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PSYB57 Chapter 6 (pages 172-193)

Scheme Based Theories of Memory

Bartlett and the Concept of the Schema

 Bartlett invented the concept of schema
o Schema (Bartlett): an active mass of organized pass reaction that
provides a setting that guides our behaviour
 A standard that can be adjusted to fit changing circumstances
(like a tennis stroke changes between hits)
 Bartlett often used the method of repeated reproduction (one participant
is given multiple opportunities to recall a story over time) and the method of
serial reproduction (broken telephone game)
 In the method of serial reproduction, upon long and complex stories, people
used rationalization (the attempt to make memory as coherent and sensible
as possible) to reproduce
 4 components of schemas:
i. selection: select information consistent with goals/interests
ii. abstraction: take the information and convert it into abstract form
(the gist)
iii. interpret: interpret the information in terms of other information we
have
iv. integration: integrate the information to make it consistent with our
schemas
 Professor A.C. Aitken was a brilliant musician and mathematician with an
amazing memory. Showed how interests and schemas help increase
memorization

Eyewitness Testimony
 Loftus and Palmer found when asking people involved in a car collision what
happened, the wording greatly affected their description and memory of the
event after it actually occurred
o Misinformation effect: the hypothesis that misleading post-event
information can become integrated with the original memory of the
event

False Memories
 If we imagine an event in a particularly vivid way, we may later have the
illusion that it actually happened
 Johnson: source monitoring framework – the theory that some errors of
memory are caused by mistaken identification of the memory’s source

Encoding Specificity

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 Tulving and Thomson (1973) proposed the principle of encoding

specificity: that a cue is more likely to lead to the recall of a particular item if
the cue was initially encoded along with that item
o The way an item is retrieved from memory depends on the way it was
stored in memory
 Tulving and Thomson made 3 important findings after studying word cues in
participants
1. Recognition failure of recallable words
 Information about an event is available in memory in a form
sufficient for the production of the appropriate response, however
the literal response of the word is not produced
 Strong cues were less effective in remembering associated words
than weak cues that were learned in a more similar context of
learning and recollection

 context-dependent recall: congruence between learning and recall context

lead to improved remembrance
 mood-dependent recall: congruence between learning and recall moods
lead to improved remembrance
 mood congruence: the idea that mood might cause selective learning of
affective material

Depression and Memory

 Using homophones (words that sound alike) Hertel and Hardin found
statements that set a depressive mood (Since I made fun of Jack he avoids
saying hi to me) reduce the number of homophones learned as opposed to
neutral moods (the tower is a high building)

Scripts
 Script: a structure that describes an appropriate sequences of
events/expectations in a particular context/situation
 Scripts are differentiated from schemas by their particular references to the
sequence of events or actions

Autobiographical Memory
 Autobiographical memories: episodic memories of events recalled in terms of
the time in our life when they occurred
 Franz Galton used to go on walks and then write down all the memories that
occurred
 Crovitz and Schiffman used Galton’s method to study autobiographical
memories and found they decrease with separation via time between the
event and present

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o They created the term Galton’s number: the number of

autobiographical episodes available to participants from the
preceding 20 years

Childhood amnesia
 According to textbook, not all memories from childhood amnesia (the
general inability to retrieve episodic memories from before the age of about
3) are irretrievable
 They way children experience events will change as they develop the ability
to describe them using language
 A study with Russian Cornell students showed that using language elicit
language-related memories (Russian questions elicited autobiographical
memories that had Russian in it)

The memory bump

 Three factors form the memory bump:
1. People over the age of 50 tend to have significantly more memories from
their teens and twenties than would be expected if memories decayed
smoothly over time
2. Childhood amnesia makes very early memories largely inaccessible
3. General tendency for memories to become increasingly unavailable as
time passed
 Memory bump: an increase in the number of memories between 10 and 30
years of age over what would be expected if memories decayed smoothly
over time
 Proust effect: the power of odors as autobiographical memory cues
 Theories of the bump:
o People over 50 have increased memory cause they make important
formative decisions at 10-30 that they likely reflect on
o 80% of autobiographically consequential experiences (ACEs)
occur between 18-35
 consistent with above hypothesis of formative experience
o life script: a cultural narrative that prescribe the age norms for
important events in an individual’s life
 often times life scripts have the most important event
occurring between 18-35
o distinctiveness: distinctive events occur most often at 18-35

Levels of Processing
 when information is related semantically, people can remember more
information
o Craik and Lockhart argued to be reason why newer models focus
more on the process of cognition, whereas older models normally
focused on the structure of cognition

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 Craik and Lockhart: levels of processing a continuum that ranges from

registering an event purely in terms of its physical characteristics to
analyzing it in terms of its relationship to other thing s that you know
o Eg. consider the word train . A shallow way of processing is just
observing the printed letters, a deeper way of processing would be to
observe that it refers to a form of transportation or has trolleys
o They state that cognition is a system designed for perception and
understanding. increased semantic meaning leads to more
comprehension which leads to better memory

Elaboration and distinctiveness

 Elaboration: adding to or enriching information by relating it to other
information
 Distinctiveness: the precision with which an item is encoded

Levels of processing and Aging

 Craik: Specific and general levels of representation: as people age they
tend to forget specific details but to remember deeper, more general
meanings

Levels of processing and the brain

 There’s no particular place in the brain where memories are stored, but there
is a brain activation that occurs in learning and in recollection

Two Approaches to Memory Research

 Two contrasting approaches to memory research:
o The first is lab-based and emphasizes experimental control
o The second incorporates real-world complexities

The Lab-based approach

 Ebbinghaus is the first prominent figurehead of the lab-based approach to
memory
 Also called the general principles tradition
 Ebbinghaus pioneered the use of nonsense syllables which were words
consisting of a consonant followed by a vowel followed by a consonant
 Ebbinghuas memorized a list of nonsense syllables then measures his
memory of them over time…created the forgetting curve from this, which
states that information is forgotten greatest immediately after the
information has been learned, and then declines gradually over time
 Jost’s law of forgetting: of two memory traces of equal strength, the
younger trace will decay faster than the older one
o Offspring of this: Ribot’s law of retrograde amnesia: older
memories are less likely to be lost as a result of brain damage than are
newer memories

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 Exemplifies the law of progressions and pathologies: last in,

first out  refers to mental systems and their development

The Ecological Approach

 This is the second type of approach to studying memory
 Focuses on incorporating real-world complexities
 Critique of this is that it is unscientific and poorly controls of variables
o Neisser is prominent figurehead, states how memory is used in an
ecologically oriented way

Bahrick and the Permastore

 Flashbulb memory research is usually considered to be the most ecologically
valid
 Bahrick studied a large group of Spanish students, found that after the initial
forgetting of knowledge occurred, knowledge was continued to be lost for 50
years, however still over 50 percent of words were correctly recalled
 Bahrick: Permastore: the state of relative permanence in which Bahrick
found that some kinds of memory can be retained over very long periods of
time
o Refers to retention of memory and not localization or retention to a
brain area

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