Introduction to Psychology: Human Memory

Introduction to Psychology: Human Memory

• Memory is the process of observing, storing, and recalling information. Memories can be visual, auditory, or tactile.
• Memory processes often involve multiple systems, both conscious and automatic.

Lecture Outline

• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval and Forgetting
• Multiple memory systems

Encoding

• Attention: Spotlight analogy, sensory detection, recognition of meaning, response selection
• Levels of Processing:
  • Shallow processing (structural encoding): focusing on physical features (e.g., capital letters, color).
  • Intermediate processing (phonemic encoding): focusing on sound (e.g., rhyming, homonyms).
  • Deep processing (semantic encoding): focusing on meaning (e.g., symbolism, connection to prior knowledge).
• Facilitating Encoding: Techniques for better encoding involve: Elaboration, Visual Imagery, Self Referential Encoding, Rehearsal and Over-learning, Deep and Transfer Appropriate processing, Distributed practice, Organize information.
• Mnemonic Devices: Verbal mnemonics (acrostics, acronyms, rhymes), Visual mnemonics (link method, method of loci, keyword, SQ3R).

Encoding Specificity

• Encoding Specificity Principle: Ease of retrieval depends on how well encoding matches retrieval.
• Poor recall occurs if shallow learning methods are used in encoding and deeper methods in retrieval, as was seen by encoding using a multiple-choice format and wanting to retrieve using an essay format.
• State-dependent memory: Memories are better retrieved when the individual is in the same emotional or physiological state when the memory was encoded.

Storage

• Memory consists of three stores: Sensory registers (Iconic, Echoic), Short-term memory (STM), Long-term memory (LTM).

Information Processing Model of Memory

• Information flows from sensory registers to STM, then to LTM.
• Rehearsal moves information from STM to LTM; otherwise, information is lost.

Characteristics of STM

• Duration: Information in STM fades after 20-30 seconds without rehearsal.
• Capacity: Limited to about 7 items of information. Capacity is constant across cultures.
• Rehearsal: Maintenance (repeating information) and Elaborative (relating information to other knowledge).

Working Memory

• Temporary storage and processing of information used to solve problems, respond to environmental demands, and achieve goals.
• Modules: Visual memory store, Verbal memory store, Central Executive. Working memory stores are independent. Brain damage may alter visual but not verbal memory store.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

• Represents facts, images, skills that can last a lifetime.
• Capacity is practically limitless.
• The serial position curve shows the primacy and recency effects, supporting the distinction between STM and LTM.

Working Memory and LTM

• Evidence suggests a distinction between working memory and LTM, where working memory is easily accessed but with a limited capacity. Neurological studies show that brain damage can impair working memory or LTM, but not both necessarily.
• Chunking uses LTM information to increase the size of working memory items (e.g., using acronyms like IBM, CIA, or USC).

Functional Aspects of Memory

• Recall may depend on interest in the information; men show better recall for construction details.

Networks of Association

• LTM is organized in clusters of interconnected nodes representing related information (thoughts, images, smells, emotions).
• Mnemonic devices allow the addition of new concepts to existing networks.

Varieties of LTM

• Declarative memory (explicit): Semantic (general knowledge) and Episodic (specific events). Autobiographical memory.
• Procedural memory (implicit): For skills (e.g., riding a bike).
• Explicit memory: Conscious retrieval of information.
• Implicit memory: Skills, conditioned learning and associative memory.

Repressed Memories

• Retrieval failures, Motivated forgetting, Denial, Repression, Psychogenic amnesia, False Memory Syndrome

"Seven Sins of Memory"

• Transience: Memories fade over time.
• Absentmindedness: Failure to pay attention.
• Blocking: Temporarily blocked memories.
• Misattribution: Assigning a memory to the wrong source.
• Suggestibility: Memories can be distorted by suggestions.
• Bias: Memories can be distorted by current knowledge and beliefs.
• Persistence: Inability to forget unwanted memories.