MEMORY

MEMORY
 Content:
 1) What is memory?
 2) Memory use for the short term
 3) Long-term memory: Encoding and retrieval
 4) Structures in long-term memory
 5) Biological aspects of memory
WHAT IS MEMORY?
 Memory is the capacity to encode, store, and
retrieve information.
 Functions?
 It allows you to have conscious access to the
personal and collective past.
 It also enables you to have effortless continuity
of experience from one day to the next.
 When you walk through your neighborhood, for
example, it is the function of memory that makes
the buildings along the way seem familiar. =
familiarity
WHAT IS MEMORY?
 Implicit and explicit memory?
 For circumstances in which you engage
conscious effort to encode or retrieve
information, those are explicit uses of
memory.
 When you encode or retrieve information
without conscious effort, those are implicit
uses of memory.
WHAT IS MEMORY?
 Declarative and procedural memory?
 Declarative memory: Memory for
information such as facts and events.
 Procedural memory: Memory for how
things get done; the way perceptual, cognitive,
and motor skills are acquired, retained,
and used.
WHAT IS MEMORY?
 An overview of memory processes?
 Memory includes three processes:
encoding, storage, and retrieval.
 Encoding is the initial processing of information
that leads to a representation in memory.
 Storage is the retention over time of encoded
material.
 Retrieval is the recovery at a later time of the
stored information.
 Simply put, encoding gets information in, storage
holds it until you need it, and retrieval gets it out.
WHAT IS MEMORY?
 Encoding requires that you form mental
representations of information from the external
world.
 They preserve important features of past
experiences in a way that enables you to re-
present those experiences to yourself.
 For ex: schemas,…
 If information is properly encoded, it will be
retained in storage over some period of time.
Storage requires both short- and long-term
changes in the structures of your brain.
 Retrieval is remembering…
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
 Sensory memory:
 It briefly holds incoming sensory information.
 It comprises different subsystems, called
sensory registers, which are the initial
information processors.
 Iconic store  visual sensory register
 Echoic store  auditory sensory register
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
 Iconic memory?
 A memory system in the visual domain that
allows large amounts of information to be
stored for very brief durations (Neisser,
1967).
 Iconic memory is an example of a sensory
memory: Researchers have speculated that
each sensory system has a memory store that
preserves representations of physical features
of environmental stimuli for, at most, a few
seconds (Radvansky, 2006).
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
 Short-term memory?
 Through selective attention, some information
enters short-term memory, a memory store
that temporarily holds a limited amount of
information.
 George Miller (1956) suggested that seven
(plus or minus two) was the “magic number”
that characterized people’s memory
performance on random lists of letters,
words, numbers, or almost any kind of
meaningful, familiar item.
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
If short term memory capacity is so limited,m
how can we remember and understand
sentences as we read?
The limit on short term storage capacity
concerns the number of meaningful units that
can be recalled. So, combining individual
items into larger units of meaning is
called chunking.
By rehearsing information, the
information in short term memory can
be extended.
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
 Mere exposure to a stimulus without focusing on it represents
shallow processing.
 But rehearsal goes beyond mere exposure. When we rehearse
information, we are thinking about it.
 There are two types of rehearsal:
 a) Maintenance rehearsal  involves simple, rote repetition.
(rote memorization). It keeps information active in working
memory. But it is not an optimal method to transfer information
into long-term memory. It is better suited to learning number
strings than learning material that has meaning.
 b) Elaborative rehearsal  involves focusing on the meaning of
information or expanding on it ,n some way. (organizing and
understanding the material rather than just memorizing it, thinking
about how it applies to your own life, and relating it to concepts or
examples you have already known.)
 Elaborative rehearsal involves deeper processing than maintenance
processing. It is more effective in transferring information into
long-term memory.
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
 Working memory?
 A memory resource that is used to accomplish
tasks such as reasoning and language
comprehension; consists of the phonological
loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and central
executive.
 Whereas your short-term memory processes
allow you to keep the number in mind, your
more general working memory resource allows
you to execute the mental operations to
accomplish an efficient search. Working memory
provides a foundation for the moment-by-
moment fluidity of thought and action.
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
 Working memory?
 Alan Baddeley (2002, 2003) has provided
evidence for four components of working
memory:
 a) A phonological loop:
 This resource holds and manipulates speech-
based information.
 The phonological loop overlaps most with short-
term memory.
 When you rehearse a telephone number by
“listening” to it as you run it through your head,
you are making use of the phonological loop.
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
 Working memory?
 b) A visuospatial sketchpad:
 This resource performs the same types of
functions as the phonological loop for visual
and spatial information.
 If, for example, someone asked you how many
desks there are in your psychology classroom,
you might use the resources of the
visuospatial sketchpad to form a mental
picture of the classroom and then estimate
the number of desks from that picture.
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
 Working memory?
 c) The central executive:
 This resource is responsible for controlling
attention and coordinating information from the
phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad.
 Any time you carry out a task that requires a
combination of mental processes—imagine, for
example, you are asked to describe a picture
from memory—you rely on the central executive
function to apportion your mental resources to
different aspects of the task
MEMORY USE FOR THE SHORT
TERM
 Working memory?
 d) The episodic buffer is a storage system
with limited capacity that is controlled by the
central executive.
 The episodic buffer allows you to retrieve
information from long-term memory and
combine it with information from the current
situation.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Long term memory (LTM) is the storehouse
of all the experiences, events, information,
emotions, skills, words, categories, rules, and
judgments that have been acquired from
sensory and short-term memories.
 LTM constitutes each person’s total
knowledge of the world and of the self.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Retrieval cues?
 How do you “find” a memory? The basic answer
is that you use retrieval cues.
 Retrieval cues are the stimuli available as you
search for a particular memory.
 These cues may be provided externally, such as
questions on a quiz (“What memory concepts
do you associate with the research of Baddeley
and Sperling?”), or generated internally (“Where
have I met her before?”).
 Each time you attempt to retrieve an explicit
memory, you do so for some purpose, and that
purpose often supplies the retrieval cue.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 A retrieval cue is a stimulus, whether
internal or external, that activates information
stored in long-term memory.
 For ex:
 A yearbook picture can act as a retrieval cue
triggering memories of a classmate….
 Priming ….
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Recall and recognition?
 Recognition  requires one to decide whether
a stimulus is familiar. In recognition tasks, the
target stimuli are provided to you. For ex:
multiple-choice tests …
 Recall  spontaneous memory retrieval in the
sense that you must retrieve the target stimuli
on your own. For ex: Essay, short-answer
questions …
 Cued recall  Hints are given to stimulate
memory. For ex: fill-in the blanks questions ….
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 When you recall, you reproduce the
information to which you were previously
exposed. “What are the components of
working memory?” is a recall question.
 Recognition refers to the realization that a
certain stimulus event is one you have seen or
heard before. Here’s a recognition ques tion:
“Which is the term for a visual sensory
memory: (1) echo; (2) chunk; (3) icon; or (4)
abstract code?”
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Declarative memory:
 It involves factual knowledge. It is called declarative
because to demonstrate our knowledge, we typically
have to declare it: we tell other people what we know.
 Declarative memory includes two subcategories:
 a) Episodic memory  our store of knowledge
concerning personal experiences: when, where and
what happened in the episodes of our lives. For ex:
your recollections of childhood friends, a favorite
movie, or what you ate this morning…
 b) Semantic memory general factual knowledge
about the world and language including memory for
words and concepts. For ex: Mount Everest is the
world’s tallest peak….
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Procedural / nondeclarative memory:
 It is reflected in skills and actions.
 It consists of skills expressed by doing things
in particular situations.
 For ex: riding a bicycle, driving a car , …
 Classically conditioned response also reflect
procedural memory.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Context and encoding?
Encoding specificity principle??
It states that memory is enhanced when
conditions present during retrieval match those
that were present during encoding.
Applying this principle to external cues leads us
to context-dependent memory: It typically
is easier to remember something in the same
environment in which it was originally encoded.
For ex:Visiting your old neighborhood triggers
memories of friends …
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Context and encoding?
Moving from external to internal cues, the concept of
state-dependent memory proposes that our ability
to retrieve information is greater when our internal
state at the time of retrieval matches our original state
during learning.
e.g. State-dependent memory explains why events
experienced in a drugged state is difficult to recall later
while in a drug free state. Because there is a mismatch
between lperson’s states during learning and testing.
We tend to recall information or events that are
congruent with our current mood (mood-congruent
recall). When happy, we are more likely to remember
positive events, when sad, we tend to remember negative
events.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
The serial position effect?
Changes in context also explain one of the classic effects in
memory research: the serial position effect.
Most experiments find that words at the end and beginning
of a list are the easiest to recall.
It is related to the serial position effect (the ability to
recall an item is influenced by the item’s position in a series.
The serial position has two components: a primacy effect –
reflecting superior recall of the earliest items; a recency
effect – representing the superior recall of the most recent
items.
According to three-stage model, primacy effect is due to
transfer of early words into long term memory via
rehersing, whereas recency effect is due to the continued
presence of information in short term memory.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
Processes of encoding and retrieval?
Transfer-appropriate processing? The
perspective suggests that memory is best when the
type of processing carried out at encoding
transfers to the processes required at retrieval
(Roediger, 2008).
Levels-of-processing theory suggests that the
deeper the level at which information was
processed, the more likely it is to be committed to
memory (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Lockhart &
Craik, 1990). If processing involves more analysis,
interpretation, comparison, and elaboration, it
should result in better memory
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 There are two basic types of encoding:
 a) Effortful processing  encoding that is
initiated intentionally and requires conscious
attention. For ex: When you rehearse
information, make lists and take notes you are
engaging effortful processing.
 b) Automatic processing  encoding that
occurs without attention and requires
minimal attention. For ex: Information about
the frequency, spatiallocation and sequence of
events is often encoded automatically.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Structural encoding (noticing how the
words look like) involves shallow
processing.
 Phonological encoding (encoding by
sounding out the word to oneself and judging
whether it matches the sound of other word)
involves intermediate processing.
 Semantic encoding (what the word means)
involves the deepest processing because it
requires us to focus on the meaning of
information.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Processes and implicit memory?
 Implicit memory:
 For ex: Priming ….
 Priming means exposure to a stimulus influences how you subsequently
respond to that same or another stimulus.
 Firstly, subliminal stimuli are given. In an experiment, you read a list of
words (one word per second) that includes kitchen, moon and defend.
Days, weeks or even a year later you participate in another seemingly
unrelated study.The experimenter rapidly shows you many word stems,
some of which might be KIT---, MO---, DE---, and asks you to complete
each stem to form a word.You are not aware that it is a memory test, but
compared with people not given the original list of words, you will be
more likely to complete the stems with words on the original list. (e.g.
Moon, rather than Mother or Money).
 The word stems have activated or primed your stored mental
representations of the original complete words.  Information from
the orignal list is still in your memory and is implicitly influencing
your behavior despite having no conscious recall.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Why we forget??????
 The study of forget ting was pioneered by by
the German psychologist Hermann
Ebbinghaus (1850–1909).
 Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve:
Ebbinghaus calculated his retention of
nonsense syllables over a 30-day period using
the savings method. The curve shows rapid
forgetting and then reaches a plateau of little
change.
 LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Why we forget??????
 Interference:
 According to interference theory,
we forget information because
other items in long-term memory
impair our ability to retrieve it.
 Proactive interference (proactive
means “forward acting”) refers to
circumstances in which information you
have acquired in the past makes it more
difficult to acquire new information.
 Retroactive interference
(retroactive means “backward acting”)
occurs when the acquisi tion of new
information makes it harder for you to
remember older information.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Improving memory?
 1) Elaborative rehearsal
 2) Mnemonics:
 Devices that encode a long series of facts by associating
them with familiar and previously encoded information.
 Establishing hierarchy (making associations between
concepts)
 Visual imagery (According to dual coding theory, both
verbal and visual codes enhance memory because the odds
improve that at least one of the codes will be available
later to support recall. Dual coding is betterwith concrete
concepts than abstract ones)
 Chunking
 The method of loci (a memory aid associating information
with mental images of physical locations)
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Improving memory?
 2) Mnemonics:
 Mnemonic devices reorganize information into more
meaningful units and provide extra cues to help
retrieve information from long-term memory.
 a)Acronyms: In order to recall the events or
processes, you form these precise words. For example,
to help students remember the order of colors in a
rainbow: ROY G BIV => Red Orange Yellow Green
Blue Indigo Violet
 b)Rhyme (kafiye, uyak): Repetition of similar sounds
in two or more words, most often in the final syllables
of lines in poems and songs. For ex. Righty tighty ..
 Mnemonists often use elaborative rehearsal.
LONG-TERM MEMORY: ENCODING
AND RETRIEVAL
 Metamemory?
 Research on metamemory suggests that
people generally have good intuitions about
what they know and what they don’t know.
 If you are in an exam situation in which there
is time pressure, you should allow those
intuitions to guide how you allocate your
time.
 You might, for example, read the whole test
over quickly and see which questions give you
the strongest feelings-of-knowing.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
 Memory structures?
 Categories and Concepts
 The mental representations of the categories you form are
called concepts.
 Concepts can often be arranged into meaningful
organizations.
 A broad category like animal has several subcategories,
such as bird and fish, which in turn contain exemplars such
as canary, ostrich, shark, and salmon.
 The animal category is itself a subcategory of the still
larger category of living beings.
 Concepts are also linked to other types of information: You
store the knowledge that some birds are edible, some are
endangered, some are na tional symbols.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
 Basic level
 The level of categorization that can be
retrieved from memory most quickly and
used most efficiently.
 For example, when you buy an apple at the
grocery store, you could think of it as a piece
of fruit—but that seems imprecise—or a
Golden Delicious—but that seems too
specific or narrow. The basic level is just apple.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
 Schemas?
 Schemas are conceptual frameworks, or
clusters of knowledge, regarding objects,
people, and situations.
 Schemas are “knowledge packages” that
encode complex generalizations about your
experience of the structure of the
environment.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
 Researchers have provided two theories of how
people use concepts in memory to categorize
the objects they encounter in the world.
 1) One theory suggests that, for each concept in
memory, you encode a prototype—a
representation of the most central or average
member of a category.
 2) An alternative theory suggests that people
retain memories of the many different exemplars
they experience for each category. On the
exemplar view, you recognize an object by
comparing it to the exemplars you have stored in
memory.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
 Remembering as a reconstructive process?
 Reconstructive memory:
 The process of putting information together
based on general types of stored knowledge in
the absence of a specific memory representation.
Memory distortion and schemas:
People have generalized ideas (schemas) about
how events happen, which they use to organize
information and construct their memories.
However, schemas can distort out memories by
leading us to encode or retrieve information in
ways making sense and fit in with our preexisting
assumptions about the world.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
 If memories are constructed, then information
that occurs after an event may shape that
construction process. That is
misinformation effect.
 Misinformation effect is the distortion of a
memory by misleading postevent information.
 They have been frequently investigated in
relation to mistaken eyewitness testimony.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
For ex:
In a classical experiment, college students viewed films
of car accidents and then judged how fast the cars
were going. (e.g. How fast were the two cars going
when they _____ each other?  contacted / hit /
bumped into / collided with / smashed )
The judged speed increased by up to 33 percent when
the word contacted was changed to hit, bumped into,
collided with or smashed into.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
 Flashbulb memories?
 Flashbulb memories—arise when people
experience emotionally charged events:
People’s memories are so vivid that they seem
almost to be photographs of the original
incident.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
Distinctive stimuli are better remembered
than nondistinctive ones.
Distinctive events such as weddings, romantic
encounters, births and deaths, vacations,
accidents …. stand a greater chance of etching
long-term memories that seem vivid and clear.
STRUCTURES IN LONG-TERM
MEMORY
Emotionally arousing stimuli are also better
remembered…. Why??? Arousing stimuli trigger
the release of hormones.
It causes neurotransmitters to increase activation
of amygdala (encoding emotional aspects of
experiences into longer term memories)
Emotional arousal enhances autobiographical
memories, recollections of personally
experienced events that make up the stories of
our lives.
e.g. Memories of traumatic experiences ..
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF
MEMORY
 The cerebellum, essential for
procedural memory, memo ries
acquired by repetition, and
classically conditioned responses
 The striatum, a complex of
structures in the forebrain; the
likely basis for habit formation and
for stimulus response connections
 The cerebral cortex, responsible
for sensory memories and
associations between sensations
 The hippocampus, largely
responsible for declarative memory
of facts, dates, and names, and the
consolidation of spatial memories
 The amygdala, which plays a critical
role in the formation and retrieval
of memories with emotional
significance
 MEMORY AND THE BRAIN
 Memory involves numerous interacting brain
regions such as frontal cortex, amygdala,
hippocampus, thalamus, cerebellum etc.
 Sensory memory depends on input from our
sensory systems and initial processing by
cortical sensory areas.
 Frontal cortex- esp. Prefrontal cortex – plays
a key role in working memory. It becomes
more active during tasks placing greater
demands on working memory.
 MEMORY AND THE BRAIN
 Hippocampus helps consolidate long term
declarative memories. It helps to gradually
convert short term memories into permanent
ones.
 Thalamus is involved in ecoding new memories
and retrieval of old ones.
 Amygdala encodes emotionally arousing aspects
of stimuli and plays an important role in helping
us from long term memories for events strring
our emotions.
 Cerebellum plays an important role in forming
procedural memories.
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF
MEMORY
 Memory Disorders?
 Almost all of us have experienced a retrieval
problem called the tip-of-the-tongue
(TOT) state in which we cannot recall
something but feel that we are on the verge
of remembering it. For ex: inability to
remember name of an acquintance, famous
person or object.
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF
MEMORY
 For Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective, people
are unconsciously motivated to forget. They
use repression for traumatic or anxiety
arousing events.
 Repression protects us by blocking the
conscious recall of anxiety arousing memories.
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF MEMORY
 Amnesia:
 It is a memory loss due to special conditions
such as brain injury, illness, or psychological
trauma.
 Types of amnesia:
 Retrograde amnesia  memory loss for
events that took place something in life before
the onset of amnesia.
 For ex: Footbal players experience it when they
are knocked out by a concussion (sarsıntı), regain
consciousness and cannot remember the events
just before being hit.
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF
MEMORY
 Amnesia:
 Types of amnesia:
 Anterograde amnesia  memory loss for
events that occur after the initial onset of
amnesia.
 For ex:
 H.M., at age 27, had most of hippocampus and
surrounding brain tissue surgically removed to
reduce his severe epileptic seizures. After the
operation, he couldn’t form new memories,
experiences and facts that he could consciously
recall.
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF
MEMORY
 Amnesia:
 Types of amnesia:
 Infantile / childhood amnesia: memory loss for
early year experiences. It is an inability to remember
personal experiences from the first few years of
lives.
 What causes it??
 1) Brain regions encoding long termepisodic
memories are still immature in the first years after
birth.
 2) We don’t encode our earliest experiences deeply
and fail to form rich retrieval cues for them.
 3) Infants lack a clear self concept (not having
personal frame of reference)
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF
MEMORY
 Dementia:
 It is impaired memory and other cognitive
deficits that accompany brain degeneration
and interfere with normal functioning.
 It is more prevalent among elderly adults.
 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a
progressive brain disorder, the most
common cause of dementia among adults
over the age of 65.
 AD produces borh retrograde and
anterograde amnesia.
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF
MEMORY
 Dementia:
 AD’s symptoms: forgetfulness, poor
judgment, confusion, disorientation, working
memory and long term memory worsen,
disruption of the ACh system, language
problems, mood and personality changes ..
 AD’s brain: abnormal amount of plaques and
tangles (structures preventing neurons to
communicate effectively) in the brain, attacking
subcortical temporal lobe regions (near and
then the hippocampus, then frontal lobes …)
 AD’s causes: Genes, …
ENCODING-STORAGE-RETRIEVAL
ENCODING-STORAGE-RETRIEVAL
ENCODING-STORAGE-RETRIEVAL

QUESTION 1 was deleted due