Memory processes

C H A P T E R 6
MEMORY PROCESSES

ENCODING AND TRANSFER OF
INFORMATION
• Forms of Encoding
• Short-Term Storage
• Long-Term Storage
• Transfer of Information from Short-Term
Memory to Long-Term Memory
• Rehearsal
• Organization of Information

• Each one represents a stage in memory
processing:
• Encoding refers to how you transform a
physical, sensory input into a kind of
representation that can be placed into
memory.
• Storage refers to how you retain encoded
information in memory.
• Retrieval refers to how you gain access to
information stored in memory.

ENCODING AND TRANSFER
OF INFORMATION
FORMS OF ENCODING

SHORT-TERM STORAGE
• Conrad and colleagues (1964)
• Participants were visually presented with several series of 6
letters at the rate of 0.75 seconds per letter. The letters used in
the various lists were B, C, F, M, N, P, S, T, V, and X. Immediately,
after the letters were presented, participant were asked to write
down each list of 6 letters in the order given. Instead of recalling
the letters they were supposed to recall, participants substituted
letters that sounded like the correct letters.
• Another group of participants simply listened to single letters in a
setting that had noise in the background.
• Thus, we seem to encode visually presented letters by how
they sound, not by how they look.

SHORT-TERM STORAGE
• The Conrad experiment shows the importance in short-term
memory of an acoustic code rather than a visual code.
• Baddeley (1966) argued that short-term memory relies
primarily on an acoustic rather than a semantic code.
• Acoustically confusable words – map, cab, mad, man, cap
• Acoustically distinct words – cow, pit, day, rig, bun
• Semantically similar words – big, long, large, wide, broad
• Semantically dissimilar words – old, foul, late, hot, strong

SHORT-TERM STORAGE
• Thus, encoding in short-term memory appears to be
primarily acoustic, but there may be some secondary
semantic encoding as well.
• We are more prone to forgetting visual information than
acoustic information.
• Ex. Remembering a telephone number from long ago,
more likely to remember how it sounds when you say it
to yourself than to remember a visual image of it.

LONG-TERM STORAGE
• Most information stored in long-term memory is primarily
semantically encoded. (Grossman & Eagle, 1970)
• Participants were remembering words by clustering them into
categories. (Bousfield, 1953)
• Encoding of information in long-term memory is not
exclusively semantic. There is also evidence for visual
encoding. (Frost, 1972)
• Acoustic information can be encoded in long-term memory.
(Nelson & Rothbart, 1972)

LONG-TERM STORAGE
• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies
have found that the brain areas that are involved in encoding
can be, but do not necessarily have to be, involved in
retrieval.
• Anterior medial prefrontal cortex and right fusiform face
area (encoding/retrieval)
• Left fusiform face area (encoding)
• Left parahippocampal place area PPA (encoding)
• Medial temporal and prefrontal regions (memory
processes in general)

ENCODING AND TRANSFER
OF INFORMATION
TRANSFER OF INFORMATION FROM SHORT-TERM
MEMORY TO LONG-TERM MEMORY

TRANSFER OF INFORMATION
FROM SHORT-TERM MEMORY
TO LONG-TERM MEMORY
• When competing information interferes with our storing
information we speak of interference.
• When we forget facts just because time passes, we speak of
decay.
• Some forms of nondeclarative memory are highly volatile and
decay quickly.
• Other nondeclarative forms are maintained more readily,
particularly as a result of repeated practice (of procedures) or
repeated conditioning (of responses).

• Entrance into long-term declarative memory may occur
through a variety of processes:
• By deliberately attending to information to comprehend it.
• Making connections or associations between the new information and
what we already know and understand.
• We make connections by integrating the new data into our
existing schemas of stored information. This process of
integrating new information into stored information is called
consolidation.
TO LONG-TERM MEMORY

• Metacognition – our ability to think about and control
our own processes of thought and ways of enhancing
our thinking.
• Metamemory strategies – one component of
metacognition; involve reflecting on our own memory
processes with a view to improving our memory.
TO LONG-TERM MEMORY

REHEARSAL
• One technique people use for keeping information
active; repeated recitation of an item
• Practice effects
• Overt – aloud and obvious to anyone watching.
• Covert – silent and hidden

REHEARSAL
• Elaborative – the individual somehow elaborates the items to
be remembered. Such rehearsal makes the items either more
meaningfully integrated into what the person already knows or
more meaningfully connected to one another and therefore
more memorable.
• Maintenance – the individual simply repetitiously rehearses
the items to be repeated. Such rehearsal temporarily
maintains information in short-term memory without
transferring the information to long-term memory.

REHEARSAL
• People’s memory for information depends on how they
acquire it.
• Their memories tend to be good when they use distributed
practice, learning in which various sessions are spaced
over time.
• Massed pratice – learning in which sessions are crammed
together in a very short space of time.
• The Spacing Effect
• To maximize the effect on long-term recall, the spacing should ideally
be distributed over months, rather than days or weeks.

SLEEP AND MEMORY CONSOLIDATION
• There are 5 different sleep stages that differ in their EEG
patterns. Dreaming takes place during stage 5, the so-called
REM sleep. REM sleep is particularly important for memory
consolidation.
• Better learning with increases in the proportion of REM-stage
sleep after exposure to learning situations.
• The positive influence of sleep on memory consolidation is
seen across age groups. (Hornung et al., 2007)

SLEEP AND MEMORY CONSOLIDATION
• People who suffer from insomnia, a disorder that
deprives the sufferer of much-needed sleep, have
trouble with memory consolidation. (Backhaus et al.,
2006)
• Prolonged sleep deprivation seems to affect such cell
development negatively (Meerlo, 2009). Thus, a good
night sleep, which includes plenty of REM-stage
sleep, aids in memory consolidation.

NEUROSCIENCE AND MEMORY
CONSOLIDATION
• Cells of the hippocampus that were activated during
initial learning are reactivated during subsequent periods
of sleep. It is as if they are replaying the initial learning
episode to achieve consolidation into long-term storage.
• The hippocampus acts as a rapid learning system. It
temporarily maintains new experiences until they can be
appropriately assimilated into the more gradual
neocortical representation system of the brain.

NEUROSCIENCE AND MEMORY
CONSOLIDATION
• The benefits of distributed practice seem to occur because
we have a relatively rapid learning system in the
hippocampus that becomes activated during sleep.
• These rapidly learned memories become integrated into our
more permanent long-term memory system.

ORGANIZATION OF INFORMATION
• Participants create their own consistent organization and
then group their recall by the subjective units they
create.
• Mnemonic devices are specific techniques to help you
memorize lists of words (Best, 2003).
• Thus, when choosing a method for encoding information
for subsequent recall, you should consider the purpose
for recalling the information.

• The use of mnemonic devices and other techniques for
aiding memory involves metamemory (our understanding
and reflection upon our memory and how to improve it).
• Reminders – external memory aids—to enhance the
likelihood that we will remember important information.
• Ex. Taking notes, shopping lists, timers and alarms, asking people to
help you remember things.
• Forcing Functions – physical constraints that prevent us
from acting without at least considering the key information
to be remembered.
• Ex. To ensure that you remember to take your notebook to class, you
might lean the notebook against the door through which you must
pass to go to class.

MNEMONIC DEVICES
• Categorical Clustering – organize a list of items into a set
of categories.
• Interactive images – create interactive images that link the
isolated words in a list.
• Pegword system – associate each new word with a word
on a previously memorized list and form an interactive image
between the two words.
• Method of loci – visualize walking around an area with
distinctive landmarks that you know well, and then link the
various landmarks to specific items to be remembered.

MNEMONIC DEVICES
• Acronym – devise a word or expression in which each of its
letters stands for a certain other word or concept
• Acrostic – form a sentence rather than a single word to help
you remember the new words.
• Keyword system – form an interactive image that links the
sound and meaning of a foreign word with the sound and
meaning of a familiar word.

TRANSFER OF INFORMATION INTO LONG-
TERM STORAGE MAY BE FACILITATED BY
SEVERAL FACTORS:
• Rehearsal of the information, particularly if the
information is elaborated meaningfully.
• Organization, such as categorization of the information.
• The use of mnemonic devices
• The use of external memory aids, such as writing lists
or taking notes
• Knowledge acquisition through distributed practice
across various study sessions, rather than through
massed practice.

RETRIEVAL
• Retrieval from Short-Term Memory
• Parallel or Serial Processing?
• Exhaustive or Self-Terminating
Processing?
• The Winner—a Serial Exhaustive
Model—with Some Qualifications
• Retrieval from Long-Term Memory
• Intelligence and Retrieval

RETRIEVAL
RETRIEVAL FROM SHORT-TERM MEMORY

PARALLEL OR SERIAL PROCESSING?
• Parallel processing refers to the simultaneous handling
of multiple operations.
• Serial processing refers to operations being done one
after another.

EXHAUSTIVE OR SELF-TERMINATING
PROCESSING?
• Exhaustive serial processing implies that the
participant always checks the test digit against all digits
in the positive set, even if a match were found partway
through the list.
• Self-terminating serial processing implies that the
participant would check the test digit against only those
digits needed to make a response.

PROCESSES OF FORGETTING
AND MEMORY DISTORTION
INTERFERENCE THEORY
DECAY THEORY

INTERFERENCE THEORY
• Refers to the view that forgetting occurs because recall of
certain words interferes with recall of other words.
• Retroactive interference (or retroactive inhibition) occurs
when newly acquired knowledge impedes the recall of older
material. (new information inhibits the ability to remember old
information)
• Proactive interference (or proactive inhibition)occurs when
material that was learned in the past impedes the learning of
new material. (old information inhibits the ability to remember
new information)

INTERFERENCE THEORY
• Serial-position curve represents the probability of recall
of a given word, given its serial position (order of
presentation) in a list.
• Recency effect refers to superior recall of words at and
near the end of a list.
• Primacy effect refers to superior recall of words at and
near the beginning of a list.

DECAY THEORY
• Asserts that information is forgotten because of the
gradual disappearance, rather than displacement, of the
memory trace.

THE CONSTRUCTIVE NATURE OF
MEMORY
•Autobiographical Memory
•Memory Distortions
• The Eyewitness Testimony
Paradigm Repressed Memories
• The Effect of Context on Memory

• Reconstructive – involving the use of various
strategies(e.g., searching for cues, drawing inferences)
for retrieving the original memory traces of our
experiences and then rebuilding the original experiences
as a basis for retrieval.
• Constructive – prior experience affects how we recall
things and what we actually recall from memory.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY
• Refers to memory of an individual’s history.
• Flashbulb memory – a memory of an event so powerful
that the person remembers the event as vividly as if it
were indelibly preserved on film.
• Surprising
• Important
• Emotional

MEMORY DISTORTION
SCHACTER (2001) 7 SINS OF MEMORY

1. TRANSIENCE
• Memory fades quickly.
• The state or fact of lasting only for a short time.
• General deterioration of a specific memory over time.
• This is especially true with episodic memory, because
every time an episodic memory is recalled, it is re-encoded
within the hippocampus, altering the memory each time
you recall it. Transience is caused because of interference.

2. ABSENT-MINDEDNESS
• is where a person shows inattentive or
forgetful behavior.
• so lost in thought that one does not realize
what one is doing, what is happening, etc.;
preoccupied to the extent of being unaware
of one's immediate surroundings.
• This form of memory breakdown involves
problems at the point where attention and
memory interface. Common errors of this
type include misplacing keys, eyeglasses,
or forgetting appointments because at the
time of encoding sufficient attention was
not paid on what would later need to be
recalled.

3. BLOCKING
• Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
• People sometimes have something that they know they
should remember, but they can’t.
• Blocking is when the brain tries to retrieve or encode
information, but another memory interferes with it.
Blocking is a primary cause of Tip of the tongue
phenomenon (a temporary inaccessibility of stored
information).

4. MISATTRIBUTION
• People often cannot remember where they heard what they
heard or read what they read. Sometimes people think they
saw things they did not see or heard things they did not hear.
• Ex. Eyewitness testimony
• It entails correct recollection of information with incorrect recollection
of the source of that information. For example, a person who
witnesses a murder after watching a television program may
incorrectly blame the murder on someone she saw on the television
program. This error has profound consequences in legal systems
because of its unacknowledged prevalence and the confidence which
is often placed in the person's ability to know the source of information
important to suspect identification.

5. SUGGESTIBILITY
• People are susceptible to suggestions, so if it is suggested to them
that they saw something, they may think they remember seeing it.
• Examples:
• You witness an argument after school. When later asked about the
"huge fight" that occurred, you recall the memory, but unknowingly
distort it with exaggerated fabrications, because you now think of
the event as a "huge fight" instead of a simple argument.
• A witness' testimony is altered because the police or attorneys
make suggestions during the interview, which causes their already
uncertain observations to become distorted memories.
• Your parents tell you that you have always been a good singer, so
from then on you believe you have talent when really your parents
were falsely encouraging you.

6. BIAS
• The sin of bias is similar to the sin of suggestibility in that
one's current feelings and worldview distort
remembrance of past events. This can pertain to
specific incidences and the general conception one has of
a certain period in one's life. This occurs partly because
memories encoded while a person was feeling a certain
level of arousal and a certain type of emotion come to
mind more quickly when a person is in a similar mood.
Thus, a contented adult might look back with fondness on
their childhood, induced to do so by positive memories
from that time which might not actually be representative
of their average mood during their childhood.

7. PERSISTENCE
• People sometimes remember things as consequential that, in a
broad context, are inconsequential.
• Ex. Someone with many successes but one notable failure may
remember the single failure better than the many successes.
• This failure of the memory system involves the unwanted recall of
information that is disturbing. The remembrance can range from a
blunder on the job to a truly traumatic experience, and the
persistent recall can lead to formation of phobias, post-traumatic
stress disorder, and even suicide in especially disturbing and
intrusive instances.

THE EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY
PARADIGM
• May be the most common source of wrongful convictions
in the United States (Modafferi et al., 2009).

WHAT INFLUENCES THE ACCURACY OF
EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIES?
• In general, people are remarkably susceptible to
mistakes in eyewitness testimony. They are generally
prone to imagine that they have seen things they have
not seen (Loftus, 1998).
• Line-ups
• Confessions
• Feedback to eyewitnesses affected participants’
testimony
• Level of stress

CHILDREN AS EYEWITNESSES
• Children’s recollections are particularly susceptible to distortion.
• The younger the child is, the less reliable the testimony of that child can
be expected to be.
• When a questioner is coercive or even just seems to want a particular
answer, children can be quite susceptible to providing the adult with what
he or she wants to hear.
• Children may believe that they recall observing things that others have
said they observed.
• The testimony of children must be interpreted with great caution.

CAN EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIES BE
IMPROVED?
• Gary Wells (2006) made several suggestions to improve
identification accuracy in line-ups:
• Presenting only1 suspect per line-up.
• Making sure that all people in the line-up are reasonably similar to
each other.
• Cautioning witnesses that the suspect may not be in the line-up at
all.

REPRESSED MEMORIES
• Are memories that are alleged to have been pushed
down into unconsciousness because of the distress they
cause.
• Do repressed memories actually exist?
• Some therapists may inadvertently plant ideas in their client’s
heads. In this way, they may inadvertently create false memories
of events that never took place.
• Showing that implanted memories are false is often extremely
hard to do.

REPRESSED MEMORIES
• Roediger-McDermott (1995) paradigm
• 15 words strongly related to the word sleep
• Why are people so weak in distinguishing what they
have heard from what they have not heard?
• Source-monitoring error, which occurs when a person attributes
a memory derived from one source to another source.
• Spreading activation, every time an item is studied, you think of
the items related to that item.

THE EFFECT OF CONTEXT ON MEMORY
• Emotional intensity
• Mood
• State of consciousness
• Environmental context cues
• Encoding Specificity refers to the fact that what is
recalled depends largely on what is encoded.

QUIZ
1. What is the main difference between two of the proposed
mechanisms by which we forget information? (3pts)
2. Explain flashbulb memory. (2pts)
3. Make a list of 10 or more unrelated items you need to memorize.
Choose one of the mnemonic devices mentioned, and described
how you would apply the device to memorizing the list of items.
Be specific. (5pts)
4. What are three things you learned about memory that can help
you learn new information and effectively recall the information
over the long term? (5pts)

ASSIGNMENT
1. In what forms can knowledge be represented in our mind?
2. What kinds of codes does dual-code theory comprise?
3. What is a proposition?
4. What is mental rotation?
5. What is image scaling?
6. How do we mentally scan images? (2pts)
7. What is representational neglect?
8. What kind of mental model did Johnson-Laird propose?
9. What is the difference between visual and spatial imagery?
(2pts)
10. What is cognitive map?
11. What is a text map?
12. Name some heuristics that people use when manipulating
cognitive maps.

Memory processes

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