Psychology 1100E Module 5 - Human Memory PDF

Psychology 1100 Lecture - Week 8 Day 16: Nov 13th Human Memory Memory Stages. Encoding: forming a memory code Storage: maintaining encoded information over time Retrieval: recovering information from memory storage Encoding: The Role of Attention Attention involves focusing awareness on a narrowed...

Psychology 1100 Lecture - Week 8 Day 16: Nov 13th Human Memory Memory Stages. Encoding: forming a memory code Storage: maintaining encoded information over time Retrieval: recovering information from memory storage Encoding: The Role of Attention Attention involves focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events Cocktail Party Phenomenon: Demonstrates the ability to attend to a particular stimulus (your name) while filtering out a range of other stimuli (irrelevant conversations and sounds) Model of Selective Attention Divided Attention impairs encoding - Full attention = just primary task - Divided attention = both tasks Primary task Secondary Task (memorize words) (Classify low, medium and high tones) Enriched encoding Levels of Processing theory: proposes that deeper levels of processing result in longer-lasting memories Deeper levels of processing result in better memory Elaboration: Linking a stimulus to other information at the time of encoding. E.g. associating the stimulus with pre-existing information or knowledge Tree - “trees are large plants, usually green, there are a lot of trees on campus” Visual imagery: Linking a stimulus to representative mental images Dual-coding theory: Memory is enhanced by forming semantic and visual codes, since either can lead to recall. - Concrete words (bed) are easier to remember than abstract words (dream); pictures are easier to remember than words. Bed > dream Picture of bed* > dream Self-Referent Encoding: Linking a stimulus to personally relevant information. E.g. likes, dislikes, whether of how to stimulus applies to you personally Dog: “I love dogs and i have a dog named lady” Enriching encoding through techniques like Elaboration, Visual Imagery, and Self-Referent Encoding improve memory because they help to form better memory codes. Storage Sensory Memory - Decays very rapidly - Info that we see, hear, taste, or feel Short Term Memory - Small amounts of info for a short time - Requires attention Long Term Memory - Many forms of stored episodes, knowledge, procedures, etc Sensory Memory Preserves information in sensory form for a brief time before it decays away Echoic memory storage auditory sensory information (3 to 4 secs) Iconic memory stores visual sensory information (200 to 500 ms) - Allows us to perceive afterimages Sensory Memory Capacity: Sperling (1960) demonstrates how quickly the iconic memory afterimage disappears. - Participants can recall letters when prompted within ¼ of a second, but not after because the afterimage has disappeared Short term Memory (STM) A limited capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for up to 20s Rehearsal: The process of repetitively verbalizing or thinking about information to keep it in STM - Maintenance Rehearsal: maintains info, involves shallow processing (e.g. saying number over and over) - Elaborative Rehearsal: deeper level of processing, helps to encode info into LTM (e.g. semantic encoding) STM Duration: Peterson and Peterson (1959) showed that when rehearsal is prevented (by counting backwards) information (string of letters) can only be retained in STM for about 15s STM Capacity: The amount of content that can be held in STM. The magical number of Seven, plus or minus two, is an overestimation; four or minus one is more accurate - 4+/-1 ‘bits’ of information Chunking: Grouping stimuli together into familiar units of information - Helps us store more information in STM CTV YMCA IBM KGB FBI Working Memory: A limited capacity storage system that temporarily maintains and stores information by providing an interface between perception, memory, and action. - ‘Working’ memory is often used interchangeably with ‘short term’ memory. Phonological Loop: Manipulation of auditory information. Visuospatial Sketch Pad: Manipulation of visual information. Episodic Buffer: Integrates information with long term memory content. Central Executive: Controls subordinate memory systems. Working Memory Capacity: Refers to one’s ability to hold and manipulate information in conscious attention. - Varies between individuals - Correlates positively with other cognitive abilities (e.g. complex reasoning and intelligence) - Altered by situational factors (e.g. anxiety, fatigue) Psychology 1100 Lecture - Week 8 Day 17: Nov 15th Human Memory Storage: Long term memory (LTM) An unlimited-capacity store that can hold information over lengthy periods of time Remote Long term memory: Memory for events that occurred years or decades ago. Recent Long Term memory: Memory for events that occurred hours, days, or weeks ago E.g. lunch last week Flashbulb memories: unusually vivid detailed ‘snapshot’ recollection of an event. - People tend to be very confident in these memories because they feel accurate, however mo memory is a perfect record E.g. twin towers 911, world cup Episodic memory: recollection of personally experienced events, or ‘episodes’. E.g. a childhood birthday party, your high school grad Semantic memory: general knowledge that is not tied to the time the information was learned. E.g. knowing an apple is a fruit, dogs have 4 legs, toronto is the capital of ontario Information in semantic memory is organized into categories and conceptual hierarchies. Clustering: Tendency to remember similar or related items in groups (e.g. categories) Cat pants rabbit recall: snake cat horse Bowl cup shoe shirt, shoe, pants, glove Frog glove fork bowl, spoon, cup Shirt snake horse Spoon shoe plate Conceptual Hierarchy: Multilevel classification system based on common properties among items. Semantic Network: Consists of nodes representing concepts, joined together by pathways that link related concepts. Spreading of activation: Activation of a concept will lead to closely related concepts also becoming activated. Schema: An organised cluster of knowledge about a particular object or event abstracted from previous experience. People tend to remember things that are consistent with their schemas (e.g. chair, table, shelf, in a professor’s office) and things that are bizarre in the context of a particular schema (e.g. bottle of wine, screwdriver). Retrieval: recovering information from memory storage. Availability: Information is no longer available because it is no longer present in the memory system. Accessibility: Information is present in the memory system but not accessible at the moment. Retrieval: Measuring memory Recall: need to reproduce information. E.g. list as many words as you can remember, no cues Cued-recall: need to reproduce information given a cue. E.g. category cue: list the animal words your remember Recognition: need to identify information from an array of options. E.g. which of the following words do you remember? Retrieval: Cueing Memory Retrieval cues: Stimuli that help gain access to memories. E.g. cues in cued-recall, old items in recognition test - Stimuli like scent and music tend to be very strong retrieval cues for memories of personally experienced life events. Context cues: Stimuli from an event that help reinstate the context. E.g. Your memory for breakfast yesterday can be more easily accessed if you have context cues like where you were sitting, who was beside you, what you were wearing, etc. help to reinstate the context of the event and allow you to recall what you ate. Retrieval: Reconstructing Memories Memory Distortion: Some aspects of a memory become altered and distorted through the way that we encode and reconstruct information. e.g. Barlett (1932) demonstrated memory distortion by having residents of England read and retell the Pacific Northwest Indigenous “War of the Ghosts” Story Memory Distortion and Schemas: Recall after a long period of time: the story became shorter and less detailed in memory. Details recalled were more consistent with British culture to fit within existing schemas E.g. ‘canoe’ remembered as ‘ship’, warrior’ remembered as ‘soldier’ Misinformation Effect: occurs when participants’ recall of an event they witnessed is altered by introducing misleading post-event information. Study by Loftus and Palmer (1974): - Participants watched a video of a car crash - Wording of follow up questions altered subsequent memory for details Source Monitoring: The process of making inferences about the origin of memories. E.g. “where did i hear that” Source monitoring error: Occurs when a memory derived from one source misattributed to another source. E.g. recalling information came from sign when you had recently heard it from a friend Psychology 1100 Lecture - Week 9 Day 18: Nov 20th Human Memory Ebbinghaues’s Forgetting Curve Hermann Ebbinghaus Tested memory for nonsense syllables (BAF, XOF, VIR, MEQ) to examine retention and forgetting. Retention: The proportion of material that remains in memory. Forgetting Curve: Graphs retention and forgetting over time. Forgetting Relearning: Requires a participant to memorize information a second time to determine how much time or many practice trials are ‘saved’ by having learned it before. Savings: Information that is retained but not easily accessed until relearning occurs. Forgetting: Why we forget How and why do we forget? - Decay - Interference - Retrieval Failure - Motivated Forgetting Decay Theory: Proposes that forgetting occurs because memory traces fade (or ‘decay’) with time. - Physical memory traces in the nervous system fade with time and disuse. Interference theory: Proposes that people forget information because of competition from other material. - Information that is highly similar to studied material interferes more with memory. Study word: happy Inference theory: Inference can also come from pre-existing knowledge. Retroactive Interference: Newer information interferes with the relation of previously learned information. Proactive Interference: Previously learned information interferes with the retention of newer information. Retrieval Failure: Momentary forgetting due to a breakdown in the retrieval process. Tip of the tongue phenomenon: The temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that it's just out of reach. Retrieval Failure: Momentary forgetting due to a breakdown in the retrieval process. Encoding Specificity Principle: The value of a retrieval cue depends on how well it corresponds to the memory code. - When the context at retrieval is more similar to the context at encoding, memory will be better. Forgetting can be due to poor retrieval cues^^^ Motivated Forgetting: Retrieval of upsetting memories is blocked to regulate emotions. Freud’s original concept was termed ‘repression’ Repression: Keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious. The Repressed Memory Controversy Can memories truly be repressed? Support Evidence that individuals who experienced childhood abuse or trauma do not report those experiences as adults, or report having experienced complete amnesia for the event at some point in life. Skepticism Memories can very easily become distorted (misinformation effect, source monitoring errors), and false memories can be induced, even false memory for life events. The Physiology of Memory Memory Trace: The physiological basis for a memory. - Memories involve patterns of activity across a distributed set of neurons. Long Term Potentiation (LTP): A long lasting increase in neural excitability at synapses along a specific neural pathway. - Involves changes in both presynaptic and the postsynaptic neurons, strengthening their connection. Hebbian Learning: “Cells that fire together, wire together” LTP strengthens memory traces, making them more likely to reactivate for retrieval. Jang et al (2017) showed that memory retrieval involves the reinstatement (or reactivation) of the pattern of neural activity that occurred at the time of encoding. Hippocampus: Brain region in the medial temporal lobes involved in memory processes. - Critical for the formation of new memories - Older memories are stored throughout the cortex and downed less on the hippocampus. Neurogenesis: The formation of new neurons. - Occurs in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus - Supports learning of new information - Suppressing neurogenesis leads to memory impairments Consolidation: A hypothetical process involving the gradual conversion of new, unstable memories into stable, durable memory traces stored in long term memory. - The hippocampal region coordinates consolidation and reinstatement of memories that are stored in the cortex. Reconsolidation: A hypothetical process in which memories are updated and changed. - Reactivated memories (when you recall and event) are returned to an unstable state, allowing reconsolidation - Can result in distortions Psychology 1100 Lecture - Week 9 Day 19: Nov 22th Human Memory The Physiology of Memory Patient H.M. Underwent surgery to prevent debilitating epileptic seizures which destroyed his hippocampal region. Suffered complete loss of the ability to form new long term memories. Short term memory and remote childhood memories were intact. “It's like walking from a dream.. Everyday is alone in itself” Organic Amnesia: Extensive memory loss due to head injury. Retrograde Amnesia: Loss of memory for events that occurred prior to the onset of amnesia. Anterograde Amnesia: Loss of memories for events that occur after the onset of amnesia. Memory and Aging: Memory declines in healthy aging are associated with shrinkage in the hippocampus. Dementia: A general term for the progressive decline in ability to remember, think, or make decisions that interferes with doing everyday activities. - Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia - The hippocampal region is the first brain area that starts to change in AD Types of Memory Patient H.M.: unable to form new long term memories.. But not all types of memory were lost. Patient H.M. was able to learn and improve performance on the mirror tracing task despite having no memory of ever having done the task before. - Suggests that some form of memory is intact for H.M. Types of Memory: Implicit Memory Implicit vs. Explicit.. Explicit Memory: Conscious and effortful, exhibited on tasks that require intentional remembering. Implicit Memory: Unconscious and automatic, exhibited on tasks that do not require intentional remembering. Word fragment task: Tr__k P_t_t_ _cy_l_ You will be more likely to complete the fragment: _ss_ss_ With assassin if you had recently read a list of words including the word assassin. Individuals with Amnesia will perform poorly on typical memory tests (like free recall) but perform well on implicit memory tasks like a word fragment task. Explicit Memory: Facts and events Conscious, deliberate, effortful Relies on Hippocampus Implicit Memory: Perceptual and motor skills Unconscious, unintentional, automatic Relies on Cerebellum Memory Systems Declarative memory: Explicit recollection of facts and events E.g. words, definitions, names, faces, ideas - Includes Episodic and Semantic memory Nondeclarative Memory: Implicit memory for actions, skills, operations and conditioned responses (also called procedural memory). Memory Systems: Detective Episodic Memory: Recollection of personally experienced events, or ‘episodes’ that occurred at a specific time and location. E.g. a childhood birthday party, your high school grad In a lab setting: Recently experienced information such as word lists, pictures, videos, etc. Semantic Memory: General knowledge or factual information that is not tied to the time the information was learned. General semantics: Common knowledge Personal semantics: Facts about yourself Autobiographical Memory: Memory for one’s personal history, including events experienced across the lifespan. Includes both episodic and semantic content - Personally experienced events that are integrated with personal and general semantic information, and how you view yourself Imagining Future Events Reconstructing events from the past (remembering) and constructing hypothetical events that might occur in the future (imagining) result in similar neural activation and are thought to rely on similar processes. Retrospective Memory: Memory for information previously encountered. E.g. memory for last time you baked cookies Prospective Memory: Remembering to perform actions in future. E.g. remembering to take cookies out of the oven in 20 minutes