sensory memory
- lasts seconds
- connection between perception and memory
- iconic memory: sensory memory for vision (George Sperling) - “partial report” - Ps can only remember for a few seconds
- Ulric Neisser - “icon” lasts 1 second. backward masking if new image is presented before last one fades, erasing original. more successful if similar to 1st
- echoic memory - sensory memory for auditory sensations
Short-term memory (STM)
- lasts seconds or minutes
- working memory - needed to perform task at hand
- George Miller: capacity of 7 items (+/- 2)
- Chunking can increase STM capacity
- largely auditory, items coded phonologically
- rehearsal transfers memory to LTM. primary (maintenance) rehearsal involves repetition. secondary (elaborative) rehearsal involves organizing and understanding material to transfer it to LTM
- interference - disrupting info before items is “proactive interference” and causes “proactive inhibition” in recalling items. after items is “retroactive”
Long-term memory (LTM)
- permanent retention is possible
- items learned semantically (for meaning)
- recognition e.g. multiple choice
- recall: cued recall e.g. fill in the blank, free recall - remembering with no cue
- savings - measures how much info remains in LTM by assessing how long it takes to learn something the 2nd time
- encoding specificity principle - easier to remember if in context in which it was stored
- subject to interference effects
Episodic vs. semantic memory
episodic - details, events, discrete knowledge
semantic - general knowledge of world
procedural vs. declarative memory
procedural - knowing how to do something
declarative - knowing a fact
explicit vs. implicit memory
explicit - being aware of knowing something
implicit - not being aware of knowing something e.g. amnesia patient’s performance on task
reconstructive memory
Frederick Bartlett - people are more likely to remember ideas/semantics than details/grammar
Dual code hypothesis
items will be better remembered if encoded both visually and semantically
paired-associate learning
(behaviorist theory) one item is learned with and cues the recall of another. e.g. learning a foreign language and knowing that “hola” is “hello”
Elizabeth Loftus
memory of traumatic events is altered by event itself and way questions about event are phrased
Brenda Milner, patient HM
lesion of hippocampus to treat epilepsy. remembered things from before surgery and STM was intact but could not store long-term memories
serial learning
learning a list
- recency & primacy effects
- serial position curve (U-shaped)
serial-anticipation learning
asked to recall one item at a time rather than entire list
factors that make list items easier to learn
- acoustic & semantic dissimilarity
- brevity
- familiarity
- concreteness
- meaning
- importance
decay theory
aka trace theory: memories fade with time
interference theory
competing info blocks memory retrieval
generation-recognition model
recognition is easier than recall (multiple choice is easier than essay)
clustering
tendency to group together similar items in memory whether learned together or not
incidental learning
learning when not intended
eidetic imagery
photographic memory. more common in children and rural countries
flashbulb memories
recollections that seem burned into brain e.g. where were you when JFK died
tachtiscope
instrument used to present visual material for a fraction of a second
Zeigarnik effect
tendency to recall uncompleted tasks better than completed ones
