Cognitive processes memory

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885)
• He conducted the first major studies of memory,
• Used himself as a subject and nonsense syllables,
such as VOL, RIZ, and TAV, as a material to be learned
• Measured both learning and retention
Savings method or method of relearning: Hermann Ebbinghaus
1850-1909
• Refers to amount of time it takes to learn a list a second time
• Original overlearning, or repeating the list of items will result in a saving of
both time and errors upon relearning
Nature of Forgetting:
Initial drop-off followed by slower forgetting overtime
• 63% of material is remembered after 20 minutes
• 38% after one day
• 31% after two days
• 25% after 31 days

Forgetting Curve
• Illustrates the decline of memory retention in time.
• Strength of memory refers to the durability
that memory traces in the brain.
• The stronger the memory, the longer
period of time that a person is able to
recall it.
Graph of the Forgetting Curve:
Humans tend to halve their memory of newly
learned knowledge in a matter of days or weeks
unless they consciously review the learned materials

Multi-store Model
Memory consists of three levels of systems:
1. sensory memory,
2. Short-Term Memory
3. Long-term Memory
Sensory memory:
• Sense organs have a limited ability to store information for less than a
second
• Provides brief storage of sensory information, after the stimuli have been
removed
• Echoic store: Sensory store (hearing system) for auditory information
• iconic store; Sensory store for visual stimuli
• Visual system processes visual stimuli such as shape, size, color and
location, but not meaning

STM (working memory):
• Has a limited capacity
• sensory memory ___attention____ STM
• Holds a limited amount of information for a short period of time
• For example:
- you keep some piece of information in your head for just a few seconds.
- A number to do a subtraction,
- an argument you make after a person finishing talking
• Ability to hold on to a piece of information
temporarily to complete a task.
• It causes pre-frontal lobe to be very active.

George Miller (1956)
• Identified "magical number of 7 plus or minus 2 as amount of
information that can be retained in STM with rehearsal
Chunking:
• Increases the amount of information that can be retained in STM store
• Involves grouping large amounts of information into smaller related
units
• For example, the mobile number: 966545074077
• 966 545 074 077
• The 7 units of information could be 7 sentences or 7 phrases, rather
than 7 words or 7 letters

Long-term Memory (LTM):
• Has an unlimited capacity
• Information gets into LTM only if it is transferred from STM
• This is related to how information is rehearsed
• Once information is transferred to LTM, it remains there permanently,
• May not remain if brain is compromised severely due to a medical
condition or substance use

Atkinson and Shiffrin Model (1968)
Multi-store model
•12 items
•George Sperling (1960)
•Partial Report Paradigm
7±2
Miller’s Magic Number
(1956)

10
Information processing model
Explanations for how
cognitive processes
work are known as
information
processing theories
or models.
The three-
component model of
information
processing is taught
in Educational
Psychology.
http://www.innovativelearning.com/educational_psychology/cognitivism/index.htm

Hippocampus:
• Information is transferred from STM to LTM through hippocampus,
• Resembles the curved tail of a seahorse
• Old part of cortex, evolutionarily, and is located in the inner fold of the
temporal lobe.

Endel Tulving (1986):
• He divided LTM into three components:
- Procedural
- Semantic
- Episodic
Procedural memory (implicit):
• LTM of motor skills, habits, and ways of doing things, such as drive a car
• Recalled without conscious effort;
• Acquired through observation and practice and are difficult to forget
Semantic memory:
• LTM of knowledge about language (e.g., what words mean and how they
are used),
• common sense, and the rules of logic and inference
• Social customs
Episodic memory (autobiographical memory):
• Contains information about events that have been personally experienced
• Links to time and place

• Semantic and episodic together are called “declarative memory”
Declarative Memory (explicit):
• Effortful
• Factual Memory
• Consciously Available
Priming:
• Unconscious and that is not episodic, procedure nor semantic
• Instance of perception rather than memory
• Its role is to enhance identification of objects so that they seem familiar
• Exists when the appearance of fragments of a previously encountered
target (eg, the first few letters, sketchy outline, first letter of a verse in the
Quran)
• Increase in ease of doing a task or remembering information as a result of
a previous encounter with the task or information.
‫به‬ ‫يذكرني‬ ‫شي‬ ‫فيه‬ ‫بس‬ ‫اسمه‬ ‫ناسية‬ ‫أحد‬ ‫أشوف‬ ‫لما‬
‫علةقة‬ ‫له‬
‫مره‬ ‫بأول‬

• One with dissociative amnesia (psychogenic not biologically
caused amnesia) displays Retrograde but not Antrograde
amnesia
• One sign of pseudodementia is Retrograde but not AA
Global amnesia.
• Some patients with severe cases have a combined form of
anterograde and retrograde amnesia
• Neuropsychologists debate over whether it is a problem with
encoding or retrieval

Schema Theory of Memory:
• Schema is a cognitive structure or framework that influences how we
look at the world – basically, mental models of how things are
• Wyer and Scull (1986) indicate that schema affects how we store and
retrieve information
• Our memory is filtered through schema
• Witness testimony and other reported memories may be biased to fit
into preexisting schema

Mnemonic Devices:
• Strategies known as mnemonic devices improve memory for information
•Method of Loci (ML(:
• Loci" is the plural of locus, which means location, or place
• Involves associating each item to be remembered with mental images of
"places"
• For terms that unrelated and difficult to remember, a visual image is most
effective
• Useful for remembering terms recalled in a specific order
• To use ML, first mentally associate each item to be remembered with a
visual image
• Mentally place these images somewhere in a familiar room or building,
such as in corners, and on tables and chairs

• To recall the items, you would mentally walk through the room or building
and "look" around at the items
• ML exemplifies the use of visual imagery as a tool for remembering verbal
information
• Visual imagery is highly effective as a memory aid
• People who have the ability to form vivid visual images tend to be good at
memorizing
Here's how it would work if you wanted to remember the following
shopping list:
1. Ketchup
2. ice cream
• Enter the dining room and picture a bottle of ketchup, dressed in an Asian
maid's uniform, sitting on the table.
• Go to the kitchen and picture a gallon of ice cream, melting over a hot
stove.
• Or locate your car’s driver standing by your house door and visualize him
wearing a cony hat of ice cream

Eidetic Imagery: ‫تخيلى‬
• In layperson's terms, it is called "photographic memory“
• Patient can study an image for approximately 30 seconds, and maintain a
nearly perfect photographic memory of that image for a short time once it
has been removed
• Some people have an ability to remember very specific details
• They have ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with
extreme accuracy and in abundant volume.
• Able to maintain a mental picture of an object even after it is removed
• More common in children than adults
• Intensity of recall may be subject to several factors such as duration and
frequency of exposure to the stimulus observation , relevance to the
person, etc

Context and State Dependence:
Encoding Specificity Hypothesis (Tulving &Thomson, 1973)
• Indicates that the closer relationship between encoding, storage, and
retrieval, the better the recall of information
Context Dependence:
• When the learning and retrieval environments are the same or similar,
your recall of information will be better than when the two environments
are different
• For example, take exam in your own classroom
State Dependence:
• When your emotional state is the same during learning and retrieval, you
will find it easier to remember information than when your emotional
state differs
• Being in a depressed mood increases tendency to remember negative
events.

Environmental reinstatement effect (long-term vs. short-term)
• Long-term: Even after many years of absence, go back to your
primary school campus and you will immediately remember
things that have already been forgotten
• Short-term: Imagine sitting at your desk and deciding to get a
drink from the kitchen.
• Once you get to the kitchen, you completely forget what you
wanted.
• If you return to your desk, you will most likely remember
what you wanted from the kitchen.

Hippocampus and prefrontal cortex
• Hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are involved in context dependent
memory.
• fMRI demonstrated elevated activation in the hippocampus when
contextual information matches from encoding to retrieval, suggesting
that the hippocampus may be important in mediating context-dependent
memory processes
• Activation of the right prefrontal cortex was dependent on
contextual information
Hippocampus
activation in
context
dependent
state
pre
prefrontal cortex

Example of context dependent memory
• Divers in underwater environment were placed under water
and listened to a prerecorded list of 36 unrelated words.
• After listening to the list of words they were tested on their
recall of the words in:
- the same environment
- the alternative environment.
• Results showed that:
- words learned underwater were best recalled underwater,
- words learned on land were best recalled on land.

Overlearning:
• Refers to a person practicing or rehearsing of some material
beyond the point of mastery
• In learning information that has little inherent (‫)متأصل‬meaning
such as multiplication table, overlearning is the most effective
memory strategy
• Overlearning is best for simple tasks

Forgetting:
There are a number of theories of forgetting such as:
A. Trace Decay:
• Refers to information in LTM that are deteriorated or forgotten unless it is
accessed or rehearsed
• This explains the loss of information from STM
B. Interference:
Types of interference:
1. Retroactive inhibition (RI)
• RI occurs when a new experience interferes with recall of an earlier one
• For example, anatomy lecture of today interferes with information of
anatomy lecture of last week.
• So you experience difficulty recalling anatomy information of last week

Experimental vs. control group:
• Experimental group learns list A and list B and recalls B.
• Control group learns list B and is asked about recalling list B
List A List B_________experimental group___control group
orange okra learn A and B and learn B and
banana biscuit recall A recall B
grape garlic
• Control group recall B better than experimental group.
• Sleeping following the learning of new information demonstrate better
recall than remaining awake after learning the same information
2. Proactive Inhibition (PI)
• Occurs when previous learning interferes with more recent learning.
• For example, anatomy lecture of last week interferes with information of
anatomy lecture of today.
• So you experience difficulty recalling anatomy information of today

C. Repression:
• Information is not recalled due to its emotional significance
• An active inhibition of recall, rather than a true loss of information,
accounts for observed instances of forgetting
• Repression of memory is seen as a dynamic and unconscious process
• For example, a severe fright or trauma may be repressed because
recall of trauma is disturbing
• 19% of sexual abuse victims had forgotten but later recalled sexual
abuse (loftus et al, 1994)
Hypnosis:
• Research shows that Memories retrieved under hypnosis tend to be
less accurate than other memories
• Nonetheless, Individuals who recall information while under hypnosis
have greater confidence in their memories as compared to controls
• In some research studies, hypnotized subjects were reluctant to admit
that their memories were inaccurate even confronted with clear
evidence demonstrating this to be the case

Anatomically Correct Dolls:
Used for assessment of childhood sexual abuse and by parents of identifying
inappropriate touching:
1. Sexual abuse victims do respond differently to these dolls than non
victims (e.g., among victims sexualized play is more common)
2. Dolls facilitate memory for details of sexual abuse
3. Useful in helping shy, embarrassing, or verbally limited
to talk children about incidents of abuse
male/female
identification
(with depicted genitals)
mom is going through her
pregnancy
CONTROVERSIAL

Metacognition:
• Refers to thinking about thinking or knowing about knowing
• Refers to person’s awareness about his or her own cognitive state and
processes
Metacognition involves:
• Evaluating one’s own cognitive skills
• Using strategies to increase the efficiency of memory or learning
• The ability to determine how much knowledge you have and need
• Using mnemonics in rereading or organizing information
• Develops in early adolescence or later, in conjunction with Piaget’s
formal operation stage
• Found in adult intelligence

Zeigarnik Effect (1938)
• Bluma Zeigarnik assigned her subjects simple puzzle-like problems
• Subjects allowed to finish half the problems but interrupted and kept
from finishing the other half
• Later, subjects were asked to recall all tasks
• 68% of unfinished tasks were recalled vs. 43% of finished tasks
• Interrupting a subject in middle of task has the effect of leaving him or
her in a state of tension and disequilibrium
• To replace the tension, subject wants to complete the task, and thereby
to remember unfinished tasks better than completed ones

Cognitive processes memory

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