Chapter 5

Episodic Memory: Organizing and

Remembering
 2

Endel Tulving’s Distinction

Episodic Memory Semantic Knowledge
• Memory that allows you to • Generalized knowledge of the
access specific events located world
at a particular point in time • May arise through the
consolidation of numerous
• “Mental time travel” episodic memories
• Backward: to relive • e.g. Conway et al.,
earlier episodes 1992:
• Forward: to anticipate • Short delay:
and plan future events information is
recalled in
episodes
• Long delay: the
same information
had been
integrated into
semantic memory
Episodic Memory

• The crucial feature of episodic memory is the capacity

to remember specific events.
• mental filing system that will allow you to distinguish
that event from similar events on other occasions:
1. a system that allows you to encode that particular
experience in a way that will distinguish it from
others
Episodic Memory

2. it requires a method of storing that event in a durable

form, and
3. it requires a method of searching the system and
retrieving that particular memory.
Episodic Memory

Impaired episodic memory in amnesic patients is

generally associated with impaired knowledge
acquisition, the capacity to continue to develop
knowledge of the world, rather than the capacity to
retrieve existing knowledge.
Thus a patient might be unable to remember the current
US president, but be able to recall the name of the US
president and UK prime minister during the Second World
War.
Episodic Memory

Semantic Morris
Water
Maze

EVENTS

Episodic
hippocampus
 7

Approaches to Studying Memory

Ebbinghaus Bartlett
• Ran carefully controlled • Studied the recall of complex
experiments in the laboratory. material (e.g. drawings and folk
• He was criticized for tales) –
focusing on narrow issues • Examined recall errors to
and phenomena. understand encoding and
• He largely ignored how storing processes.
memory works in the • Used informal testing methods
real world. • Stressed participants’ effort
• He went to lengths to strip after meaning.
study materials of any pre- • Assumed schemas: long-term
existing meaning (e.g., structured knowledge used to
nonsense syllables) – not make sense of new material
avoiding meaning but and subsequently store and
avoiding familiarity recall it.
confounds.
• Schemas are influenced
by social and cultural
factors.
Bartlett

• Bartlett (1932) interpreted his findings by

arguing that the systematic errors and
distortions produced in the participants’
recalls were due to the intrusion of their
schematic knowledge.
 9

More on Bartlett’s Methodology

• Bartlett believed:
• Systematic recall errors and distortions are often
caused by schemas intruding on reality.
• Appropriate schemas help memory, e.g. Bower,
Karlin, and Dueck’s (1975)“droodles”.
• Bartlett was criticized for:
• Failing to conduct/report statistical tests.
• Providing only vague instructions to his participants.
• These instructions may have produced
deliberate guessing, amounting to the memory
distortions of interest.
• Many of Bartlett’s findings still stand the test of time,
however.
 10

Tests of Bartlett’s Theory

Sulin and Dooling (1974)
• Hypothesis:
• Schema-driven errors are more likely at longer retention
intervals because schematic information is more durable
than rote recall.
• Task and Results:
• Presented all participants with the same story about a
dictator, whose name was either: Gerald Martin (an
unknown) or Adolf Hitler (someone well known historically).
• Asked participants whether they remembered reading a
statement that the dictator “hated Jews,” which did not
appear in the story. Delay time was varied:
• Short (5 minutes): No difference between groups
• Long (1 week): Participants who read about Hitler were more
likely to incorrectly agree that they had read a statement
about Jews, influenced by schematic knowledge about the
real Hitler.
 11

Tests of Bartlett’s Theory

Sulin and Dooling (1974)
 12

Tests of Bartlett’s Theory

Carmichael, Hogan, and Walter (1932)

• Task:
• Presented participants with a
series of ambiguous objects (e.g.
could either be a hat or a
beehive) along with one of those
labels (list 1 or 2)
• Later, asked them to draw the
objects
• Results:
• The label influenced people’s
drawings
• Conclusion:
• The label biased the perception From Carmichael, Hogan, and Walter (1932). Copyright © American
and storage of the objects Psychological Association. Reproduced with permission.
 13

Tests of Bartlett’s Theory

Bower, Karlin, and Dueck (1975)

• people were asked to recall apparently

meaningless patterns or “droodles”.
• Free recall of these patterns was very
poor. However, recall was greatly
improved when each droodle was
accompanied by an interpretative
label. Bower et al. conclude that
“memory is aided whenever contextual
cues arouse appropriate schemata

Figure 6.2 A set of droodles of the type used by Bower et al. (1975).
Subsequent recall was greatly enhanced when the droodles were accompanied
by their titles. What titles would you suggest? Possible answers are given below
the figure.
 14

Tests of Bartlett’s Theory

Carmichael, Hogan, and Walter (1932) … Revisited

• However, Prentice (1954) conducted a follow-up:

• Methods:
• Same as for Carmichael, Hogan, and Walter (1932), but instead of
asking participants to draw the objects, they were simply asked to
recognize the objects
• Results:
• The label effect disappears under recognition conditions
• Conclusion:
• The bias observed by Carmichael, Hogan, and Walter arose during
retrieval rather than encoding because the items recognized were
not the distorted ones drawn in the previous recall task, but the
original figures.
 15

Meaning and Memory

• Not all “nonsense” syllables are created equal:
• Even “nonsense” syllables can take on meaning
• e.g. CAS might prompt participants to think of CASTLE
• Syllables rated as more meaningful are easier to recall
(CAS vs ZIJ)
• However, there wasn’t enough time to form such associations
in Ebbinghaus’s study.
• Studying memory for nonsense syllables is most likely
a study of the formation of, as Bartlett suggested.
repetition habits
• Syllables that most closely follow the structure of English are
easiest to acquire
 16

Meaning and Memory

Test Methods
• Memory could be explained purely in terms of
associations or links between words.
• When prior interword associations were strong, such
as bread–butter, learning would be easier than when
they were more remote, such as castle–tower, or
absent, as in lobster–symphony
 17

Meaning and Memory

Test Methods
• Testing word learning, rather than nonsense syllables
involved:
• Serial recall: Recall all the words in the list, in order
• Associative recall:
• e.g. study: DOG–BISHOP; Test: DOG–?
• Strongly related pairs (e.g. DOG–BONE) are more memorable.
• Free recall: Recall as many words from the list as possible, in
any order.
• Lists with many inter-word associations are more easily recalled
(Deese, 1959).
• Related words within a list tend to be recalled in a cluster
(Jenkins & Russell, 1952). (thread, needle, and mend,
were included in a mixed list, even though they were
presented separately, they tended to be recalled as a
cluster)
LIST A

• read out the following list of words, at a steady

rate of about 2 seconds per word. Then close your
eyes and recite the alphabet to get rid of the
recency effect before writing down as many words
as you can in any order.

• virtue, history, silence, life,

hope, value, mathematics,
dissent, idea
LIST B

• read out the following list of words, at a

steady rate of about 2 seconds per word. Then
close your eyes and recite the alphabet to get
rid of the recency effect before writing down
as many words as you can in any order.

• church, beggar, carpet, arm,

hat, teapot, dragon, cannon,
apple
 20

Meaning and Memory

Visual Imagery
• Paivio (1969; 1971):
• Words rated as being more imageable (e.g. concrete
nouns) are more memorable.
• Low-imageability examples: VIRTUE, HISTORY, DISSENT,
IDEA
• High-imageability examples: CHURCH, BEGGAR, ARM,
TEAPOT
• The results are explained in terms of the dual-coding
hypothesis:
• Imageable words can be encoded both in terms of:
• Visual appearance
• Verbal meaning
• Availability of multiple retrieval routes improves the chance
of successful recall.
LIST C

• read out the following list of words, at a steady rate

of about 2 seconds per word. Then close your eyes
and recite the alphabet to get rid of the recency
effect before writing down as many words as you can
in any order.

• large, grey, elephants, terrified,

by, roaring, flames, trampled,
tiny,defenseless, rabbits
The Cloze Technique -guess the missing
words

• The sly young fox ____ to eat the little ____ hen for his

dinner. _____ made all sorts of _____ to catch her. He _____

many times to _____ her. But she was _____ clever little hen.

Not _____ of the sly fox’s _____ worked. He grew quite _____

trying to catch the _____ red hen.

The Cloze Technique

• The sly young fox wanted to eat the little red hen for his

dinner. He made all sorts of plans to catch her. He tried many

times to catch her. But she was a clever little hen. Not one of

the sly fox’s plans worked. He grew quite thin trying to catch

the little red hen.

 The Cloze Technique -guess the missing
words
• In the first place, — had by that time, — the benefit of his —
education: continual hard work, — soon and concluded late, —
extinguished any curiosity he — possessed in pursuit of —, and any
love for — or learning.

• His childhood’s — of superiority, instilled into — by the favors of —

Mr. Earnshaw, was faded —. He struggled long to — up an equality
with — in her studies, and — with a poignant though silent —: but he
yielded completely; — there was no prevailing — him to take a — in
the way of — upward, when he found — must, necessarily, sink
beneath — former level.
The Cloze Technique
• In the first place, he had by that time, lost the benefit of his
early education: continual hard work, begun soon and
concluded late, had extinguished any curiosity he once possessed
in pursuit of knowledge, and any love for books or learning.

• His childhood’s sense of superiority, instilled into him by the

favors of old Mr. Earnshaw, was faded away. He struggled long to
keep up an equality with Catherine in her studies, and yielded
with a poignant though silent regret : but he yielded
completely; and there was no prevailing on him to take a step in
the way of moving upward, when he found he must, necessarily,
sink beneath his former level.
 26

Learning and Predictability

• Sentences are more memorable than random word
strings because:
• Words in a sentence tend to be more related than in unrelated
word strings.
• Words in a sentence are somewhat predictable due to linguistic
redundancy built in by grammar and semantics – not equally
probable.
• The Cloze technique:
• A measure of redundancy in language.
• Task:
• Ask individuals to fill in sentences where every fifth word is
missing (like Mad Libs, e.g. “The dog chased his ____.”
• Results:
• The more redundant and predictable the prose (text), the easier it
is to recall. Children’s story was easier than Wuthering Heights.
 27

Levels of Processing Theory

• Why does meaning facilitate LTM?
• Levels-of-Processing Hypothesis (Craik & Lockhart, 1972):
• Information can be processed on a variety of levels, from the most
basic (visual form), to phonology (speech sounds), to the deepest
level (contextual meaning).
• The depth of processing helps determine the durability in LTM.

Level of Processing Example

SHALLOW 1) Visual Form “DOG” includes the letters
D, O, and G
2) Phonology Rhymes with FOG
3) Semantics (Meaning) A four-legged pet that often
DEEP chases cats and chews on
bones
 28

Levels of Processing
Craik and Tulving (1975)
• Task:
• Participants viewed words and were asked to make three
different types of judgments:
• Visual processing (e.g. “Is LOG in upper case?” Y/N)
• Phonological (e.g. “Does DOG rhyme with LOG?” Y/N)
• Semantic (e.g. “Does DOG fit in the sentence: ‘The ___ chased the
cat’?” Y/N)
• Finally, participants were asked to recognize the words they had
seen before in a surprise test including both old and new words.
• Results:
• Words that were more deeply processed were more easily
recognized -- particularly for questions with a “YES” response.
 29

Levels of Processing
Craik and Tulving (1975)

• Conclusions:
• “Yes” responses were better recalled
because these items are better
integrated with the encoding
question.
• In the semantic condition, especially,
the sentence context provided a
reminder during the test.
• While semantic judgments typically
take longer to make, the slower
processing rate is not the cause of
this effect.
• Slowing down the shallower levels of Based on Craik and Tulving (1975).
processing by increasing the
judgment difficulty did not affect
memorability in a follow-up
experiment.
 30

Levels of Processing
Generalizability

• The levels-of-processing effect is found:

• Across numerous encoding tasks.
• On both recognition and recall tests.
• Regardless of whether participants expect a final test.
• Limits to the levels-of-processing hypothesis:
• It is difficult to operationally define depth of processing.
• As we’ve seen, we can’t use processing speed to define it.
• Different levels of processing can occur simultaneously, rather than
in series, making them hard to separate in a task.
• Deeper processing does not always lead to better performance.
• Consider this thought experiment.
Suppose you don’t know how to ride a
bicycle. You approach an expert on
bicycle riding, who has written a 200-
• page book detailing all the rules and
facts that one needs to know, describing
even the minutest adjustments in
posture. Being an excellent student, you
spend weeks memorizing everything.
• If you were given a test on the book, you
would score 100%. Then you get on the
bicycle and what happens?
• You crash within seconds, unable to keep
balanced.
• You don’t really know what is important
about riding bicycles. You have excellent
factual knowledge, but no skill.
 32

Transfer-Appropriate Processing
• The Transfer-Appropriate Processing Principle:
• The processing requirements of the test should match the processing
conditions at encoding in order to reveal prior learning.
• Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977) tested the principle:
• Task:
• Participants made either a phonological or semantic judgment about
each item on a word list.
• The learning was incidental: participants were not told that they
would have to later recall the words.
• This constrains (limits) the learning strategies used.
• The final test was either:
• A standard recognition test for the learned words.
• A rhyming recognition test for learned words – e.g., Was a word
presented that rhymed with “bar”?
 33

Transfer-Appropriate Processing
Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977)

• Results:
• Standard recognition test: Deeper processing led to
better performance.
• Rhyming recognition test: The shallower rhyme-based
encoding task led to better performance because it
matched the demands of the testing situation.
• Conclusion:
• It only makes sense to talk about a learning method’s
efficiency in the context of the type of final test.
• Follow-up by Fisher and Craik (1977):
• They replicated these findings but emphasized the
overall advantage for deeper processing.
 34

The Benefit of Deeper Coding

• Elaboration enhances retrievability:
• William James (1890) was among the first to highlight the benefit
of weaving together associations between items.
• Semantically richer sentences make the words within them more
memorable (Craik & Tulving, 1975).
• Elaborative rehearsal enhances delayed long-term learning
more than maintenance rehearsal (Craik & Lockhart, 1972):
• Maintenance rehearsal: Continuing to process an item at
the same level at which it was encoded (e.g. rote rehearsal).
• Elaborative rehearsal: Linking material being rehearsed to
other material in memory.
The one who THINKS over his experiences most,
and weaves them into systematic relations with
each other will be the one with the best
memory
… All improvement of the memory lies in the
line of elaborating the associates.
(James, 1890, p. 662)
 36

Maintenance Rehearsal
Glenberg, Smith, and Green (1977)

• Task:
• Participants were asked to remember numbers over a delay.
• During the delay, they had to read out words (purportedly to
limit rehearsal on numbers), but really this was simulating
maintenance rehearsal on the words.
• Some words were repeated only once during the delay; others
were repeated many times.
• Participants then recalled the numbers followed by a surprise
recall (or recognition) test for the words.
• Results:
• Having nine times as many repetitions only increased recall by
1.5% (9% for recognition), suggesting that simple maintenance
rehearsal doesn’t help long-term recall much.
 37

Maintenance Rehearsal
Mechanic (1964)
• Task:
• Participants had to repeat nonsense syllables either once or many times.
• Only half of the participants were warned of an upcoming recall test.
• Results:

• Conclusion:
• Knowing that there’s a test coming prompted additional processing in the
intentional learning group.
• Having to repeatedly articulate the word quickly discouraged either group
from engaging in further processing.
 38

When Does Maintenance

Rehearsal Work?
Glenberg, Smith, and Green (1977) Mechanic (1964)
• Finding: • Finding:
• Maintenance didn’t help • Maintenance did help in one
condition
• Stimuli:
• Stimuli:
• Already known words • Unfamiliar nonsense stimuli
• Rationale: that need to be learned from
scratch
• The recall test relied on
meaningful links between • Rationale:
the known words (already • Repeating unfamiliar stimuli
in LTM), which depend on with no natural links between
deeper, semantic features them boosts their
representation in phonological
LTM
 39

Organization and Learning

Subjective Organization

• In contrast to learning nonsense syllables, when

dealing with previously known words, nothing is being
learned (represented in LTM).
• Instead, participants need to learn to select only the
presented words from other words they already know.
• Tulving (1962) found that people can do this through
subjective organization:
• Chunking together separate words for recall, even if
those words weren’t presented together.
 40

Organization and Learning

Subjective Organization
• Items are often chunked together if they:
• Are linked to a common associate
• e.g. SYRINGE, POINT, HAYSTACK, and KNITTING are all linked
to NEEDLE
• Come from the same semantic category (e.g. professions)
• Simply cueing people with a category often improves recall
• Form a logical heirarchical structure (Bower et al., 1969) or
matrix (Cooper & Broadbent, 1978)
• pink, green, blue, purple,
apple, cherry, lemon, plum,
lion, zebra, cow, rabbit
A Conceptual Hierarchy for
Organizing Information

The “minerals”
conceptual
hierarchy used by
Bower
et al. (1969). Recall
is much higher than
when the same
words were
presented in
scrambled order.
 43

Organization and Learning

Strategies for Improving Memory
• Creating a story involving all the studied items.
• Pros:
• Given enough time and imagination, it’s possible to create a story
for nearly any set of items.
• Promotes elaborative encoding, building in links between items.
• Cons:
• Time intensive
• Risk of recalling parts of the story that weren’t actually studied.
• Using visual imagery to have the studied items interact.
• Pros:
• Flexible and quick
• Cons:
• Best for concrete nouns, difficult for abstract nouns.
 44

Intention to Learn
Mandler (1967)
• Task:
• Participants get a deck of cards with a word on each and are divided into
four groups, and asked to do one of the following:
• Learn the words
• Sort the cards into categories based on meaning.
• Sort the cards by meaning knowing that they’ll be tested later.
• Arrange the words in columns.
• Results:
• Sorting by meaning with or without knowledge of the test produced the same
level of recall.
• Worst recall was found for incidental learning group asked to arrange the
words into columns.
• Conclusion:
• As long as you’re paying attention to the material, intention doesn’t
matter, but level/type of processing does matter.
 45

Memory and the Brain

• Since episodic memory is arguably uniquely
human, nonhuman animal studies are of
limited value.
• Neuropsychological patients (like HM) who have
deficits in episodic LTM often have damage to the
Papez circuit.
• Links the hippocampus and the frontal lobes
 46

Memory and the Brain

The Aggleton and Brown (1999) Model

Brain Region Function

Hippocampus Episodic recollection/recall
Surrounding rhinal and perirhinal Recognition memory
cortex

 Aggleton and Brown argue that while the hippocampus is important,

the surrounding rhinal and perirhinal cortex can support recognition,
even when the hippocampus is compromised.
 However, this remains a hotly debated and researched topic.
Perirhinal Hippocampus
 (A) Simple schematic diagram of cortical–hippocampal connections.

Eichenbaum H et al. PNAS 1996;93:13500-13507

©1996 by National Academy of Sciences

 49

Memory and the Brain

The Aggleton and Brown (1999) Model
• Further support for the Aggleton and Brown Model comes
from Vargha-Khadem et al. (1997)
• They tested three patients who became amnesic at an early age,
including Jon.
• Jon has damage to his hippocampus.
• While he’s clearly amnesic, he has normal semantic memory.
• This goes against the assumption that semantic memory depends on
episodic memory, which, in turn, relies on the hippocampus.

• Some have argued that Jon has just learned to adapt to

his deficits, shifting the burden to another brain region
since his brain was so young when the damage occurred.
 50

Memory and the Brain

Episodic Memory and the Healthy Brain
• Brain activity can be recorded noninvasively using the
electroencephalogram (EEG) and analyzed according to
the response (ERP) evoked by the presentation of a
stimulus that is repeated numerous times.
• The peaks and troughs occurring at particular times can be used
to distinguish between different processes.
• However, this technique doesn’t afford the ability to determine
where in the brain the activity is generated.
 51

Memory and the Brain

The HERA Hypothesis (Tulving et al., 1994)
• The Hemispheric Encoding and Retrieval Asymmetry
(HERA) Hypothesis:
• Verbal encoding is supported by the left frontal region
• Especially with deep, semantically elaborated encoding
(Gabrieli et al., 1998).
• However, nonverbal material tends to activate the right
prefrontal area during encoding (Wagner et al., 1998).
• Episodic retrieval is supported by the right frontal region.
• This hypothesis was formed on the basis of neuroimaging
data; supportive neuropsychological data arose afterwards.
 52

Memory and the Brain

Brewer et al. (1998)

• Event-related fMRI was used to disentangle the encoding-related brain

activity of each photo stimulus.
• This permitted a subsequent-memory analysis contrasting encoding
activity for items that are later remembered in full episodic detail, those
that simply felt familiar, and those that were later forgotten.
• Subsequently remembered photos were associated with encoding activity in
the right frontal lobe and bilaterally in the hippocampus.
• Familiar and forgotten items did not activate these brain regions during
encoding.
• Wagner et al. (1998) replicated these findings using words as stimuli,
finding activation in the left frontal lobe and the same two hippocampal
areas found by Brewer et al.
fMRI Data for Remembered, Felt
Familiar and Forgotten Items
Activation in the
area of the
hippocampus as a
function of
whether an item
was subsequently
remembered,
judged familiar,
or forgotten. High
activation is
associated with
good recall. Data
from Brewer et al.
(1998).
 54

Memory and the Brain

• Can we see signs of physical changes in the brain due to
long-term learning?
• DeZeeuw (2007) discovered the growth of neural connections
with learning.
• Experienced taxi drivers have larger posterior hippocampi than
novice drivers (Maguire et al., 2001) or bus drivers who followed
a regular route (Maguire et al., 2006).
• The brain differences increased with more taxi experience.
• Other regions in the hippocampus were smaller for experienced
cab drivers.
• Experienced cab drivers, though better at spatial navigation through
London were worse at learning other visuo-spatial tasks,
demonstrating their expertise comes at an expense.
The War of the Ghosts

One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to
hunt seals, and while they were there it became foggy and calm.
Then they hear war-cries, and they thought: “Maybe this is a war-
party.”
They escaped to the shore, and hid behind a log.
Now canoes came up, and they heard the noise of paddles, and saw
one canoe coming up to them.
There were five men in the canoe, and they said: “What do you
think?
We wish to take you along.
We are going up the river to make war on the people.”
The War of the Ghosts

One of the young men said: “I have no arrows.”

“Arrows are in the canoe,” they said.
“I will not go along. I might be killed. My relatives do
not know where I have gone.
But you,” he said, turning to the other, “may go with
them.”
So one of the young men went, but the other returned
home. And the warriors went up the river to a town on
the other side of Kalama.
The War of the Ghosts

The people came down to the water, and they began to fight, and many
were killed.
But presently the young man heard one of the warriors say:
“Quick, let us go home: that Indian has been hit.”
Now he thought: “Oh, they are ghosts.”
He did not feel sick, but they said he had been shot.
So the canoes went back to Egulac, and the young man went ashore to his
house, and made a fire.
And he told everybody and said: “Behold I accompanied the ghosts, and we
went to fight. Many of our fellows were killed, and many of those who
attacked us were killed.
They said I was hit, and I did not feel sick.”
The War of the Ghosts

He told it all, and then he came quiet. When

the sun rose he fell down.
Something black came out of his mouth. His
face became contorted.
The people jumped up and cried. He was dead.