Memory
It is sometimes said that What you are is what you eat
but on the other hand Who you are is what you
remember.
We can know nothing about ourselves without reference
to our memories. Our memories organize our past lives
and make sense of them, while at the same time
creating a context that influences how we live our
future lives and what is important to us. Without our
memories we would be hopelessly lost.
Memories, . . . . .
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
•  Desired to know how memories are formed
•  Assumed memories based on temporal associations formed between
events
•  Studied the process of association through serial learning. Approach
similar to behaviorists.
•  AàBàCàD
•  Invented over 2300 nonsense syllables (bok, gaz, lup, wuc). Why
did he need them? Why not use ordinary words?
Ebbinghaus’s Pioneering Studies of
Memory
Hermann Ebbinghaus studied his own ability to memorize
new material
•  He invented over 2300 nonsense syllables and put them into
random lists.
•  Over 6 years he memorized thousands of lists of nonsense
syllables.
•  Generally he found that delay between memorization and recall
resulted in the forgetting of a large portion of the material.
Ebbinghaus and Serial Learning
Longer lists take longer to learn
N of List
•  7
•  10
•  12
•  16
•  24
•  36
N of Readings
1
13
17
30
44
55
Time per syllable
.4
5.2
6.8
12
17.6
22
Once you learn a list you immediately begin to forget it.
•  Measured forgetting by Savings Method:
Number of Times it takes to learn list correctly the first time
- Number of Times it takes to relearn list correctly
Amount of savings
How soon we forget
Did Ebbinghaus Underestimate Memory?
•  Interference problem.
•  He memorized thousands of nonsense syllable lists over 6 year
period. Learning sets of similar materials makes it harder to learn
new material and makes it harder to remember old material
•  Nonsense syllables.
•  If he used meaningful materials he would have shown better
learning and retention. Memory related to nature of the
information being retained, the level of interest in it, and its
significance to that individual.
•  Memorizing in order.
•  Ebbinghaus required himself to repeat the syllables in correct order
after memorizing them. We seldom are required to remember
things in order.
Is Repetition of an Experience Enough to
Create a Memory?
Which is the genuine penny?
A failure to encode
We don t recognize the penny because it is unlikely that
we bothered to encode the information.
Memory is divided into three parts
•  Encoding
–  The process by which we transform our experience into a form that is
memorable
•  Storage
–  The means by which we retain memories over time
•  Retrieval
–  The process by which we recover our encoded memories from
storage.
Storing Memories
Atkinson & Shiffrin Model of Memory
Sensory Memory Store
•  The initial storage of sensory information
Sensory Memory
Letters flashed on screen for 1/20 of a second, participants
could report about half correctly
•  Failure to encode all the letters or failure of memory?
Retest with tone next to line to be remembered
•  Memory near perfect
Sensory Memory Store
Iconic Memory
•  Memory for visual information
•  Very short duration, less than 1 second
•  Very large capacity
In moving to the next place for storage for memory, Short
Term Memory, attentional processes become very
important in determining what we remember.
Storing Memories
Atkinson & Shiffrin Model of Memory
Sensory Memory Store
•  The initial storage of sensory information
Daniel Levin-Change Blindness
Memory Stores
Short Term Memory
•  Medium Duration 20-30 seconds
•  Small Capacity +- 7 items
•  About the size of a telephone number
Short Term Memory Duration
Confusions over what is Short Term
•  Short Term Memory is the memory of things in our immediate
awareness
•  If attention shifts, items in STM dissipate in approximately 20
seconds (Peterson study)
–  Rehearsal can increase the length of time memory retained or
transferred to long term memory
–  To maintain items in STM they need to be rehearsed
Demo: You will see 4 letters followed by 3 numbers.
Start counting backwards by 3, until I say stop.
vfdh
Short Term Memory
Demo: Remember as many letters as you can
794
Short Term Memory
Capacity approximately 7 items plus or minus 2
•  Capacity can be increased by Chunking
•  Anders Ericsson s work
•  Chess masters and visual chunks
Is Short Term Memory composed of only space for
temporary storage or does it have other functions?
XIBMSATMTVPHDX
X IBM SAT MTV PHD X
Short-term memory
or
Working memory?
Processing
Storage
Space
Space
Short Term Memory or Working Memory
Short Term Memory might be better termed Working
memory because space available for remembered
items, changes depending on processing needs of the
executive.
Demo:
Sing the Happy Birthday while spelling the word
ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM
--Sing the Happy Birthday while drawing what
your favorite house would look like.
Why do 5 year old children
have a STM of about 3 and
adults, 7.
Alan Baddeley (1986),
Overworking Working Memory
Have you noticed that when you attend lectures you know
some thing about you remember so much more from
them? Why is that?
The importance of a college education is often learning to
pay attention to those things which count but it often
takes a large store of knowledge to do that.
Book
Flower
Telephone
Carpet
Sky
Basket
Chimney
Hammer
Tree
Coat
Picture
Shoe
Lamp
Napkin
Carrot
The Serial-Position Effect
Long Term Memory
The location where information is held for hours, days,
weeks, or years. At your 50th high school reunion most
of you will be able to recognize 90% of your classmates
from the yearbook.
•  No known capacity, decay uncertain
What is responsible for Primacy effect? Recency effect?
Children under 8 don t show primacy effect but do show recency. Why?
Retrieval
Retrieval from long term memory is different from STM
or Sensory memory in which the memory decays
rapidly.
•  In LTM the memory is stored and brought back to consciousness
by a retrieval cue that was associated with the memory when it
was formed
Encoding Specificity Principle
•  Association you form at the time of learning material will be most
effective cue in retrieving it.
Memory
Cue
Football
Animal
Board game
Part of the body
Social event
Transportation
Weather
Crime
Clergyman
Music
Shrubbery
Write
Memory and Retrieval Cues
Cue
Football
Envelope
Board game
Inches
Social event
Geometry
Weather
Tennis
Clergyman
Stone
U.S. Pol
Magic
Target
Pass
Seal
Checkers
Feet
Ball
Plane
Fair
Racket
Cardinal
Rock
Bush
Spell
Encoding Specificity Principle
Cue2
Cue1
Football
Football
Animal
Envelope
Board game
Board game
Part of the body Inches
Social event
Social event
Transportation Geometry
Weather
Weather
Crime
Tennis
Clergyman
Clergyman
Music
Stone
Shrubbery
U.S. Pol
Write
Magic
Target
Pass
Seal
Checkers
Feet
Ball
Plane
Fair
Racket
Cardinal
Rock
Bush
Spell
State Dependent Memory
Encoding specificity implies memory would be better if
your physiological state is the same as what it was
during the original learning
Why would you do better on the psych exam if you take it
in this room?
The scuba diving experiment
•  Participants learned list A while diving and list B while on shore.
•  Tested for Lists A & B in both places.
Have you ever gone back to a place from your childhood?
• In therapy, patients remember many sad and unfortunate ways their
parents treated them. When they recover they can remember many
positive things that happened. Why is that?
Levels of Processing (encoding)
Demo: Half the room close your eyes.
Consider each of the items you will be shown as something
you might possibly want for your dorm room and the
reason why for your choice.
Close your eyes
Count the total number of CAPITAL LETTERS in all of
the words you will be shown.
Close your eyes
Everyone open your eyes.
eleCtrIc drill
sTereo
heating pAd
poPcorn poppEr
teleVision
refrigErator
teLephone
automoBile
fryiNg pAn
blenDer
electric toOth brush
RaDio
Encoding Information
How well we remember things depends on the how much
we elaborate on the information when we encode it.
This is also called the Depth of Processing Model,
signifying that information is processed at greater
depths (elaborated) it is remembered better.
Depth of Processing
Processing HEN
Is it written in CAPITAL letters?
SHALLOW
(Structural encoding, Physical
structure of stimulus)
SHALLOW
Does it RHYME with PEN?
(Phonemic encoding, emphasizes sounds)
Would it fit in the following sentence?
"She cooked the ______.
(Semantic encoding, emphasizes meaning)
DEEP
Deeper Processing Through Imagery
Encoding in Visual Images
Further elaborations can occur if we convert what we
need to remember into a visual image.
"She cooked the _______."
or
"The great bird swooped down and carried off the struggling _____."
"He dropped the WATCH."
or
"The old man hobbled across the room and picked up his valuable
WATCH that had dropped from his pocket.
The second examples increases the elaborateness of the visual image
for remembering it. The last one is remembered better.
Evidence is that encoding without imagery involves the frontal and
temporal lobes of the brain, whereas encoding with imagery
involves occipital lobe. Thus more resources devoted to memory,
two places rather than one.
Studying for Psychology
and Levels of Processing
•  Using Flash Cards to memorize terms.
•  Talking about something you read or learned in class
with your friends during lunch
•  Repeating the names of items you need to know over
and over again
•  Creating a personal meaning for oneself with what you
want to learn
•  Taking quizzes until you get all the answers right
•  Writing a short summary in your notes about what
your instructor said
Mnemonic Devices
Peg method
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
One is a bun
Two is a shoe
Three is a tree
Four is a door
Five is a hive
Six is sticks
Seven is heaven
Eight is a gate
Nine is wine
Ten is a hen
Method of Loci
•  Store items in a well-learned geographic place, e.g., street were
you live, or the inside of your house
Try to remember as many as you can
Pinto
Siamese
Manx
Collie
Goose
Arabian
Finch
Mustang
Swan
Warbler
Duck
Shepherd
Dachshund
Persian
Wren
Terrier
Memory and Organization
Our memory for objects is aided if we use the natural
organizations that we use for categorizing things.
Proactive and Retroactive Interference
One of the main reasons we forget is interference
Childhood Memories
Is Memory a Tape Recording?
Do our memories make an accurate copy of our
experience.
•  Brain stimulation - Penfield
Memory as a reconstructive Process
•  It would not be possible to have memory for every detail, instead
we remember a few unique details and reconstruct the remainder
based on our expectations. However, our expectations can create
biased memories.
Eyewitness testimony is susceptible to these effects
•  Events occur so quickly that the memory created is susceptible to
disortion.
Source memory not very good and becomes poorer with
age
–  Can lead to errors in eyewitness accounts of accidents, robberies,
etc.,
–  Book s example of the psychologist accused of rape when he actually
was being interviewed on TV at the time.
Semantic Networks
Much knowledge is linked by meaning and similarity. Thinking
about some concepts may stimulate others (Spreading activation)
Suggesting False Memories
Experimentally implanting False Memory-Loftus
•  Various studies have shown that it is possible by suggestion to
implant memories for events that did not occur.
•  About a quarter of subjects in several studies were convinced that
they had been lost as children after a researcher suggested it to
them.
•  Plausible events were more likely to be remembered, but the
memories were somewhat vague, but these results were achieved
after a single, brief suggestion. The “false” or “recovered” memory
controversy
•  Reports of long-lost memories, prompted by clinical techniques,
are known as recovered memories. Often these are memories of
abuse that took place in early childhood. Some true but some not.
–  Are you depressed without a reason, have trouble concentrating, or
experience sleepless nights? Then you may be a victim of child abuse.
Amnesia
Retrograde Amnesia
•  Time graded – memory loss greatest for memories acquire just
before injury, and least for distant time memories
•  Ability to form long-term memories after injury, intact
Anterograde Amnesia
• 
• 
• 
• 
Short-term memory intact
Long-term memory intact
Inability to form long-term memories after injury
Related to temporal lobe damage and hippocampus
The Case of H. M.
Temporal Lobe Amnesia (Hippocampus)
•  In 1953, underwent surgery to stop seizures. Doctors removed
parts of Medial temporal lobes, hippocampus and amygdala
•  Suffered some degree of retrograde amnesia for memories 1-3
years before his operation
•  Anterograde Amnesia, STM Normal, LTM Normal, but he could
not transfer memories in STM and consolidate them to LTM
•  He can carry on a conversation, he can read, and deal with new
information as long as it doesn t leave awareness
•  He has some awareness of this memory problem:
–  right now, I m wondering, have I gotten or said anything amiss?
You see, at this moment everything looks clear to me, but what
happened just before? That s what worries me. It s like waking
from a dream. I just don t remember.
The Memory Maker
Hippocampus intimately involved in forming new
memories
•  Aspects of our memories located in different areas, auditory,
visual, etc.,
•  To remember some part of the brain has to organized this amalgam
of different information into a integrated cohesive memory
•  Hippocampus creates the recipe for our newly formed memories
But a little mysterious because once we develop a solid
memory, hippocampus no longer needed to remember
it.
Surprising learning in Amnesics
Mirror Tracing
The tower puzzle. In this puzzle, all the colored disks must be moved to another post,
without ever placing a larger disk on a smaller one. Only one disk may be moved at a
time, and a disk must always be moved from one post to another (it cannot be held
aside).
Organization of LTM
Organization of Memory
Studies of brain damaged patients support idea of
different types of stored memories
Explicit Memory-Conscious or the intentional act of
remembering
•  Semantic Memory-Who is the president of the US
•  Episodic Memory-What did you eat yesterday for breakfast
Implicit Memory-Remembering without awareness. Past
experience shows an influence that can be
demonstrated by a change in a person s actions
•  Classical Conditioning Effects--conditioned emotional responses
(e.g., your heart beats faster as you approach your arch rival)
•  Procedural Memory—motor skills, habits, tacit rules (e.g., riding a
bike, swinging a tennis racket)
•  Priming--implicit activation of concepts in long-term memory
Implicit Memory
Priming
•  Enhanced memory for a stimulus, after previous exposure to it
Fill in the blanks with the first thing that comes to mind:
_L__P_
_N__Z_
__C
_O_E_
_ R _ _ P_
__PP_
_A_H_U_
These results suggest that the hippocampal structures
damaged are not involved in implicit memory.
Memory for Traumatic Events
Memory for traumatic events
•  Repression. Sigmund Freud believed that it was possible to
repress a painful memory, motivation or emotion, to remove it
from consciousness so that it couldn’t cause psychic pain.
Contrary to Freud’s assertion it appears that the greater
the emotional arousal associated with an event, the
greater the likelihood it will be remembered
•  Most people do not forget traumatic events if they happen later
than age 3.
•  It may appear that people are repressing since people often don t
want to talk about traumatic events, but they are trying to suppress
them, not repress.
Memory for Traumatic Events
Repression of traumatic events does not fit well with our
understanding of the biological process of storing
memory.
Key player is the amygdala
•  There is survival value in remembering things that frighten or
scare us
•  During stressful or emotional events, the amygdala encourages the
sympathetic nervous system to boost production of the stress
hormones cortisol and adrenaline which lead to better memories.
•  Damage to the amygdala prevents the emotional arousal that
creates stronger memories.
The Biochemistry of Memory
Hints on how memories are formed at the biological level
It is assumed that memories are formed as a result of a
change between the synapses of neurons
•  If neuron A excites neuron B, the connection between them
changes, so that it is easier for A to excite B in the future.
•  This strengthening called Long Term Potentiation (LTP), and can
last hours or even weeks.
•  The hippocampus is an area of the brain where LTP is occurring
more than any other (making memories).
•  If this process is interfered with memory formation is disrupted.
Memory and the Brain
Differences between intact hippocampus and amygdala
•  Intact hippocampus but damaged amygdala
–  When classically conditioned to fear stimulus like tone and shock,
they do not show physiological response to CS although they
understand connection
•  Damaged hippocampus but intact amygdala
–  No realization that CS signifies shock, but they respond
physiologically.
Frontal-lobe damage
•  Damage to the frontal lobes also affects memory because it is
responsible for strategies used in creating memories.
•  Frontal lobes help us to focus on what is to be remembered and
helps to inhibit stimulation that might interfere with our
remembering.