Chapter 9 Outline

Memory- Persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of
information.
Flashbulb memory: a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Information processing
o Human memory like a computer
1. Get info into our brain –encoding: processing of info into memory system
2. Retain info –storage: retention of encoded info over time
3. Get it back later –retrieval: process of getting into out of memory storage
o Humans store vast amounts of info in long-term memory: relatively permanent
and limitless storehouse of the memory system
o Short-term memory: activated memory that holds few items briefly; phone
number just dial
• The Atkinson-Shiffrin classic three-stage model of memory suggests that we (1)
register fleeting sensory memories, some of which are (2) processed into on-screen
short-term memories, a tiny fraction of then are (3) encoded for long-term memory
and possibly later retrieval.
• The working-memory model includes visual-spatial and auditory subsystems,
coordinated by a central executive processor that focuses attention where needed.

Encoding: Getting Information In

o Automatic processing: unconscious encoding of incidental info; occurs with
little or no effort, without our awareness, and without interfering with our
thinking of other things; space, time, frequency, well-learned info
o Effortful processing: encoding that requires attention and conscious effort
o After practice, effort processing becomes more automatic
o Can boost memory through rehearsal: conscious repetition of info, either to
maintain it in consciousness or to encode it for storage
o Next-in-line effect: when people go around circle saying names/words,
poorest memories are for name/word person before them said
o Information received before sleep is hardly ever remembered are
consciousness fade before processing able
o Retain info better when rehearsal distributed over time –phenomenon called
spacing effect: tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-
term retention than is achieved through cramming
o When given a list of items and ask to recall, people often demonstrate serial
position effect: tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list

What we encode
 o Rehearsal will not encode all info equally well because processing of info is in 3
ways
1. Semantic encoding: encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words
2. Acoustic encoding: encoding of sound, especially the sound of words
3. Visual encoding: encoding of picture images
o Fergus Craik and Endel Tulving flashed a word to people, asking question that
required processing either visually, acoustically, or semantically; semantic
encoding was found to yield much better memory

Visual Encoding
o Imagery: mental pictures; powerful aid to effortful processing, especially when
combined with semantic encoding like how we can easily picture where we were
yesterday, where we sat, and what we wore.
o Mnemonic: memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and
organizational devices
o Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs
automatically
o We are able to remember info best when able to organize it into personal
meaningful arrangements
• We tend to remember concrete nouns better than abstract nouns because, we can
associate both an image and a meaning with the object or noun, but only a meaning
with process.
• In hierarchies, we process information by dividing it into logical levels, beginning
with the most general and moving to the most specific.
• Forgetting as Encoding Failure
• Failure to encode info –never entered memory system
• Much of what we sense, we never notice
• Raymond Nickerson and Marilyn Adams discover most people cannot pick the real
American penny from different ones

Storage: Retaining Information

• Sensory memory: immediate, initial recording of sensory info in memory system
• we have short temporary photographic memory called iconic memory:
momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; photographic/picture-image
memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a sec
• fleeting memory for auditory sensory images called echoic memory: momentary
sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words
can still be recalled within 3 or 4 sec; auditory = ear, which starts with “e” like
echoic
• Short-Term Memory-without active processing, short-term memories have limited
life
• short-term memory limited in capacity –about 7 chunks of info; at any given
moment, can consciously process only very limited amount of info
 • Long-Term Memory-capacity for storing long-term memories is practically
limitless though forgetting occurs as new experiences interfere with retrieval and
as physical memory trace gradually decays
• Karl Lashley removed pieces of rat’s cortex as it ran through maze; found that no
matter what part removed, partial memory of solving maze stayed; concluded
memories don’t reside in single specific spot
• Psychologists then focused on neurons

Synaptic Changes
• Long-term potential (LTP): increase in a synapse’s firing potential after brief,
rapid stimulation; believed to be neural basis for learning and memory
o After long-term potential occurs, passing electric current through brain
won’t disrupt old memories, but wipe up recent experiences; like how a
football player with blow to head won’t recall name of play before the
blow
• CREB can switch genes off or on.

Stress Hormones and Memory

• Drugs that block neurotransmitters also disrupt info storage; drunk people hardly
remembers previous evening
o Stimulating hormones affect memory as more glucose available to fuel
brain activity, indicating important event –sears events onto brain;
remembering first kiss, earthquake
• The amygdale, an emotion-processing structure in the brain’s limbic system,
arouses brain areas that process emotion.

Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories

o These memories are processed in part by the cerebellum.
o Explicit memories are processed in various sub regions of the
hippocampus
• The implicit and explicit memory systems are independent.
• Hippocampus is a temporary processing site for the explicit memories.
• The cerebellum stores the implicit memories created by classical conditioning.
• Implicit memory formation requires the cerebellum
• Damage to the hippocampus may destroy the ability to consciously recall
memories, without destroying skills or classically conditioned responses.
• Damage to the left hippocampus has trouble remembering verbal information.
• Damage to the right hippocampus has trouble in recalling visual designs and
locations.
o Through scans, found that Hippocampus, neural center located in limbic
system, helps process explicit memories for storage
o When hippocampus removed from monkeys, lose recent memories, but
old memories intact, suggesting hippocampus not permanent storage
• Long-term memories scattered across various parts of frontal and temporal lobes

Retrieval: getting information out

o Recognition is the ability to identify items previously learned; a multiple choice
question test recognition.
o Recall is the ability to retrieve information not in conscious awareness; a fill-in-
the-blank question tests recall.
o Relearning is the ability to master previously stored information more quickly
than you originally learned it.

Retrieval Cues
o Retrieval cues are bits of related information we encode while processing a target
piece information.
o This process of activating associations is priming.

Context Effects
o The context in which we originally experienced an event or encoded a thought
can flood our memories with retrieval cues, leading us to the target memory.

Moods and Memories

o Things we learn in one state (joyful, sad, drunk, sober, etc) are more easily
recalled when in same state –phenomenon called state-dependent memory
o Moods also associated with memory; easily recall memory when mood of that
incident same as present
o Mood-congruent memory: tendency to recall experiences that are consistent
with one’s current good or bad mood
Forgetting
o Our memory can fail us through forgetting (absent-mindedness, transience, and
blocking), through distortion (misattribution, suggestibility, and bias), and
through intrusion (persistence of wanted memories).

Encoding Failure
• Without encoding, information does not enter our long-term memory store and
cannot be retrieved.
Storage Decay
• Ebbinghaus determined the forgetting curve because in his research he fount that
in over the course of forgetting is initially rapid, then levels off with time; this
principle became known as the forgetting curve.

Interference
• Learning some items may interfere with retrieving others
• Proactive interference (forward-acting): disruptive effect of prior learning on the
recall of new info
 • Retroactive interference (backward-acting): disruptive effect of new learning on
the recall of old info

Freud

 Repression: in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes

anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness
Increasing memory researchers think repression occurs rarely

Misinformation and Imagination Effects

• incorporating misleading info into one’s memory of an event; usually with

exaggeration.

Source Amnesia
• attributing to the wrong source an event that we experienced, heard about,
read about, or imagined
• Infantile amnesia—the ability to recall memories from the first three years of
life—makes recovery of very early childhood memories unlikely.