COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Memory Processes
Definition
The process by which we encode,
store and retrieve information.
Encoding
•Encoding refers to the process by which
information initially is recorded in a form
usable to memory.
Storage
•The maintainacne of material saved in
the memory system. if the material is not
stored adequately , it can not be recalled
later.
Retrieval
•Material in memory storage has to be
located and brought into awareness to
be useful.
 MEMORY
PROCESS / STAGES
The Three Systems of Memory:
Memory Storehouses
•Although the processes of encoding, storing,
and retrieving information are necessary for
memory to operate successfully, they do not
describe how information enters into memory.
•According to the three-system theory of
memory (that dominated memory research for
several decades), there are different memory
storage systems or stages through which
information must travel if it is to be
remembered.
•Sensory memory refers to the initial,
momentary storage of information,
lasting only an instant. Information is
recorded by the person’s sensory system.
•In a second stage, short term memory
holds information for fifteen to twenty-
five seconds and stores it according to
its meaning rather than as mere sensory
stimulation.
•The third type of storage system is long-
term memory. Information is stored in
long-term memory on a relatively
permanent basis, although it may be
difficult to retrieve.
TYPES OF
MEMORY
SENSORY MEMORY
•A momentary flash of lightning, the sound of a twig
snapping, and the sting of a pinprick all represent
stimulation of exceedingly brief duration, but they may
provide important information that can require a
response. Such stimuli are initially—and briefly—stored
in sensory memory, the first store of the information the
world presents to us.
•Actually,the term sensory memory
encompasses several types of sensory
memories, each related to a different
source of sensory information.
•There is iconic memory, which reflects
information from the visual system;
•echoic memory, which stores auditory
information coming from the ears; and
corresponding memories for each of the other
senses.
•Regardless of the individual subtypes,
sensory memory in general is able to
store information for only a very short
time. If information does not pass to
short-term memory, it is lost.
•For instance, iconic memory seems to
last less than a second, and echoic
memory typically fades within two or
three seconds.
•Ifthe storage capabilities of sensory memory are so
limited and information stored within sensory memory so
brief, it would seem
almost impossible to find evidence for its existence; new
information would constantly
be replacing older information, even before a person could
report its presence.
•Not until psychologist George Sperling (1960)
conducted a series of clever and now-classic
studies to understand sensory memory.
•Sperling briefly exposed people to a series of
twelve letters arranged in the following pattern:
•F T Y C
•K DNL
•Y W B M
•When exposed to this pattern of letters for just one-
twentieth of a second, most people could recall
only four or five of the letters accurately. Although
they knew that they had seen more, the memory of
those letters had faded by the time they reported
the first few letters.
•Insum, sensory memory operates as a kind of
snapshot that stores information— which may be
of a visual, auditory, or other sensory nature—for a
brief moment in time.
•But it is as if each snapshot, immediately after
being taken, is destroyed and replaced with a new
one. Unless the information in the snapshot is
transferred to some other type of memory, it is lost.
 SHORT-TERM
MEMORY: GIVING
MEMORY MEANING
•Because the information that is stored briefly in
sensory memory consists of representation of raw
sensory stimuli, it is not meaningful to us. For us to
make sense of it and to allow for the possibility of
long-term retention, the information must be
transferred to the next stage of memory: short-term
memory.
•Short-termmemory is the memory store in
which information first has meaning, although
the maximum length of retention is relatively
short.
•The specific process by which sensory memories are
transformed into short-term memories is not clear. Some
theorists suggest that the information is first translated
into graphical representations or images, and others
hypothesize that the transfer occurs when the sensory
stimuli are changed to words (Baddeley & Wilson, 1985).
•What is clear, however, is that unlike sensory
memory, which holds a relatively full and
detailed—if short-lived—representation of the
world, short-term memory has incomplete
representational capabilities.
•Infact, the specific amount of information
that can be held in short-term memory has
been identified as seven items, or “chunks,”
of information, with variations up to plus or
minus two chunks.
•A chunk is a meaningful grouping of stimuli
that can be stored as a unit in short-term memory.
According to George Miller (1956), it can be
individual letters or numbers, permitting us to hold
a seven-digit phone number (like 226-4610) in
short-term memory.
•But a chunk also may consist of larger categories,
such as words or other meaningful units. For
example, consider the following list of twenty-one
letters:

PBSFOXCNNABCCBSMTVNBC
•Because the list exceeds seven chunks, it is difficult to
recall the letters after one exposure. But suppose they
were presented as follows:

PBS FOX CNN ABC CBS MTV NBC

•Inthis case, even though there are still
twenty-one letters, you’d be able to store them
in short-term memory, since they represent
only seven chunks.
•Chunks can vary in size from single letters or
numbers to categories that are far more
complicated. The specific nature of what
constitutes a chunk varies according to one’s
past experience.
•You can see this for yourself by trying an
experiment that was first carried out as a
comparison between expert and inexperienced
chess players and is illustrated in Figure 4
(deGroot, 1966; Huffman, Matthews, &
Gagne, 2001; Saariluoma & Laine, 2001).
•Although it is possible to remember seven or
so relatively complicated sets of information
entering short-term memory, the information
cannot be held there very long. Just how brief
is short-term memory?
•Anyone who has looked up a telephone
number at a pay phone, struggled to find
coins, and forgotten the number at the sound
of the dial tone knows that information in
short-term memory does not remain there
very long.
•Most psychologists believe that
information in short-term memory is lost
after fifteen to twenty-five seconds—
unless it is transferred to long-term
memory.
Types of Long-Term Memory
• Procedural memory: Memory for skills and habits, such as riding bike or hitting
a baseball, sometimes referred to as “no declarative memory.”

• Declarative memory: Memory for

factual information:
• Semantic memory: Memory for general knowledge and facts about the world, as
well as memory for the rules of logic that are used to deduce other.(example ;math
facts).
Episodic Memory (personal knowledge):

•Memory for the biographical details of our

individuals lives.
•Example; your car accident
 Comparison of
Three Stages ofShortMemory
Sensory Term Long Term

1.Large capacity 1.Limited capacity 1.Unlimited capacity

2.Contains sensory information 2.Acoustically encoded 2.Semantically encoded

3.Very brief retention (1/2 sec for 3.Brief storage (up to 30 sec) 3.Storage presumed permanent
visual; 2 sec for auditory

4.Conscious processing of 4.Information highly organized

information
Encoding and Transfer of Information
• Before information can be stored in memory, it first needs to be encoded for storage.
• Even if the information is held in our short-term memory, it is not always
transferred to our long-term memory.
• So,
in order to remember events and facts over a long period of time, we need to
encode and subsequently transfer them from short-term to long-term storage.
Encoding Processes
•Creating an acoustic code
• What it sounds like

•Creating a semantic code

• What it means

•Creating a visual code

• What it looks like
Encoding and Short Term Memory
• Encoding in short-term memory appears to be primarily acoustic (based on sounds),
but there may be some secondary semantic encoding (based on meaning) as well.
• Inaddition, we sometimes temporarily encode information visually as well. But
visual encoding appears to be even more fleeting (about 1.5 seconds). We are more
prone to forgetting visual information than acoustic information.
• Thus,
initial encoding is primarily acoustic in nature, but other forms of encoding
may be used under some circumstances.
• For example, when you remember a telephone number from long ago, you are more
likely to remember how it sounds when you say it to yourself than to remember a
visual image of it. We seem to encode visually presented letters by how they sound,
not by how they look.
Encoding and Long Term Memory
• Most information stored in long-term memory is primarily semantically encoded. In
other words, it is encoded by the meanings of words.
• When learning lists of words, participants move more information into long-term
memory when using a semantic encoding strategy than when using a nonsemantic
strategy.
• Encoding of information in long-term memory is not exclusively semantic. There
also is evidence for visual encoding.
• Inaddition to semantic and visual information, acoustic information can be encoded
in long-term memory
Transfer of Information from Short-
Term Memory to Long-Term Memory
• One method of accomplishing this goal is by deliberately attending to information
to comprehend it.
• Anotheris by making connections or associations between the new information and
what we already know and understand.
• We make connections by integrating the new data into our existing schemas of
stored information. This process of integrating new information into stored
information is called consolidation.
• In
humans, the process of consolidating declarative information into memory can
continue for many years after the initial experience.
• When you learn about someone or something, for example, you often integrate new
information into your knowledge a long time after you have acquired that
knowledge.
• Forexample, you may have met a friend many years ago and started organizing that
knowledge at that time. But you still acquire new information about that friend—
sometimes surprising information—and continue to integrate this new information
into your knowledge base.
• We
may use various metamemory strategies to preserve or enhance the integrity of
memories during consolidation
• Metamemory strategies involve reflecting on our own memory processes with a
view to improving our memory. Such strategies are especially important when we
are transferring new information to long-term memory by rehearsing it.
Rehearsal
• 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.
Elaborative vs Maintenance Rehearsal
• Elaborative Rehearsal: To move information into long-term memory, an
individual must engage in elaborative rehearsal. In elaborative rehearsal, the
individual somehow elaborates 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.
• Maintenance Rehearsal: The individual simply repetitiously rehearses the
items to be repeated. Such rehearsal temporarily maintains information in
short-term memory without transferring the information to long-term
memory.
• Without any kind of elaboration, the information cannot be organized and
transferred.
• This finding is of immediate importance when you study for an exam. If you want
to transfer facts to your long-term memory, you will need somehow to elaborate on
the information and link it to what you already know.
• Forexample, if you meet a new acquaintance, you might encode not just the
acquaintance’s name but also other connections you have with the person, such as
being members of a particular club or taking a particular course together. It will also
be helpful to use mnemonic techniques like the ones discussed in the next section,
but repeating words over and over again is not enough to achieve effective
rehearsal.
Distributed Practice vs Massed Practice
• People’smemory for information depends on how they acquire it. Their memories
tend to be good when they use distributed practice, learning in which various
sessions are spaced over time.
• Theirmemories for information are not as good when the information is acquired
through massed practice, learning in which sessions are crammed together in a very
short space of time.
• The greater the distribution of learning trials over time, the more the participants
remembered over long periods. To maximize the effect on long-term recall, the
spacing should ideally be distributed over months, rather than days or weeks. This
effect is termed the spacing effect.
• The research in this area is used by companies producing consumer products and
advertising companies, among others. The goal of these companies is to anchor their
products in your long-term memory so that you will remember them when you are
in need of a particular product. The spacing in advertisements is varied to maximize
the effect on your memory.
• Thatmeans that a company will not place ads for the same product on several
papers of a given magazine, but rather that they will place one ad every month in
that magazine.
• The principle of the spacing effect is important to remember in studying.
• You will recall information longer, on average, if you distribute your learning of
subject matter and you vary the context for encoding. Do not try to cram it all into a
short period.
• Imagine studying for an exam in several short sessions over a 2-week period. You
will remember much of the material. However, if you try to study all the material in
just one night, you will remember very little and the memory for this material will
decay relatively quickly
Organization of Information
• Organizing information enhances memory. Although most adults spontaneously
tend to cluster items into categories, categorical clustering also may be used
intentionally as an aid to memorization.
• Mnemonic devices are specific techniques to help in improving one ability to
remember something (improving encoding an recall). Essentially, such devices add
meaning to otherwise meaningless or arbitrary lists of items.
• Even music can be used as a mnemonic device when a wellknown or easy melody is
used and connected with the material that needs to be learned. Music can even serve
as a retrieval cue. For example, if you want to learn vocabulary words in a foreign
language for body parts, sing those words to yourself in a melody that you like and
know well
• In categorical clustering, organize a list of items into a set of categories.
• Ininteractive images, imagine (as vividly as possible) the objects represented by words you have
to remember as if the objects are interacting with each other in some active way.
• Inthe pegword system, associate each word with a word on a previously memorized list and
form an interactive image between the two words.
• In
the method of loci, visualize walking around an area with distinctive, wellknown landmarks
and link the various landmarks to specific items to be remembered.
• Inusing acronyms, devise a word or expression in which each of its letters stands for a certain
other word or concept.
• In using acrostics, form a sentence, rather than a single word, to help one remember new words.
• Inusing the keyword system, create an interactive image that links the sound and meaning of a
foreign word with the sound and meaning of a familiar word.
• Most of the time, we try to improve our retrospective memory—our memory for the
past. At times we also try to improve our prospective memory—memory for things
we need to do or remember in the future.
• Forexample, we may need to remember to call someone, to buy cereal at the
supermarket, or to finish a homework assignment due the next day. We use a
number of strategies to improve prospective memory.
• Examples are keeping a to-do list, asking someone to remind us to do something, or
tying a string around our finger to remind us that we need to do something.
• Research suggests that having to do something regularly on a certain day does not
necessarily improve prospective memory for doing that thing. However, being
monetarily reinforced for doing the thing does tend to improve prospective memory
Retrieval from Short-Term Memory
• Parallel or Serial Processing
• Parallel
processing refers to the simultaneous handling of multiple operations. As
applied to short-term memory, the items stored in short-term memory would be
retrieved all at once, not one at a time.
• Serial
processing refers to operations being done one after another. In other words,
on the digit-recall task, the digits would be retrieved in succession, rather than all at
once (as in the parallel model).
• According to the serial model, it should take longer to retrieve four digits than to
retrieve two digits.
• Exhaustive or Self-Terminating Processing
• If
information processing were serial, there would be two ways in which to gain
access to the stimuli: exhaustive or self-terminating processing.
• Exhaustive serial processing implies that the participant always checks the test digit
against all digits in the set, even if a match were found partway through the list.
• Self-terminating serial processing implies that the participant would check the test
digit against only those digits needed to make a response.
• Mathematically, it is impossible to distinguish parallel from serial models
unequivocally. Some parallel model always exists that will mimic any serial model
in its predictions and vice versa. The two models may not be equally plausible, but
they still exist.
• Moreover, it appears that which processes individuals use depends in part on the
stimuli that are processed.
Retrieval from Long-Term Memory
• Research shows that cued recall was far better, on average, than free recall.
• However,
the comparison to the cued recall condition demonstrated that apparent
memory failures were largely a result of retrieval, rather than storage failures.
• Participantsgiven hierarchical presentation recalled 65% of the words. In contrast,
recall was just 19% by participants given the words in random order
• Another problem that arises when studying memory is figuring out why we
sometimes have trouble retrieving information. Cognitive psychologists often have
difficulty finding a way to distinguish between availability and accessibility of
items.
• Availability is the presence of information stored in long-term memory.
• Accessibility is the degree to which we can gain access to the available information.
• Memory performance depends on the accessibility of the information to be
remembered. Ideally, memory researchers would like to assess the availability of
information in memory. Unfortunately, they must settle for assessing the
accessibility of such information.
Processes of Forgetting and Memory
Distortion
• Why do we so easily and so quickly forget phone numbers we have just looked up
or the names of people whom we have just met?
• Severaltheories have been proposed as to why we forget information stored in
working memory. The two most well known theories are interference theory and
decay theory.
• Interferenceoccurs when competing information causes us to forget something;
decay occurs when simply the passage of time causes us to forget.
Interference Theory
• Interference
theory refers to the view that forgetting occurs
because recall of certain words interferes with recall of other
words.
• Brown-Peterson Paradigm
• Participants were given 3 consonants to try to remember (e.g., FRL)
• Participants were then given a 3 digit number (294) & asked to count
backwards by threes (e.g., 291, 288, 285)
• After varying delays (3-18 seconds) participants were asked to recall
the 3 letters
• Trigrams were forgotten by 18 seconds due to retroactive
interference of counting backwards
• Atleast two kinds of interference figure prominently in psychological theory and
research: retroactive interference and proactive interference.
• 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. The interference in the Brown-Peterson task appears to be retroactive because
counting backward by threes occurs after learning the trigram. It interferes with our
ability to remember information we learned previously.
• 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.
• If
you have studied more than one foreign language, you may have experienced this
effect quite intensely. If you studied French at school, and then started learning
Spanish when entered college. Unfortunately, French words found their way into
Spanish essays unnoticed, and it may took a while to eliminate those French words
from writing in Spanish (proactive interference).
• The recency effect refers to superior recall of words at and near the end of a list.
The primacy effect refers to superior recall of words at and near the beginning of a
list.
• Primacy and recency effects can also be encountered in everyday life. Have you
noticed that when you meet someone and then get to know him or her better, it can
sometimes be very hard to get over your first impressions? This difficulty may be a
result of a primacy effect, which leads to your remembering your first impression
particularly well.
• And if you are applying for a job and are doing interviews, you may be well served
by being one of the first or last candidates that are interviewed in the hope that your
interviewers will remember you better and more clearly than the candidates whose
turns were in the middle.
Retroactive vs. Proactive Interference
Decay Theory The “Use it or lose it” theory!

• Decaytheory 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.
• Decay theory turns out to be exceedingly difficult to test because under normal
circumstances, preventing participants from rehearsing is difficult. Through
rehearsal, participants maintain the to-be-remembered information in memory.
• Usuallyparticipants know that you are testing their memory. They may try to
rehearse the information or they may even inadvertently rehearse it to perform well
during testing.
• For example, try not to think of white elephants as you read the next two pages.
When instructed not to think about them, you actually find it quite difficult not to.
The difficulty persists even if you try to follow the instructions. Unfortunately, as a
test of decay theory, this experiment is itself a white elephant because preventing
people from rehearsing is so difficult.
• Research concludes:
• Decay only had a relatively small effect on forgetting in short-term memory.
• Interference accounted for most of the forgetting.
• So even if both decay and interference contribute to forgetting, it can be argued that
interference has the strongest effect.

• Toconclude, evidence exists for both interference and decay, at least in short-term
memory. There is some evidence for decay, but the evidence for interference is
much stronger. For now, we can assume that interference accounts for most of the
forgetting in short-term memory.
Forgetting Due to Loss of Cues?
• Cue-dependent theory: a theory that proposes that forgetting is due to the
unavailability of the retrieval cues necessary to locate the information in
long-term memory.

• Thisis one explanation for why we do not seem to have many memories
from early childhood (ages 3 to 6 or so)
Autobiographical Memory
• Autobiographicalmemory refers to memory of an individual’s history.
Autobiographical memory is constructive. One does not remember exactly what has
happened. Rather, one remembers one’s construction or reconstruction of what
happened.
• People’s autobiographical memories are generally quite good. Nevertheless, they are
subject to distortions. They are differentially good for different periods of life.
• Middle-aged adults often remember events from their youthful and early-adult
periods better than they remember events from their more recent past.
• One way of studying autobiographical memory is through diary studies. In such
studies, individuals, often researchers, keep detailed autobiographies.
• One investigator, for example, kept a diary for a 6-year period. She recorded at least
two experiences per day on index cards. Then, each month she chose two cards at
random and tried to recall the events she had written on the cards as well as the
dates of the events. She further rated each memory for its salience and its emotional
content.
• Surprisingly,her rate of forgetting of events was linear. It was not curvilinear, as is
usually the case.
• Inother words, a typical memory curve shows substantial forgetting over short time
intervals and then a slowing in the rate of forgetting over longer time intervals.
Linton’s forgetting curve, however, did not show any such pattern. Her rate of
forgetting was about the same over the entire 6-year interval. She also found little
relationship between her ratings of the salience and emotionality of memories, on
the one hand, and their memorability, on the other. Thus, she surprised herself in
what she did and did not remember
Flashbulb Memory
• Anoften-studied form of vivid memory is the flashbulb memory—a memory of an
event so powerful that the person remembers the event as vividly as if it were
indelibly preserved on film.
• Some people also have flashbulb memories for the destruction of the World Trade
Center, or momentous events in their personal lives.
• A relatedview is that a memory is most likely to become a flashbulb memory under
three circumstances: The memory trace is important to the individual, is surprising,
and has an emotional effect on the individual
Memory Distortions
• People
have tendencies to distort their memories. For example, just saying
something has happened to you makes you more likely to think it really
happened. This is true whether the event happened or not.
• These distortions tend to occur in seven specific ways, which Schacter
(2001) refers to as the “seven sins of memory.” Here are Schacter’s “seven
sins”:
• 1.Transience:Memory fades quickly. The decreasing accessibility of
memory over time. While a degree of this is normal with aging, decay of or
damage to the brain can cause extreme forms of it.
• 2. Absent-mindedness: Lapses of attention and forgetting to do things. People sometimes brush
their teeth after already having brushed them or enter a room looking for something only to
discover that they have forgotten what they were seeking. Examples are forgetting where you put
your keys or glasses.

• 3. Blocking: People sometimes have something that they know they should remember, but they
can’t. It’s as though the information is on the tip of their tongue, but they cannot retrieve it. For
example, people may see someone they know, but the person’s name escapes them; or they may
try to think of a synonym for a word, knowing that there is an obvious synonym, but are unable to
recall it.
• 4. Misattribution: Attribution of memories to incorrect sources or believing that you have seen or
heard something you haven't. People often cannot remember where they heard what they heard or
read what they read. Sometimes people think they saw things they did not see or heard things they
did not hear. For example, eyewitness testimony is sometimes clouded by what we think we should
have seen, rather than what we actually saw.

• 5. Suggestibility. People are susceptible to suggestion, so if it is suggested to them that they saw
something, they may think they remember seeing it. For example, in one study, when asked whether
they had seen a television film of a plane crashing into an apartment building, many people said they
had seen it. There was no such film.
• 6. Bias: Retrospective distortions produced by current knowledge and beliefs. People often
are biased in their recall. For example, people who currently are experiencing chronic pain
in their lives are more likely to remember pain in the past, whether or not they actually
experienced it. For example, research indicates that people currently displeased with a
romantic relationship tend to have a disproportionately negative take on past states of the
relationship.

• 7. Persistence: Unwanted recollections that people can't forget, such as the unrelenting,
intrusive memories of post-traumatic stress disorder. For example, someone with many
successes but one notable failure may remember the single failure better than the many
successes
The Eyewitness Testimony Paradigm
• Thereare serious potential problems of wrongful conviction when using
eyewitness testimony as the sole, or even the primary, basis for convicting
accused people of crimes.
• Peoplesometimes even think they remember things simply because they
have imagined or thought about them. In general, people are remarkably
susceptible to mistakes in eyewitness testimony. They are generally prone to
imagine that they have seen things they have not seen
• It
has been estimated that as many as 10,000 people per year may be
convicted wrongfully on the basis of mistaken eyewitness testimony
• Line-ups also can lead to faulty conclusions. Eyewitnesses assume that the
perpetrator is in the line-up. This is not always the case, however. When the
perpetrator of a staged crime was not in a line-up, participants were susceptible to
naming someone other than the true perpetrator as the perpetrator.
• Confessions also influence the testimony of eyewitnesses. For example, if the
witness was informed that one of the suspects in the line-up had made a confession.
It can have an impact the identification of a perpetrator.
• Eyewitness identification is particularly weak when identifying people of a racial or
ethnic group other than that of the witness
• Eyewitness identification and recall are also affected by the witness’s level of stress.
As stress increases, the accuracy of both recall and identification declines
• Children as Eyewitnesses: Children’s recollections are particularly susceptible to
distortion. Such distortion is especially likely when the children are asked leading
questions, as in a courtroom setting.
• First,
the younger the child is, the less reliable the testimony of that child can be
expected to be.
• Second,when a questioner is coercive or even just seems to want a particular
answer, children can be quite susceptible to providing the adult with what he or she
wants to hear.
• Third,
children may believe that they recall observing things that others have said
they observed.
Can Eyewitness Testimonies Be
Improved?
• Steps can be taken to enhance eyewitness identification. For example: using methods to
reduce potential biases, to reduce the pressure to choose a suspect from a limited set of
options, and to ensure that each member of an array of suspects fits the description given
by the eyewitness, yet offers diversity in other ways.
• Gary Wells (2006) made several suggestions to improve identification accuracy in line-ups.
These suggestions include
• Presenting only one suspect per line-up so that witnesses do not feel like they have to
decide between several people they saw;
• Making sure that all people in the line-up are reasonably similar to each other to decrease
the chance that somebody is identified mistakenly, just because he or she happens to share
one characteristic with the suspected perpetrator that no one else in the line-up shares; and
• Cautioning witnesses that the suspect may not be in the line-up at all.
Repressed Memories
• Repressed memories are memories that are alleged to have been pushed down into
unconsciousness because of the distress they cause. Supporters of the notion of repressed memory
(based on Freud’s psychoanalytic theory) suggest that such memories may remain hidden, possibly
throughout a person’s lifetime, unless they are triggered by some current circumstance, such as the
probing that occurs during psychological therapy.
• Do repressed memories actually exist? Many psychologists strongly doubt their existence. Others
are at least highly sceptical.
• There are many reasons for this skepticism, which are provided in the following section.
• First, some therapists may inadvertently plant ideas in their clients’ heads. In this way, they may
inadvertently create false memories of events that never took place. Indeed, creating false
memories is relatively easy, even in people with no particular psychological problems. Such
memories can be implanted by using ordinary, nonemotional stimuli
• Second, checking the validity of these is often extremely hard to do.
• Reported incidents often end up, as in the case of childhood sexual abuse, merely
pitting one person’s word against another.
• Atthe present time, no compelling evidence points to the existence of such
memories. But psychologists also have not reached the point where their existence
can be ruled out definitively. Therefore, no clear conclusion can be reached at this
time.
Loss of Memory
• Anterograde amnesia: the inability to form new explicit long-term memories for
events following brain trauma or surgery. Explicit memories formed before are left
intact. Cause possibly is damage to hippocampus.
• Retrograde amnesia: the disruption of memory for the past, especially episodic
memory. After brain trauma or surgery, there often is retrograde amnesia for events
occurring just before.
• Infantile/childamnesia: the inability as adults to remember events that occurred in
our lives before about 3 years of age. Due possibly to fact that hippocampus is not
fully developed
Serial Position Effect:
• Recall: Direct retrieval of facts or information

• Serial Position Effect:

• Hardest to recall items in the middle of a list

• Primacy effect: Easier to remember items first in a list than items in the
middle, because first items are studied the most

• Recency effect: Easier to remember items last in a list than items in the
middle, because the last items were last studied
Graphic: Serial Position Effect
Comparison of
Three Stages of Memory
Sensory Short Term Long Term

1.Large capacity 1.Limited capacity 1.Unlimited capacity

2.Contains sensory 2.Acoustically encoded 2.Semantically encoded

information

3.Very brief retention (1/2 3.Brief storage (up to 30 3.Storage presumed

sec for visual; 2 sec for sec) permanent
auditory

4.Conscious processing of 4.Information highly

information organized
Forgetting Due to Decay in Storage?
• Storage decay theory: a theory that proposes that forgetting is due to the
decay of physical traces of the information in the brain; periodically using the
information helps to maintain it in the brain

• The “Use it or lose it” theory!

• Graphic: Forgetting Curve

Forgetting Due to Loss of Cues?
• Cue-dependent theory: a theory that proposes that forgetting is due to the
unavailability of the retrieval cues necessary to locate the information in
long-term memory.

• Thisis one explanation for why we do not seem to have many memories
from early childhood (ages 3 to 6 or so)
Some Ways to Improve Memory
• Knowledge of Results: Feedback allowing you to check your progress

• Recitation: Summarizing aloud while you are learning

• Rehearsal: Reviewing information mentally (silently)

• Selection: Selecting most important concepts to memorize

• Organization: Organizing difficult items into chunks; a type of reordering

• Whole Learning: Studying an entire package of information at once, like a poem
• Part Learning: Studying subparts of a larger body of information (like text
chapters)
• Serial Position Effect: Making most errors while remembering the middle of the
list

• Spaced Practice: Alternating study sessions with brief rest periods

• Mnemonics: Memory “tricks”; any kind of memory system or aid
(something such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person
remember something)
- Using mental pictures
- Making things meaningful
- Making information familiar
- Forming bizarre, unusual or exaggerated mental associations
• Flashbulb memories: Memories centered on a specific,
important, or surprising event that are so vivid it is as if they
represented a snapshot of the event.