3 stages of long term memory
encoding
storing
retrival
available
something you could theoretically remember
accessible
something you can successfully retrieve in the moment
Metaphors for Memory
1.) memory as an aviary (Plato)
2.) memory as a library (Broadbent)
3.) memory as a computer
Language influences our perception of the thing itself
Jenkins’ Tetrahedral Model (1979)
1.) subjects: who is participating (age, gender, race)
2.) materials: words, images, sentences, audio (stimuli)
3.) orienting tasks: what you have the participants do with the stimuli (what you tell them to do)
4.) retrieval tasks: recall, recognition, savings, reaction time, transfer
Interaction
The effect of one variable depends on another
Contextualism
results occur within the context of a particular experiment
Ecological Validity
Endel Tulving (1983)
Are results generalizable across different settings
Common ways to study memory
1.) word lists (recall, recognition, savings)
2.) looking at errors
Properties of words that make them good from studying memory
1.) well defined boundaries (word starts and ends)
2.) individual, discrete items (right or wrong)
3.) dated in time and place
4.) discriminated from one another
5.) clearly identified at a fast rate
6.) have meaning
7.) can be presented visually or auditory
8.) can vary within a modality (voice gender, pitch)
9.) can be grouped (conceptual categories, orthographic similarity)
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Percent savings formula
(original learning - relearning) / original learning
Criticisms of Ebbinghaus
Findings from Ebbinghaus
1.) forgetting curve
2.) spacing effect
3.) digit span
4.) list length effect
5.) importance of meaning on memory
6.) serial position curve (primacy and recency)
7.) remote association
Remote Association
William James (1890)
Primary memory
immediate consciousness
Secondary memory
awareness of a state of mind after it has dropped from consciousness
FC Bartlett (1932)
FC Bartlett Cambridge Study Findings
1.) memory does not repeat the past but reconstructs it
2.) every time you retell something it deviates more and more from the original truth
3.) we shorten information
4.) we replace information with things that make more sense to us (canoe - boat, seal - fish) –> schemas
Short- term memory definition
what we have accessible at any given time
Elements of Short Term memory
1.) duration
2.) capacity
3.) retrieval form
4.) coding
Short Term Memory: duration
Brown - Peterson Distractor Paradigm CONDITIONS