Baddeley and Focused Attention

 Auditory  Visual
spatial
 Central
rehearsal executive information
 (focuses
attention)
 Long-Term Memory Store
 Function - organizes and stores information
 more passive form of storage than working memory
 Unlimited capacity
 Duration - thought by some to be permanent

Maintenance Rehearsal

Encoding
Sensory Attention
Sensory Working or Long-term
Memory Short-term memory
Input Memory Retrieval
Brain structures and memory:
Hippocampus
 Thehippocampus is the equivalent of a
‘save’ button
 Explicit memories of names, images, and
events are laid down by the hippocampus
(Schachter, 1996)
Hippocampus and
frontal lobes

 Memories are not permanently

stored in the hippocampus but
it holds the information to
register the elements of
memory
 The feel, smell, sound, location,
etc. before storing elsewhere
(cortex)
Effective Ways to Encode

 Actively question new information

 Think about implications
 Relate information to things you
already know
 Generate your own examples of
concepts
 Don’t highlight passage as you read
 focus instead on the ideas in the text
 Brain structures and memory:
Basal Ganglia and Cerebellum

 Cerebellumis important for forming and storing

memories created through classical conditioning

 Thebasal ganglia facilitate procedural memory

formation
Emotions and memories
 Emotions
persist without conscious
awareness
 You may not remember the film that made
you sad but you retain the sadness
(hippocampal damage)
Emotions and memories
 Flashbulb memories
A detailed and
vivid memory that is stored on
one occasion and retained
for a lifetime. Usually,
such memories are
associated with important
historical or significant
emotional events
LTP – Long Term Potentiation
 The efficacy of a synapse can be changed
by increasing or decreasing the amount of
neurotransmitter presynaptically released
across the synapse

 So, LTP is an increase in a cell’s firing potential

after brief, rapid stimulation

 Thought to be the neural basis for learning

and memory
LTP – Long Term Potentiation
 Sea slug experimentation – researchers
examined neural connections before and
after conditioning (gill retraction in
response to water squirt paired with
electrical shock)
 Increased serotonin in certain synapses
when learning occurs
 These synapses become more efficient
Mutant Mice
 Mutant mice without an
enzyme needed for LTP
can’t learn their way out
of a maze
 Rats given a drug that
enhances LTP learned a
maze with half the usual
number of mistakes
 Injection of a chemical
blocking LTP erased recent
learning
Understanding
and
Implementing
Memory
Strategies
Use the power of the network!
 Chunking

 Organizing items into familiar and

manageable units enables us to recall the
information more easily than if we tried to
remember the whole, unsorted set.
 This usually occurs naturally and without us
noticing.
 Personally meaningful arrangements
Mnemonics
 Memory aids, especially those that use vivid
imagery and organizational devices

 Think of it as using concrete but easily visualized

words – we are very good at remembering images

 Ex. Peg-word system: a memory aid that works by

creating mental associations between two
concrete objects in a one-to-one fashion that will
later be applied to to-be-remembered information
 Grocery list – stick the carrots in your
imaginary bun, milk in the shoe, etc.
visualize the associated images and then
you will recall the items in any order
Why isolate strategies?

 Combining
mnemonic and
chunking
strategies give us
Hierarchies
 Experts
not only chunk information
but process them in hierarchies
 Thus they take broad concepts and
divide (and subdivide) them
 This helps to retrieve information
efficiently
 Where have you seen them?
 How can you use them to your
advantage?
Hierarchies
 Distributed Practice
 We keep more of the information that we take
in when we spread our encoding efforts over
time

 Wecan call this the spacing effect – where you

achieve better long term retention than through
massed practice/study

 Cramming is in-efficient
 Hermann Ebbinghaus’s research has shown that what is
quickly learned is also quickly forgotten
 Distributed Practice
 Repeated self-testing is called the testing
effect by Henry Roediger and Jeffrey
Karpicke (2006)
 Retrieving information enhances retention

 This tells us that it is better to practice

retrieval than to simply re-read
information
  Verbal
information is
processed at
Processing depth different levels
 Shallow
information is
encoded at a
very basic level
 Ex. a word’s
letters
  Deep processing
encodes
Processing depth semantically
(based on the
meaning of the
words)

 Craik and Tulving

(1975)
demonstrated
that deeper,
semantic
processing
contributed to
better
remembering
Sample questions Word flashed Yes No
Is the word in capital letters? CHAIR

 The
Does the word rhyme withwords brain
were flashed briefly then
train?
asked the participants questions
Would the word fit in this doll
sentence? The girl put the
___________on the table
 Meaning Matters
 A passage given without context is difficult to
remember (John Bransford and Marcia Johnson,
1972)

 The procedure is actually quite simple. First you

arrange things into different groups. Of course, one
pile may be sufficient depending on how much
there is to do….After the procedure is complete one
arranges the materials into different groups again.
Then they can be put into their appropriate
places….
Retrieval cues
 Priming
 The activation of particular associations in
memory
 More likely to perceive a man talking to a
child as a threat

 Context dependent memory

 State-dependent memory
Retrieval cues
 Priming
 Context dependent memory
 Memory retrieval can be primed by the
context in which the memory was created

 State-dependent memory
Retrieval cues
 Priming
 Context dependent memory
 State-dependent memory
What we learn in one state is more easily
learned or recalled in that state
Forgetting Theories
 Encoding failure
 Role of time (decay)
 Interference theories
Forgetting as Encoding Failure

 Information never encoded into LTM

X
Encoding Failure Demonstrations

 What is on the front of a penny?

Encoding Failure Demonstrations

 What is on the front of a penny?

 According to this theory, objects

are seen frequently, but information
is never encoded into LTM
 Selective attention
Role of Time : Decay Theory

 Memories fade away

or decay gradually if
unused
 (Think about the
neurons in the neural
network)

 Time plays critical role

 Ability to retrieve info
declines with time
after original encoding
Forgetting as Retrieval Failure
 Sometimesinformation IS encoded into LTM,
but we can’t retrieve it

X
 Interference Theories
 “Memories interfering with memories”

 Forgetting
is NOT caused by the mere
passage of time but caused by one
memory competing with or replacing
another memory

 There are two types of interference

Two Types of Interference
Typesof interference

Retroactive Proactive
Interference Interference
Retroactive Interference
A New memory interferes with retrieving old
information
 Example: Learning a new language interferes with
ability to remember old language
Proactive Interference
 Opposite of retroactive interference

 Whenan OLD memory interferes with

remembering NEW information
 Example: Previously learned language interferes with
ability to remember newly learned language
 Review of Interference Theory
 Retroactive Interference
 Learn A Learn B Recall A, B
interferes

 Proactive Interference
 Learn A Learn B Recall B,
A interferes

 Interference reflects competition between responses.

 BUT THERE ISN’T ALWAYS INTERFERENCE – POSITIVE TRANSFER

IS THE CONCEPT THAT PREVIOUSLY LEARNED MATERIAL
FACILITATES OUR LEARNING
Amnesia
Someone with Someone with

cannot recall cannot recall

Memory construction errors
 Misinformation and Imagination
 Source Amnesia
 True and False memories
 Children’s eye-witness recall
 Repressed or constructed memories of
abuse
Memory construction errors
 Misinformation and Imagination
 Elizabeth Loftus demonstrated the
misinformation effect

 Exposureto misleading information leads

to misremembering
Memory construction errors
 Misinformation and Imagination
 Imagination inflation we often have high
confidence in false memories
 Repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions
and events create false memories
Memory construction errors
 Misinformation
and Imagination
 Source Amnesia
 Attributing the wrong source of an event,
heard about, read about or imagined
Memory construction errors
 Misinformation and Imagination
 Source Amnesia
 True and False memories
 Both the misinformation effect and source
amnesia happen outside of our awareness
which makes it nearly impossible to
separate suggested ideas from real
memories
 Huge impact on eyewitness testimony!!!!!
Memory construction errors
 Misinformation and Imagination
 Source Amnesia
 True and False memories
 Children’s eye-witness recall

techniques have a HUGE

 Interviewing
impact on children’s memories
 Repeated questioning: “Think real hard,
and tell me if this ever happened to you.
Can you remember going to the hospital
with a mousetrap on your finger?”
 Then had children think about several real
and fictional events
 Ten weeks later…
 Research with 3-year
old children
 “Where did the
doctor touch you?”
 55% of those who
did not have genital
exams reported
genital or anal
touching
Memory construction errors
 Misinformation and Imagination
 Source Amnesia
 True and False memories
 Children’s eye-witness recall
 Repressed or constructed memories of abuse
 Abuse happens but memories are so fragile that
it is imperative to remember that injustice also
happens
 Know page 379
Investigating memory
construction errors

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB2
OegI6wvI