Explicit memory
Conscious/intentional retrieval of information
- Semantic: facts and general knowledge
- Episodic: personal information that allows for ‘mental’ time travel’ and helps construct cohesive narratives of our lives based on connecting past and present.
Implicit memory
The information that we do not store purposely and is unintentionally memorised.
- Procedural: motor
- Priming: enhanced identification of objects or words.
Autobiographical memory
Personal record of significant events in one’s life.
Flashbulb memories
Detailed recollections of when/where you where when something significant occurred (e.g., knowing the colour of a pen on a desk when you hear about shocking news)
Emotional arousal
- Emotions increase memory.
In emotional situations the amygdala modulates encoding and storage of hippo-campal dependent memories. The hippocampus can influence the amygdala response when emotional stimuli are encountered.
Herman Ebbinghaus
First to conduct experimental studies on memory.
- If something cannot be remember, does it imply that the memory no longer exists (storage), or that it cannot be found (retreival)?
Forgetting Curve (Ebbinghaus)
The saving of information declined the longer the time between initial learning and test.
- Memory is transient, rapidly declines right after learning, followed by a slower decline.
Interference (memory)
An obstruction in the retrieval of a memory event that is stored in LTM. Usually one memory event interferes with the other because they are similar.
Proactive interference
Information learned prior to the ‘target’ interferes with learning new information.
- A difficulty in remembering a friend’s new phone number after having previously learned the old number.
Retroactive interference
When newer memories interfere with the retrieval of older memories
- Once you have learned a new mobile number, it is often very difficult to recall your old number.
Blocking and tip of the tongue experience
Information cannot be retrieved despite conscious effort.
- Happens relatively more often for names of places or people because the link with related concepts and knowledge is rather week.
Absentmindedness
A lapse in attention resulting in memory failure.
- Attention lapses often arise from dual task situations where attention needs to be divided.
Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm
False memories/recognitions can be easily evoked if they fit into a certain scheme.
Suggestibility
The tendency to incorporate misleading information into personal recollections.
Schacter’s 7 sins of memory
- Transcience
- Absentmindedness
- Blocking
- Memory misattribution
- Suggestibility
- Bias
- Persistence
Transience
Forgetting what occurs with the passage of time.
- Occurs during the storage phase of memory, after an experience has been encoded and before it is retrieved.
Memory misattribution
Assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source.
- More prone to those with damage to the frontal lobes.
Bias + sub-biases (7 sins)
The distorting influences of present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings on recollection of previous experiences.
- Consistency bias: to reconstruct the past to fit the present.
- Change bias: to exaggerate differences between what we feel or believe now and what we felt or believed in the past.
- Egocentric bias: to exaggerate the change between the present and past in order to make ourselves look good in retrospect.
Persistence
The intrusive recollection of events that we wish we could forget.
- Influenced by the amygdala.
Retrograde amnesia
Inability to recall events or experiences that took place prior to the event that caused amnesia.
- Retrieval problem
- Often temporally graded: most recent memories are affected first whereas oldest memories are usually spared.
Anterograde amnesia
Inability to create new memories after the event that caused amnesia (problem with transfer from STM to LTM).
Childhood amnesia
The first few years of childhood are extremely important for development, but we barely remember anything explicitly from that period.
- Due to hippocampus not being fully developed at birth.
- Schemes have not yet been constructed.
Transient global amnesia (TGA)
A sudden loss of memory with both an anterograde and retrograde component.
Dissociative amnesia
Memory loss of significant information about one’s life caused by a traumatic or stressful event.
