PS 101: General

Psychology
Memory
(Part 2)
Section DD
Fall 2024
 Reminders &
Announcements
• Reading this week:
• Chapter 6: Memory

• Discussion this week:

• No Quiz
• Review of Topic Form for Critique Project
• Form due on Blackboard on November 1st
Encoding Long-Term Memory
• The key to efficient long-
term memory is in the
organization of the content
• We can use several
mnemonic devices to help
us remember things
• Some work better for certain tasks
than others!
• Experiment with multiple devices
as you are trying to learn things
Mnemonic Devices: Clustering
• Clustering involves grouping
items into categories (chunks,
clusters)
• We can typically remember 7
± 2 “chunks” of information in
STM
• What is a chunk? A
meaningful unit of
information:
•
Mnemonic Devices: Clustering
• Imagine you wanted to memorize this grocery
shopping list:paper Green
Toilet
Hamburger beans Matches
Asparagus Bacon Milk
Corn Chicken Sour cream
Broom Cheese
• What could you do using the device of clustering?
Mnemonic Devices: Clustering
• Imagine you wanted to memorize this grocery
shopping list:paper Green
Toilet
Hamburger beans Matches
Asparagus Bacon Milk
Corn Chicken Sour cream
Broom Cheese
• What could you do using the device of clustering?
• 12 items is too many for short-term memory, thus
encoding in long-term memory would be inefficient
• You could cluster the items into four categories with three
Mnemonic Devices: Method of Loci
• The method of loci involves forming
picture associations with items you
want to remember and specific
locations along a route you could
travel
1. Map a route that you know
2. Imagine pictures linked with
each item you want to
remember and place them
along the route
• Developed by the ancient Greeks!
Mnemonic Devices: Narrative Story
• The narrative story mnemonic device involves organizing the
information you want to remember into a story
• You can also use songs and rhymes in a similar way
• Suppose you want to remember the five explanations for why
we forget things:
1. Interference
2. Organic amnesia
3. Decay of the memory trace
4. Retrieval failure
5. Motivated forgetting
Mnemonic Devices: Narrative Story
• You could organize the terms into a story:
1. Interference The rotten odor emanating from his d
uffel bag was sufficient to run interfer
2. Organic amnesia ence
3. Decay of the memory as Sam weaved his way through the c
trace rowded
corridors. “Phew!” exclaimed his
4. Retrieval failure
buddy Bill. “It smells like something or
5. Motivated forgetting ganic is
decaying in your duffel bag.” “Oh,
that is just the remnants of a crummy
brown
bag lunch that my Mom failed to
Mnemonic Devices: Acrostics
• Acrostics are sentences in which the first letter of
each word serves as a cue for recalling specific
information
• The order of the planets from the sun:
• Mercury - Venus – Earth – Mars – Jupiter – Saturn – Uranus
– Neptune
• My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine (Pizzas).
Mnemonic Devices: Acronyms
• Acronyms are arrangements of letters that provide
cues for our recall
• The order of the colors of the rainbow ROY G BIV:
Do memory strategies actually work?
• Memory strategies do work, and we get
better at them as we grow and develop!
• Younger children tend to use maintenance
rehearsal to remember things, or repeat
things without attributing meaning
• Older children tend to use elaborative
rehearsal, which involves organizing
information and attribute meaning to things
• If we teach younger children how to use
elaborative rehearsal, they get better at
remembering things too!
Retrieval from Long-Term Memory
• Why do you think
elaborative rehearsal works
well?
• Memory strategies are
effective because they
create cues or “handles” to
help us grab and access
information
• The more retrieval cues we
Retrieval from Long-Term Memory
• Why do you think
elaborative rehearsal works
well?
• Memory strategies are
effective when they create
cues or “handles” to help
us grab and access
information
• The more retrieval cues we
Testing Retrieval from Long-Term
Memory
• You are given a word: ”Cat”
• You are asked to remember the word in a simple or
complex sentence that either makes sense or does
not make sense:
• “She danced the cat.” (Simple, Nonsense)
• “The great bird swooped down and carried off the
struggling cat” (Complex, Makes sense)
• Which would you be more likely to remember?
• Simple or Complex?
Testing Retrieval from Long-Term
Memory
• Craik and Tulving (1975) study:
• Participants were more likely to recall
words that fit a sentence than words
that did not
• Participants were also considerably
more likely to remember a word if it fit
a complex sentence than if it fit a
simple sentence
• In other words, we are more likely to
remember things when they are
meaningful and have many retrieval
Testing Long-Term Memory
• Which type of question do you prefer on an exam?
• Multiple choice
• Fill-in-the-blank
• Short answer
• Essay
• Why?
Testing Long-Term Memory
• Recall tasks are those in which we are asked to
reproduce information that we were exposed to
before
• Fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and essay-type
questions
• Recognition tasks are those in which we pick a
correct answer from a set of possible answers
• In other words, we must “recognize” or realize that we
were previously exposed to that information
• Multiple choice questions
(Re)Constructive Memory
• Memory is a dynamic process, and our memories
of events can change over time
• Remembering is often a process of reconstructing
an event, rather than searching our long-term
memory storage for a copy
• Our memories are not always accurate representations
of what happened
• Generally, we store a few main facts and organize
the rest of a story or memory around central
Review: Ethics in Psychological
Experiments
• Lost in a Shopping Mall Study
• Elizabeth Loftus and colleagues (~1992)
• Research question: Are recovered memories of past child
abuse sometimes false memories induced by
psychotherapists’ suggestions?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTF7FUAoGWw&t=220s
• Participants: ~24 adults
• Given three true experiences and one falsified narrative
• Falsified narrative: Getting lost in a shopping mall as a child when
they were five or six years old
• Some participants reported remembering the event and
shared details about it
• Interpreted as the creation of a false memory
False Memories
• False memories are memories of
events that never actually
occurred
• False memories can be ”planted”
?
(accidentally or intentionally) in a
person prior to recall by many
The Mandela
methods Effect:
• Hypnosis Misinformation
• Suggestion or Collective
• Lack of sleep False
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2FUCZpT-_Q
The Misinformation Effect
• The misinformation effect
occurs when misleading
information is presented
after an event
• People will alter their
descriptions and reports
of the event to match
• Also a source of false
memories
Memory Schemas
• Schemas are conceptual
frameworks that we use to
make sense of our worlds
• Schemas give us
preconceived expectations
and help make the world
feel more predictable
• They can also lead to
memory distortions, because
we remember things in ways
State-Dependent Memory
• Our internal states also impact
our memory encoding and
recall
• If people learn under the
influence of a drug (cannabis,
alcohol), they recall that
information more easily in the
drug state than the non-drug
state MILES, C., & HARDMAN, E. (1998).
State-dependent memory produced by
• State-dependent memory also aerobic exercise. Ergonomics, 41(1),
20–28.
applies to emotional states https://doi.org/10.1080/001401398187
297
• Experiments with college
Emotion and Flashbulb Memories
• Flashbulb memories are
associated with extreme
emotion, surprise, or
uniqueness
• These memories are often very
vivid and have a lot of detail
• While we are typically more
confident in the accuracy of
flashbulb memories, they are
just as likely to be distorted or
forgotten as other types of
 Next Time:
Forgetting, Memory Case
Studies, and the Biology
of Memory
Questions?