3.5 MEMORY
CHAPTER 1 BADDELEY: WHAT IS MEMORY?
THEORIES, MAPS AND MODELS
● Clark Hull studied learning behavior of white rats and attempted to use this results to
build a grand general theory of learning in which learning behavior of both rats and
people was predicted using a series of postulates and equations
● Edward Tolman thought of rats as forming cognitive maps, internal representations of
their environment acquired as result of active exploration
● Both Hull and Tolman had to assume some kind of representation that went beyond
the simple association between stimuli impinging on the rat and its learned behavior
● Broad view of theory says that theories are essentially like maps, they summarize our
knowledge in simple and structured way that helps us to understand what is known
○ A good theory help us to ask new question and that in turn will help us find
out more about the topic we are mapping
○ Each map is designed to serve a different purpose
○ In the case of psychological theories, different theories will operate at different
levels of explanation and focus on different issues; all explanations are
relevant and related to each other, but none is the single ‘correct’
interpretation
● This view contrasts with reductionism, which assumes the aim of science is to
reduce each explanation a lower level of analysis e.g. psychology in terms of
physiology
HOW CAN WE STUDY MEMORY?
● Philosophical approach is limited to understanding memory and mind with reliance on
introspection, the capacity to reflect and report our ongoing thoughts
○ Not unimportant, but are not a reliable indication of the way our minds work
for two reasons: (1) people differ in what they appear to experience in a given
situation, and (2) we are only consciously aware of a relatively small
proportion of the mechanisms underpinning our mental life, tip of the mental
iceberg that is available to conscious awareness is not necessarily a good
guide to what lies beneath
● Psychophysics is an attempt to systematically map the relationship between physical
stimuli like brightness and loudness onto their perceived magnitude
○ Despite success in linking physical stimuli to psychological experience of
participants, capacities such as learning and memory were initially regarded
as unsuitable for experimental study
● Herman Ebbinghaus was the first person to demonstrate that it is possible to study
memory experimentally
○ He conducted experiments on himself, showing that it was possible to plot
systematic relationships between conditions of learning and amount learned
○ He began by simplifying the experimental situation, he developed material
that was devoid of meaning but verbally learnable and reportable, inventing
what is know as the nonsense syllable (e.g. zug, pij, tev)
, ○ He established some basic principles of learning and the classic forgetting
curve
○ The Ebbinghaus tradition was most strongly developed in the US, focusing
particularly on factors and conditions surrounding the important question of
how new learning interacted with what was already known; results were
interpreted in terms of associations assumed to be formed between stimuli
and responses, using methods like the verbal learning approach that relies
on learning lists of words and nonsense syllables
● Gestalt psychology (George Mandler and Endel Tulving) attempted to apply ideas
developed in the study of perception to the understanding of human memory
○ Emphasize the importance of internal representations rather than observable
stimuli and responses, and to stress the active role of the rememberer in
organizing material
● Frederick Barlett rejected learning of meaningless material, but emphasized the
study of memory errors explaining them in terms of participants’ cultural assumptions
about the world
○ Proposed that these assumptions depended on internal representations
referred to as schemas
● Kenneth Craik proposed the idea of representing theories as models, and using the
computer to develop such models
○ Model being a method of expressing a theory more precisely, allowing
predictions to be made and tested
● Using digital computer as an analogy, memory could be regarded as compromising
one or more storage systems
○ Any memory system requires three things:
■ The capacity to encode or enter information into the system
■ The capacity to store it
■ The capacity to retrieve it
○ These systems serve different functions but interact
HOW MANY KINDS OF MEMORY?
● Atkinson and Shiffrin’s modal model was representative of many similar models of
operation of human memory
● Distinctions between types of memory as a way of organizing and structuring
knowledge of human memory, but do not assume simple flow of information as
information-processing approach as there is evidence that it flows on both directions
SENSORY MEMORY
● Sensory memory is a term applied to the brief storage of information within a
specific modality
● The perceptual system stores visual information long enough to bridge gap between
static images, integrating each one with the next, very slightly different image
, ● Neisser referred to brief visual memory system as iconic memory
○ Indirect function, forming part of the process of perceiving the world
● Masking is the process by which the perception and/or storage of a stimulus is
influenced by events occurring immediately before presentation (forward masking) or
more commonly after (backward masking)
○ Brightness masking refers to the degree of masking increasing when the
mask becomes brighter, or is presented closer in time to the stimulus; this
effect only occurs if the mask and the stimulus are presented to the same
eye, suggesting that it is operating at a peripheral retinal level
○ Pattern masking occurs when targets are followed by a mask comprising
broadly similar features to the target; operates even when the target is
presented to one eye and the mask to the other, suggests that influences a
later stage of visual processing that occurs after information from the two
eyes has been combined into a single percept
● Echoic memory referring to auditory sensory memory
● Crowder and Morton postulated the precategorical acoustic store as the basis for
auditory recency effect
SHORT-TERM AND WORKING MEMORY
● Short-term memory (STM) refers to the temporary storage of small amounts of
material over brief delays
○ In most situations, this storage is achieved with contribution to performance
from long-term memory
○ Most studies use verbal material, but also in visual and spatial information
● Working memory (WM) is based on the assumption that a system exists for the
temporary maintenance and manipulation of information (‘keep things in mind’), and
that this is helpful in performing many complex tasks
LONG-TERM MEMORY
● Long-term memory (LTM) is a system or systems assumed to underpin the capacity
to store information over long periods of time
● Squire proposed the classification of LTM with broad distinctions
● Explicit or declarative memory is memory that is open to intentional retrieval,
whether based on recollecting personal events (episodic memory) or facts (semantic
memory)
○ Endel Tulving proposed the distinction between semantic and episodic
memory
○ Semantic memory stores accumulative knowledge of the world (not only
meaning, but sensory attributes, how society works)
, ○ Episodic memory underpins the capacity to remember specific events
■ Mental time travel is a term that emphasizes the way in which episodic
memory allows us to relive the past and use this information to
imagine the future
● Implicit or nondeclarative memory is retrieval of information from LTM through
performance rather than explicit conscious recall or recognition
○ Classical conditioning is a learning procedure whereby a neutral stimulus
(bell) paired repeatedly with a response-evoking stimulus (food) will come to
evoke that response (salivation)
○ Priming is the process whereby presentation of an item influences the
processing of a subsequent item, either making it easier to process (positive
priming) or more difficult to process (negative priming)
MEMORY BEYOND THE LAB
● It is certainly easier to develop and test theories under controlled laboratory
conditions, but if they tell us little or nothing about the way in which memory works in
the world outside, they are of distinctly limited value
● In general, attempts to generalize theories have worked well, and have in turn
enriched theory
○ One important application of theory is memory performance of particular
groups like children, elderly and patients with memory problems
● Very important aspects of memory were not being directly covered by existing
theories, some of these have led to important new theoretical developments
★ THEME 1: SHORT-TERM MEMORY ★
CHAPTER 4 RADVANSKY: SENSORY AND SHORT-TERM MEMORY
RETRIEVAL IN STM
● If a person encodes information into the limited capacity of STM and avoids decay
and interference sufficiently to retain it, it may be necessary to then use it; at that
point it needs to be retrieved
● It appears people are using a serial self-terminating search in which people search
through items one at a time in short-term memory and produce a response after they
have gotten through all of the items
● Not everyone agrees with serial process, but suggest parallel processing in which
limited cognitive resources are divided among the elements held in STM but takes
longer for retrieval to occur
● Currently, it is generally accepted that both serial and parallel processes can be
derived to produce a given outcome
● For every complex memory process there are probably both parallel and serial
components intermixed in cascading processes, because several neural assemblies
are often simultaneously being used for memory there is some element of parallel
processing
STUDY IN DEPTH
