What is Cognition?
Psychological concepts and processes associated with the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, senses, memory and their relationship to behaviour
What is Memory?
An active system that receives information from the senses, organises and alters information and stores it for to be retrieved from storage when needed
What is Mental Representation?
Memory is a psychological version of the original sound, thought of concept
What are the Memory Systems?
- Sensory Memory (SM)
- Short term Memory (STM)
- Working Memory (WM)
- Long term Memory (LTM)
What is each Memory system characterised by?
Capacity: How much information can be stored
Duration: How long can the information be stored
Function: What is done with the stored information
What does information processing in terms of each memory system refer to?
Encoding: Changing information into a form which the brain is able to store it (must attend to info)
Storage: Retaining information in the memory
Retrieval: The ability to locate and recover previously stored information
What did Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) propose?
- Proposed the multi store model of memory
- Memory is made up of a series of stores; a sensory memory, short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM)
- Information processing in humans resembles a computers in ways such as mental representation, encoding, storage and retrieval
What is Sensory Memory and the characteristics involved?
- Memory retained for short periods of time (3-4 seconds)
- Capacity is limited
- Encoded through each sense, e.g. Auditory information is encoded in Echoic Memory, Visual information is encoded in Iconic Memory
What are the two types of Sensory Memory?
- Iconic memory - temporally stores sensory information of a visual nature e.g. eye
- Echoic memory - temporally stores sensory information of an auditory (sound) nature (3-4 seconds) e.g. ears hear echoes
What is Short Term Memory and the characteristics involved?
- Short term memory refers to memory (thoughts, words images) that are available for decision making and problem solving
- Capacity: 7+/-2 pieces of information (George Miller 1956)
- Duration: 18 - 30 seconds if not rehearsed
- Auditory nature
How is information transferred from STM to Long Term Memory?
- Maintenance Rehearsal - Meaningless rote repetition of material to be remembered (least effective)
- Elaborate Rehearsal - Applying meaning to be words in order to retain them in memory (most effective)
- Chunking - Material is combined into a large meaningful group e.g. mobile phone number in 3s
What is Long Term Memory and the characteristics involved?
- Memory encoded from short term memory for long term storage which is retained indefinitely, but some information may be difficult to retrieve, due to incorrect cues
- Capacity: Believed to be unlimited
- Encoding: Semantic
- Duration: Unlimited / Permanent
What are the types of Long Term Memory?
- Procedural memory - Is the ‘how’ to of memory e.g. how to ride a bike, happens automatically also known as ‘implicit memory’ NOT CONSCIOUS
- Declarative memory - Is the ‘what’ of memory,also known as explicit memory CONSCIOUS e.g.
——> episodic memory - memory of you own set of autobiographical events/personal experiences
——> semantic memory - factual knowledge passed about outside world
What did Baddley and Hitch (1974) propose?
- Believed that Atkinson & Shiffrin’s model, short term memory (STM) store lacked detail and therefore added a new component ‘Working Memory’
- Working memory replaces short term memory
- Working memory consists of a central executive which controls and coordinates the operation of two subsystems: the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketch pad
- An additional component was added - episodic buffer in 2000
What is the role of the Central Executive?
- Boss of the working memory
- It controls and coordinates two systems; the phonological loop and visuo spatial sketchpad
- Also controls attention, sends incoming information to the relevant components and briefly stores all sensory information
What is the role of the Visuo spatial Sketchpad?
Stores and manipulates information of a visual and spatial nature; a slave system to the central executive
What is the role of the Phonological loop?
- Known as the ‘inner ear’ or rehearsal loop
- A slave system to the central executive, it stores and manipulates information of an auditory nature, linked to speech perception and holds information in speech based form
What is Forgetting?
- Forgetting is defined as a failure to access information that had previously been stored in memory
- Forgetting is caused by a range of different deficiencies in encoding, storage and retrieval
What are the three ‘Rs’ of learning?
~ Recall - Being able to access the information without being cued
~Recognition - Involves identifying information after experiencing it again
~ Relearning - Involves relearning information that has been previously learned
What is the Retrieval Failure Theory (RFT)?
- Refers to cues dependent forgetting
- Forgetting occurs because of a failure to use the right, correct or appropriate cues at a certain time
- The information is actually in memory it just cant be accessed
- Known as the ‘Tip of the Tongue’ Phenomenon
What is the Interference Theory?
- Forgetting in LTM arises because old or new information produces confusion or competition, as a consequence blocks retrieval
——> proactive interference: interference of old memories on retrial of new information
——> retroactive interference: new information interfere with ability to remember old, retro = old, new interferes with old
What is Motivated Forgetting?
- A strong desire to forget certain things because the memory is either too traumatic, disturbing, anxiety provoking or upsetting
- It is a self protective defence
~ Repression - keeping distressing or unpleasant thoughts buried in the unconscious and from entering ones conscious
~Suppression - a deliberate effort to keep distressing thoughts out of conscious awareness
What is the Decay Theory of Forgetting?
Forgetting occurs because the memory trace (initially formed at learning) tends to gradually fade or decay over time
What is the Organic Theory of Forgetting?
Forgetting (amnesia) or memory loss, occurs due to some brain damage e.g. a blow to the head, misuse of alcohol and drugs, ageing or brain surgery
