that we are
doing so

CULTURE-RELEVANT TESTS
● measure skills and knowledge that relate to the cultural experiences of the test-takers

MODELS OF MEMORY (THE TRADITIONAL MODEL OF MEMORY)

● Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968) proposed an alternative model that
conceptualized memory in terms of memory stores:

1. SENSORY STORE
○ Capable of storing relatively limited amounts of information for very brief periods;
○ Is the initial repository of much information that eventually enters the short and
long-term stores.
 2. ICONIC STORE
○ is a discrete visual sensory register that holds information for very short periods.
○ Its name derives from the fact that information is stored in the form of icons.
3. SHORT-TERM STORE
○ capable of storing information for somewhat longer periods but of relatively
limited capacity as well
○ It also has some control processes available that regulate the flow of information
to and from the long-term store, where we may hold information for longer
periods.
4. LONG-TERM STORE
○ Very large capacity, capable of storing information for very long periods, perhaps
even indefinitely

LEVELS OF PROCESSING (LOP) FRAMEWORK

● Proposed by Fergus Craik and Endel Tulving (1972)
● a model of memory that suggests that memory comprises a continuous dimension in
which memory is encoded related to the ease with which it can be retrieved:
● the deeper the processing of information, the greater the chance of it being retrieved.
● The level-of-processing framework can also be applied to nonverbal stimuli.

LEVELS OF PROCESSING
● PHYSICAL
○ Visually apparent features of the letters
● PHONOLOGICAL
○ Sound combinations associated with the letters
● SEMANTIC
○ meaning of the word

SELF-REFERENCE EFFECT
● participants show very high levels of recall when asked to relate words meaningfully to
the participants by determining whether the word describe them/
SELF-SCHEMA
● an organized system of internal cues regarding our attributes, our personal experiences
and ourselves.

TWO KINDS OF STRATEGIES FOR ELABORATING THE ENCODING

● WITHIN-ITEM ELABORATION
○ It elaborates encoding of the particular item in terms of its characteristics,
including the various levels of processing.
● BETWEEN-ITEM ELABORATION
○ it elaborates encoding by relating each item’s features to the features of items
already in memory
AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL: WORKING MEMORY

WORKING MEMORY

● Baddeley and Hitch (1974) proposed a working memory model

● It is the small amount of information that can be held in mind and used in the
execution of cognitive tasks
● holds only the most recently activated, or conscious, portion of long-term
memory, and it moves these activated elements into and out of brief, temporary
memory storage.

COMPONENTS OF WORKING MEMORY

● Working memory comprises five elements: the visuospatial sketchpad, the

phonological loop, the central executive, subsidiary slave systems, and the
episodic buffer.

1. PHONOLOGICAL LOOP
● briefly holds inner speech for verbal comprehension and for acoustic
rehearsal.

1.1 ARTICULATORY CONTROL PROCESS (inner voice)

 ● The articulatory control process (linked to speech production) acts
like an inner voice rehearsing information from the phonological
store.

1.2 PHONOLOGICAL STORE (inner ear)

● Phonological Store (inner ear) processes speech perception and

stores spoken words we hear for 1-2 seconds.

2. VISUOSPATIAL SKETCHPAD

● it briefly holds some visual images.

3. CENTRAL EXECUTIVE

● which both coordinates attentional activities and governs responses. The central
executive is critical to working memory because it is the gating mechanism that
decides what information to process further and how to process this
information. It decides what resources to allocate to memory and related tasks,
and how to allocate them.

4. “SUBSIDIARY SLAVE SYSTEMS”

● It perform other cognitive or perceptual tasks.

5. EPISODIC BUFFER

● It is a limited-capacity system that is capable of binding information from the

visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop as well as from long-term
memory into a unitary episodic representation.

MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS

The working-memory model is consistent with the notion that multiple systems may be involved
in the storage and retrieval of information. Endel Tulving (1972) proposed a distinction between
two kinds of explicit memory:

1. SEMANTIC MEMORY
● is our storehouse of more-or-less permanent knowledge, such as the meanings of words
in a language
● Stores general world knowledge. It is our memory for facts that are not unique to us and
that are not recalled in any particular temporal context.
 2. EPISODIC MEMORY
● refers to the long-term storage of information regarding experiences.
● Examples of episodic memories include information about past events and activities,
such as what happened, how we felt, or who said what to whom.

EXCEPTIONAL MEMORY AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

MNEMONIST
● someone who demonstrates extraordinarily keen memory ability, usually based on using
special techniques for memory enhancement.
● often referred to as a "memory prodigy" or "memory expert
SYNESTHESIA
● the experience of sensations in a sensory modality different from the sense that has
been physically stimulated.
● For someone with grapheme-color synesthesia:
○ The letter "A" might be seen as always red.
○ The number "2" might consistently appear as green
HYPERMNESIA
● a process of producing retrieval of memories that would seem to have been forgotten

AMNESIA
● is severe loss of explicit memory
● explicit memory is typically impaired in amnesia.

RETROGRADE AMNESIA
● in which individuals lose their purposeful memory for events prior to whatever
trauma induces memory
● the memories that return typically do so starting from the more distant past, they
then progressively return up to the time of the trauma.
● retrograde amnesia can occur fairly commonly when someone sustains a
concussion
● Often events right before the trauma are never recalled.
ANTEROGRADE AMNESIA
● the inability to remember events that occur after a traumatic event.
INFANTILE AMNESIA
● the inability to recall events that happened when we were very young.

DISSOCIATIONS
● occurs when two or more cognitive functions or processes are not impaired or affected in
the same way by a specific condition, injury, or manipulation.
● it suggests that these functions are independent of each other and are supported by
separate neural or cognitive systems.
DOUBLE DISSOCIATIONS
● more specific and powerful concept. It occurs when there are two separate cases (or
groups of individuals) where each case shows a dissociation between two different
functions.
● it means that one case is impaired in function A but not in function B, while the other
case is impaired in function B but not in function A.

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE
● Alois Alzheimer
● a disease of older adults that causes dementia (loss of intellectual function that is
severe enough to impair one’s everyday life) as well as progressive memory loss
● Alzheimer’s disease leads to an atrophy (decrease in size) of the brain; especially in the
hippocampus, frontal, and temporal brain regions.
● Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed when memory is impaired and there is at least one
other area of dysfunction in the domains of language, motor, attention, executive
function, personality, or object recognition.
● Although the progression of disease is irreversible, it can be slowed somewhat.
● The main drug currently being used for this purpose is DONEPEZIL (Aricept). A more
recent drug, MEMANTINE (sold as Namenda or Ebixa), can supplement Aricept and
slow progression of the disease somewhat more.
● The two drugs have different mechanisms.
○ ARICEPT slows destruction of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain.
○ MEMANTINE inhibits a chemical that overexcites brain cells and leads to cell
damage and death.

● A special kind of Alzheimer’s disease is familial, known as early-onset Alzheimer’s

disease.
● Late-onset Alzheimer’s, in contrast, appears to be complexly determined and related to
a variety of possible genetic and environmental influences, none of which have been
conclusively identified.
● High concentrations of acetylcholine have been found in the hippocampus of normal
people (Squire, 1987), but low concentrations are found in people with Alzheimer’s
disease. In fact, Alzheimer’s patients show severe loss of the brain tissue that secretes
acetylcholine.
LONG-TERM POTENTIATION (LTP)
● refers to the long-lasting strengthening of synapses (the connections between neurons)
that occurs when those synapses are repeatedly and persistently stimulated.
● fundamental concept in neuroscience that helps researchers and healthcare
professionals understand how neurons communicate and adapt.

KORSAKOFF’S SYNDROME
● neurological disorder often caused by severe alcoholism or a deficiency in thiamine
(vitamin B1).
● the lack of thiamine impairs the brain's ability to function properly.
● has been linked to damage in the diencephalon, the region comprising the thalamus and
the hypothalamus of the brain in the frontal and the temporal lobes of the cortex.