Class notes

Psychology of Memory and Amnesia

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Course
Psyc 144 (PSYC144)

Institution
University Of California - San Diego

This document contains lecture notes from the course Psychology 144: Memory and Amnesia with professor Anne Yilmaz. These notes cover all lectures, including models of memory, in-class examples, vocabulary definitions, experimental designs, research, and more. They are detailed, accurate, and usefu...

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Uploaded on November 12, 2024
Number of pages 18
Written in 2023/2024
Type Class notes
Professor(s) Anne yilmaz
Contains All classes

psychology
memory
amnesia
psychology of memory
short term memory
long term memory
working memory
dementia
sensory memory
episodic memory
semantic memory
memory and amnesia
forgetting

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Psychology 144: Memory & Amnesia
Professor Anne Yilmaz

1/10/24
What is Memory?
● The process by which we encode, store, and retrieve information – involves many brain systems
● Clive Wearing: unique amnesic – severe brain damage resulted in the inability to form any new
memories; “this is the first time I’ve ever spoken, seen you, been here, etc.”
○ Lives in one singular moment, no past or future; moment-to-moment consciousness
Brain Structures
● Temporal lobe important because it contains the hippocampus (medial temporal lobe)
● Hippocampus responsible for putting things into long-term memory
○ Bilateral (one hippocampus on each side); classic amnesics have damage limited to this
region & area immediately surrounding tissue
● Multimodal Brain = different regions of the brain are responsible for processing different sensory
inputs (sound, vision, taste, etc.)
● An “experience” is the simultaneous activation of all these brain regions
○ There is not one singular processing area in the brain; this ability is distributed across the
brain depending on the sensory input
Models of Memory
● Atkinson-Shiffrin Model (1968):
○ Environment → sensory memory → short-term memory → long-term memory
(simplified)
■ Information from environment enters our sensory memory, our attention puts it
into STM and we “keep it alive” (rehearsal), encode into LTM via hippocampus
Where are long-term memories stores?
● They are stored where they are made = when we remember something, the same areas of the
brain will be activated again “memory engram”

1/12/24
Sensory Memory
● Sperling’s (1964) Iconic Memory Experiment: iconic memory = sensory memory
○ Presented matrix of letters for 50 ms; asked participants to report as many letters as
possible – found that subjects only recall about half of the presented letters
● Follow-up → sounded a low, medium, or high tone immediately after matrix disappeared (tone
signaled which row to report)
○ Recall of that row was almost perfect when the tone was added
● Partial report method allows us to determine how many items are in an individual’s icon
○ Calculation: size of icon = (number of remembered items in the row) x (number of rows)
■ (# of letters reported from a row) x (# of rows) = estimated letters in iconic image
○ If the tone was delayed, the icon will already start to fade from memory and recall
accuracy will decrease
Hypothesis: perception of Continuous Motion

, ● allows us to smoothly perceive motion as fluid, rather than staccato stop motion
Atkinson-Shiffrin Model
● Murdock (1962) “word list experiments”: primacy and recency effect; easier to remember words
presented at beginning/end of a sequence
○ Read list of words and then immediately asks participants to free-recall any words they
remember
○ Primacy Effect believed to be a long-term memory phenomenon
○ Recency Effect believed to be a short-term memory phenomenon
● Overt Rehearsal: want participants to rehearse out loud to keep items in memory
○ First few items receive the most rehearsal and therefore are more easily recalled
● Incidental Learning = learning by accident; subjects unaware of the impending memory test and
therefore do not rehearse
○ No rehearsal → expect to see primacy effect no longer present
○ How do we test whether incidental vs intentional learning causes a primacy effect?
● Speeded Lists: less opportunity to rehearse; reduced primacy effect but unaffected recency effect
● Amnesia: rehearsal does not help; primacy effect reduced or eliminated (no mechanisms to retain
first items presented, but recency effect remains)
Conclusion = the primacy effect is a long-term phenomenon (the more rehearsal, the more retention)
● Recency Effect (STM):
○ Immediate Recall vs Delayed Recall – immediate = ask participants to immediately recall
items; delayed = gap allows participants to rehearse, so researchers present a distractor
task for 15 seconds (to prevent rehearsal)
■ No distractor task after last item → strong recency effect
■ 15s distractor task after last item → no recency effect
● Final Free Recall: immediate recall experience plus one more final memory test
○ Participants recall words, do something else afterwards, and then are presented w/ a final
memory task (tell me again how many words you remember); participant is unprepared
■ Everything that is remembered is recalled from LTM; “negative recency effect” –
the words at the end have the least amount of rehearsal and therefore are less
likely to be remembered than words in beginning/middle
Conclusion = the negative recency effect is a long-term memory phenomenon (the less rehearsal an item
receives, the less likely it is to be remembered)

1/17/24
Recap from last week…
➢ If someone has hippocampal damage, this will not affect their sensory memory
➢ Recap → recency effect is STM phenomenon; primacy effect is LTM phenomenon
➢ Immediate recall vs final free recall tests (Craik, 1970)

● Craik and Watkins (1973): last few items of a list usually receive the least amount of rehearsal;
explains the “negative recency effect” in final free recall
○ Change procedure so that last few items are rehearsed more, which means we should see
positive recency effect; still use immediate and final free recall design

, ○ However, researchers still saw a negative recency effect during the final free recall
despite prompting participants to rehearse more
● Craik and Tulving (1975): incidental memory task; manipulated depth of processing for a list of
words – shallow (surface features), intermediate (phonemic processing), deep (semantic)
● We remember info better when we relate it to yourself/something you care about!
● Maintenance Rehearsal keeps info alive in STM, and Elaborative Rehearsal puts it into LTM
○ Maintenance Rehearsal – repeating word to yourself over and over
○ Elaborative Rehearsal – process the info on a deeper level (semantically)
● Primacy Effect = long term memory phenomenon; stays in memory due to depth of processing
How does depth of processing relate to the primacy effect?
● Fewer items to weave together; easier to remember the first words because elaborative rehearsal
becomes more difficult w/ more words to “link together”

1/19/24
● Typical STM tasks overestimate the storage capacity of STM (7 +/- 2)
○ In reality, it is actually much closer to the magical number 4
What happens when steps are taken to minimize chunking?
● Example – use unattended lists; while playing video game, ignored digits are presented through
headphones, followed by unexpected recall test for the digits
● Baddeley’s Working Memory Model (revision of STM concept):
○ Input via sensory memory → visuospatial (vision) WM and phonological loops (speech
sounds) → interacts w/ central executive back and forth → LTM
● Chess Positions: study chess positions for 10s; interfering activity for 10s
○ Manipulated Variable = type of distractor task
■ Phonological loop suppression (ALS): repeating a word aloud
■ Visual-sketchpad suppression (VSSP): push keys on a calculator
● Results: there was no change between control and ALS/verbal suppression group; however,
performance dropped significantly is the VSSP/vision suppression group
● STUDY EPISODIC BUFFER (will be on exam)
● Baddeley’s WM Model can be inserted in the middle of the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model
○ Sensory memory → Baddeley’s WMM → long term memory
● Patient PV (Baddeley):
○ PV had a left-hemisphere stroke in 1977, causing her to have a very short digit span (2)
■ L-Hemisphere = phonological loop/verbal WM
■ NO hippocampus damage
○ She had normal recall of meaningful material, normal performance on visuo-spatial tasks,
and normal functioning in everyday life
Why do you think PV can perform as well as controls in this AUDITORY task even though she doesn’t
have a phonological loop?
● Meaningful information through word-association allowed this information to be directly sent to
LTM – “understanding IS memorizing”; did not require phonological rehearsal
● In a second experiment (non-word task including not real words), patient PV could not recall a
single variable = fails at a paired-associated non-word task

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