Human Memory
Part 2

I.  Thinking about Memory

  1. Why do we forget?
  2. What are ‘false’ or ‘distorted’ memories?
  3. When are memories not desirable?
  4. How can you improve your memory?

II.  Core Concept: Most of our memory problems arise from memory’s “seven sins” ---which are really by products of otherwise adaptive features of human memory.

III.  Why do we forget?

a.  Transience

  1. Defined as : Memories fading over time
  2. Research
  3. Ebbinghouse
  4. Forgetting Curve
  5. Savings method: Number of original learning trials minus number of relearning trials equals savings (savings is a measure of memory).
  6. Rapid initial loss of memory, followed by a declining rate of loss
  7. Meaningful material does not fade as rapidly
  8. Example: The forgetting curve for Spanish learned in school
  9. fMRI and PET can also demonstrate diminishing brain activity during forgetting
  10. Exceptions
  11. Motor skills
  12. “Flashbulb” memories
  13. The Good : keeps memory from being overwhelmed by information that is no longer needed (old, outdated, and/or irrelevant information). Also helps to forget ‘involuntary ‘memories.

The Bad: Lose too much information or things you might need later.

The Ugly (example): Having to retake a math class (because you could not remember the information on the placement test) in college when you passed the same course with a B+ in high school.

  1. Avoiding transience in your college studies
  2. Distributed learning
  3. Other

b.  Absent Mindedness

  1. Defined as: Lapses of Attention
  2. Encoding Failure
  3. Objects may be seen frequently, but information is never encoded into LTM
  4. Examples

i.  Where did I put my keys?

ii.  Change blindness

  1. And more (in class)
  2. Penny Demonstration
  3. Retrieval Failure due to absent mindedness
  4. Memory is there but your attention shifted elsewhere
  5. Examples
  6. Appointments
  7. Anniversary

iii.  Why did I come in this room?

  1. And more (in class)
  2. Research: Points to limits of the attention systems as precursor to absent mindedness.
  3. The Good: Benefits – ability to shift attention, to divide attention

or to encode information selectively and avoid storing useless details.

The Bad: Unable to direct the attention to the things that we many need to remember later or if we encode relevant things on a level too shallow for long term retention.

Daydreaming in psychology lectures.

Reading while watching TV.

The ugly (examples): Being late (or unable to attend) to work or school because you “lost” your keys (you lost your memory?).

Feeling like an idiot due to forgetting appointment, meeting, anniversary etc.

  1. Blocking
  2. Defined as: A failure to retrieve or access encoded information temporarily due to interference
  3. Vulnerability to interference
  4. Similarity in sets of material to be learned
  5. Meaningless material
  6. Material being recalled during emotional states
  7. Old habits getting in the way of new behaviors
  8. Categories of interference
  9. Proactive Interference
  10. Retroactive interference
  11. The Serial Position Effect
  12. The T.O.T. phenomena

Unable to recall particular information while knowing that you know the information!

  1. The Good: Benefit – allows only information with most current cues to come to mind.

The Bad: Information may be suppressed that you want to remember.

The ugly: Not passing tests you studied for! Confusing or not remembering people’s names.

  1. Avoiding Blocking on Tests
  2. minimize interference
  3. over learning
  4. elaborative rehearsal
  5. develop and use retrieval cues

IV.  False or Distorted Memories

a.  Misattribution

  1. Defined as: Association of memory with the wrong time, place, or person (Source errors)
  2. Reconstructive nature of memory
  3. Examples
  4. Wrong Person A
  5. Wrong Person B
  6. Wrong source of idea
  7. Wrong idea- plagiarism
  8. Power of context cues
  9. Confabulation – confusing an event that happened to someone else as one that happened to you or belief that you remember something that never happened.
  10. The Good: Benefit – Can focus on meaning and discard details. More efficient to get the gist. Often source is not relevant.

The Bad: Not distinguishing between sources when it is important to do so.

The Ugly: Plagiarism, accusations, relationship damage, trust issues. False memories. Credibility issues.

b.  Suggestibility

  1. Defined as : Distortion of memories as the result of deliberate or inadvertent suggestion often without individuals awareness

ii.  Misinformation Effect

  1. Distortion due to misinformation and/or embellishment
  2. Example – Loftus and Palmer study ( hint: cars colliding)
  3. Fabricated memories
  4. Distortion due to believable , yet inaccurate, details of experiences
  5. Eyewitness testimony
  6. What research says about increasing the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
  7. Being forewarned that interrogations can create memory bias
  8. Not allowing for large passage of time between event and testimony
  9. Not retrieving the memory numerous times
  10. Recognize that age of witness has effect on accuracy (younger children and > 65 less accurate)
  11. Don’t confuse confidence with accuracy
  12. Recovered memories
  13. Legitimate recovered memories do occur
  14. Be suspicious of those that are cued by suggestion or leading questions as these memories are particularly prone to distortion and fabrication.
  15. Episodic memories before the age of 3 are rare..
  16. Repressed memories (ala Freud) are not supported by research.
  17. It is more likely that traumatic memories are persistent and intrusive rather than repressed.
  18. The Good: Reflect on positive

The Bad: False beliefs. Inaccurate testimonies in court.

The Ugly: Damage to self and/ others. Lack of accuracy in important matters.

c.  Bias

i.  Defined as the influence of current personal beliefs, attitudes, and experiences on memory (it’s easier to see bias in others than in ourselves!) Memories may become distorted or discriminating.

  1. Expectancy Bias- unconscious tendency to remember events as being congruent with our expectations
  2. Self consistency bias- The belief that we are more consistent in our attitudes, opinions, and beliefs than we actually are. (We are less consistent than we remember).
  3. Schemata/Schema
  4. The Good: Processing information is more efficient with schemas than without thus allowing more information to be processed and organized.

The Bad: Memories fill in the blanks based on schemas that may not represent the situation well.

The Ugly: stereotyping, hindsight bias, negative dominance.

V.  Memories that will not go away - Persistence

  1. Defined as: When we can’t forget usually linked to strong emotional experiences
  1. Examples of intense negative emotions
  2. Depression
  3. Phobias
  4. Traumatic relationship breakups
  5. Accidents
  6. Other
  7. The Good: Learning from and being responsive to emotional experiences. Not repeating the same mistake again!

The Bad: Intrusions can interfere with everyday life.

The Ugly (Example): PTSD

VI.  Improving your memory

  1. Organization Memory greatly enhanced by actively organizing material as it is learned
  2. Spaced Practice Shorter practice sessions spaced widely apart; more effective than massed practice
  3. Recall practice Practicing recalling material rather than just rereading it; especially useful for college material

d.  Overlearning Practicing material well beyond the point needed to recall it for the moment

  1. Mnemonic devices (ni MON ix from Greek meaning “remember”
  2. Strategies that can increase memory, esp. for material that is not easily organized;
  3. Impose an artificial structure on items that would otherwise be hard to remember
  4. Examples
  5. Method of Loci (LOW sye, form the Latin locus, “place”i: Involves pairing each thing to be remembered with one of an organized set of familiar locations
  6. Stacking Images
  7. Peg-Word Method: Connecting each thing to be remembered in an interactive image with each item on a standard list (One is a bun, two is a shoe...)
  8. Acronyms:Representing each item with a single letter that fits into a familiar word or phrase. (A type of natural language mediators
  9. Other