Study/lecture notes for first-year psychology on memory
*Please note that the information in the document is not my own knowledge, it belongs to the Unversity of the Witwatersrand and is comprised of notes from lectures and textbooks.
Contents
Memory .......................................................................................................................................................................... 3
What is memory for? .............................................................................................................................................. 3
Two approach to understanding Memory .................................................................................................................. 3
The information processing approach to understanding memory ............................................................................. 4
retrieval failure ........................................................................................................................................................... 4
Transfer-appropriate processing ............................................................................................................................ 4
The information-processing approach to understanding memory ............................................................................. 5
Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) multi-store model of memory ................................................................................. 5
Sensory memory ......................................................................................................................................................... 6
Short-term memory ........................................................................................................................................................ 7
Features of Short-Term Memory? .......................................................................................................................... 7
Peterson and Peterson’s (1959) study of short-term memory ............................................................................... 7
Short coming of short-term memory? .................................................................................................................... 7
Working memory .................................................................................................................................................... 8
Craik and Lockhart (1972) ....................................................................................................................................... 8
The multi-component working memory model ...................................................................................................... 9
Long-Term Memory ...................................................................................................................................................... 11
Types of long-term memory: .................................................................................................................................... 11
How is knowledge represented and organised in memory? ..................................................................................... 13
the accuracy of memory ....................................................................................................................................... 14
Cued recall ................................................................................................................................................................ 15
Anatomy of memory ................................................................................................................................................. 15
Neural Circuitry of Memory ...................................................................................................................................... 15
Long-term Potentiation Neurogenesis .................................................................................................................. 15
Memory and the brain .............................................................................................................................................. 16
types of memory ................................................................................................................................................... 16
Remembering and forgetting.................................................................................................................................... 17
primacy & recency ................................................................................................................................................ 17
Forgetting ............................................................................................................................................................. 17
Recognition versus recall .......................................................................................................................................... 18
ebbinghaus’ curve..................................................................................................................................................... 18
Forgetting ................................................................................................................................................................. 19
Memory decay WHEN STORAGE FAILS RETRIEVAL IS IMPOSSIBLE .......................................................................... 19
Interference .............................................................................................................................................................. 19
When storage fails retrieval is impossible ............................................................................................................ 19
Serial position curve ............................................................................................................................................. 20
retrieval and context cues .................................................................................................................................... 21
Encoding specificity principle ................................................................................................................................ 21
1
, State dependent learning and retrieval ................................................................................................................ 22
Reconstructing memories ..................................................................................................................................... 22
The expansion of understandings of memory ...................................................................................................... 22
Source monitoring and retrieval ........................................................................................................................... 23
False memories ......................................................................................................................................................... 23
Motivated forgetting ................................................................................................................................................ 23
Repressed Memory ............................................................................................................................................... 23
The controversy of recovered memories .............................................................................................................. 24
2
, MEMORY
In the videos provided in the uploaded lectures we took a look at;
- Too much memory
- Too little memory
- False memory
Memory is a fascinating process that has intrigued psychologists for decades. Over the past
century, psychologists have realised that memory is an extremely complex process, which
sometimes acts in mysterious ways. For example, we all remember the location, time, age, and
partner with whom we shared our first kiss.
Memory is a complex topic
We might consider it as a group of mechanisms/processes through which
experience shapes us, changing our brains & behaviour
WHAT IS MEMORY FOR?
- Holding on to the details of everyday life
- Holding information in mid for just a short time while we work on it
- Remembering events of our lives and the people who inhabit them
- Identifying, appreciating, and responding appropriately to various objects and situations
and interactions between them
- Capturing the regularities in the world, the correlations and patterns of co-occurrence
- Pathway to ‘self’
TWO APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING MEMORY
Cognitive psychology
▪ Abstract models of memory operations
▪ Look at how information is actually processed to reduce it
down to “if this happens then this happens”
Clinical Neuropsychology
▪ Double dissociation in the organically compromised brain
3
, THE INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING MEMORY
In this approach, memory is mostly studied as an internal process of the brain (a mental
process) which consists of distinct and interconnected stages.
The memory process consists of three aspects:
1. An input stage
2. A storage stage
3. An output (retrieval) stage.
Three enduring questions that psychologists ask of memory, correspond to these three key processes.
These processes and memory itself are often viewed as analogous to a modern day computer.
? The first question is, how does information get into memory?
Like a scanner or copier, we have to encode stimuli into a language our brain understands.
? The second question is, how is that information stored or maintained into memory?
Like hard drives in computers, information is organized and stored for later use.
? The third question is, how is the stored information retrieved or pulled back out of memory?
Like a computer monitor retrieving information to display, we too call up information and
“display” it in various forms (e.g., talking, thinking, moving).
Although technology serves as a nice analogy, the inner workings of our memory are far more
complex.
RETRIEVAL FAILURE
TRANSFER-APPROPRIATE PROCESSING
Occurs when the initial processing of information is similar to the type of processing required
by the subsequent measure of retention.
For example, Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977) gave subjects a list of words that required
either semantic or phonemic processing. Retention was measured with recognition tests that
emphasised either the meaning or the sound of the words. Semantic processing yielded higher
retention when the testing stressed semantic factors, while the phonetic processing yielded
higher retention when the testing stressed phonemic factors. Thus,
retrieval failures are more likely when a poor fit occurs between the
processing done during encoding and the processing invoked by the
measure of retention
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