memory - york university · amnesia – anterograde (can’t form new memories) and ... knowledge...
TRANSCRIPT
MEMORY August 31, 2007 LONDON (AP) — Diana was solemnly remembered Friday
at a service attended by the Queen, Prince Charles, her sons William and Harry, and her own family on the 10th anniversary of her death in a Paris car crash.
Memory: Good and Bad – AJ and EP
A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering Authors: Elizabeth S. Parker; Larry Cahill ; James L. McGaugh
This report describes AJ, a woman whose remembering dominates her life. Her memory is "nonstop, uncontrollable, and automatic." AJ spends an excessive amount of time recalling her personal past with considerable accuracy and reliability. If given a date, she can tell you what she was doing and what day of the week it fell on. She differs from other cases of superior memory who use practiced mnemonics to remember vast amounts of personally irrelevant information. We propose the name hyperthymestic syndrome, from the Greek word thymesis meaning remembering, and that AJ is the first reported case.
Neurocase, Volume 12, Issue 1 February 2006 , pages 35 - 49
AJ E.g.,
She remembers
She remembers
And everything
EP 61, grandfather type, likes to laugh Amnesia – anterograde (can’t form new memories) and
retrograde (can’t remember old memories – since 1960) Lives 15 years
ate away his hippocampus (and adjoining areas) that form our memories
Mental Time Travel: Remembering (re-experience) and forecasting ahead (pre-experience)
Addis, D.R., Wong, A.T., & Schacter, D.L. (2007). Remembering the past and imagining the future: Common and distinct neural substrates during event construction and elaboration. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1363-1377
In traveling through time, we use our episodic memories to simulate what might happen in the future, we “project ourselves into the future based on what we remember from the past” Schacter & Addis, 2007, p. 27).
fMRI study – similar brain locations used when remembering and imagining the future (cue word – past/future e.g., successful)
-although some differences, medial temporal, parietal and prefrontal regions showed increases in activity in remembering the past and imagining the future relative to the control conditions
Memory: Structure and Process
-structure vs. process (alternative/complimentary)
STRUCTURE Sensory Memory - -
Short Term Memory (STM) -system that lasts less than 20 sec.
and holds infor. that is:
Long Term Memory (LTM) -permanent (?) and almost
unlimited capacity and process
Encoding, storage, retrieval, forgetting
SENSORY MEMORY Sperling – visual sensory memory
-everything, 1/10 of a second example: to test capacity
G H Q T V I M C S B D N
-problem of this method to test capacity hypothesis ???? -
….
Sooo… its impossible to test capacity with this method
changes?? Partial Report Method
-training - if hear high tone ---- middle tone – low tone ---- Procedure – training – see matrix – hear
tone - recall
gets around the problem by??
-to test duration vary the interval between when see matrix and when see tone conclude: very brief duration/ and
enormous capacity.
STM – “working memory” inf’n from sensory memory or LTM from sensory:
automatic –
intentional/controlled
consciously select what to attend to
to examine attention use the shadowing task
unattended ear attended ear -word list -follow story
-unaware except “special words”
STM – capacity Miller 7 +/- 2
recall = 6 or 7 out of 10 recall = 2 out of 2 “chunks”
by chunking infor. can enhance memory – can work for studying (takes practice but pays off in the end)
duration of STM – Peterson & Peterson task word “filled” delay recall list (no rehearsal) if vary delay, can test duration = 18 sec.
LTM -transfer from STM through – rehearsal: a) maintenance b) elaborative *
Encoding…
-semantic encoding – meaning
schema: “pre-existent cognitive structures
representing an organized body of knowledge concerning a specific class of objects”
Elaborative Rehearsal ie.-giving additional meaning (often
idiosyncratic) to the to-be-remembered material e.g. – through associations through organization for eg. my course outline – chpt order studying – reorganize the chapter content elaborate on meaning by relating it to your
self e.g. operant conditioning of your dog enhance “meaning” or “memorability”
Homework for next week
Schemas: Types of Social Schemas
Person Schemas persons e.g., types of people e.g., occupations – e.g.,
- social roles e.g., racial/ethnic groups
Event Routine events: e.g. restaurant,
sequence of events
Other types of encoding imagery (visual encoding)
e.g., “method of loci” (see illustration) imagine words types of images (see illustration)
Individual Differences in Memory:
How to test? INSTRUCTIONS –
Close eyes when asked
1 2 3 4 5
Impossible very easy
Why??
Depth of processing theory Can process (encode) infor in different
ways
Orienting Task
Structural (# letters)
Acoustic
Visual imagery
Semantic (meaning)
Self (describes you?) deeper better encoding memory
Mnemonics: to increase memory
imagery method of loci elaborative encoding
Modern Poets
Doug’s Poem
Storage: -similar things are “stored”
together -examine by “recall organization” LIST:
Bread, Ford, pencil, Mazda, bun, pen, dinner roll, Chevy, eraser
RECALL ORDER:
LTM - retrieval -use cues e.g., what did you have for dinner
July 1, 2009 e.g., where were you who were you with what were you doing that day
List Elephant Shirt Helicopter Rose Aluminum Whiskey Chair Doctor Purple January Alabama Tennis Elbow Magazine Trombone
-count backwards by 3’ from 177
Recall as many as you can….
Cues to help in recall…. Try again! Animal – Clothing – Vehicle – Flower – Metal – Beverage – Furniture – Profession – Color – Month – State – Sport – Reading material – Musical instrument – Part of the body -
More memory facts….
-Serial Position Effect (primacy/recency) (see illustration)
Types of Long Term Memory (see illustration)
Theories of Forgetting Decay **Retrieval Failure (ineffective/no
cues) Motivated Forgetting (e.g.,
repression) **Interference
Proactive (old infor interferes with new) Retroactive (new interferes with old) (see illustration)
Proactive Interference
interference
Day one day two day three Study for study for take the biology test psychology psych test
On the psych test you keep remembering bio terms “old” information (bio) interferes with recall of “new” infor (psych)
Retroactive Interference
Day one day two day three Study for study for take the History test sociology History test
interference
On the history test you keep remembering sociology terms “new” information (soci) interferes with recall of “old” infor (Hist)
(Re)Constructive Memory
Our memories are a construction, can be influenced E.g., Elizabeth Loftus
“Hit each other” “Smashed into each other”
Constructive Memory
-in everyday recall, rarely remember things word for word/scene for scene/moment by moment
-create summary/gist/labels (not detail) -when remembering start with summary/gist
and construct memory around it inf’n about people – often encode infor. In
terms of labels (summarizes what you know) e.g., he’s aggressive, intelligent
e.g. see someone on bus knock others
coded in memory as: aggressive
recall:
Hmmmm, therefore, if can influence labels/summary can influence memory
Higgins & Rholes Communication Rules – “message
modification” e.g., (see illustration) Positive effects:
Avoid embarrassment, avoid conflict, its polite
Negative effects: “saying is believing”
LOGIC: if memory is constructive Final memory is combination of
original stimulus information you are talking about and what you say (your message/summary)
Thus, to the degree that message is biased/distorted, so will final memory
METHOD: read infor. about Donald (ambiguous –
positive/negative) give message about Donald to a listener INDEP:
½ Ss talk about Donald to listener who likes Donald (should modify message and positively bias message)
½ Ss talk about Donald to listener who dislikes Donald (should modify message and negatively bias message)
-after delay, surprise recall for what they read about Donald (“word for word”).
Dependent Measures:
-message, distortion of information about Donald included in message
-recall, distortion of information they read about Donald Distortion determined by comparing
what they say/recall to what they originally read – positive or negative distortions counted
RESULTS
Message Distortions (comparing message to what Ss originally read)
Distortion Positive Negative Like 25% > 19% Dislike 3% < 28%
Memory Distortions
Positive Negative Like 34% > 0% Dislike 4% < 31%
“Saying is Believing”
Memory is constructive