Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Cognitive Psychology
(PSYC612)

Mr. Manoj Kumar

Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Coordinator – Behavioural Science
 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Module 5: Memory and

Forgetting
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Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences
 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

2.Storage / Retention: Holding this information in memory for later

use
3. Retrieval / Remembering: Taking memories out of storage
Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences
Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences
Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences
 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Types of Memory
Sensory Memory:
Storing an exact copy of incoming information for a few seconds; the first
stage of memory.
Types of Sensory Memory:
Iconic: A fleeting mental image or visual representation.
Example: “You look around the room, quickly surveying objects that you see
on the floor, end tables, dresser, and bed, before quickly shutting your eyes.
The memory of what your room looked like during your observation is an
example of iconic memory.”
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Echoic: After a sound is heard, a brief continuation of the sound in the

auditory system.
Example: Spoken language is a common example. When someone
discuss, your echoic memory remembers each individual syllable.
Your brain identifies words by connecting each syllable to the earlier
one. Each word is also stored in echoic memory, which permits your
brain to comprehend a full sentence.
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 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Size of Short term memory:

• Serial Position curve
• Memory Span Method:
Miller: Magic Number 7 (Plus or Minus 2): STM is limited to holding
seven (plus or minus two) information bits at once
Duration of Short term memory:
• Distracter Technique (John Brown, Peterson & Peterson,1958)
• Probe Technique (Waugh& Norman, 1962)
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Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences
 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Serial Position Effect and Rehearsal

• The better recall of the first few words, called the primacy effect, reflects
the extra maintenance rehearsal they receive. The first word gets the
most extra rehearsal, because it's the only one the participants have. The
second word in the list shares rehearsal time with the first, the third word
shares with the first two, and so on.
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Serial Position Effect

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 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

• Storing information relatively permanently
• Information stored on the basis of meaning and importance
• Another name of LTM is Secondary Memory

Types of Long-Term Memories:

Procedural memory / Implicit memory: is recall of how to do things such as
swimming or driving a car.
Declarative memory / Explicit memory: is recall of factual information such as
dates, words, faces, events, and concepts.
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Types of Declarative / Explicit memory

Semantic memory includes things that are common knowledge, such as the
sounds of letters, names of states,, and the capitals of countries.
Episodic Memory / Autobiographical is a person's unique recollections of
a particular event or an episode. People are usually able to connect
particular details with an episodic memory, such as how they felt, the
place and time, and other particulars.
Some examples of episodic memory:
• Where you were and the people you were with
• Your beach vacations of last summer
• The first time you travelled by plane
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 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Model of Semantic Memory: https://

youtu.be/IHTliFOyZUs
 STM V/S LTM Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Particulars STM LTM

Timing Max 30 Sec. Whole life
Decay Rehearsal Time Gap / Interruption

Storage Capacity 7+-2 unlimited

Forgetting Trace dependent Retrieval cues
Forgetting
Recall Easy & Automatic Efforts
Encoding Acoustic Coding Semantic Coding
Effect Recency Primacy
Indexing Not required Mandatory
Handle Frontal lobes Hippocampus
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Chunking
• Chunking is the process of taking individual pieces of information and
grouping them into larger units. With this techniques you can improve
the amount of information you can remember.
• Most likely the most common example of chunking occurs in phone
numbers.
• For example, a phone number sequence of 2-3-2-3-1-2-3 would be
chunked into 2323-123.
• Chunking is often a useful tool when learning large amounts of
information. By separating different individual elements into larger
group, information becomes easier to retain and recall.
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Retrieval Cue

A Retrieval Cue is always help us to remember the information. When we create a

new memory, we comprise certain information about the situation that act as triggers
to access the memory.
For example, when someone is introduced to us at a party, we don't only store the
name and appearance of the new acquaintance in our memory. We also contain
external cues about the situation like what kind of party it was, what cocktails were
served, who made the introduction and what music was playing.
We also include internal cues such as what mood you were in at the time, or what
you thought of the person being introduced. When we try to recall the person, having
one or more of these cues present will help us remember better.
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Context-dependent memory
• Psychologist suggests that recall will be more when a person tries to
recall the information in the same environment that they learned it in
(Godden & Baddeley, 1975; Smith, Glenberg & Bjork, 1978).
• For example: when a student tries to recall information in an exam,
they will be able to recall it best if they learned it in an environment
which is similar to the exam environment.
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State-dependent memory
State-dependent memory is where a person’s physical state can
influence their ability to recall information; if they are in the same
state when they learn and recall information, they will recall more
than if they are in a different state for learning and recalling.
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Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is the subjective feeling that
individual have of being confident that they know the exact word for
which they are searching, yet they are not able to recall this word.
They are able to recall words of similar sounds and meaning, but
never the exact word they are seeking. TOT is an experience with
memory recollection involving difficulty retrieving a well-known
word or familiar name.
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Flashbulb memories
The term “flashbulb memory” was introduced in 1977 by Roger Brown and
James Kulik.
Flashbulb memories, which are memories of learning something so
shocking or surprising that it creates a strong and seemingly very
accurate memory of learning about the event--but not the event itself.
Some common examples of such remembrances include the memory of
9/11 attacks, a school shooting, college graduation, or even the birth of
one's child.

https://youtu.be/PIg8kCD9ZGk
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Forgetting
Forgetting refers to the loss of information that was previously stored in
memory.
For example, if you can’t recall the name of your play school or if you
can’t remember how to play a song on the piano that you knew last year.
Some memories are completely erased when forgotten, but in many cases
a trace of the memory remains.

Sometimes we just have challenging retrieving information, and we can

pull it up with the proper cues. You can reduce the chance of forgetting
something by periodically reviewing or rehearsing the information.
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“Forgetting is passive mental process”

Ebinghaus
“Forgetting is an active mental process”

Jenkins& Dallenbach, Muller & Pilzecker, Melton &

Irwin
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Determinants or Cause of Forgetting

a) Nature of learnt material
b) Degree of Learning
c) Length of the learnt task
d) Method of learning
e) Serial position of item
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Forgetting Factors related to learner

• Health
• Mental Set
• Emotional factors
• Motivational factors
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 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Retrieval Failure Theory

• Retrieval failure is where the information is stored in secondary
memory, but cannot be retrieve. Such information is available but not
accessible. It cannot be retrieve because the retrieval cues are not
present.
• When we create a new memory we also store information about the
situation and it is known as retrieval cues. When we come into the
similar situation again, these retrieval cues can activate the memory of
the situation. Retrieval cues can be:
External / Context - in the environment, e.g. smell, place, object etc.
Internal / State- inside of us, e.g. physical, emotional, mood, drunk etc.
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Decay Theory / Disuse Theory:

The term "decay theory" was first coined by Edward Thorndike in his
book The Psychology of Learning in 1914.
Trace decay theory states that forgetting occurs as a result of the
spontaneous decay or diminishing of the memory trace. Trace decay
theory focuses on time and the limited duration of short term memory.
This theory suggests primary memory can only hold information for
between 15 and 30 seconds unless it is rehearsed.
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 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Interference theory
The interference theory of forgetting explain that forgetting can
be caused by two competing memories.

Retroactive interference occurs when new information interferes

with the retrieval of old information, and

Proactive interference occurs when old information interferes with

the retrieval of new information.
Figure 7.15
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FIGURE 7.15 Retroactive and proactive interference. The order of learning and testing shows whether interference is retroactive
(backward) or proactive (forward).
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Motivated forgetting
Motivated forgetting theory, suggests that people forget things
because they do not want to remember them for a particular reason.
Painful and Sad memories are made unconscious and very difficult
to recall, but still remain in storage.
There are two classes of Motivated Forgetting:
• Psychological Repression, an unconscious act
• Thought Suppression, a conscious act
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Psychological Repression
The concept of psychological repression was first developed in
1915. The concept was based on Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic
model, which explain that people subconsciously push unpleasant
thoughts and feelings into unconscious.
For instance, a child abused by a parent, who had repressed the
memory, has trouble forming relationships. Psychoanalysis was the
treatment method offered by Freud for repressed memories, with the
goal to bring back the fears and emotions unto the conscious level.
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Thought Suppression
• The thoughtful or conscious attempt to suppress memories is referred to
as thought suppression. This phenomenon involves conscious strategies
and deliberate context shifts, so it is goal directed.
• If a person faces with stimulants of unpleasant memories, he/she might
consciously try to push the memory into the unconscious by thinking
about something else.
Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences
 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Ways to Improve Memory

• Knowledge of Results: Feedback allowing you to check your progress
• Recitation: Summarizing aloud while you are rehearsing material
• Elaborative Rehearsal: Look for connections to existing knowledge
• Selection: Selecting most important concepts to memorize
• Organization: Organizing difficult items into chunks; a type of
reordering
• Part Learning: Studying subparts of a larger body of information (like
text chapters)
• Progressive Part Learning: Breaking learning task into a series of short
sections
https://youtu.be/Ml8dkictaRI
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THANK YOU !