Week 6 - Memory.pptx

Basic Psychology Week 6: Memory Who remembers where memory is processed in the brain? See what I did there? Types of Memory  Sensory Memory  Working Memory  Long-Term Memory  Explicit (Declarative) Memory  Semantic Memory  Episodic Memory  Implicit (Non-declarative)Memory  Procedural Me...

Basic Psychology Week 6: Memory Who remembers where memory is processed in the brain? See what I did there? Types of Memory  Sensory Memory  Working Memory  Long-Term Memory  Explicit (Declarative) Memory  Semantic Memory  Episodic Memory  Implicit (Non-declarative)Memory  Procedural Memory Brain Regions involved in Memory  Frontal Lobes: Working Memory is an Executive Function and is connected to planning and attention. Therefore, the frontal lobes in heavily involved.  Hippocampus: holds memories from your immediate past and dispatches the memory to the cortex, where it is stored in long-term memory.  Amygdala: plays a role in the storage of emotional memories. Sensory Memory  Immediate memory produced by our senses (smell, taste, touch, vision, hearing)  Very large capacity (since our senses are constantly taking in information)  The deciding factor of whether sensory memory is transferred to short term memory is Attention ____________ Working Memory (Short-Term Memory)  Used to be referred to as short-term memory, but now more commonly known as working memory.  Processes information used in planning, problem solving, and perception. Its short-term memories that you work with when performing a task.  Computer analogy: RAM Working Memory  Receives information from both sensory memory AND Long-term memory. We work with information from our stored knowledge and immediate sensory experience  We work with information from our stored knowledge and immediate sensory experience to navigate our everyday reality.  Long-Term Memory  Working Memory  Sensory Memory Examples of Working Memory  Writing notes in class  Making a grocery list  learning a dance  Rehearsing a speech  Working memory test story Long-Term Memory  The memories that stay with us (for the most part) in long term, permanent storage.  Long term memory often consists of things that are meaningful to us, our experiences, facts and knowledge, and things that are automatic to us.  In terms of a computer analogy, think of our long-term memory as the hard drive.  Long-term memory is broken down into many different components. Types of Long-Term Memory: Implicit Memory  Implicit Memory – also known as Non-declarative memory; memories that are almost unconscious. Memory that a person is not aware of processing.  This form of memory is automatic, and breaks down further into Procedural Memory Procedural Memory  Memory consisting of unconscious skills that we have once learned to help us perform various tasks.  Motor skills  Habits  Riding a bike  Driving a car  Essentially our memory of things that we know how to do automatically. Things in which we know the procedure without having to consciously think about it. Types of Long-Term Memory: Explicit (Declarative) Memory  Explicit Memory – also known as declarative memory; conscious memories that a person is completely aware of. Memory of specific knowledge and is used when you consciously recall information.  Breaks down into 2 specific types:  Semantic Memory  Episodic Memory Semantic Memory  Semantic Memory – our memory of facts, concepts, words, and knowledge about the world  Examples can be:  What is the capitol of Canada?  Who was the lead singer of Nirvana?  What is a brain cell called?  Facts and concepts that have learned and can retrieve from our knowledge base. Episodic Memory  Episodic Memory – our memory of specific events that we have experienced. Often seen in images or "episodes" of our lives.  Examples can be:  That one time my friend switched his ping pong paddle from his right to his left hand and said "OH MY GOD... I’M BILINGUAL"  The first time you tried sushi, and it literally changed your life.  Heartfelt events, either bad or good. Using our Memory Using our Memory  Encoding – Initial experience of perceiving and learning information. Turning sensory memory into working memory  Storage – the process of memory consolidation. Turing working memory into long term memory.  Retrieval – taking information from our prestored knowledge (long term memory) and using it to complete complex tasks (working memory) Firefighter Story  A Lieutenant Firefighter was interviewed about a situation regarding quick decision making. He shared a story about a routine call, that ended up not being so familiar in the end.  The fire was in the back of a one-story house in a residential area, in the kitchen  The firefighters broke down the front door, laid down their hose, and doused the flames in the kitchen with water.  At this point the flames should have started to decrease, but they didn’t. The firefighters kept spraying the fire, continuing to have very little effect. (Blink, Malcom Gladwell, 2005)  The Firefighters retreated back through the archway into the living room, when suddenly, the Lieutenant was struck with a sudden thought.  “There’s something wrong” He thought to himself. He turns to his team and says, “Let’s get out NOW!”  Seconds after they left, the floor which they had been standing on collapsed. The fire, as it turns out, had been in the basement.  The Lieutenant did not no why he ordered his team to leave the room.  When interviewed about the situation, his belief was that he experienced ESP (Extrasensory Perception, through paranormal means).  He was completely serious, and claimed that because of this ESP, he has been protected throughout his career.  The interviewer (Dr. Klein Ph.D, decision making researcher) could not accept this as an answer. So they both reflected on the events that happened that day to come to a conclusion.  The first thing the Lieutenant reflected on, was that the fire didn’t behave the way that is was supposed to.  Kitchen fires should respond to water, and this one didn’t. So they moved back into the living room.  The Lieutenant stated that he “always keeps his earflaps up because he wants to get a sense of how hot the fire is.”. He was surprised by how hot this fire was. A kitchen fire shouldn't have been that hot.  Next, the Lieutenant stated that he was surprised that the fire wasn’t noisy. It was quiet, and this didn’t make sense given how much heat there was.  In retrospect everything makes perfect sense.  The fire didn’t respond to being sprayed in the kitchen because it wasn’t centered in the kitchen.  The fire was quiet because it was muffled by the floor.  The living room was hot because the fire was underneath the floor, and heat rises.  At the time however, the Lieutenant made none of these connections consciously.  All of his thinking was going on behind the locked door of his unconscious. This is a perfect example of Thin-Slicing in action. Thin-Slicing Conclusion  The Lieutenant’s internal computer effortlessly and instantly found a pattern within the chaos. His brain used the thin slices of information that were available to him, and unconsciously influenced a decision that saved their lives.  Had the Lieutenant stopped and discussed the situation with his team to figure out what was going on; it might have destroyed his ability to jump to the insight that saved their lives. Thin-Slicing “The ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behaviour, based on very narrow slices of experience” Unique Phenomena in Memory Amnesia False Memories Photographic Memory Amnesia  Inability to remember information (typically all events within a specific period, usually due to physiological trauma). This includes loss of facts, experiences, time and place. ​ ​ 2 Types of Amnesia:  Retrograde  Anterograde ​ Retrograde Amnesia Lose explicit memories from before the surgery/accident​ BUT don’t lose implicit memories​ Loss of memory for events and experiences that happened before the amnesia causing event. Anterograde Amnesia  loss of memory for events and experiences that occurred after the amnesia-causing event. ​ Anterograde amnesia​ Normal working’ memory Remember everything up to incident​ Cannot form new long-term explicit memories​ CAN form new long-term implicit memories False Memories  Refers to cases in which people remember events differently from the way they happened or, in the most dramatic case, remember events that never happened at all.  False memories can be very vivid and held with high confidence, and it can be difficult to convince someone that the memory in question is wrong.  A simple example would be seeming to remember starting the dishwasher, when you in fact didn't.  A serious example would be during an eyewitness testimony, seeing the face of someone and remembering them doing the crime, when they didn't. The Mandala Effect  The Mandela Effect refers to a situation in which a large mass of people believes that an event occurred when it did not.  One theory for the basis for the Mandela effect originates from quantum physics and relates to the idea that rather than one timeline of events, alternate realities or universes may be taking place and mixing with our timeline.  In theory, this would result in groups of people having the same memories because the timeline has been altered as we shift between these different realities. Photographic Memory  Eidetic memory - is the ability to recall an image from memory with high precision – at least for a brief period of time – after seeing it only once  It is still debated whether it truly exists or not.  More commonly found in children rather than adults.  More anecdotally found in people with autism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejhNxNIK vOI The Truth of Memory Storage Recent neuroscientists have found that although the Frontal lobes, hippocampus and amygdala are found to be heavily involved in memory..... Long term memories are also heavily stored in the sensory brain areas that were active when creating the memory. Your eyes – Occipital lobe  Your ears – Temporal lobe Physical sensation – Parietal lobe