Memory Systems Overview

Memory Systems

• Memory is essential for understanding the world and oneself
• Memory is essential for life. Without memory, there is no life, because memory provides coherence, reason, and feeling, even action.

Three Separable Processes

• Encoding: Entering information into the memory system
• Storage: Retaining memories over time
• Retrieval: Finding and recovering stored memories

Basic Distinctions in Memory

• Sensory Input → Sensory Memory → Short-Term Memory → Long-Term Memory

Sensory Memory

• Visual: Iconic memory
• Speech-based: Echoic memory

Experiment

• Fixation: Display letters (1/20 sec.)
• Display: Letters, Tone, Pitch
• Report: High, medium, low pitches associated with letters
• Recall: Recalling letters after presentation was poor with just letters. When presented with tone, recall was excellent.

Short-Term Memory Duration

• Peterson and Peterson (1959), Brown (1959) studied this
• Counting backwards from 49, then recalling words, decreased recall probability with increasing interval between the two.
• This could be due to confusion between lists (e.g., Keppel and Underwood, 1962).

Modal/Stage Model

• Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
• Memory depends on process, not just time in short term
• Some patients have severe short-term memory deficits without clear long-term memory deficits
• Explains storage in unitary store

Levels of Processing

• Craik and Tulving:
  • Shallow, grapheme-based tasks ~43% recognised
  • Intermediate, phoneme-based tasks ~63% recognised
  • Deep, semantic-based tasks ~90% recognised

Working Memory

• Baddeley and Hitch (1974), Baddeley (2012)
• Short-term memory + processing
• Crucial for abilities such as educational attainment (Gathercole et al., 2008).

Fluid Systems

• Central executive
• Visuo-spatial sketchpad
• Episodic buffer
• Phonological loop

Crystallized Systems

Basic Distinction in Memory

• Long-term memory has enormous capacity but no known duration limits.
• Patients can store details of thousands of items (Brady et al., 1008).

Memory as a Unitary System?

• Melton (1963) proposed a continuum of short and long-term memory instead of separate systems.

Primacy and Recency

• Primacy and recency in immediate and delayed recall (Postman and Phillips, 1965).
• Recency effect is often still observed in long-term recall. How is this possible? How do we explain this? (Perhaps through temporal discrimination)

Evidence from Neuropsychology

• Neuropsychological double-dissociations
  • Different patients differ in short-term and long-term memory impairment.
  • Supports the idea of independent cognitive functions underlying the tasks.
  • This helps rule out task difficulty as a basis for observations.

Amnesia

• Patient HM: (Scoville and Milner, 1957; Milner, 1966) bilateral hippocampal damage, severe anterograde amnesia, limited retrograde amnesia
• Jon (hippocampal amnesic): item-location binding in working memory
• Short-term memory patients: (e.g., KF) opposite pattern in memory issues; double dissociation between short and long-term memory.
• Impairments: Peterson task, other short-term memory tasks, recency in free recall. Spared ability for long-term memory tasks.

Long-Term Memory

• Explicit (declarative):
  • Episodic: (biographical events) recalling events, such as remembering a word list or a-level results
  • Semantic: (words, ideas, concepts) recalling concepts and facts, such as elephants living in Africa or their a-level exam results.

Implicit (non-declarative)

• Procedural (skills): Learning to play an instrument, emotional conditioning, and priming effect.

Flashbulb Memory

• "Snapshot" memory of emotional, public events, and moments
• Importance, distinctiveness, consequentiality, and proximity are determinants.

Memory

• Is a broad term (Pezdek, 2003, Ost et al., 2002).
• Likely a collection of interacting systems.
• Crucial for understanding oneself and interacting with the world.

Explore the essential components of memory systems, including encoding, storage, and retrieval. Understand the distinctions between sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory through engaging experiments. This quiz delves into foundational concepts that explain how we retain and recall information.