Memory

Chapter 9
Memories as Types & Stages

As Types • Explicit Memory

• Implicit Memory
As Stages • Sensory Memory
• Short-Term Memory
• Long-Term Memory
As Processes • Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval
Explicit Memory
• Explicit memory refers to knowledge or experiences that can be
consciously remembered.

• Two types:
• Episodic memory: the firsthand experiences that we have had
• Semantic memory: knowledge of facts and concepts about the world

• Assessed using two measures:

• Recall memory test
• Recognition memory test
Implicit Memory

• Knowledge that we cannot consciously access.

• The influence of experience on behavior, even if the individual is not
aware of those influences

• Three types:
• Procedural memory – our often unexplainable knowledge of how to do
things
• Classical conditioning effects
• Priming – changes in behavior as a result of experiences that have
happened frequently or recently
Stages of Memory
Stages of Memory

• Sensory memory
• Brief storage of sensory information
• Lasts only very briefly and then, unless it is attended to and passed on for more processing, is
forgotten
Short Term Memory
• Short-Term memory
• The place where small amounts of information can be temporarily kept for more than a few
seconds but usually less than one minute
• Not stored permanently but rather becomes available for us to process
Capacity of Short-term Memory
• When short-term memory is filled to capacity, displacement can occur
• In displacement, each incoming item pushes out an existing item, which is then forgotten

• One way to overcome the limitation of 7 or so is to use a technique called

chunking
• Chunking means organizing or grouping separate bits of information into larger units, or
chunks
Long-term memory
• Long-Term memory
• Memory storage that can hold information for days, months and years
• There is no known limit to what we can remember
How to Remember
Cues to Improving memory
Encoding
• Encoding:
• The process by which we place the things that we experience into memory
• Not everything we experience can or should be encoded

• Encoding Strategies:
• Elaborative Encoding:
• we process new information in ways that make it more relevant or meaningful
Retrieval
• Refers to the process of reactivating information that has been stored
in memory.

• We are more likely to retrieve items from memory when conditions at

retrieval are similar to the conditions under which we encoded them
• Context-Dependent Learning

• Superior retrieval of memories when the individual is in the same

physiological or psychological state as during encoding
• State-Dependent Learning
The Biology of Memory

• The ability to maintain information in LTM involves a gradual strengthening of

the connections among the neurons in the brain.
• When pathways in these neural networks are frequently and repeatedly fired, the
synapses become more efficient in communicating with each other and these changes
create a memory
• Process is known as Long-term Potentiation

• The period of time in which LTP occurs and in which memories are stored is known as
the period of consolidation
• Memory is not confined to the cortex
• One of the most important brain regions in explicit memory is the
hippocampus, which serves as a preprocessor and elaborator of
information
• It holds the memory for a short time and then directs the information to other parts of the
brain

• The cerebellum and the amygdala play a role in implicit and emotional
memories, respectively
Amnesia
• A memory disorder that involves the inability to remember information.

• Retrograde amnesia:
• A memory disorder that produces an inability to retrieve events that occurred
before a given time
• Usually more severe for memories that occurred just prior to the trauma than it is for older
memories

• Anterograde amnesia:
• The inability to transfer information from short-term into long-term memory,
making it impossible to form new memories
Neurotransmitters & Memory
• Long-term potentiation occurs as a result of changes in the synapses,
which suggests that chemicals, particularly neurotransmitters and
hormones, must be involved in memory.

• Glutamate is perhaps the most important neurotransmitter in

memory.
• When stressed, more glutamate is secreted, and this glutamate can help
retrieve memories
• Serotonin and epinephrine may also help retrieve memories when under stress
Memory & Cognition
Accuracy & inaccuracy
Cognitive Bias
• Cognitive biases are errors in memory or judgement that are caused
by the inappropriate use of cognitive processes.
Source Monitoring
• One potential error in memory involves mistakes in differentiating the
sources of information
• Source monitoring refers to the ability to accurately identify the source of a
memory
• E.g. wondering whether you really experienced an event or only dreamed or imagined it

• Sleeper Effect
• Refers to attitude change that occurs over time when we forget the source of
information
Schematic Processing
• Using schemas may lead us to falsely remember things that never happened to us
and to distort or misremember things that did
• Confirmation bias: the tendency to verify and confirm our existing memories rather than to
challenge and disconfirm them
• A process that makes stereotypes very hard to change

• Functional Fixedness: occurs when people’s schemas prevent them from using an object in a
new and nontraditional way
Misinformation Effects
• A particular problem for eyewitnesses is that our memories are often
influenced by the things that occur to us after we have learned the
information
• Misinformation effect: errors in memory that occur when new information
influences existing memories
• Distorts memories that have actually occurred
• May lead us to falsely remember information that never occurred
Overconfidence
• Pervasive cognitive bias toward overconfidence:
• The tendency for people to be too certain about their ability to accurately remember
events and to make judgements

• Eyewitnesses to crimes are frequently overconfident in their memories, and there is only
a small correlation between how accurate and how confident an eyewitness is

• Flashbulb Memory:
• A vivid and emotional memory of an unusual event that people believe they remember
very well
Heuristic Processing
• Information processing may be biased when we use heuristics

• Representativeness Heuristic:
• In many cases we base our judgements on information that seems to represent, or match,
what we expect will happen, while ignoring other potentially more relevant statistical
information

• Availability Heuristic:
• The tendency to make judgements of the frequency or likelihood that an event occurs on the
basis of the ease with which it can be retrieved from memory
Salience and Cognitive Accessibility

• We are more likely to attend to, and thus make use of and
remember, some information more than other information.
• We tend to attend to and remember things that are highly salient,
meaning that they attract our attention

• Cognitive Accessibility:
• The extent to which knowledge is activated in memory, and thus likely to
be used in cognition and behaviour
Counterfactual Thinking
• The tendency to think about and experience events according to
“what might have been”
• E.g. winning a silver medal, but thinking about what might have happened if
you had been just a little bit better (gold medal!)
Factors Influencing Retrieval
Serial Position Effect
• The finding that for information learned in sequence, recall is better
for items at the beginning and the end than for items in the middles
of the sequence
• Primacy Effect: tendency to recall the first items in a sequence more readily
than those in the middle of a sequence
• Recency Effect: tendency to recall the last items in a sequence more readily
than those in the middle of a sequence
Environmental Context & Memory
• Research has revealed that we tend to recall information better when
we are in the same location as when they information was originally
encoded
• If part or all of the original context is reinstated, it may serve as a retrieval
cue. Then the information previously learned in that context may come to
mind.
• Known as the encoding specific hypothesis
State-Dependent Memory Effect

 We tend to recall information better if we are in the same internal

state as when the information was encoded
 Called the state-dependent memory effect

 E.g. Alcohol & Other dugs

 People learned material while sober or intoxicated and later were tested with sober or
intoxicated
 Recall was found to be best when the subjects were in the same state for both learning and
testing
The Causes of
“Forgetting”
Encoding Failure
• Forgetting is “the inability to recall something now that could be
recalled on an earlier occasion”
• But often when we say we cannot remember, we have not actually forgotten.
Our inability to remember may be a result of encoding failure:
• The information never entered our long-term memory in the first place
Interference
• Interference refers to those times when new information or
information you have already learned interferes with what you are
now learning or trying to recall

• There are two forms of interference

Proactive Interference
• Occurs when old information (learned earlier) blocks or disrupts the
remembering of related new information (learned later)
• E.g. when you buy a new car, it may take a while to feel comfortable with the
new arrangement of the dashboard
• Your memory of the old car’s dashboard may at first interfere with your driving
Retroactive Interference
• Occurs when new information (learned later) blocks or disrupts the
retrieval of related old information (learned earlier)
• The more similar the new learning or experience is to the previous learning,
the more interference there is
Motivated Forgetting
 Forgetting through suppression or repression in order to protect
oneself from material that is too painful, anxiety-or guilt-
producing, or otherwise unpleasant
 Suppression: a person makes a conscious, active attempt to put a painful
or disturbing memory out of mind, but the person is still aware that the
painful event occurred
 Repression: Unpleasant memories are literally removed from
consciousness, and the person is no long aware that the unpleasant
event ever occurred
Improving Memory
Organization
We tend to retrieve information from long-term memory
according to the way that we have organized it for storage
Study Tips
1. Organize, Organize, Organize
2. Explain your answers to “others”
3. Take regular breaks
4. Reward good behavior
5. Have a study “space”
6. Rest – do NOT study tired
7. Test yourself
8. Disperse study sessions
9. Minimize distractions
10. Overstudy