MindMap Gallery Chapter 7 - Memory
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Chapter 7 - Memory
Varieties of Memory Three Stages of the Learning/Memory Process
Edited at 2021-01-30 15:32:21
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Ch. 7Memory
Varieties of Memory
Working Memory
Holding information briefly while working with it
Episodic Memory
Remembering episodes of one’s life
Eg: Recalling everything you did 2 days ago
First type of memory to go in someone with Alzheimer’s disease
Autobiographical Memory
Remembering specific events that have happened over the course of one’s entire life
Eg: Your experiences in sixth grade
Semantic Memory
General knowledge of facts of the world
Eg: Meanings of words in a language, and random facts
Collective Memory
The kind of memory that people in a group shareSuch as: family, community, schoolmates, or citizens of a state or a country
Passes stories and recollections between neighbors and to future generations, forming a memory system unto itself.
Eg: Residents of small towns often strongly identify with those towns, remembering the local customs and historical events in a unique way
Vivid Memory
Memories associated with a strong emotion often seem to leave a permanent mark on us.
Flashbulb Memory
Describes this sort of vivid memory of finding out an important piece of news. The name refers to how some memories seem to be captured in the mind like a flash photograph; because of the distinctiveness and emotionality of the news, they seem to become permanently etched in the mind with exceptional clarity compared to other memories.
Three Stages of the Learning/Memory Process
Any successful act of remembering requires that all three stages be intact.
Encoding
Initial learning of information; Learning it, by perceiving it and relating it to past knowledge
Techniques
Relating new information to what one already knows
Forming mental images
Creating associations among information that needs to be remembered
Distinctiveness
Having an event stand out as quite different from a background of similar events
Create meaning
We should try to relate new events to information we already know.
Form links or associations
Imagining events
Creating vivid images out of information (even verbal information) can greatly improve later recall
Principles
It is selective
We attend to some events in our environment and we ignore others
It is prolific
We are always encoding the events of our lives—attending to the world, trying to understand it.
Recoding
The process of encoding always involves recoding—that is, taking the information from the form it is delivered to us and then converting it in a way that we can make sense of it.
Storage
Maintaining information over time
Experiences leave memory traces, or engrams
The physical change in the nervous system (whatever that may be, exactly) that represents our experience.
Consolidation
The neural changes that occur after learning to create the memory trace of an experience.
Retroactive interference
Refers to new activities (i.e., the subsequent lunches) during the retention interval (i.e., the time between the lunch 17 days ago and now) that interfere with retrieving the specific, older memory (i.e., the lunch details from 17 days ago).
Proactive interference
When past memories interfere with the encoding of new ones.
Eg: If you have ever studied a second language, often times the grammar and vocabulary of your native language will pop into your head, impairing your fluency in the foreign language.
Retrieval
Ability to access information when you need it
Available information
Information that is stored in memory
Accessible information
All we can know is what information we can retrieve
Techniques
Developing effective cues that will lead the rememberer back to the encoded information
Eg: Hearing a song on the radio that suddenly evokes memories of an earlier time in your life, even if you were not trying to remember it when the song came on.
Cue overload principle
To be effective, a retrieval cue cannot be overloaded with too many memories
For a retrieval cue to be effective, a match must exist between the cue and the desired target memory; furthermore, to produce the best retrieval, the cue-target relationship should be distinctive.
Mnemonic systems
Peg word technique
You would have a set of peg words on which you could “hang” memories
Memory palaces
If information were encoded and stored but could not be retrieved, it would be useless
Encoding specificity principle
When people encode information, they do so in specific ways
Eg: Take the song on the radio: perhaps you heard it while you were at a terrific party, having a great, philosophical conversation with a friend. Thus, the song became part of that whole complex experience. Years later, even though you haven’t thought about that party in ages, when you hear the song on the radio, the whole experience rushes back to you.
To the extent a retrieval cue (the song) matches or overlaps the memory trace of an experience (the party, the conversation), it will be effective in evoking the memory.
Measuring memoryperformance
Production tests
How psychologists measure memory performance; Involving recall
Eg: With our list of 100 words, one group of people might be asked to recall the list in any order (a free recall test)
Recognition tests
Eg: While a different group might be asked to circle the 100 studied words out of a mix with another 100, unstudied words (a recognition test)
Involving the selection of correct from incorrect information, e.g., a multiple-choice test
In this situation, the recognition test would likely produce better performance from participants than the recall test.
Types of errors:
Forgetting
Eg: You see the person you met at the party and you cannot recall her name.
Retroactive interference is one of the main causes of forgetting
Misinformation effect
Misremembering/False Memories
Eg. You see someone who looks like Lyn Goff and call the person by that name
People can sometimes remember events that did not actually happen—because during the process of recoding, details got added. Every time we retrieve a memory, it is altered.
Sometimes we make false memories from our inferences
Refers to instances when something is not explicitly stated, but we are still able to guess the undisclosed intention.
Eg: “The karate champion hit the cinder block.” After hearing or seeing this sentence, participants who were given a memory test tended to remember the statement as having been, “The karate champion broke the cinder block.”
Testing effect / The retrieval practice effect
The act of retrieval itself (of a fact, concept, or event) makes the retrieved memory much more likely to be retrieved again
Retrieval-induced forgetting
Retrieving some information can actually cause us to forget other information related to it