Notes and reminders
Memory (outline, notes of 10/14/98, links)
Memory bears a fundamental relationship to most other behavior -- learning,
intelligence, thought, social relationships, etc.
Demonstrations
Familiar object (e.g. penny memory)
See the exhibit on memory
at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/index.html
Serial position curve
Primacy and recency effects
False memory
Confabulation of "sleep" amongst sleep words, recovered memory, effects
of questions on eyewitness testimony, (Elizabeth Loftus' paper)
Memory distortion due to schema and encoding failure
Bartlett's (1932) Remembering studies
(mnemonics)
See Yates, F. A. (1966). The art of memory. London, Routledge and
K. Paul. For the history of mnemonics)
Still a useful "mind-tool?" (Mind tools are cultural innovations that
extend the power of our mind. We are not born with these though we are
probably adapted to using them and even evolved in concert with some of
them like language.)
Check this "mind tool" site:
http://www.psychwww.com/mtsite/
Verbal acronyms, method of loci, peg-words and imagery are common mnemonics.
For details see:
http://www.psychwww.com/mtsite/memory.html
Other useful techniques
Spaced practice, overlearning, increased elaboration with rich interconnections
of ideas, hierarchical organization of ideas
Stage model
See Glietman, p.247 Fig.
7.1
http://web.wwnorton.com/norton/figures/fig0701.gif
Working memory instead of STM
Encoding info into LTM requires an active process; mere exposure is not
enough e.g. Nickerson & Adams penny study)
Encoding depends on situation and existing memories
The magic number 7 and recoding into "chunks"
Organization of LTM
Implicit (procedural)
Memory for doing is not as much affected by hippocampal lesions
Explicit (declarative)
Semantic or episodic?
Episodic memory most affected by hippocampal lesions
Retrieval
Recall or recognition?
While recognition (as in a multiple choice exam) is often seen as "easier"
than recall, it really depends on how close the alternatives are.
Cues, priming, depth of processing
Familiarity (sensitivity to prior exposure) helpful but may be trouble!
See below.
Failures in memory
Interference
e.g. "Tip of the tongue" phenomena
repression
deliberate forgetting may be possible but difficult -- clinical dissociation?
See Freud section in Gleitman.
Amnesia (contrast with déjà vu")
Retrograde
Prior info lost or unretrievable?
Present
Patients may retain semantic memory (language skills, some basic knowledge
of life) but be fixed in the present- - current hour or so.
Anterograde (video)
No new memories?
No new "declarative" (language, propositional) info?
Maybe new "procedural" (skill, implicit knowledge) memory? This requires
indirect assessment of memory, e.g. forced choice procedures.
Childhood "amnesia"
There's an entire genre of research on autobiographical memory. Cf. "flashbulb
memories"
brain and memory
The search for the "engram" -- where are new memories embodied? (video)
Hippocampus and other critical structures
Most obvious in the case of HM and others with similar hippocampal damage.
Alzheimer's and other degenerative diseases
Aging and memory loss
Prosopagnosia
Confabulation
The Human tendency to want to tell a good story often and unconsciously
fabricates a memory in the process if needed.
Reconstruction biases
The role of schemas, "scripts", and "top-down" influences on memories.
False recovered memories
E. Loftus' work on implanted memories.
Effects of familiarity
Déjà vu, familiarity and fame, p.261. In all of these it
appears the mind confabulates a lot based upon no more than feelings of
familiarity triggered by the situation.