Memory

Memory: The capacity to retain and later retrieve information.

Encoding: The process through which information is converted into a form that can be
entered into memory.
Storage: The process through which information is retained in memory.
Retrieval: The process through which information stored in memory is located.

Information-Processing Approach: An approach to understanding human memory

that emphasizes the encoding, storage, and later retrieval of information.
Process of Memory
Sensory memory
● first encountered by a stimulus
● holds impressions briefly
● but long enough so that series of perceptions are
psychologically continuous
● Memory trace is an assumed change in the
nervous system that reflects the impression by a
stimulus.
● “held” in sensory registers.
● Sensory register - holds information briefly, but
long to processed further.
● sensory register for every sense.
Icon - mental representation of a visual stimulus

Iconic memory - sensory register that briefly holds mental representations of visual

stimuli.

Duration: Very short — about 200 to 500 milliseconds

Capacity: Large but fleeting (you can momentarily “see” a whole scene)

Type of input: Visual (images, shapes, letters, movement)

accurate photographic memories.

Participants were trained beforehand to understand the cue-tone
mapping:
● High tone : top row
● Medium tone : middle row
● Low tone : bottom row
Sperling found that participants were able to recall the letters as
long as the tone was sounded within one-third of a second of the
letter display.
When the interval was extended to over one-third of a second, the
accuracy of the letter reports declined significantly, and anything
over one-second made it virtually impossible to recall the letters.
Echo - mental representation of an auditory stimulus

Echoic memory - sensory register that briefly holds mental representations of auditory

stimuli.

can last for several seconds, many times longer than the traces of visual stimuli

Duration: Longer than iconic memory — about 2 to 4 seconds

Capacity: Relatively large (you can momentarily retain a sequence of sounds)

Type of input: Auditory (speech, music, environmental sounds)

When does filtration happen?
Participants were presented with a different list of digits in each ear. When asked to report the digits they
heard, participants tended to report all digits presented to one ear first and then the digits reported to the
second ear, regardless of the order in which the digits were presented.
When asked to report the digits they heard in the order they were presented, accuracy dropped. This study
suggested that information is filtered according to basic characteristics of the stimuli (e.g., the ear in which it
was presented).
Participants first reported the information from one ear and then switched filters in order to report the digits
presented to the second ear. Therefore, when required to report the digits in the order they were presented,
participants had to continuously switch filters, which impacted accuracy.
 if 496 were presented to one ear and 852 to the other ear, recall would be 496852 rather
than 489562. Note that various kinds of stimuli (e.g., letters, words) can be used with the
dichotic listening task.
Dichotic listening

Cherry (1953) also carried out studies using a shadowing task, in which one auditory
message had to be shadowed (repeated back out aloud) while a second auditory message
was presented to the other ear.
Very little information seemed to be obtained from the second or non-attended message.
Listeners rarely noticed even when that message was spoken in a foreign language or in
reversed speech. In contrast, physical changes (e.g., the insertion of a pure tone) were
usually detected, and listeners noticed the sex of the speaker and the intensity of sound of
unattended messages.
The cocktail party effect refers to a phenomenon wherein the brain focuses a person's attention on a
particular stimulus, usually auditory. This focus excludes a range of other stimuli from conscious
awareness, as when a partygoer follows a single conversation in a noisy room.

This ability is widely distributed among humans, with most listeners more or less easily able to
portion the totality of sound detected by the ears into distinct streams, and subsequently to decide
which streams are most pertinent, excluding all or most others.
Short-Term Memory

● hold information for up to a minute or so

after the trace of the stimulus decays

● Traces fade if not rehearsed

● image tends to fade significantly after 10 to

12 seconds

● Rehearsal helps in storing it permanently

STM - Contd.,
Serial-position effect - first and last items in a series; first items are rehearsed frequently;
last items are rehearsed most recently

Primacy effect - initial items in a series of items

Recency effect - last items in a series of items.

Miller’s magical number

1. Miller proposed that short-term memory (STM) can hold about: 7 items (plus or
minus 2)
2. roughly 5 to 9 units of information
3. Chunking (Chunking is a method of facilitating short-term memory by grouping
individual pieces of information into larger, more familiar)
 Long-term memory
● relatively permanent storage.
● storehouse of information containing names, dates, places,
of the past

● Schema - way of mentally representing the world.

● It would be a belief or an expectation, that influence

perception of persons, objects, and situations.

● Unknown about how much can be stored

Explicit memory
Conscious memory

Memory that clearly and distinctly expresses specific

information

also called as declarative memory

autobiographical or refer to general knowledge

Episodic memory - events experienced by a person or that take

place in the person’s presence.

Semantic memory - general knowledge, as opposed to episodic

memory
Implicit Memory
Memory that is suggested (implied) but not plainly expressed,
as illustrated in the things that people do but do not state clearly.

also referred to as non-declarative or procedural memory.

how to perform a task, doing something

involve both cognitive and physical skills

they reveal habits; and involve the effects of conditioning

persist even when we have not used them for many years
Retrospective memory - past events, activities, and learning experiences, as shown by
explicit (episodic and semantic) and implicit memories.

Prospective memory - perform an act in the future, as at a certain time or when a certain
event occurs. (to do list). Habitual tasks, Event-based tasks and Time-based tasks
[Link]
Forgetting

● failure to either recall or retain

information into present consciousness.
● failure to remember material previously
learned
● Three basic memory tasks have been used
by psychologists to measure forgetting:
recognition, recall, and relearning
Recognition
● easiest memory task
● identification of objects or events encountered
● failure to recognize something we have
experienced
● Eg. multiple-choice tests are easier than fill-in-
the-blank or essay tests
● Can you identify the place or year by seeing an
album?
Recall
● Retrieval or reconstruction of learned

material.

● Recall is more difficult than recognition

● Encoding specificity principle: Memory

improves when context matches

 Relearning
● third method of measuring retention

● E.g., Capital of india, national bird

● Method of savings - A measure of retention in which

the difference between the number of repetitions

originally required to learn a list and the number of

repetitions required to relearn the list after a certain

amount of time has elapsed is calculated.

Interference Theory

● Forget material in short-term and long-term memory because newly learned material

interferes with it

● The view that we may forget stored material because other learning interferes with it

● Retroactive interference - The interference of new learning with the ability to retrieve

material learned previously.

● Proactive interference - The interference of old learning with the ability to retrieve

material learned recently.

Elaborative rehearsal

If the information is given meaning (elaborative rehearsal) it is transferred from STM to LTM.

Elaborative rehearsal involves linking new information in a meaningful way with information already stored in long-term
memory.

Instead of just repeating something over and over, you connect new information to something you already know or create
associations that make it personally relevant.

Simply put, elaborative rehearsal is all about giving new information meaning and context, which makes it stick better in
your memory.

For example, if you’re trying to remember someone’s name, you might connect it to someone else you know with the same
name, imagine a vivid picture involving their name, or think about what their name means.
Maintenance rehearsal is a psychological technique used to memorize information for a short period. It
usually involves repeating information without absorbing its meaning or connecting it to other information,
meaning that it is less likely to be stored in long-term memory.
● Infantile amnesia - Inability to recall events that occurred prior to the age of 3 or so; also
termed childhood amnesia.
● Anterograde amnesia - Failure to remember events that occurred after physical trauma
because of the effects of the trauma.
● Retrograde amnesia - Failure to remember events that occurred prior to physical trauma
because of the effects of the trauma.
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