MEMORY & UNIT - V

FORGETTING
MEMORY
Def: The ability to retain information or a representation of
past experience, based on the mental processes of learning
or encoding, retention across some interval of time,
and retrieval or reactivation - APA.
MEMORY
•Encoding: occurs during learning: it involves transforming
presented sensory information into a representation that can
subsequently be stored.
•Storage: refers to how we store (keep) encoded information
in memory.
•Retrieval: refers to how we gain access to information
stored in memory.

We say that forgetting occurs when we cannot retrieve

information.
MODELS OF MEMORY
1. Multi-Store Model / Modal Model - Atkinson & Shiffrin
2. Unitary-Store Model - John Anderson
3. Working Memory Model- Baddeley & Hitch
MULTI STORE MODEL
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) proposed an extremely influential multi-store model
of memory
SENSORY STORES
•According to the multi-store model, environmental stimulation is initially
processed by the sensory stores.
•These stores are modality-specific (e.g., vision; hearing).
•Information is held very briefly in the sensory stores, with some being
attended to and processed further within the short-term store.
SENSORY STORES
Iconic memory: The visual sensory store, holds visual information briefly.
•According to a recent estimate, iconic memory for a natural scene lasts
for at least typically around 250 milliseconds (1/4 of a second) after
stimulus offset.
•If you twirl a lighted object in a circle in the dark, you will see a circle of
light because of the persistence of visual information in iconic memory.
•More generally, iconic memory increases the time for which visual
information is accessible (e.g., when reading).
SENSORY STORES
Echoic Memory: A sensory store that holds auditory information
for approximately 2–3 seconds.
SHORT-TERM MEMORY
•Short-term memory has very limited capacity.
•The maximum number of items recalled without error is typically about
seven (plus or minus 2) - George Miller.
•Miller reviewed evidence demonstrating that if you are presented with a
string of random digits you’ll be able to recall them only if the string
contains about seven or fewer digits.
•The same is true if you are presented with random strings of any kinds of
units: letters, words, abbreviations, and so on.
•The only way to overcome this limitation is by somehow chunking the
individual units into larger units.
SHORT-TERM MEMORY

•FB - INB - CC - IAIB - M

SHORT-TERM MEMORY

•FBI - NBC - CIA - IBM

SHORT-TERM MEMORY

•1, 9, 8, 4, 1, 7, 7, 6
SHORT-TERM MEMORY

•1984, 1776—
SHORT-TERM MEMORY
•Miller regarded the process of forming chunks (he called it
“recoding”) as a fundamental process of memory—a very
powerful means of increasing the amount of information we
can process at any given time, and one we use constantly in
our daily lives.
•If not rehearsed, information is lost from STM in as little as 20
seconds. This length of time is called the retention duration
of the memory.
LONG-TERM MEMORY
•In the modal model, long-term memory (LTM) is thought to differ from
short-term memory (STM) in many ways.
•LTM is described as a place for storing large amounts of information for
indefinite periods of time.
LONG-TERM MEMORY
Tulving's Model of Memory
Proposed by Endel Tulving, which divides LTM into these categories:
Declarative (Explicit) Memory
•Involves conscious recollection of information, such as facts and
events.
•Includes episodic and semantic memory.
Non-Declarative (Implicit) Memory:
•Involves memories that are not consciously recalled but influence
behavior and skills.
•Includes procedural memory, priming, and classical conditioning.
EXPLICIT (DECLARATIVE)
MEMORY
Episodic Memory
•Memory of personal experiences and specific events, including the
context in which they occurred (time, place, emotions).
•Remembering your first day at college or a recent vacation.
Semantic Memory
•Memory of general knowledge, facts, concepts, and meanings that
are not tied to personal experiences.
•Knowing that Paris is the capital of France or that a triangle has
three sides.
IMPLICIT (NON-
DECLARATIVE) MEMORY
Procedural Memory
•Memory of how to perform tasks, actions, and skills, often learned
through repetition and practice.
•Knowing how to ride a bicycle or play a musical instrument.
Priming
•The process by which exposure to a stimulus influences the
response to a later stimulus, often without conscious awareness.
•If you've recently seen the word "doctor," you're more likely to
recognize or think of related words like "nurse."
IMPLICIT (NON-
DECLARATIVE) MEMORY
Classical Conditioning
•Memory of learned associations between stimuli, such as the
association between a bell and food in Pavlov’s dogs.
•Feeling anxious when you hear a sound similar to a dentist’s drill.
FROM STM TO LTM
•One technique people use for keeping information active is rehearsal,
the repeated recitation of an item.
•The effects of such rehearsal are termed practice effects. Rehearsal may
be overt, in which case it is usually aloud and obvious to anyone
watching.
•Or it may be covert, in which case it is silent and hidden.
•To move information into long-term memory, an individual must engage in
elaborative rehearsal.
FROM STM TO LTM
•In elaborative rehearsal, the individual somehow elaborates on the
items to be remembered.
•Such rehearsal makes the items either more meaningfully integrated into
what the person already knows or more meaningfully connected to one
another and therefore more memorable.
•In contrast, during maintenance rehearsal, the individual simply
repeats the items to be remembered.
•Such rehearsal temporarily maintains information in short-term memory
without transferring the information to long-term memory.
UNITARY-STORE MODEL
•Several theorists have argued the multi-store approach should be replaced
by a unitary-store model. According to such a model, “short-term memory
consists of temporary activations of long-term memory representations or
of representations of items that were recently perceived”.
•In essence, Atkinson and Shiffrin emphasized the differences between
short-term and long-term memory whereas advocates of the unitary-store
approach focus on the similarities.
Limitations of the Unitary-Store Model
1. The claim that short-term memory consists only of activated long-term
memory is oversimplified.
2. The theory fails to provide a precise definition of the crucial explanatory
concept of “activation”.
WORKING MEMORY MODEL
•Working memory, which was introduced in a paper by Baddeley
and Hitch (1974), is defined as “a limited-capacity system for
temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex
tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning.”
•Short-term memory is concerned mainly with storing information
for a brief period of, whereas working memory is concerned with
the manipulation of information that occurs during complex
cognition.
•The fact that STM and the modal model do not consider dynamic
processes that unfold over time is what led Baddeley and Hitch to
propose that the name working memory.
WORKING MEMORY MODEL
Baddeley proposed three components: the phonological loop, the visuospatial
sketch pad, and the central executive
WORKING MEMORY MODEL
•The phonological loop consists of two components:
1. the phonological store, which has a limited capacity and holds
information for only a few seconds.
2. the articulatory rehearsal process, which is responsible for rehearsal
that can keep items in the phonological store from decaying. The
phonological loop holds verbal and auditory information.
•The visuospatial sketch pad holds visual and spatial information.
•The central executive is where the major work of working memory occurs.
The central executive pulls information from long-term memory and
coordinates the activity of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch
pad by focusing on specific parts of a task and deciding how to divide
attention between different tasks.
WORKING MEMORY MODEL
•Baddeley decided it was necessary
to propose an additional component
of working memory to address the
interchange of information between
working memory and long-term
memory.
•Hence the episodic buffer was
conceptualized.
•The episodic buffer can store
information, thereby providing extra
capacity and is connected to LTM
thereby making interchange
between working memory and LTM
possible.
FORGETTING
Theories of Forgetting
1. Interference Theory
2. Decay Theory
INTERFERENCE THEORY
•Interference occurs when competing information causes us to forget something.
•Interference theory refers to forgetting that occurs because recall of certain
information interferes with recall of other information.
•At least two kinds of interference figure prominently in psychological theory and
research:
•Retroactive interference (or retroactive inhibition) occurs when newly
acquired knowledge impedes the recall of older material. This kind of
interference is caused by activity occurring after we learn something but before
we are asked to recall that thing.
•Proactive interference (or proactive inhibition) occurs when material that
was learned in the past impedes the learning of new material. In this case, the
interfering material occurs before, rather than after, learning of the to-be-
remembered material.
DECAY THEORY
• Decay occurs when the passage of time causes us to forget.
• Decay theory asserts that information is forgotten because of the gradual
disappearance, rather than displacement, of the memory trace. Thus, decay
theory views the original piece of information as gradually disappearing unless
something is done to keep it intact.
• This view contrasts with interference theory, in which one or more pieces of
information block recall of another.
MOTIVATED FORGETTING
1. REPRESSION
2. MOTIVATED FORGETTING
3. CUE-DEPENDENT FORGETTING
REPRESSION
•Freud claimed threatening or traumatic memories often cannot gain
access to conscious awareness: this serves to reduce anxiety.
•He used the term repression to refer to this phenomenon. He
claimed childhood traumatic memories forgotten for many years
are sometimes remembered in adult life.
•Freud found these recovered memories were often recalled during
therapy.
DIRECTED FORGETTING
•Directed forgetting is a phenomenon involving impaired long-term
memory triggered by instructions to forget information previously
presented for learning.
•It is often studied using the item method: several words are presented,
each followed immediately by an instruction to remember or forget it.
After the words have been presented, participants are tested for recall
or recognition memory of all the words.
• Memory performance is worse for the to-be-forgotten words than the
to-be remembered ones.
•What causes directed forgetting? - The instructions cause learners to
direct their rehearsal processes to to-be-remembered items at the
expense of to-be-forgotten ones.
CUE-DEPENDENT
FORGETTING
• We often attribute forgetting to the weakness of relevant memory traces. However,
forgetting often occurs because we lack the appropriate retrieval cues (cue-
dependent forgetting).
• For example, suppose you have forgotten the name of an acquaintance. If presented
with four names, however, you might well recognize the correct one.
• Tulving argued that forgetting typically occurs when there is a poor match or fit
between memory-trace information and information available at retrieval.
• This notion was expressed in his encoding specificity principle
• Tulving assumed that when we store information about an event, we also store
information about its context. According to the encoding specificity principle, memory
is better when the retrieval context
is the same as that at learning.
• Note that context can be external (the environment in which learning and retrieval
occur) or internal (e.g., mood state).
AMNESIA
The term amnesia, as a description of a clinical disorder, refers to a
loss of memory for personal experiences, public events, or
information, despite otherwise normal cognitive function.
The cause of amnesia can be either primarily organic, resulting
from neurological conditions such as stroke, tumor, infection,
anoxia, and degenerative diseases that affect brain structures
implicated in memory; or it can be primarily functional or
psychogenic, resulting from some traumatic psychological
experience.
ANTEROGRADE AMNESIA
Cohen (1997) noted that the anterograde form of amnesia, a memory deficit
extending forward in time from the initial point of memory loss, has five
principal features.
1. anterograde amnesia affects LTM but not working memory.
2. affects memory regardless of the modality—that is, regardless of whether
the information is visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile.
3. spares memory for general knowledge (acquired well before the onset of
amnesia) but generally impairs recall for new facts and events.
4. it spares skilled performance.
5. even when amnesic patients do learn a skill, they show hyper-specific
memory: They can express this learning only in a context extremely similar
to the conditions of encoding.
RETROGRADE AMNESIA
Loss of memory for information acquired and stored before the onset of
amnesia is known as retrograde amnesia.
Cohen (1997) described four basic features of retrograde amnesia.
1. The first is that the temporal extent—the time span for which memory
is lost—can vary enormously in retrograde amnesia.
2. the episodic memories are the ones that are compromised.
3. It typically spares information that was “overlearned” before the onset.
4. Finally, as with anterograde amnesia, retrograde amnesia seems not to
affect skill learning. Even when patients cannot remember ever having
practiced the skill, their performance still seems to show normal rates
of improvement.