Survey of Modern Psychology Memory and Learning Memory

Survey of Modern Psychology Memory and Learning

Memory We will discuss: • Types of memory • Memory storage • Memory retrieval • Factors that influence memory

Types of Memory • • Implicit Explicit Episodic Semantic Short term memory Long term memory Flashbulb memory

Types of Memory • Implicit – Memory that is not consciously recalled – For example, motor memory (typing, piano playing) • Explicit – Memory that needs to be consciously/purposely recalled

Types of Memory • Episodic – Memories of specific events – Personal memories – These involve the frontal lobe • Semantic – General knowledge/factual knowledge

Types of Memory • Short term memory – Working memory – Memory that is used in the present • Long term memory – Memory of past events – Comparable to a hard drive Metamemory – awareness of one’s own memory

Types of Memories Flashbulb memories • High level of importance, high affective response, distinctive • Increase in amount of information that’s recalled • May also incorporate outside details

Memory Storage/Aids • The short term memory can hold 7 +/- 2 items • Chunking – grouping items together to remember them • Rehearsal – practicing or repeating the item to be remembered • Dual coding – storing a memory in more than one modality – Ex. The word “hat” and a mental image of a hat

Memory Aids - Rehearsal • Maintenance rehearsal involves simple repetition • Elaborative rehearsal is more complex, and uses the meaning to better understand the information • Elaborative rehearsal is more effective

Effects in Memory • Primacy effect – tendency to remember an earlier item • Recency effect – tendency to remember a later (more recent) item

Memory Retrieval Recognition i. e. , multiple choice vs. Recall Free recall vs. Serial recall

Memory Retrieval Theories • • • Spreading activation Feature lists Cognitive economy Typicality effect Schema

Spreading Activation • Semantic memory as nodes in a network (set of related concepts) • Every node is connected, issue of how direct or indirect the route is – Ex. table is easily connected to chair, but less immediately connected to Yorkshire terrier. • The connection between table and Yorkie might be “things that have four legs”

Feature Lists • Each concept is a list of features, simple characteristics of the concept – Defining features are stored near the top of the list • “Furniture” is a defining feature of “table” • Feature comparison – For true/false statements, feature lists are compared for overlap

Cognitive Economy • Challenged other theories of memory storage and retrieval • Said that memories should contain as little redundant information as possible • Inheritance – the members of a category contain/inherit the properties of the category itself – Anything true of “animals” is true of dogs, cats, etc.

Typicality Effect • Degree to which an item is seen as typical or a central member of a category – Typicality effect: in “yes or no” tasks, a more typical member of a category is judged faster – Ex. “is an ape a mammal” is judged faster than “is a platypus a mammal? ”

Schema A stored framework or body of knowledge about a topic • E. g. , we have a schema of what happens when we go to a restaurant • We sometimes use these to reconstruct a memory

Schemas - Research • One group read a passage about a fictional character “Gerald Martin’s seizure of power” • A second group read the same paragraph, but with the name “Adolf Hitler” • After a waiting period, participants were shown a list of sentences and had to indicate whether each sentence was exactly the same, nearly the same, or very different from the original story.

Schemas - Research • Participants who read the paragraph with the name Hitler rated sentences as “the same” more frequently when the sentence matched their existing knowledge about Hitler, even when the original passage did not include that information – E. g. , “Hitler was obsessed by the desire to conquer the world” • The effect grew stronger after more time passed

The Seven Sins of Memory (Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft) 1. Transience The tendency to lose access to information across time, whether through forgetting, interference, or retrieval failure

The Seven Sins of Memory (Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft) 2. Absent Mindedness Everyday memory failures in remembering information and intended activities, probably caused by insufficient attention or superficial, automatic processing during coding

The Seven Sins of Memory (Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft) 3. Blocking Temporary retrieval failure or loss of access, such as the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon, in either episodic or semantic memory

The Seven Sins of Memory (Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft) 4. Misattribution Remembering a fact correctly from past experience but attributing it to an incorrect source or context

The Seven Sins of Memory (Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft) 5. Suggestibility The tendency to incorporate information provided by others into your own recollection and memory representation

The Seven Sins of Memory (Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft) 6. Bias The tendency for knowledge, beliefs, and feeling to distort recollection of previous experiences and to affect current and future judgments and memory

The Seven Sins of Memory (Cognition Third Edition, Ashcraft) 7. Persistence The tendency to remember facts or events, including traumatic memories, that one would rather forget. Failure to forget occurs because of intrusive recollections and rumination.

False Memories A false memory is a memory of something that did not happen

Examples of False Memories Research • Study in which participants studied a list of words including “bed, ” “rest, ” “awake, ” and “pillow” (words highly associated with “sleep”) – In immediate free recall, 40% of participants recalled seeing the word “sleep, ” and were confident that it had been on the list

Examples of False Memories Researchers obtained a group of participants and asked the participants’ families for stories about 3 real childhood events and one false one about being lost in a mall. – The families were instructed to make the false story seem plausible; for example, by using the name of a local mall

Examples of False Memories Research • Participants were asked to write more details about the events that they remembered – They wrote further details about all 4 • Later on, participants were told that one of the four stories was made up, and asked to guess which one that was – 80% did guess correctly, but until that time, with no coercion, they believed that the event had happened – However, clarity was lower for this memory than the real events

Memory in Eye Witness Testimony The use of leading questions: Leading questions hint at what the answer should be rather than what it really is

Research on Eye Witness Testimony Loftus • Showed participants a video of a car accident and asked them to estimate the car’s speed – Participants were asked how fast the cars were going when they hit each other. – Other groups had the word “hit” replaced with “smashed, ” “collided, ” “bumped, ” or “contacted”

Eye Witness Testimony - Loftus • Participants who read more extreme verbs (smashed) estimated the speed as being higher • In subsequent studies, participants who read the word “smashed” also recalled more damage

Factors Influencing Accuracy People’s recollections are less influenced by leading questions if they are forewarned that interrogations can cause memory bias

Factors Influencing Accuracy When the passage of time allows memories to fade, people are more likely to misremember

Factors Influencing Accuracy Each time a memory is retrieved, it is reconstructed and then restored; this increases the chances of error

Factors Influencing Accuracy Age – young children and adults over 65 may be more susceptible to influence and misinformation in their efforts to recall

Factors Influencing Accuracy Confidence does not mean accuracy. People can be very confident in false memories

Interference in Memories • Retroactive Interference – New information interfering with old information • Proactive Interference – Old information interfering with the learning of new information

Flaws in Memory impairment “A genuine change or aberration in memory of an experienced event as a function of some later event”

Flaws in Memory Misinformation acceptance – Accepting additional information as being part of the earlier experience without actually remembering the information – The memory becomes stronger over time

Flaws in Memory Overconfidence in memory • Source memory – we have difficulty distinguishing where the information came from – Can be influenced by our general knowledge of the situation – We might remember blowing out birthday candles even if it didn’t actually happen because it fits with our idea of what a birthday involves

Flaws in Memory Processing fluency – How easily the information comes to mind • In the study with sleep related words, the word “sleep” came to mind very easily, and therefore one would feel that it happened too easily and quickly for it to have been imagined

Flaws in Memory Recovered memories • There’s an idea that a traumatic memory is too harmful to remember, and therefore it’s “blocked out” – In reality, traumatic memories are likely to play over and over in one’s mind – PTSD

Biases in Memory Mood • Our mood changes how we interpret what’s around us and form memories • Depressed people are more likely to have negative memories, and are more likely to retrieve negative events

Biases in Memory Expectancy • We remember events as being congruent with our expectations – May be influenced by schemas

Biases in Memory Self consistency • We remember ourselves as being more consistent than we are • In successful relationships, people will remember their initial evaluations of their partners as being more positive

Amnesia Anterograde amnesia • Inability to form new memories • Research suggests that implicit memory is not affected, only explicit – In studies, participants with anterograde amnesia have been given tasks to solve, such as mazes – Although they do not remember having completed the maze before, they solve it more quickly with each trial

Amnesia Retrograde amnesia • Inability to access old memories – This generally applies to episodic memory rather than semantic memory – A person with retrograde amnesia might cover for their memory loss by using schemas

Learning

Conditioning • Habituation – We are less likely to respond to a stimulus when it becomes familiar • Ex. getting used to the sounds of traffic or a light bulb humming

Classical Conditioning Pavlov • Noticed that dogs would salivate when they heard the sounds associated with their feeding • Began ringing a bell immediately before feeding • Dogs then learned to salivate when the bell rang

Conditioning Terms • Unconditioned stimulus (US) and unconditioned response (UR) – Ex. stimulus might be a loud noise, response is flinching – Flinching is an innate response, and therefore unconditioned • Conditioned stimulus (CS) and conditioned response (CR) – Learned response – The CS begins as neutral and does not initially cause the CR

Conditioning • Pairs the US and CS to elicit the CR – i. e. , pairing the US (food) with CS (bell) yielded the CR of salivation

Conditioned Emotional Response I participated in a study where I was hooked up to a sensor monitoring heart rate and a mechanism to give electric shocks • Shocks were given when specific (neutral) pictures were shown • Over time, seeing the picture induced an anxious response because I (or other participants) was expecting the painful shock

Extinction If the CS is repeatedly given without the US, the CR will disappear i. e. , Bell but no food

Instrumental/Operative Conditioning • Given a reward with a proper response – Ex. animal training – the dog gets a treat when it sits The idea behind operant conditioning is that there are consequences for a behavior

Shaping – only giving the reward when the behavior comes closer to a desired result – First reward an animal for walking to a specific corner of a cage – After it stays there all the time, reward it only when facing a specific direction – Add that the animal needs to stand on its hind legs to get the reward

Partial Reinforcement Fixed ratio schedule Vs. Variable ratio/partial reinforcement

Fixed Ratio Schedule • Reward only after action is performed X number of times • Ex. every three times you perform the chore of cleaning the bathroom, you get a new CD

Variable Ratio/Partial Reinforcement • Reward comes after multiple attempts, but this is not a set number • On average, the reward might come every 10 times, but that might mean the activity is performed 5 times one day but 15 times the next

Variable Ratio/Partial Reinforcement • Behavior will be repeated because it is uncertain how many times you need to perform the activity for the reward This is the idea behind slot machines – the reward is big and unpredictable

Aversive Conditioning • Response causes an unpleasant stimulus – Ex. punishment – Escape response – makes the unpleasant stimulus stop – Avoidance response – stops stimulus from happening

Learned Helplessness Seligman Conducted studies with dogs • Dogs were divided into group A and group B • Both groups received shocks, and group A could make them stop for both groups by pressing a button – Group B learned that they had no control over the situation

Learned Helplessness Seligman • Both groups of dogs were later given an avoidance learning task where they had to jump from one compartment to another to avoid shocks – Group A learned quickly, group B put in less effort to learn to avoid the shocks and became passive • Group B had learned previously that they could not control their environments and became passive – believing there was no point in trying