UNIT 2
1. MEMORY
“Memory refers to the psychological processes of acquiring, storing, retaining, and later
retrieving information”.
Human memory involves the ability to both preserve and recover information. However, this
is not a flawless process. Sometimes people forget or misremember things. Other times,
information is not properly encoded in memory in the first place. Memory encompasses the
facts and experiential details that people consciously call to mind as well as ingrained
knowledge that surface without effort or even awareness. It is both a short-term cache of
information and the more permanent record of what one has learned.
Memory problems are often relatively minor annoyances, like forgetting birthdays. However,
they can also be a sign of serious conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and other kinds
of dementia. These conditions affect quality of life and ability to function.
2. STAGES OF MEMORY
1. ENCODING
Encoding is the process by which we place the things that we experience into memory. Unless
information is encoded, it cannot be remembered. Examples include, when you’ve been to a
party where you’ve been introduced to someone and then — maybe only seconds later — you
realize that you do not remember the person’s name. Of course, it is not surprising that you
cannot remember the name, because you probably were distracted and you never encoded the
name to begin with.
Not everything we experience can or should be encoded. We tend to encode things that we
need to remember and not bother to encode things that are irrelevant.
One way to improve our memory is to use better encoding strategies. Some ways of studying
are more effective than others. Research has found that we are better able to remember
information if we encode it in a meaningful way. When we engage in elaborative encoding,
we process new information in ways that make it more relevant or meaningful.
Rather than simply trying to remember, for example, the name of schools and their
characteristics, you might try to relate the information to things you already know. For instance,
you might try to remember the fundamentals of the cognitive school of psychology by linking
the characteristics to the computer model. The cognitive school focuses on how information is
input, processed, and retrieved, and you might think about how computers do pretty much the
same thing. You might also try to organize the information into meaningful units. For instance,
you might link the cognitive school to structuralism because both were concerned with mental
processes. You also might try to use visual cues to help you remember the information. You
might look at the image of Freud and imagine what he looked like as a child. That image might
help you remember that childhood experiences were an important part of Freudian theory. Each
person has his or her unique way of elaborating on information; the important thing is to try to
develop unique and meaningful associations among the materials.
2. STORAGE
This concerns the nature of memory stores, i.e., where the information is stored, how long the
memory lasts (duration), how much can be stored at any time (capacity) and what kind of
information is held.
The way we store information affects the way we retrieve it. There has been a significant
amount of research regarding the differences between Short Term Memory (STM) and Long
Term Memory (LTM).
Most adults can store between 5 and 9 items in their short-term memory. Miller (1956) put
this idea forward, and he called it the magic number 7. He thought that short-term memory
capacity was 7 (plus or minus 2) items because it only had a certain number of “slots” in which
items could be stored.
However, Miller did not specify the amount of information that can be held in each
slot. Indeed, if we can “chunk” information together, we can store a lot more information in
our short-term memory. In contrast, the capacity of LTM is thought to be unlimited.
Information can only be stored for a brief duration in STM (0-30 seconds), but LTM can last a
lifetime.
3. RETRIEVAL
Even when information has been adequately encoded and stored, it does not do us any good if
we cannot retrieve it. Retrieval refers to the process of reactivating information that has been
stored in memory. We have all experienced retrieval failure in the form of the frustrating tip-
of-the-tongue phenomenon, in which we are certain that we know something that we are
trying to recall but cannot quite come up with it.
We are more likely to be able to retrieve items from memory when conditions at retrieval are
similar to the conditions under which we encoded them. Context-dependent learning refers
to an increase in retrieval when the external situation in which information is learned matches
the situation in which it is remembered.
Whereas context-dependent learning refers to a match in the external situation between
learning and remembering, state-dependent learning refers to superior retrieval of memories
when the individual is in the same physiological or psychological state as during encoding.
Research has found, for instance, that animals that learn a maze while under the influence of
one drug tend to remember their learning better when they are tested under the influence of the
same drug than when they are tested without the drug (Jackson, Koek, & Colpaert, 1992). And
research with humans finds that bilinguals remember better when tested in the same language
in which they learned the material (Marian & Kaushanskaya, 2007). Mood states may also
produce state-dependent learning. People who learn information when they are in a bad (rather
than a good) mood find it easier to recall these memories when they are tested while they are
in a bad mood, and vice versa. It is easier to recall unpleasant memories than pleasant ones
when we’re sad, and easier to recall pleasant memories than unpleasant ones when we’re happy
(Bower, 1981; Eich, 2008).
Retroactive interference occurs when learning something new impairs our ability to retrieve
information that was learned earlier. For example, if you have learned to program in one
computer language, and then you learn to program in another similar one, you may start to
make mistakes programming the first language that you never would have made before you
learned the new one. In this case the new memories work backward (retroactively) to influence
retrieval from memory that is already in place.
In contrast to retroactive interference, proactive interference works in a forward
direction. Proactive interference occurs when earlier learning impairs our ability to encode
information that we try to learn later.
3. TYPES OF MEMORY
i. SENSORY MEMORY
Sensory memory refers to the brief storage of sensory information. Sensory memory is a
memory buffer that lasts only very briefly and then, unless it is attended to and passed on for
more processing, is forgotten. The purpose of sensory memory is to give the brain some time
to process the incoming sensations, and to allow us to see the world as an unbroken stream of
events rather than as individual pieces.
Visual sensory memory is known as iconic memory. The psychologist George Sperling (1960)
first studied iconic memory. In his research, Sperling showed participants a display of letters
in rows, similar to that shown in the Figure “Measuring Iconic Memory.” However, the display
lasted only about 50 milliseconds (1/20 of a second). Then, Sperling gave his participants a
recall test in which they were asked to name all the letters that they could remember. On
average, the participants could remember only about one-quarter of the letters that they had
seen.
Measuring Iconic Memory. Sperling showed his participants displays such as this one for only
1/20th of a second. He found that when he cued the participants to report one of the three rows
of letters, they could do it, even if the cue was given shortly after the display had been removed.
The research demonstrated the existence of iconic memory.
Sperling reasoned that the participants had seen all the letters but could remember them only
very briefly, making it impossible for them to report them all. To test this idea, in his next
experiment, he first showed the same letters, but then after the display had been removed, he
signaled to the participants to report the letters from either the first, second, or third row. In
this condition, the participants now reported almost all the letters in that row. This finding
confirmed Sperling’s hunch: participants had access to all of the letters in their iconic
memories, and if the task was short enough, they were able to report on the part of the display
he asked them to. The “short enough” is the length of iconic memory, which turns out to be
about 250 milliseconds (¼ of a second).
Auditory sensory memory is known as echoic memory. In contrast to iconic memories, which
decay very rapidly, echoic memories can last as long as four seconds (Cowan, Lichty, & Grove,
1990). This is convenient as it allows you — among other things — to remember the words
that you said at the beginning of a long sentence when you get to the end of it, and to take notes
on your psychology professor’s most recent statement even after he or she has finished saying
it.
In some people iconic memory seems to last longer, a phenomenon known as eidetic
imagery (or photographic memory) in which people can report details of an image over long
periods of time. These people, who often suffer from psychological disorders such as autism,
claim that they can “see” an image long after it has been presented, and can often report
accurately on that image. There is also some evidence for eidetic memories in hearing; some
people report that their echoic memories persist for unusually long periods of time. The
composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may have possessed eidetic memory for music, because
even when he was very young and had not yet had a great deal of musical training, he could
listen to long compositions and then play them back almost perfectly (Solomon, 1995).
ii. SHORT-TERM MEMORY
Most of the information that gets into sensory memory is forgotten, but information that we
turn our attention to, with the goal of remembering it, may pass into short-term memory. Short-
term memory (STM) is the place where small amounts of information can be temporarily kept
for more than a few seconds but usually for less than one minute (Baddeley, Vallar, & Shallice,
1990). Information in short-term memory is not stored permanently but rather becomes
available for us to process, and the processes that we use to make sense of, modify, interpret,
and store information in STM are known as working memory.
To accomplish this difficult task you need to use a variety of skills. You clearly need to use
STM, as you must keep the letters in storage until you are asked to list them. However, you
also need a way to make the best use of your available attention and processing. For instance,
you might decide to use a strategy of repeat the letters twice, then quickly solve the next
problem, and then repeat the letters twice again including the new one. Keeping this strategy
(or others like it) going is the role of working memory’s central executive — the part of
working memory that directs attention and processing. The central executive will make use of
whatever strategies seem to be best for the given task. For instance, the central executive will
direct the rehearsal process, and at the same time direct the visual cortex to form an image of
the list of letters in memory. You can see that although STM is involved, the processes that we
use to operate on the material in memory are also critical.
Short-term memory is limited in both the length and the amount of information it can hold.
Peterson and Peterson (1959) found that when people were asked to remember a list of three-
letter strings and then were immediately asked to perform a distracting task (counting backward
by threes), the material was quickly forgotten (see Figure 9.6, “STM Decay”), such that by 18
seconds it was virtually gone.
One way to prevent the decay of information from short-term memory is to use working
memory to rehearse it. Maintenance rehearsal is the process of repeating information
mentally or out loud with the goal of keeping it in memory. We engage in maintenance
rehearsal to keep something that we want to remember (e.g., a person’s name, email address,
or phone number) in mind long enough to write it down, use it, or potentially transfer it to long-
term memory.
The digit span of most adults is between five and nine digits, with an average of about seven.
The cognitive psychologist George Miller (1956) referred to “seven plus or minus two” pieces
of information as the magic number in short-term memory. But if we can only hold a maximum
of about nine digits in short-term memory, then how can we remember larger amounts of
information than this? For instance, how can we ever remember a 10-digit phone number long
enough to dial it?
One way we are able to expand our ability to remember things in STM is by using a memory
technique called chunking. Chunking is the process of organizing information into smaller
groupings (chunks), thereby increasing the number of items that can be held in STM. For
instance, try to remember this string of 12 letters:
XOFCBANNCVTM
You probably won’t do that well because the number of letters is more than the magic number
of seven.
Now try again with this one:
CTVCBCTSNHBO
Experts rely on chunking to help them process complex information. Herbert Simon and
William Chase (1973) showed chess masters and chess novices various positions of pieces on
a chessboard for a few seconds each. The experts did a lot better than the novices in
remembering the positions because they were able to see the “big picture.” They didn’t have
to remember the position of each of the pieces individually, but chunked the pieces into several
larger layouts. But when the researchers showed both groups random chess positions —
positions that would be very unlikely to occur in real games — both groups did equally poorly,
because in this situation the experts lost their ability to organize the layouts (see Figure 9.7,
“Possible and Impossible Chess Positions”). The same occurs for basketball. Basketball players
recall actual basketball positions much better than do nonplayers, but only when the positions
make sense in terms of what is happening on the court, or what is likely to happen in the near
future, and thus can be chunked into bigger units (Didierjean & Marmèche, 2005).
iii. LONG TERM MEMORY
If information makes it past short term-memory it may enter long-term memory
(LTM), memory storage that can hold information for days, months, and years. The capacity
of long-term memory is large, and there is no known limit to what we can remember (Wang,
Liu, & Wang, 2003). We want to remember the name of the new boy in the class, the name of
the movie we saw last week, and the material for our upcoming psychology test. Psychological
research has produced a great deal of knowledge about long-term memory, and this research
can be useful as you try to learn and remember new material.
Long-term memory is a crucial component of human memory storage, characterized by its
capacity to retain information for an extended period, ranging from days to years, or even a
lifetime. Unlike short-term memory, which has limited capacity and duration, long-term
memory offers virtually limitless storage potential. Long-term memory encompasses various
types of information, including facts, experiences, skills, and semantic knowledge. It is further
subdivided into explicit (declarative) and implicit (non-declarative) memory.
Various factors can influence long-term memory formation and retrieval, including attention,
rehearsal, and meaningfulness of the information, emotional arousal, and context.
Neuroscientists study long-term memory using techniques such as brain imaging (e.g.,
functional MRI), lesion studies, and experiments involving amnesic patients to understand the
underlying neural mechanisms and structures involved in memory processing.
Memories that are stored in LTM are not isolated but rather are linked together
into categories— networks of associated memories that have features in common with each
other. Forming categories, and using categories to guide behaviour, is a fundamental part of
human nature. Associated concepts within a category are connected through spreading
activation, which occurs when activating one element of a category activates other associated
elements. For instance, because tools are associated in a category, reminding people of the
word “screwdriver” will help them remember the word “wrench.” In addition, when people
have learned lists of words that come from different categories (e.g., as in “Retrieval
Demonstration”), they do not recall the information haphazardly. If they have just remembered
the word “wrench,” they are more likely to remember the word “screwdriver” next than they
are to remember the word “dahlia,” because the words are organized in memory by category
and because “dahlia” is activated by spreading activation from “wrench”.
4. MEASUREMENT OF RETENTION
1. Recall:
Recall is a method used for measuring retention which involves the verbal reproduction or
repetition of learnt material. It is basically of two types – serial recall and free recall. In serial
recall learnt material is reproduced often in the order in which it was learnt or following a
specific order. Many of us can recall certain material only in a particular order. For example,
if we have to locate a name in the telephone directory or word in the dictionary starting with
‘Res-‘ we cannot locate it instantly.
We mentally say the alphabets starting from A up to R and flip the pages making sure that R
comes after letters O, P, Q and before letters S,T and so on. Similarly, there are people who
when asked the question what is twelve multiplied by seven equivalent to (12 X 7 =?) tend to
go over the arithmetic table of twelve from the beginning and only then can recall the correct
answer.
In free recall, however, chunks or pieces of learnt material may be recalled freely without
following any specific order. For example, every one may not go through the whole arithmetic
table to recall the answer of twelve multiplied by seven. Some may reproduce the answer
instantly, i.e. without following a specific order.
2. Recognition:
Recognition is evidenced when recall is either weak or absent. For instance, though you have
been passing through a particular street every evening you may not recall that there was a
building at a particular spot, but when you find a vacant land (because the building has been
demolished) you will suddenly recognise that there was some structure or building and the land
was not vacant earlier.
This shows that the image of a structure or a building has been retained and present all along
but it needed a different experience, vacant land, to make you remember that there was a
building once. A classical example of this process is seen in multiple choice test.
This test is often used to measure retention through recognition. If you are asked in which
country the leaning tower is located, you may not remember. But if you are asked to choose
your answer from a) England, b) France, c) Italy and d) Germany, you will immediately
recognize Italy as the answer. This shows that unless you encounter the word, event or
experience or it is presented before you, recognition does not take place. Thus, we see that in
this type of retention some sort of a suggestion or clue is presented, unlike recall.
3. Saving:
The saving method is also called method of relearning. Though we may not recall or recognise
the material learnt once, we realise that if we learn it again we can pick it up very soon,
understand and master it. For instance, a student who learns his lessons perfectly may be unable
to recall them six or seven months later. But when he starts to relearn or revise the lesson he
will be able to grasp and reproduce everything with ease.
He may also consume much less time to do so, compared to what he did the first time when he
learnt his lessons. H. E. Burtt tried to demonstrate this method. He taught Greek to a fifteen-
month old infant by reading twenty lines of Greek poetry to him over and over at various
intervals until he was three years old.
At this point, however, poetry reading was discontinued and for the next five years the child
had no contact with Greek. Later, at the age of eight, he was given Greek poetry to learn. Some
of the lines were what he had learnt as an infant and others were new.
He had apparently forgotten his experience with Greek as a baby; he could not recall or
recognise any of the lines. However, the specific lines which had been read to him in infancy
were much easier for him to learn than those that were completely new. Thus, we see that recall,
recognition, and saving methods are very good yardsticks to measure retention.
5. FACTORS AFFECTING RETENTION
Seven main factors that influence retention. The factors are: 1. Repetition or Practice 2.
Meaningful Learning 3. Whole Vs. Part Learning 4. Massed and Spaced Practice 5. Motivation
6. Feedback 7. Passage of Time.
1. Repetition or Practice:
Learning a task involves repeating acts related to that particular task. Many tasks are such that
one can learn perfectly only by repeating them. For example, if one wants to learn typing or
riding a bicycle, one has to repeat the various acts involved in these skills continuously until
one learns these skills perfectly. It has been shown that the greater the number of times we
repeat or practice, the better is our retention.
2. Meaningful Learning:
Learning often involves repeating a particular response or a given task. This type of learning,
through repetition, is demonstrated when a child repeats mechanically his geography lessons
or arithmetic tables. Similarly, a three or four-year old child who simply repeats nursery rhymes
while knowing little about stars and sky, says, “Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder
what you are …………. in the sky.”
This method of learning is called rote learning. Rote learning makes little or no sense to the
learner because the repetition is done without understanding what one is repeating. However,
it was found that by mere rote learning one may learn particular material but may not be able
to retain it for a long period. Further, the child may not remember the learnt material for very
long and even if it remembers this will contribute little or nothing to its intellectual
development.
Hence, a better way of learning is to learn by paying attention to the meaning and significance
of the matter that has to be learnt. It has been proved experimentally that it is easier to learn
and remember something if you understand its overall meaning and can relate it to the matter
you already know. This type of learning where one also learns the meaning associated with the
material helps in both storage and remembering.
In learning a poem or a passage, for example, it is always better to read it, understand the whole
matter and have a clear idea of what it is. With such understanding and clarity one can learn it
rapidly, retain it for a longer time and remember it when it is necessary. This method makes
learning more meaningful unlike the rote learning method, and results in better memory.
3. Whole vs. Part Learning:
Psychologists studying this phenomenon have tried to experiment and see whether learning the
whole material of a given task would result in better retention or learning it in parts. For
example, learning a poem involves repeating the whole poem until the poem is learnt, while
the part-method of learning would mean learning the poem stanza by stanza.
Whole learning is usually more efficient than learning bit by bit or in parts and then trying to
put them together. However, the question of learning either by whole or part-method depends
upon the type of material, length of material and the way it is organised. For example, students
of English literature may divide poems and plays into parts and learn them, but students of
trigonometry or chemistry may be unable to arrive at an answer if they break the series of
mathematical or chemical equations.
Thus, in the latter case the material has to be learnt as a whole. Learning by parts is effective if
the parts are logical sub-units of the whole. The reader may see in this method of part-learning
that it is again the meaningfulness of the material which enhances the effectiveness of learning.
4. Massed and Spaced Practice:
The method of learning in which the matter is learnt in one continuous sitting with no periods
of rest between the practices is called the massed method of practice or learning. In contrast to
this is the method called the distributed method of practice or the spaced method of learning
where the matter is learnt with intervals in between the sittings.
In other words, practice in this method of learning is spaced or distributed over a period of time
with intervals or rest periods during the learning session. Ebbinghaus found that in learning
nonsense syllables, each practice session of fifteen minutes distributed over four days resulted
in effective learning and retention compared to one hour of continuous practice session in
learning the same matter. However, the distribution of the matter and length of interval has to
be carefully planned and monitored lest the effectiveness of the method is lost.
5. Motivation:
We often experience that when our learning is accompanied by a motive or purpose we are able
to retain that particular matter for a longer time. Thus, repetition or practice accompanied by
the intent to learn is more effective than mechanical repetitions because we become more
receptive if we know that the matter will be useful to us later.
For example, a student who is least interested in the subject of history and has no intention of
using the same may learn and reproduce everything in the examination and then forget
everything soon after and even here his retention may not be very effective. Thus motivation
can play an important role in strengthening or weakening the process of retention.
6. Feedback:
While performing a task or learning a particular material, if we stop and check at periodic
intervals to see the results (e.g., how many correct responses one has made or how many errors
have been committed), then this knowledge of results or feedback is likely to provide
encouragement, correction and some sort of a reinforcement. This may subsequently lead to
effective learning and, therefore, to effective retention. This method of stopping, looking and
then proceeding is sometimes discussed under the heading “Knowledge of Results”.
7. Passage of Time:
The time that has lapsed and the activities we perform in between learning and recalling are
said to exert a great influence over retention. This becomes evident, for instance, when we
apologies for forgetting something very important by saying, “I do remember, it was in my
mind all the while but it just went out of my mind”. Thus, activities, ideas, events, etc.
occurring in between learning and recalling may act as interfering variables and decrease the
probability of successful retention.
In a study conducted relating to this, it was found that sleeping (dreamless sleep) immediately
after learning led to better retention of learnt matter. J.C. Jenkins and Dallenbach, in their
experiment, found that after learning ten nonsense syllables people who had gone to sleep could
recall six, and those who stayed awake could recall only one. This, perhaps, may have occurred
because sleep is a state with relatively no or few interfering factors acting on the individual’s
mind.
6. TECHNIQUES OF IMPROVING MEMORY
Improving memory from a psychological perspective involves understanding how memory
works and employing techniques that leverage the brain's natural processes for encoding,
storing, and retrieving information. Here are some techniques backed by psychological
research:
1. Visualization and Imagery: Creating vivid mental images of information can enhance
memory encoding and retrieval. By associating information with memorable visual images,
you create stronger neural connections that facilitate recall.
2. Mnemonics: Mnemonics are memory aids that use techniques like acronyms, acrostics, or
visual imagery to organize and remember information more effectively. Mnemonic devices tap
into the brain's ability to recall information based on patterns and associations.
3. Chunking: Chunking involves breaking down large amounts of information into smaller,
manageable chunks. By organizing information into meaningful groups, you can improve
encoding and retrieval processes. For example, remembering a long string of numbers by
grouping them into smaller sets.
4. Repetition and Practice: Repetition strengthens memory by reinforcing neural pathways
associated with the information you're trying to remember. Spaced repetition, which involves
reviewing information at increasing intervals over time, is particularly effective for long-term
retention.
5. Elaborative Encoding: Connecting new information to existing knowledge enhances
memory consolidation. When you elaborate on new information by relating it to concepts you
already understand, you create more elaborate memory traces that are easier to retrieve later.
6. Contextual Encoding: Memory is often tied to the context in which information is learned.
Retrieval cues, such as environmental cues or emotional states, can help trigger memories
associated with specific contexts. Studying or practicing in environments similar to where
you'll need to recall the information can enhance memory retrieval.
7. Sleep and Rest: Quality sleep is essential for memory consolidation. During sleep, the brain
processes and integrates new information, strengthening memory traces. Adequate rest also
helps maintain cognitive function and attention, which are crucial for effective encoding and
retrieval.
8. Mindfulness and Attention Control: Paying attention to information during encoding is
critical for memory formation. Practicing mindfulness techniques can improve attention
control and reduce distractions, allowing for better encoding of important information.
9. Dual Coding: Dual coding involves representing information both verbally and visually.
Combining verbal and visual representations enhances memory encoding by engaging multiple
cognitive processes simultaneously.
10. Healthy Lifestyle: Physical exercise, a balanced diet, and stress management contribute to
overall brain health and optimal memory function. Regular exercise increases blood flow to
the brain and promotes the release of neurotransmitters associated with memory and learning.