This is a mind-map on memory and forgetting. It explains how information is taken into our memory and how it is forgotten, looking into both interference theory and decay.
Patient HM: Double dissociation of working and long-term memory in brain
Patient had brain surgery to the hippocampus in damage:
order to cure his epilepsy. Amnesiac syndrome; normal working memory, little or no ability to
This caused his long-term memory to be convert new facts/events to permanent memory (anterograde amnesia).
affected meaning that anything before 30 Short-term memory patients; selective impairments of working memory.
seconds was forgotten. Patients with anterograde amnesia have a drastically impaired ability to
His procedural memory remained intact and so form new memories for experiences, events and facts.
were his memories prior to surgery. They can exhibit normal learning rates in acquisition of perceptual skills,
He could still learn new skills, such as walking problem-solving skills and practical skills.
with a frame. Brain damage can also cause deficits in procedural memory without
He helped to explain how different areas of the impairing declarative memory – i.e. apraxia (coordinating movement),
brain are used for different parts of memory. aphasia (speech) and acalculia (maths tasks).
He had a normal memory span (7 digits) but
Stress and working memory:
could not learn a list of 8.
WM capacity is limited, worrying can act as a secondary task
He displayed a normal regency effect in free
which competes for resources.
recall but had poor recall of earlier items.
Ramires & Beilock (2011) had participants take a pre-test and
post-test of high pressure maths problems.
Declarative memory: The control group sat quietly for 10 minutes in between,
Episodic memory – memory for individual whereas the other group wrote about their feelings.
autobiographical experiences. Similar pre-test but more accurate performance in the writing
Semantic memory – general and conceptual group post-test (writing about worries frees up the WM
knowledge abstracted from experience. resources needed for a test.
Patient KC: Measuring forgetting:
Amnesiac patients tend to have We learn things, have a retention
anterograde amnesia for both new interval and then test for the things
personal episodes and new knowledge. remembered.
KC couldn’t recollect any personally
experienced events from birth but Memory and Recall test;
- Recall of events, story
remembered pre-trauma knowledge of
maths, history, geography. forgetting -
recall (hard to score)
Free recall of lists of
Semantic dementia – loss of knowledge nameable items )% recalled)
for the world, which can be combined - Cued recall, paired
with well-preserved autobiographical associates (% recalled)
memory across the lifespan. - Serial recall (% in correct
position)
Working memory: Recognition test; the ability to
We take in large amounts of information into our discriminate between ‘old’ and ‘new’
sensory memory stores but this decays quickly. items (% correct).
Only what receives attention is maintained (and
this is guided by our past experiences of what we
Testing ‘interference’ vs decay theories:
perceive as important.
We are therefore not perceiving an accurate image Under normal circumstances, retention interval –
of the world. time in storage is confounded with the number of
All of our past experiences are different so we see other experiences accumulated during the interval.
and remember the world differently. - Control the interval – alter intervening
experiences.
Ebbinghaus (1885): If forgetting is due to interference, the recall
Recorded his own forgetting; had himself learn a list of should decrease with exposure to similar things, with
words then tested himself on his memory from 20 time held constant.
minutes to 2 months. He found that his rate of memory
decay slowed over time and suggested that forgetting is
Longer retention interval does not necessarily increase
orderly.
forgetting:
If measured appropriately, forgetting can be described
No forgetting of school mates over 30 years.
by a simple mathematical function of the retention
There are flashback memories from certain times and events.
interval.
The forgetting of former students by teachers does increase
Orderliness of forgetting might suggest some inevitable
with interval.
decay process -e.g. loss from storage, however
Teachers subsequently encounter many more students.
information not recalled now may be recalled later.
So forgetting may be attributable to interference from other
Further prompts or cues may succeed in eliciting recall –
similar memories.
so in some cases forgetting is due to retrieval failure not
loss.
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