Topic II – Memory, Ch. 9 & Thinking/Learning, Ch. 10
I. The Phenomenon of Memory
A. Information Processing
1. To remember any event requires:
i. Encoding – that we get information into our brain.
ii. Storage – retain the information
iii. Retrieval – get information back out.
2. Three-Stage Processing Model
i. Record to-be remembered information as fleeting sensory memory.
ii. It is then processed in a short-term memory bin.
iii. It is encoded for long-term memory and later retrieval.
3. This three-step process is limited and fallible.
i. We are bombarded with information.
ii. Focus on certain incoming stimuli.
iii. Process as conscious short-term memories that decay unless used or rehearsed.
4. Working Memory – Clarifies short-term memory.
i. We associate new and old information and solve problems.
ii. Integrate with long-term memory.
iii. Has a visual and verbal component to process images and words simultaneously en route to storage.
iv. Quite limited.
· i.e. can’t carry on two conversations at once.
II. Encoding: Getting Information In.
A. Automatic Process
1. With little or no effort, you encode enormous amounts of information about space, time, and frequency.
2. Occurs effortlessly and is difficult to shut off.
3. After practice, some effortful processing becomes automatic.
4. Does not interfere with our thinking about other things.
· parallel processing.
B. Effortful Processing.
1. When learning novel information such as names, we can boost our memory through rehearsal, or conscious repetition.
2. German philosopher Hermann Ebbinghaus the first to scientifically study memory.
i. Did this through recalling lists of syllables.
3. Ebbinghause developed a simple principle:
i. The amount remembered depends on the time spent learning
ii. After learning material, additional rehearsal (over-learning) increases retention.
4. The Next-in line effect:
i. In giving information around a circle of people, your poorest memories are for what was said by the person just before you.
ii. You focus rather on your performance.
5. Information presented in the seconds just before sleep seldom is remembered. However, information presented an hour before sleep is well remembered.
6. Taped information played during sleep is registered by the ears but is not remembered.
7. The Spacing Effect – We retain information better when our rehearsal is distributed over time.
i. The longer the space between practice sessions, the better the retention.
ii. Spaced study beats cramming.
8. The Serial Position Effect.
i. As you struggle to recall lists, you often remember the last and the first items better.
ii. Last items are in short-term memory. After a delay time, the recall is best for the first items.
9. Our memory system processes information not just by repetitive rehearsal but also by encoding its significant features.
C. What We Encode.
1. Encoding Meaning.
i. We tend not to remember things exactly as they were, but we remember what we encode.
ii. Semantic encoding – the encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words. Yields much better memory.
iii. Acoustic encoding – the encoding of sound, especially the sound of words.
iv. Visual encoding – the encoding of picture images.
See Sample questions and chart on pg. 324.
v. Learning meaningful material requires only one-tenth the effort.
vi. The Self-Reference Effect – we have excellent recall for information we can relate to ourselves.
2. Encoding Imagery.
i. Imagery – mental pictures; a powerful aid to effort processing, especially when combined with semantic encoding.
ii. Rosy retrospection – tend to remember an event more positively than was evaluated at the time.
iii. Mnemonics – memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devises.
· i.e. stories, jingles, peg words, see pg. 325
3. Organizing Information for Encoding.
i. Chunking – organizing items into familiar, manageable units, often occurs automatically.
a. We all remember information best when we can organize it into personally meaningful arrangements.
b. Also aids in recall of unfamiliar material.
- i.e. acronyms.
ii. Hierarchies – by organizing knowledge in hierarchies, we retrieve information efficiently.
a. Outlines
b. Headings, etc.
c. See figure 9.8 on pg. 327
III. Storage: Retaining Information
A. Sensory Memory.
1. Iconic Memory – a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second.
a. Our visual screen clears quickly.
b. New images superimpose over old ones.
2. Echoic Memory – momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.
B. Short-Term Memory.
1. Unless we meaningfully encode or rehearse information, it quickly disappears.
2. Short-term memory typically stores but seven or so chunks of information (give or take two).
C. Long-Term Memory
1. Our capacity for storing long-term memories is essentially limitless.
D. Storing Memories in the Brain.
1. Forgetting occurs as new experiences interfere with our retrieval and as the physical memory trace gradually decays.
2. Memories do not reside in a single, specific spot in brain.
3. Synaptic Changes,
i. Memories begin as impulses whizzing through brain circuits, somehow leaving permanent neural traces.
ii. Where does neural change occur? The synapses – the sites where nerve cells communicate with one another through their neurotransmitter messengers.
iii. Given increased activity in a particular pathway, neural interconnections form or strengthen.
iv. Increased synaptic efficiency makes for more efficient neural circuits.
v. Long-term potentiation – increase in a synapse’s firing potential after a brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.
vi. After long-term potentiation has occurred, passing an electric current through the brain won’t disrupt old memories. The current will wipe out very recent experiences in the same way as a blow to the head or alcohol.
4. Stress Hormones and Memory.
i. The naturally stimulating hormones that humans and animals produce when excited or stressed boast learning and retention.
a. Examples: first kiss, house fire, war trauma
ii. Prolonged stress shrinks a brain area that is vital for laying down memories.
iii. When stress hormones are flowing, memories may get blocked.
a. Example: go blank while speaking in public.
5. Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories
i. A memory-to-be enters the cortex through the senses, and then winds its way into the brain’s depth.
ii. We seem to have two memory systems operating in tandem. (Dual explicit-implicit memory system)
a. Implicit memory – learn how to do something; procedural memory without conscious recall.
- Involves skills: motor and cognitive and classical/operant conditioning effects.
b. Explicit memory – with conscious recall.
- Involves facts and personally experienced events.
iii. The Hippocampus – where explicit memories are stored.
a. New explicit memories of names, images, and events are laid down via a limbic system structure call the hippocampus. This is the temporary processing site for explicit memories.
b. We have 2, just above each ear, about an inch and a half strait in.
c. Damage to the left or right seems to produce different results.
d. Damage to right – trouble remembering verbal information.
e. Damage to left – trouble recalling visual designs and locations.
iv. The Cerebellum –where implicit memories are stores.
IV. Retrieval: Getting Information Out
A. Recall – a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier.
B. Recognition – a measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned.
C. Relearning – a memory measure that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for a second time.
D. Retrieval Cues.
1. Priming – to retrieve a specific memory, you first need to identify one of the stands that lead to it.
i. The waking of associations.
2. Context Effect – you remember something better when you place yourself back in the context where you first experienced it.
i. Accounts for déjà vu experience.
a. If we have previously been in a similar situation, the current situation may load with cues that unconsciously retrieve the earlier experience.
3. Moods and Memories.
i. Events in the past may have aroused a specific emotion that later can prime us to recall its associated events. (State-dependent memory)
ii. Mood-congruent memories – associate good or bad events with their accompanying emotions.
iii. Moods influence how we interpret other people’s behavior.
V. Forgetting.
A. The Seven Sins of Memory
1. Three sins of forgetting:
i. Absent-mindedness
ii. Transience – storage decay over time
iii. Blocking
2. Three sins of distortion:
i. Misattribution – confusing the source of information
ii. Suggestibility
iii. Bias
3. One sin of intrusion:
i. Persistence – unwanted memories.
B. Encoding Failure.
1. Sometimes we simply fail to encode information (never entered long-term memory).
C. Storage Decay.
1. Even after encoding something well, we sometimes later forget.
2. The course of forgetting is initially rapid, and then levels off with time.
D. Retrieval Failure.
1. Interference.
i. Proactive (forward-acting) Interference – occurs when something you learned earlier disrupts your recall of something you experienced later.
ii. Retroactive (backward-acting) Interference – occurs when new information makes it harder to recall something you learned earlier.
2. Motivated Forgetting.
i. People unknowingly revise their own histories to protect and enhance their self-images.
ii. Repression – self-censor painful information, which is pushed into unconsciousness
a. An increasing number of researchers think this rarely, if ever, occurs. (A big change of thought in psychology!)
VI. Memory Construction.
A. Misinformation and Imagination Effects.
1. Misinformation Effect – incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event.
2. Repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories.
3. Given time, the mind’s search for a fact creates a fiction.
B. Source Amnesia.
1. We encode memories and distribute different aspects to different parts of the brain.
2. Frailest parts of a memory is its source:
i. May retain the image, but not the context (or source) in which we acquired it. For example: we recognize a person (image), but don’t know where we met them (source).
C. Discerning True and False Memories.
1. Unreal memories feel like real memories.
2. Real memories have details; false memories are restricted to the gist of the supposed event. (Gist Memories are durable)
3. The hippocampus is equally active whether a subject is truly or falsely recalling something.
4. Other brain areas respond differently.
i. Only when correctly remembering does the left temporal lobe area light up.
ii. People can’t tell the difference, but their brain can.
D. Children’s Eyewitness Recall.
1. Interviewers who ask misleading questions can plant false memories.
i. Depending on the questioning, children may or may not produce accurate eyewitness reports.
ii. Professional Psychologists who specialize in interviewing children often cannot reliably separate real from false memories – nor can the children themselves.
E. Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse
1. Memory researchers are especially suspicious of claims of long-repressed memories of abuse.
i. Unless the victim was a child too young to remember life experience, such traumas are usually remembered vividly.
VII. Improving Memory.
1. Study repeatedly to boost long-term recall.
2. Spend more time rehearsing or actively thinking about the material.
3. Make the material personally meaningful.
4. To remember a list of unfamiliar items, use mnemonic devices.
5. Refresh your memory by activating retrieval cues.
6. Recall events while they are fresh, before you encounter possible misinformation.
7. Minimize interference.
8. Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to help determine what you do not yet know.
Chapter 10: Thinking and Language.
I. Thinking = Cognition – the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, and remembering.
A. Concepts – a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
1. Humans organize concepts into hierarchies.
2. Prototype – a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category.
B. Solving Problems.
1. Some problems we solve through trial and error.
2. Algorithm – a step-by-step procedure that guarantees a solution. An often-laborious task.
3. Heuristics – a simple rule-of-thumb strategy.
i. Usually speedier, but more error-prone.
4. Insight – a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions.
C. Obstacles to Problem Solving.
1. Confirmation Bias – a tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions.
2. Fixation – the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving.
3. Mental Set – a tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially a way that has been successful in the past but may or may not be helpful in solving a new problem.
4. Functional Fixedness – a tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions.
D. Making Decisions and Forming Judgments
1. Using and Misusing Heuristics.
i. The Representativeness Heuristic.
a. Judge the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead to ignoring other relevant information.
ii. Availability Heuristics – estimate the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common.
2. Overconfidence – a tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgments.
i. Overconfidence does have its value.
3. Framing Decisions.
i. The way we present an issue is called framing.
E. Belief Bias – the tendency for one’s preexisting beliefs that distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seems valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid.
1. The Belief Perseverance Phenomenon – clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
F. Simulating Thinking: Artificial Intelligence (AI).
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) – designing and programming computers to do intelligent things and simulate human thought.
2. Computer Neural Networks – computer circuits that mimic the brain’s interconnected neural cells (they learn from experience).
II. Language
A. Language Structure – 3 Building Blocks.
1. Phoneme – in a spoken language, the smallest distinct sound unit.
2. Morpheme – in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or part of a word (i.e. prefix).
3. Grammar – system of rules in a language.
i. Semantics – set of rules by which we derive meaning, the study of meaning.
ii. Syntax – rules for combining words.
B. Language Development.
1. Acquiring Language.
i. Babbling Stage (3 to 4 months old)
ii. One-Word Stage (age 1 to 2)
iii. Two-Word Stage (about age 2)
a. Telegraph Speech – speak in nouns and verbs, omitting auxiliary words.
iii. Proceed directly from 2-word stage to quickly uttering longer phrases.
2. Explaining Language Development – different theories will be covered in other areas of this course. Knowledge of specifics theories is not needed for now.
C. Language Influences Thinking.
1. Linguistic Relativity – Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.
i. Many researchers agree the language influences thinking, but determines is much too strong.
D. Thinking Without Language.
1. We often think in images, and then put into words.
2. Much of our information processing occurs outside of consciousness, that is, without language.
3. Thinking affects our language, which then affects out thought.
III. Animal Thinking and Language.
A. Animals obviously communicate.
1. Some communicate in more human-like ways than others.
i. Apes have considerable cognitive ability.