Memory systems Csaba Plh visplehceu edu Lecture at
Memory systems Csaba Pléh vispleh@ceu. edu Lecture at the Topics in cognitive science class CEU, 2019 Fall, october 1 st
Overview • Three notions of memory: biological past, recall of context, cultivating the group • Three traditions of psychological memory research. Ebbinghaus on rote learning, Bartlett on schematization, Hering on the brain. • The Memory boxes of classical cognitive psychology. Multiple distinctions. Very Short term, Short Term, Long term. Episodicsemantic. Issue of autobiographic memory. • Structure proposals for semantic memory. • Memory without boxes. The notion of working memory. The declarative-procedural distinction. • The biology of memory • Social memory the wider context
Some conceptual issues • Two visions of memory: • • Effects of past Recall of environment in the present What, where, when situation, source, images Immune, cultural * Relations between learning and memory * Does all learning result in memory? * Relations between remembering and knowing. Issues of familiarity
Rivaling memory traditions Memory as a feature of living things. From Hering (1870, 1895) through Sokolov (1969) to Kandell (2006): effect of past on recent behavior. Memory in the mental life of the individual, psychology. Ebbinghaus, Bartlett Reenacting of past experiences. Problems with procedural issues. Memory as a cultural system: Bartlett, Halbwachs. Outsource human memory to the social groups that maintain their traditions thorough the processes of memory practices. Assmann: cultural memory. Memory as represented in instruments and utilities such as writing, printing, computer networks, and the like (Donald, 1991, 2001).
The three traditions Dissatisfactions Bergson: brain no good Bartlett: elements wrong Implicit : KNOWING HOW PAST OF THE ORGANISM HERING, HEBB, KANDEL INDIVIDUM RECALL OF PAST CONTEXT SOCIAL SYSTEM EBBINGHAUS, ASSMANN BARTLETT, TULVING MEMORY AS HALBWACHS.
Brain models Hering 1870 A book metaphor with a brain based interpretation. “We can indeed compare the brain to a book. A book is anatomically a number of rectangular white leaves, bound on one side, and marked on their pages with numerous black spots of different form and size. Under a microscope, the leaves will be seen to consist of delicate fibers, and the black spots of minute black granules. A chemical analysis will show that the leaves are cellulose, the spots carbon and resinous oil. There should be some yet to be discovered chemical like feature of nerve material that would make possible the retention of memories. A theory that is rather similar to the ones represented by Changeux (1983) and Edelman (1989) in present day neuroscience. There is certain affinity between cells, and that determines the paths taken by excitation. "The mutual relations of neurons will depend not merely upon their anatomical arrangement, but also on their degree of internal structural affinity. ”
Memory: The capacity to retain information over time. Encoding: conversion • Semon (1904) mneme of input into a form that can be stored in memory. Storage: maintaining information in memory. Retrieval: searching for stored info and bringing it to mind.
Achievements of 19 th Century research on human memory Concepts Sensory memory Attention span Short term memory Long term memory Memory consolidation Specific traces Amnesias Implicit memory Main findings 10 msec vision of letters 6 -7 units Depends on units, increases with age, varies individually List length, time functions, association and organization, memory drum Perseveration, time and rest is needed for consolidation Memory for word aspects Newer is forgotten easier, age and alcohol based degenerative issues Proponents Fechner, Baxt Cattell, Dietze Jacobs, Kennedy Amnestic patients do implicitly ‘remember’ some emotional Claparède Ebbinghaus, Müller and Pilzecker, Meumann Ribot, Müller Pilzecker Broca , Jackson, Korsakkof and Ribot,
Traditional issues in memory research • Organization, loss (neural and cultural), brain bases Memory research Ebbinghaus typical material nonsense, mosaic like research setting laboratory, instruments explanatory associations of principles elements data processing quantitative attitude of subjects elementaristic Bartlett paradigm meaningful, connected real life, interactions schemas and constructions qualitative search for meaning
The Bartlett tradition • Occasional recall • Serial recall. Are they the same? • The time and site of constructions • • Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. […] It is an imaginative reconstruction, or construction built out of the relation of our attitude towards a mass of organized past reactions or experiences (Bartlett, 1932, p. 213).
The Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of Memory 1968 :
Boxes all over the place 4 dimensions of differences representation format capacity: how many units of information can be held at one time. duration of storage: how long the information can be held. reason forgetting: storage failure versus retrieval failure
Sensory Memory Sperling 1960 partial report Format: iconic, echocic Capacity: large Duration of Storage: visual: 1 second; auditory: 2 seconds. Reason forgetting: storage failure (e. g. decay).
Short-Term Memory Brief storage of information currently being used • stores material needed for short periods. E. g. lexical learning, sentence parsing • serves as a workspace for mental computations (3 x 42 = ) • way-station to long-term memory
STM • Capacity: 7 units, + - 2 • Duration of Storage: less than 30 seconds without rehearsal • Reason forgetting: storage failure (e. g. , decay with time, displacement) • Chunking (forming units): 354 -876 9 -354 -876 ------ 9354876 Brown-Peterson task Blocking rehersal by a counting task
The Baddeley model of working memory The three components Brain involvement
Working memory individually variable Corsi task in Williams syndrome Age and literacy
Long-Term Memory Relatively permanent storage of information Capacity: virtually unlimited. It contains 2 general kinds of information: episodic and semantic Duration of Storage: relatively permanent, up to a lifetime Reason forgetting: rather access, than possession (retrieval failure)
Tulving distinctions 1972
The episodic-semantic distinction Tulving 2008 • Semantic memory refers to • Episodic memory refers to general facts and meanings, unique and concrete one shares with others personal experiences. 'memory for general facts of 'memory for personally the world. ‘ experienced events' or • "noetic" awareness of the 'remembering what existence of the world and happened where and objects, events, when‘. independently of self, autonoetic awareness and • Episodic memory has to do with one's 'autonoetic” (subjective) time awareness
Episodic semantic Tulving • Episodic: personal, time situation coded • Semantic: generic, no time and source • Traditional: • STM Episodic Semantic SPI Serial Parallel Independent
Structural proposals for semantic memory
Semantic memory in language • Traditional image: form meaning • Fast forgetting of form • • John bought a car from Mary Mary solled a car to John In Hungarian Focusing order changes are retained Pleh and Sinkovics 2011
Interactions between encoding and retrieval Organization: the more we organize the material, the easier it is to retrieve. – Use of imagery: method of loci, key word method Context, emotions: easier to retrieve info when the context and/or the individual’s mood is similar during encoding and retrieval (affective values associate with the material) Gordon Bower
Constructive Memory semantic constructions Episodic constructions eyewitness memory (Elisabeth Loftus) is constructed both from - inferences - input information
Basic Reasons for Forgetting Encoding Failure: information did not get into memory Storage Failure: information has disappeared from memory; it is no longer in storage Retrieval Failure: information is stored in memory but it cannot be located.
Two Major Theories of Forgetting Decay Theory: information in memory eventually disappears if it is not used. (“Use it or lose it. ”) Interference Theory: Forgetting occurs because other things we have learned somehow prevent us from finding the information we want. The Ranschburg effect
The seven sins of memory D. Schacter 1996 • • Omission Transience absent-mindedness blocking • Comission misattribution • suggestibility • bias • persistence
Emotional factors in recall and forgetting • Mood dependent recall G. Bower • flashbulb memories • repression of negative memories (Freud) • Erdelyi The laboratory and the clinic have converged on a simple but fundamental insight: Cognition, from perception to memory, is pervasively constructive. We inhibit and augment our reality by different techniques and for different reasons. We try to make sense of our reality, intellectually as well as emotionally” (Erdélyi, 2006, p. 511. ).
Implicit memory Information you cannot describe • skills, habits, motor tasks • conditioning • nonassociative learning • priming: the activation of clusters of neurons (river+bank, money+bank) • learned emotional responses
Edouarde Claparède • Claparède the neurologist was shaking hands with a Korsakoff syndrome patient holding a pin in his hand. The patient later did not want to shake hands with Claparède, and if asked for the reason, she confabulated. Claparède concluded: “we can distinguish between two sorts of mental connections: those established mutually between representations, and those established between representations and the me” (Claparède, 1911 p. 73). The implicit becomes explicit when needed for the creation of new actions.
A new taxomomy Kandel Squire
Varieties of implicit • Fiser at al • Lukacs et al
Biology of memory • Issues: consolidation, • Ramon y Cajal brain storage, localisation is like a garden. Arborization and • Neuro. Local. smartness • Neuro networks. Synaptic Hebbian changes • Biochemical changes • Issues: • Brain areas and memory
Implicit-explicit Squire
E. Sokolov
Category specificity Pulvermuller • • If there were really memories stored in cortical cells, than in sensory aphasia an irreversible damage of given words would be observed, concommitant to the preservation of others [. . . ] In reality the words falling out of memory are selected somehow arbitrarily, even capriciously (Bergson, 1896, p. 131. )
Collective memory the tradition of Halbwachs Functions of collective memory • Define the group • Define the values of the group • Improve group cohesion • Value the group on a societal level • Mobilize the group • Regulate the mental status of individual group members • Research issues • • Kinds of cultural knowledges The internal organization of social memories. Narrative and categorical knowledge (Bruner) Memory like transmission in cultural transmission. Mechanisms of social-cultural transmission, from gossip to Bible reading. ‘Group memory’ and cultural memory with writing and media Dynamics of competition and change in social memory. The role of emotional investments, group pressures and conformism, fashion
Modern memory Pierre Nora due to the new technologies of recording – film, tape, video etc. – our ‘memories’ are becoming technologized, and memory looses its spontaneity. “Modern memory is, above all, archival. The less memory is experienced from the inside the more it exists only through its exterior scaffolding and outward signs. […] Memory has been wholly absorbed by its meticulous reconstitution. Its new vocation is to record; delegating to the archive the responsibility of remembering, it sheds its signs upon depositing them there, as a snake sheds its skin. […] This form of memory comes to us from the outside; because it is no longer a social practice, we interiorize it as an individual constraint” (Nora, 1998, pp. 13, 14).
Hot issues • Clear taxonomy • Relate it to brain areas • Relation between networks and localization • Social functions of memory • Social sources of memory distortions
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