Cognitive Psychology

Memory Process

• Encoding refers to how you transform a physical, sensory input into a kind of representation that can be
placed into memory.
• Storage refers to how you retain encoded information in memory.
• Retrieval refers to how you gain access to information stored in memory.

SHORT-TERM STORAGE
In Conrad and colleagues (1964) experiments, participants were visually presented with several series of six
letters at the rate of 0.75 seconds per letter. The letters used in the various lists were B, C, F, M, N, P, S, T, V,
and X.
➢ Immediately after the letters were presented visually, errors tended to be based on acoustic
confusability. In other words, instead of recalling the letters they were supposed to recall, participants
substituted letters that sounded like the correct letters. Thus, they were likely to confuse F for S, B for
V, P for B, and so on.
➢ Another group of participants may simply listened to single letters in a setting that had noise in the
background and then immediately reported each letter. Participants showed the same pattern of
confusability in the listening task as in the visual memory task (Conrad, 1964).
Baddeley (1966) argued that short – term memory relies primarily on an acoustic rather than a semantic code.
➢ He compared recall performance for lists of acoustically confusable words – such as map, cab, mad, man,
and cap – with lists of acoustically distinct words such as cow, pit, day, rig and bun. He found that
performance was much worse for the visual presentation of acoustically similar words.
➢ He also compared performance for lists of semantically similar words – such as big, long, large, wide and
broad – with performance for lists of semantically dissimilar words – such as old, foul, late, hot and
strong.

There was little difference in recall between the two lists.

Encoding in short – term memory appears to be primarily acoustic, but there may be some secondary semantic
encoding as well. In addition, we sometimes temporarily encode information visually as well but visual encoding
appears to be even more fleeting. We are more prone to forgetting visual information that acoustic information.

LONG-TERM STORAGE
Most information stored in long – term memory is primarily semantically (meanings of words) encoded.
Participants in a research study learned a list of 41 words. Five minutes after learning took place, participants
were given a recognition.
➢ Included in the recognition test were distracters - items that appear to be legitimate choices but that
are not correct alternatives.
➢ Participants falsely recognized an average of 1.83 of the synonyms but only an average of 1.05 of the
unrelated words. This result indicated a greater likelihood of semantic confusion.

Another way to show semantic encoding is to use sets of semantically related test words, rather than distracters.
Participants learned a list of 60 words that included 15 animals, 15 professions, 15 vegetables, and 15 names of
people.
➢ Successive recalls from the same category did occur much more often than would be expected by chance
occurrence. Participants were remembering words by clustering them into categories.
Encoding of information in long – term memory is not exclusively semantic.
There also is evidence for visual encoding
➢ Participants in a study received 16 drawing of objects, including four items of clothing, four animals, four
vehicles, and four items of furniture
 ➢ The investigator manipulated not only the semantic category but also the visual category
➢ The order of participants’’ responses showed effects of both semantic and visual categories. These
results suggested that participants were encoding visual as well as semantic information

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies have found that the brain areas that are involved in
encoding can be, but do not necessarily have to be, involved in retrieval.
In addition to semantic and visual information, acoustic information can be encoded in long-term memory
(Nelson & Rothbart, 1972).

Transfer of Information from Short Term Memory (STM) to Long – Term Memory (LGM)
When competing information interferes with our storing information, we speak of interference.
When we forget facts just because time passes, we speak of decay.
Some forms of non-declarative memory are highly volatile and decay quickly (e.g. priming and habituation).

Entrance into long-term declarative memory may occur through a variety of processes.
➢ One method of accomplishing this goal is by deliberately attending to information to comprehend it.
➢ Another is by making connections or associations between the new information and what we already
know and understand. This process of integrating new information into stored information is called
consolidation.

Stress generally impairs the memory functioning. However, stress also can help enhance the consolidation of
memory through the release of hormones (Park et al., 2008; Roozendaal, 2002, 2003).
Metamemory strategies involve reflecting on our own memory processes with a view to improving our memory.
➢ Metamemory strategies are just one component of metacognition, our ability to think about and control
our own processes of thought and ways of enhancing our thinking.
Rehearsal. One technique people use for keeping information active is rehearsal, the repeated recitation of an
item. The effects of such rehearsal are termed practice effects. Rehearsal may be overt, in which case it is usually
aloud and obvious to anyone watching. Or it may be covert, in which case it is silent and hidden.

Elaborative Rehearsal— In elaborative rehearsal, the individual somehow elaborates the items to be
remembered. Such rehearsal makes the items either more meaningfully integrated into what the person already
knows or more meaningfully connected to one another and therefore more memorable.
Maintenance Rehearsal— In maintenance rehearsal, the individual simply repetitiously rehearses the items to
be repeated. Such rehearsal temporarily maintains information in short-term memory without transferring the
information to long-term memory.
It will also be helpful to use mnemonic techniques, but repeating words over and over again is not enough to
achieve effective rehearsal.
The Spacing Effect. Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885) noticed that the distribution of study (memory rehearsal)
sessions over time affects the consolidation of information in long-term memory.
➢ Much more recently, researchers have offered support for Ebbinghaus’s observation as a result of their
studies of people’s long-term recall of Spanish vocabulary words the subjects had learned 8 years earlier
(Bahrick & Phelps, 1987).
➢ Their memories tend to be good when they use distributed practice, learning in which various sessions
are spaced over time.
➢ Their memories for information are not as good when the information is acquired through massed
practice, learning in which sessions are crammed together in a very short space of time.
➢ To maximize the effect (so called as spacing effect) on long-term recall, the spacing should ideally be
distributed over months, rather than days or weeks.
Sleep and Memory Consolidation. Of particular importance to memory is the amount of rapid eye movement
(REM) sleep, a particular stage of sleep characterized by dreaming and increased brainwave activity, a person
receives.
➢ Specifically, disruptions in REM sleep patterns the night after learning reduced the amount of
improvement on a visual discrimination task that occurred relative to normal sleep.
 ➢ The positive influence of sleep on memory consolidation is seen across age groups (Hornung et al., 2007).
People who suffer from insomnia, a disorder that deprives the sufferer of much-needed sleep, have
trouble with memory consolidation (Backhaus et al., 2006).

Neuroscience and Memory Consolidation. The hippocampus acts as a rapid learning system (McClelland, et al.,
1995). It temporarily maintains new experiences until they can be appropriately assimilated into the more
gradual neocortical representation system of the brain.

ORGANIZATION OF INFORMATION
Mnemonic devices are specific techniques to help you memorize lists of words (Best, 2003). Essentially, such
devices add meaning to otherwise meaningless or arbitrary lists of items. Here are some of these techniques
that are most frequently used:

➢ In categorical clustering, organize a list of items into a set of categories.

➢ In interactive images, imagine (as vividly as possible) the objects represented by words you have to
remember as if the objects are interacting with each other in some active way.
➢ In the pegword system, associate each word with a word on a previously memorized list and form an
interactive
➢ Image between the two words.
➢ In the method of loci, visualize walking around an area with distinctive, well- known landmarks and link
the various landmarks to specific items to be remembered.
➢ In using acronyms, devise a word or expression in which each of its letters stands for a certain other
word or concept.
➢ In using acrostics, form a sentence, rather than a single word, to help one remember new words.
➢ In using the keyword system, create an interactive image that links the sound and meaning of a foreign
word with the sound and meaning of a familiar word.

RETRIEVAL
Retrieval from Short – Term Memory
Parallel or Serial Processing?

➢ Parallel processing refers to the simultaneous handling of multiple operations. As applied to short-term
memory, the items stored in short-term memory would be retrieved all at once, not one at a time.
➢ Serial processing refers to operations being done one after another.
Exhaustive or Self-Terminating Processing?
➢ Exhaustive serial processing implies that the participant always checks the test digit against all digits in
the positive set, even if a match were found partway through the list.
➢ Self-terminating serial processing implies that the participant would check the test digit against only
those digits needed to make a response.
Retrieval from Long – Term Memory

Categorization dramatically can affect retrieval. Investigators had participants learn lists of categorized words
(Bower et al., 1969). Either the words were presented in random order or they were presented in the form of a
hierarchical tree that showed the organization of the words. Participants given hierarchical presentation
recalled 65% of the words. In contrast, recall was just 19% by participants given the words in random order.

An interesting study by Khader and colleagues (2005) demonstrated that material that is processed in certain
cortical areas during perception also activates those same areas again during long-term memory recall.
Another problem that arises when studying memory is figuring out why we sometimes have trouble retrieving
information. Cognitive psychologists often have difficulty finding a way to distinguish between availability and
accessibility of items.
➢ Availability is the presence of information stored in long-term memory.
➢ Accessibility is the degree to which we can gain access to the available information. Memory
performance depends on the accessibility of the information to be remembered.