MEMORY NOTES

Memory is an active system that receives information from the senses, puts that information into a usable
form, organizes it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage (adapted from
Baddeley, 1996, 2003).
THREE PROCESSES OF MEMORY
Putting It In: Encoding The first process in the memory system is to get sensory information (sight, sound,
etc.) into a form that the brain can use. This is called encoding. Encoding is the set of mental operations
that people perform on sensory information to convert that information into a form that is usable in the
brain’s storage systems. For example, when people hear a sound, their ears turn the vibrations in the air
into neural messages from the auditory nerve (transduction), which make it possible for the brain to
interpret that sound
Keeping It In: Storage The next step in memory is to hold on to the information for some period of time in
a process called storage. The period of time will actually be of different lengths, depending on the system
of memory being used. For example, in one system of memory, people hold on to information just long
enough to work with it, about 20 seconds or so. In another system of memory, people hold on to
information more or less permanently
Getting It Out: Retrieval The biggest problem many people have is retrieval, that is, getting the information
they know they have out of storage.
PARALLEL DISTRIBUTION MODEL
1. It was given by Rumelhart and Mcclelland (1996,2001) . Its called neural network model
representing connections .
2. Memory is a simultaneous process, creation and storage of memory takes place across the series of
mental neural network
Stretched across the brain .
3. Simultaneous processing allows people to retrieve different aspects of memory all at once.
4. This facilitates much faster reaction and decisions. Information processing takes place through the
interactions of many simple processing units which are called nodes. Each node sends exhibitory
and inhibitory signals to the units .
5. The nodes in the neural network have connections with other nodes and are programmed to
transmit exhibitory and inhibitory signals . These nodes concepts and information , when they are
activated the input received reaches the threshold.
6. Research by rumelhart and mcclelland ( phone notes ).
INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL
1. Sensory memory is the first system in the process of memory, the point at which information
enters the nervous system through the sensory systems—eyes, ears, and so on.
OR
sensory memory the very first stage of memory, where raw information from the senses is held
for a very brief period of time.

Information is encoded into sensory memory as neural messages in the nervous system.
(Transduction ), As long as those neural messages are traveling through the system, it can be
said that people have a “memory” for that information that can be accessed if needed.
There are two kinds of sensory memory that have been studied extensively. They are the iconic
(visual) and echoic (auditory) sensory systems.

ICONIC MEMORY -The visual sensory system is often called iconic memory, and it only lasts for a
fraction of a second. Icon is the Greek word for “image.” Iconic memory was studied in several
classic experiments by George Sperling (1960), as shown in the Classic Studies in Psychology
feature.
[Link] real life, information that has just entered iconic memory will be pushed out very quickly by
new information, a process called masking (Cowan, 1988). Research suggests that after only a
quarter of a second, old information is replaced by new information.
[Link] it is rare, some people do have what is properly called eidetic imagery, or the ability
to access a visual sensory memory over a long period of time. People with eidetic imagery
ability might be able to look quickly at a page in a book, then by focusing on a blank wall or
piece of paper, “read” the words from the image that still lingers in their sensory memory.
3. The eyes make tiny little movements called microsaccades that keep vision from adapting to a
constant visual stimulus, so that what is stared at steadily doesn’t slowly disappear. Iconic
memory helps the visual system view surroundings as continuous and stable in spite of these
saccadic movements. It also allows enough time for the brain stem to decide if the information
is important enough to be brought into consciousness.

Echoic sensory Memory Another type of sensory system is echoic memory, or the brief memory
of something a person has heard.
1. The duration of echoic memory is about 4 seconds.
2. Echoic memory is very useful when a person wants to have meaningful conversations with
others. It allows the person to remember what someone said just long enough to recognize
the meaning of a phrase.
3. As with iconic memory, it also allows people to hold on to incoming auditory information
long enough for the lower brain centers to determine whether processing by higher brain
centers is needed.

SHORT TERM MEMORY

1. If an incoming sensory message is important enough to enter consciousness, that message

will move from sensory memory to the next process of memory, called short-term memory
(STM). Unlike sensory memory, short-term memories may be held for up to 30 seconds and
possibly longer through maintenance rehearsal.
2. selective attention: how information enters- Selective attention is the ability to focus on
only one stimulus from among all sensory input (Broadbent, 1958). It is through selective
attention that information enters our STM system.
3. Broadbent’s original filter theory, a kind of “bottleneck” occurs between the processes of
sensory memory and short-term memory. Only a stimulus that is “important” enough
(determined by a kind of “pre-analysis” accomplished by the attention centers in the brain
stem) will make it past the bottleneck to be consciously analyzed for meaning in STM. When
a person is thinking actively about information, that information is said to be conscious and
is also in STM.
4. “cocktail-party effect” that has been long established in studies of perception and attention
(Bronkhorst, 2000; Cherry, 1953; Handel, 1989). In this , the areas of the brain that are
involved in selective attention had to be working—even though you were not consciously
 aware of it. Then, when that important bit of information (your name) “appeared,” those
areas somehow filtered the information into your conscious awareness—in spite of the fact
that you were not paying conscious attention to the other background noise.
5. Dr. Anne M. Treisman (Treisman, 2006; Triesman & Gelade, 1980) proposed that selective
attention operates in a two-stage filtering process: In the first stage, incoming stimuli in
sensory memory are filtered on the basis of simple physical characteristics, similar to
Broadbent’s original idea. Instead of moving to STM or being lost, however, there is only a
lessening (attenuation) of the “signal strength” of unselected sensory stimuli in comparison
to the selected stimuli. In the second stage, only the stimuli that meet a certain threshold of
importance are processed. Since the attenuated stimuli are still present at this second stage,
something as subjectively important as one’s own name may be able to be “plucked” out of
the attenuated incoming stimuli. Even when deeply asleep, when the selective attention
filter is not working at its peak level, it still functions.
6. Short-term memory tends to be encoded primarily in auditory (sound) form. That simply
means that people tend to “talk” inside their own heads. Although some images are
certainly stored in STM in a kind of visual “sketchpad” (Baddeley, 1986), auditory storage
accounts for much of short-term encoding.
WORKING MEMORY
1. Short-term memory refers to simple storage and working memory as relating to storage and
manipulation of information (Baddeley, 2012). Short-term memory has traditionally been
thought of as a thing or a place into which information is put.
2. Memory researchers prefer to think of memory in terms of a more continuous system,
where information flows from one form of representation to another. Working memory is
therefore thought of as an active system that processes the information present within
short-term memory.
3. Working memory is thought to consist of three interrelated systems: a central executive -
that controls and coordinates the other two systems, the visuospatial “sketchpad” of sorts ,
and a kind of auditory action “recorder” or phonological loop .
4. The central executive acts as interpreter for both the visual and auditory information, and
the visual and auditory information are themselves contained in short-term memory. For
example, when a person is reading a book, the sketchpad will contain images of the people
and events of the particular passage being read, while the recorder “plays” the dialogue in
the person’s head. The central executive helps interpret the information from both systems
and pulls it all together. In a sense, then, short-term memory can be seen as being a part of
the working memory system (Acheson et al., 2010; Bayliss et al., 2005; Colom et al., 2006;
Kail & Hall, 2001).
5. CAPACITY OF SHORT TERM MEMORY –
George Miller (1956) wanted to know how much information humans can hold in short-
term memory at any one time (or how many “files” will fit on the “desk”). He reviewed
several memory studies, including some using a memory test called the digit-span test, in
which a series of numbers is read to subjects in the study who are then asked to recall the
numbers in order. Each series gets longer and longer, until the subjects cannot recall any of
the numbers in order.
This led Miller to conclude that the capacity of STM is about seven items or pieces of
information, plus or minus two items, or from five to nine bits of information. Miller called
this the magical number seven, plus or minus two.
-There is a way to “fool” STM into holding more information than is usual. (Think of it as
“stacking” related files on the desk.) If the bits of information are combined into meaningful
units, or chunks, more information can be held in STM. If someone were to recode the last
sequence of numbers as “654-789-3217,” for example, instead of 10 separate bits of
information, there would only be three “chunks” that read like a phone number. This
process of recoding or reorganizing the information is called chunking.

DURATION OF STM - Research has shown that short-term memory lasts from about 12 to 30
seconds without rehearsal, After that, the memory seems to rapidly “decay” or disappear. In
fact, the findings of one study with mice suggest that in order to form new memories, old
memories must be “erased” by the formation of newly formed neurons (Kitamura et al.,
2009). The hippocampus only has so much storage room, and while many of the memories
formed there will be transferred to more permanent storage in other areas of the brain,
some memories, without rehearsal, will decay as new neurons (and newer memories) are
added to the already existing neural circuits.

- Most people realize that saying something they want to remember over and over again
in their heads can help them remember it longer.
- This is a process called maintenance rehearsal. With maintenance rehearsal, a person is
simply continuing to pay attention to the information to be held in memory, and since
attention is how that information got into STM in the first place, it works quite well
(Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Rundus, 1971). With this type of rehearsal, information will
stay in short-term memory until rehearsal stops, When rehearsal stops, the memory
rapidly decays and is forgotten. If anything interferes with maintenance rehearsal,
memories are also likely to be lost.

LONG TERM MEMORY

- The third stage of memory is long-term memory (LTM), the system into which all the
information is placed to be kept more or less permanently. In terms of capacity, LTM
seems to be unlimited for all practical purposes (Bahrick, 1984; Barnyard & Grayson,
1996).
- As for duration, the name long term says it all. There is a relatively permanent physical
change in the brain itself when a memory is formed. That means that many of the
memories people have stored away for a long, long time—even since childhood—may
still be there. That does not mean that people can always retrieve those memories. The
memories may be available but not accessible, meaning that they are still there, but for
various reasons (discussed later under the topic of forgetting) people cannot “get to”
them. It’s like knowing that there is a certain item on the back of the top shelf of the
kitchen cabinet but having no ladder or step stool to reach it. The item is there
(available), but you can’t get to it (not accessible).
- Craik and Lockhart (1972) theorized that information that is more “deeply processed,” or
processed according to its meaning rather than just the sound or physical characteristics
of the word or words, will be remembered more efficiently and for a longer period of
time. As the levels-of-processing approach predicts, elaborative rehearsal is a deeper
kind of processing than maintenance rehearsal and so leads to better long-term storage
(Craik & Tulving, 1975).

TYPES OF LONG-TERM INFORMATION

- NON DECLARATIVE (IMPLICIT) LTM Memories for things that people know how to do,
like tying shoes and riding a bicycle, are a kind of LTM called nondeclarative (implicit)
memory.
- Nondeclarative memories also include emotional associations, habits, and simple
conditioned reflexes that may or may not be in conscious awareness, which are often
very strong memories (Schacter & Wagner, 2013; Squire & Kandel, 2009).
- Non declarative memories are not easily retrieved into conscious awareness. Non
declarative memories are not easily retrieved into conscious awareness.

- Declarative (explicit) ltM Nondeclarative memory is about the things that

people can do, but declarative (explicit) memory is about all the things that people can
know—the facts and information that make up knowledge. FOR EG. names of the
planets in the solar system

- There are two types of declarative long-term memories, semantic and episodic (Nyberg
& Tulving, 1996). One type of declarative memory is general knowledge that anyone has
the ability to know. Most of this information is what is learned in school or by reading.
This kind of LTM is called semantic memory. The word semantic refers to meaning, so
this kind of knowledge is the awareness of the meanings of words, concepts, and terms
as well as names of objects, math skills, and so on.

- The other kind of factual memory is the personal knowledge that each person has of his
or her daily life and personal history, a kind of autobiographical* memory (LePort et al.,
2012). Memories of what has happened to people each day, certain birthdays,
anniversaries that were particularly special, childhood events, and so on are called
episodic memory, because they represent episodes from their lives. Unlike
nondeclarative and semantic long-term memories, episodic memories tend to be
updated and revised more or less constantly. Episodic memories that are especially
meaningful, such as the memory of the first day of school or your first date, are more
likely to be kept in LTM.

- long-Term Memory organization- Research suggests that long-term memory is

organized in terms of related meanings and concepts (Collins & Loftus, 1975; Collins &
Quillian, 1969).

- semantic network model, which assumes that information is stored in the brain in a
connected fashion with concepts that are related to each other stored physically closer
to each other than concepts that are not highly related (Collins & Quillian, 1969).

- The PDP model (Rumelhart et al., 1986) discussed earlier in this chapter can be used to
explain how rapidly the different points on the networks can be accessed. Although the
access of nodes within a particular category (for example, birds) may take place in a
serial fashion, explaining the different response times in the Collins and Quillian (1969)
study, access across the entire network may take place in a parallel fashion, allowing
several different concepts to be targeted at the same time (for example, one might be
able to think about birds, cats, and trees simultaneously).
 RETRIEVAL CUES

encoding specificity: This connection between surroundings and remembered information is

called encoding specificity. It is the tendency for memory of any kind of information to be
improved if retrieval conditions are similar to the conditions under which the information
was encoded (Tulving & Thomson, 1973). These conditions, or cues, can be internal or
external.

- Context-dependent learning may refer to the physical surroundings a person is in when

they are learning specific information. For eg . giving exam in the room where you gave
the presentation of the topic being asked in the exam would help enhance the retrieval
of the topic.
- state-dependent learning, memories formed during a particular physiological or
psychological state will be easier to remember while in a similar state. For example,
when you are fighting with someone, it’s much easier to remember all of the bad things
that person has done than to remember the good times. (Pg 280 circilli for case study )
- There are two kinds of retrieval of memories, recall and recognition.
- In recall, memories are retrieved with few or no external cues, such as filling in the
blanks on an application form.
- Recognition, on the other hand, involves looking at or hearing information and
matching it to what is already in memory. A word-search puzzle, in which the words are
already written down in the grid and simply need to be circled, is an example of
recognition.
- Whenever people find themselves struggling for an answer, recall has failed (at least
temporarily). Sometimes the answer seems so very close to the surface of conscious
thought that it feels like it’s “on the tip of the tongue.” (If people could just get their
tongues out there far enough, they could read it.) This is sometimes called the tip of the
tongue (TOT) phenomenon.
- Another interesting feature of recall is that it is often subject to a kind of “prejudice” of
memory retrieval, in which information at the beginning and the end of a list, such as a
poem or song, tends to be remembered more easily and accurately. This is called the
serial position effect .
- Words at the very beginning of the list tend to be remembered better than those in the
middle of the list. This effect is called the primacy effect and is due to the fact that the
first few words, when the listener has nothing already in STM to interfere with their
rehearsal, will receive far more rehearsal time than the words in the middle, which are
constantly being replaced by the next word on the list.
- the recency effect; it is usually attributed to the fact that the last word or two was just
heard and is still in short-term memory for easy retrieval, with no new words entering to
push the most recent word or words out of memory (Bjork & Whitten, 1974; Murdock,
1962). The serial position effect works with many different kinds of information.
METHODS FOR ENHANCING MEMORY

1. chunking – breaks large piece of information into smaller units .

2. Associations – connecting the given info with smells , sounds , things , past experience
3. Method of loci – visualsing information or associating them with physical places . refer ncert 11 th for
details .
4. Memonics – using Acronyms , rhymes and acrostics
5. Active recall- rehearsing over and over
6. Good sleep , healthy diet , exercise overall for enhancing thew memory

FORGETTING
Forgetting is a loss of information that is already stored in LTM. In a classical experiment,
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885) memorised nonsense syllables (three letter consonant-
vowel-consonant meaningless words - ‘WID’, ‘ZOF’, and ‘QAX’), recalled them at various
time intervals and recorded the results. He gave what is known as the ‘Ebbinghaus
forgetting curve’ or simply ‘forgetting curve’, as shown in Figure 2.10. The results clearly
show that the rate of loss of newly learnt information is very fast. Most information is
retained when a re call happens immediately. However, in a short time span of 20
minutes, about 40% of information is lost. By about 9 hours after learning, only
approximately 40% of newly learnt information is retained. The rate of forgetting
reduced thereafter. Ebbinghaus also studied the spacing effect, i.e., learning is better if
one divides the same amount of information over shorter periods of time than learning
all information together at the same time. When a material that is to be learnt is divided
into small parts, it is known as distributed practice and when a material to be learnt is
learnt together, it is known as massed practice.

There may be multiple reasons for forgetting. Some of them are discussed as follows:
(i) Failure of Encoding Process: As we have already studied, sometimes information
is not properly encoded while storing it in LTM. Sometimes we are not paying
attention to important features of the information. In such cases, forgetting may
occur easily. This may happen because it may be possible that we are not paying
enough attention to objects that we encounter in our everyday life.

(ii) Interference: Forgetting from LTM may also happen due to interference. Either
old stored information interferes with learning of new information or vice versa,
i.e., new incoming information interferes with the old information already stored
in memory. When the former happens, it is known as proactive interference. For
instance, suppose a company has changed its name from Axon to Accent. Many
times while referring to the company, you will find yourself saying Axon rather
than Accent. Another example may be interference in learning two different
languages. For example, you have previously learnt Hindi in school. Now you have
taken up Punjabi. You will notice that on many occasions, you tend to use the
words of the Hindi language to address the same word in the Punjabi language.
When new information infers with the retrieval of older learning, it is known as
retroactive interference. For instance, you have remembered a new route to your
college. Now you cannot recall the old route that you used to take. Another
example may be, suppose you have remembered a new phone number of your
 favourite restaurant and you are unable to remember the previous phone
number.

(iii) Memory Trace Decay: A memory trace is a hypothetical physical change in the
brain that may occur due to the forming of memory. In time, when this memory
trace is not used, it is presumed that the trace will decay or fade away. When this
happens, the memory will be lost or forgetting will occur. According to Ciccarelli &
White (2016), when used in reference to LTM, it is more appropriate to use the
term disuse theory than memory trace decay theory.

(iv) Repression or Motivated Forgetting: Repression or motivated forgetting is when

one finds it difficult to retrieve information that is anxiety-provoking or
threatening in nature. Repression was extensively studied by Sigmund Freud.
According to Freud, instead of being a failure to learn, forgetting is motivated.
Some memories are likely to induce negative or unpleasant emotions like shame,
guilt, embarrassment or anxiety. Such memories are actively pushed out of
consciousness. However, this process is unconscious, i.e., one is not aware of it.
While these memories continue to influence one’s behaviour, retrieving such
repressed memories is difficult