Exploring Memory Models and Processes

• Memory is an active system that receives information from the senses, organizes it, stores it, and retrieves it when needed.

3 Processes of Memory

• Encoding: Putting information into memory.
• Storage: Retaining or keeping information in memory.
• Retrieval: Getting information out of memory.

Models of Memory

• Information-processing model: Information is handled across three memory systems.
• Sensory memory: Briefly holds raw sensory information.
• Short-term memory: Temporarily holds information being used.
• Long-term memory: Stores information more or less permanently.
• Levels-of-processing model: Memory retention depends on the depth of processing.
• Parallel distributed processing model: Memory processes occur simultaneously across a neural network.

Sensory Memory

• Iconic memory: Visual memory that lasts only a fraction of a second.
• Eidetic Imagery: A rare ability to recall visual memory (iconic) for 30 seconds or more.
• Echoic Memory: Auditory memory that lasts 2-4 seconds.

Short-Term Memory

• Temporary location of information that is consciously being used.
• Information enters short-term memory via selective attention.
• Information tends to be coded in auditory format.
• Lasts 20-30 seconds without rehearsal.
• Selective attention: Temporary location of information that is consciously being used.
• Working memory: Processes and manipulates information in short-term memory.
• Maintenance rehearsal: Repeating information to keep it in short-term memory.
• Digit span test: Measures short-term memory capacity through a memory test.
• In the test a series of numbers is read to subjects who are then asked to recall the numbers in order.
• Chunking: Combining information into units/chunks, so information can be held in short-term memory.

Long-Term Memory

• System in which information is stored more or less permanently.
• Elaborative rehearsal: Making information meaningful to transfer it to long-term memory.
• Consolidation: Changes in neurons when a memory is formed.

Types of Long-Term Memory

• Implicit: Unconscious memories affect conscious behavior.
• Non-declarative: Skills, procedures, habits, and conditioned responses.
• Procedural: Skills, habits, are improved by priming.
• Explicit: Conscious memories.
• Declarative: Memories for facts and knowledge.
• Episodic: Daily activities and events.
• Semantic: General knowledge.

Organization of Long-Term Memory

• Semantic network model: Information is stored in a connected fashion, with related concepts closer together.

Retrieval of Long-Term Memories

• Retrieval cues: Stimuli for remembering.
• Encoding specificity: Memory improves if related information is available during retrieval.
• Context-dependent learning: Better recall in similar physical surroundings.
• Improved memory in physical surroundings similar to those when memory is first formed.
• State-dependent learning: Better recall in similar physiological/psychological states.
• Memories formed during a particular physiological or psychological state will be easier to recall, while in a similar state.

Types of Retrieval: Recall vs. Recognition

• Recall: Retrieving information with few external cues.
• "Tip of the tongue" phenomenon: Feeling of knowing the answer but unable to recall it.
• Serial position effect: Better recall for items at the beginning and end.
• Primacy effect: Remembering information at the beginning of a body of information.
• Recency effect: Remembering information at the end of a body of information.
• Recognition: Matching information to a stored image/fact.
• False positive: Mistakenly recognizing something not in memory.
• People think that they recognize some stimulus that is not actually in memory.
• Automatic encoding: Information enters long-term memory with little effort.
• Flashbulb memories: Unexpected vivid memories of emotionally significant events.

Reliability of Long-Term Memory

• Constructive processing: Memories are built from information in encoding and may be altered during retrieval.
• Hindsight bias: False belief that one could have correctly predicted the outcome of an event that already happened.
• Misinformation effect: Altering memories with misleading information.

Forgetting

• Ebbinghaus' research: Studied forgetting and produced the forgetting curve.
• Curve of forgetting: Rapid initial forgetting, then gradual decline.
• Distributed practice: Spacing study sessions.
• Massed practice: Studying all at once.

Reasons for Forgetting

• Encoding failure: Information never entered memory.
• Decay/disuse: "Use it or lose it."
• Interference: Other information interferes with recall.
• Proactive: Older information interferes with new information.
• Retroactive: New information interferes with old information.

Neuroscience of Memory

• Consolidation: Process of forming stable memories.
• Hippocampus: Critical for forming new memories.

Memory Problems

• Retrograde amnesia: Loss of memory from injury/trauma backwards, or loss of past memory.
• Anterograde amnesia: Loss of memory from the point of injury or trauma forward, or the inability to form new long-term memories.
• Infantile amnesia: Inability to recall early childhood memories.
• Alzheimer's disease: Progressive memory loss affecting daily functions.
• Patients Suffer from anterograde amnesia.
• Patients do not forget how to walk, talk, fasten clothing, or even tie shoes, although they do lose motor ability because the brain eventually fails to send the proper signals.
• All of these impaired memories are all implicit and nondeclarative memories.

Processes of Memory

• Encode, Store, Retrieve (Every Student Remembers)

Sensory Memory Types

• Iconic (Visual), Echoic (Auditory) (I Enjoy Sensory).

Short-Term Memory Techniques

• Chunking, Maintenance Rehearsal (Can Memorize).

Long-Term Memory Types

• Implicit, Explicit (I Excel).

Serial Position Effects

• Primacy, Recency (Please Remember).