Chapter 6

Long-term Memory

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A Little History

Ebbinghaus (1885)

- nonsense syllable

method (e.g., DAX,

BUP, GEJ)

Tested his own

memory

Each list learned to

criterion of 2 errorless

tests.

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IV: Retention time (minutes, hours, days)

Dependant Measures

1) Number recalled

- fast loss at beginning, then levels out.

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2) Savings # of trials to relearn

Large Savings at short retention,

Rapid decreased with longer retention

Then leveled out.

E.g., After 6 days 30% savings.

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3) Overlearning

- learn to criterion then rehearsed thirty times more.

Greatly increased savings.

E.g., At 6 days 64% savings.

Appears Rehearsal leads to Memory.

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Does Rehearsal transfer information to LTM?

Glenberg, Smith and Green (1977) Study.

- subjects presented 4 digit numbers

- each digit followed by word to repeat for 2, 6 or 18 secs.

Told to remember digits (word repetition just distracter)

Tested for the words.

Incidental Learning Task – Participants did not intend to

learn the words.

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Recall vs. Recognition

Glenberg, Smith and Green Study (Revisited)

Incidental recall test showed no effect of

rehearsal.

Incidental recognition test showed that the

more rehearsed words were recalled better.

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Rehearsal increased the familiarity of the

words, but not the ability to recall the words.

Recognition depends on familiarity

Recall requires that you find the words in

LTM and then recognize that they are the

words you are trying to recall.

Causes of Forgetting

1) Fading Over Time

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

Fading is not really an explanation of the

process – just a description

2) Interference

Proactive and Retroactive

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Proactive and Retroactive

Interference

Similar items learned earlier (proactive) or after (retroactive) interfere.

Why? Similar cues lead to a variety of items in LTM.

When a memory from an

earlier or later time is stronger

(e.g., more distinctive) it is

likely to interfere.

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Von Restorff Effect (named after Hedwig

von Restorff, 1933) predicts that salient items,

those that "stands out like a sore thumb",

(called distinctive encoding) will be more

likely to be remembered than other items.

Salience can be anything that makes the item

stand out!

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3) Memory Consolidation

A neural process after initial encoding

that is critical to stable long-term

memory

Stabilizes memories.

Incorporates new information with old.

13

Your experience of last New Year’s Eve included sights, sounds, smells, emotions you were feeling and thoughts you were thinking at the stroke of midnight

Experience results in activity of the different cortical areas.

Two Phases

1st Phase: Cellular or Synaptic

Consolidation

• Brief process over a period of hours

• Involves Hippocampus

• Connections within and across Neurons

• Binds together the elements of the experience

• No cortical connection

Two Phases

2nd Phase: Systems Consolidation

• Lasts weeks, months, or years

• Applies only to semantic and episodic memory

• Involves interactions between the hippocampus

and the neocortex.

Evidence

Graded amnesia – Retrograde amnesia is

most severe for events that occurred just prior

to the injury and becomes less severe for

earlier, more remote events

Alcohol and Memory

Consolidation

• Alcoholic amnesia – alcohol prevents

consolidation so nothing is remembered

and no memory can be recovered.

Vs.

• Alcoholic blackout – state-

dependent memory, so recall

is possible if one is back in the

same state.

REM Sleep and Memory

Consolidation

Memory consolidation is

associated with REM periods

of sleep.

e.g., Significant increase in

post-training REM sleep after

intensive foreign language

learning. The degree of

successful learning correlates

with the percentage increase

of REM sleep.

Misremembering

Reconsolidation – reactivation of a memory

trace that has already been consolidated puts it

back in a fragile state – allowing it to be

updated and altered.

Walker et al. (2003)

Day One:

Participants learned a finger tapping routine.

Day Two:

Learned a different finger tapping routine.

2 Conditions

1) Brief rehearsal of day one routine before learning the new routine or

2) No rehearsal of day one routine.

Then retested on Day one routine.

Brief rehearsal condition was worse.

Brief rehearsal condition was worse!

WHY?Rehearsal re-activated the previously learned

routine making it’s memory trace more fragile!

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Depth of Processing (Craik and Lockhart)

Transfer to LTM requires processing for meaning.

Incidental vs. Intentional Learning.

LTM is like a library!

To encode information, there must be a place for it.

Added to similar information.

Elaborative Rehearsal - thinking about meaning.

- relate to other things you know.

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Depth of Processing (Craik and Lockhart)

Transfer to LTM requires processing for meaning.

When you experience a stimuli you retrieve information from

LTM to make sense of it. The new information is added to

the old information.

To figure out these are dogs

You retrieve your general

knowledge about dogs.

Then you add the new

information, “Some dogs play

cards”! New is stored with old.

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Slamecka and Graf (1978) conducted studies

in which they compared students’ ability to

recall information when they had been

provided with cues, and when they were

required to make-up their own memory cues.

They found that when students generated their

own cues they were more likely to recall the

information they were required to encode.

This is called the Generation Effect.

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Self-Reference Effect

Tendency for individuals to have better

memory for information that relates to oneself

in comparison to material that has less

personal relevance.

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What is deeper processing????

“Deeper” processing connects the material to

be recalled to other material, integrating it

with already stored information.

- Mental work

- Organization

But what is Deeper? The term

“deep” is not well defined.

• Depth of processing also tends to mean

more time spent processing; it might be

that it is the length of time spent

processing which affects the memory

trace, not the depth of processing

• There may be more effort involved in

“deeper” processing and the greater

effort might account for the better

recall.Chp 5 LTM 28

Spacing Effects

When the amount of study time is held

constant, spacing out study sessions (over

days) results in better retention then cramming

(massed studying).

- varying cues

- limits on attention span

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Serial Position Effects

Compared to other items on a list:

Primacy Effects - first information learned

shows superior memory.

Recency Effects – most recently studied

material shows shows superior memory.

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Primary Effects -Why?

Information from the beginning of the list

have a greater chance of being moved to LTM

(more rehearsal, more elaboration).

Primary effects are strong even when there

has been a break (lack of rehearsal).

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Recency Effects – Why?

Appear to be due to recent activation in WM.

Recency effects tend to disappear if there has

been a break (no rehearsal).

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Retrieval Effects

The Testing Effect – memory advantage of

material that has been studied by testing your

retrieval of the material.

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Roediger & Karpicke (2006)

College students study a passage of text

much like they would for a class. All students

were given 7 minutes to study the passage and

then were randomly assigned into two group:

1) given another 7 minutes to continue

studying

2) given a test on what they had read. The

final test of what students had learned took

place after either 5 minutes, 2 days or 1

week.

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The final test of what students had learned

took place after either 5 minutes, 2 days or 1

week.

Students who were given the extra time to

study were more confident, and did a little bit

better when the final test was 5 minutes later.

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However

Students who took a practice test instead did

much better on a test that was 2 days or a

week later.

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Why flashcards work?

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Encoding-Retrieval

Interactions

Encoding Specificity Principle

Getting Information back out depends on

the appropriateness of the cues at recall.

cogltm(1) 38

Environmental Context Effects – a match

between the cue that are present at the time of

study and the time of testing leads to better

recall.

The same is not true for recognition.

WHY?

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Recognition vs. Recall

Recognition is generally better but . . . if the

cues at recall are better than recognition cues –

recall should be better. (Muter, 1978)

Circle the last names of famous people.

~ 29% correct!

Author of Last of the Mohicans: James

Fennimore ___________.

~ 42% correct!

Godden and Baddeley (1975)

– Used subjects from a SCUBA diving club in gear

Context Effects

Results:

• Recall was better when study

environment and test environment

matched, regardless of whether it

was on land or under water.

Mood Dependent Memory

Match in mood from

learning to retrieval

produced better

memory (Eich, 1975).

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Pollyanna Principle

We tend to remember pleasant memories

more so than unpleasant. . .

Unless we are depressed.

How could you get a friend out of bad mood?

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cogltm(1) 44

State Dependent Memory

•Same effect for alcohol.

Transfer-Appropriate Processing

Memory will be best when the processes

engaged in during encoding match those

engaged in during retrieval.

What to do if you catch on fire!

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Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977)• Task:

• Participants made either a phonological or semantic judgment about each item on a word list.

• Study: eagle (yes/no fits clue)

• Deep - The ____ is the US national bird.

• Shallow - rhymes with legal

• The learning was incidental: participants were not told that they would have to later recall the words.

• This constrains (limits) the learning strategies used.

Transfer-appropriate processing

Transfer-appropriate processing

Encoding: Recognition

test:

Rhyming test:

Does ____ rhyme

with legal?

(eagle)

63% 49%

Does ____ have

feathers? (eagle)

84% 33%

Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977)

• Results:• Standard recognition test: Deeper processing led to better performance.

• Rhyming recognition test: The shallower rhyme-based encoding task led to better performance because it matched the demands of the testing situation.

Transfer-appropriate processing

Encoding: Recognition

test:

Rhyming test:

Does ____ rhyme

with legal?

(eagle)

63% 49%

Does ____ have

feathers? (eagle)

84% 33%

Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977)

• Conclusion:– The take-home message is that when the processing at encoding

matches the processing at retrieval, performance will be better.

– It only makes sense to talk about a learning method’s efficiency in the context of the type of final test.

Processing Dependent Effects

Blaxton (1989)Study Phase consisted of 2 conditions:

(1) No context (COLD) - Reading words

- low depth of processing

(2) Generate (hot-? Generate the word

opposite.

- high depth of processing

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Test Phase

(1) Graphemic-cued recall- (cost-?) cold

(2) Word-fragment completion c_l_

(3) Free recall – list the words

(4) Semantic-cued recall- (hot-?)-cold

(5) General knowledge test – What climate do

penguins live in?

Test involving visual form of the word, read

study was better.

For tests involving MEANING, generation

task was better.Chp 5 LTM 50

Main Point

If you are going to be tested on MEANING,

using a study technique that focuses on

processing for Meaning will be more

effective.

If the test will involve the visual form of then

use repetition.

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Same goes for Prospective

Memory (Meier & Graf, 2000)

Used two types of prospective memory tasks

- Respond if word is a type of animal (meaning).

- Respond if word has 3 e’s (visual)

Two types of ongoing tasks

Is the word a natural or fabricated thing? (meaning)

How many spaces are included in the word

(Visual)

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Results

More prospective responses were made when

the ongoing processing matched the when the

prospective cues.

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GP Mem(1) 54

Getting Value Out of Your Study Time.

1) Distribute study sessions.

- cramming leads to poor learning.

- LTM is not limited, but your attention span is.

2) Don’t just read the material over and over.

Inefficient strategy.

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3) Monitor your progress

- focus in on what you need to learn.

4) Think about the meaning of the material.

5) What about meaningless stuff?

MAKE IT MEANINGFULL

Mnemonics (Memory Tricks)

Find structure to organize it.

Structure serves as a cue.

DON’T USE MNENOMICS FOR STUFF YOU

ALREADY KNOW -- It’s a waste of time!

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First letter cues (ROY G BIV)

Sentences (Every good boy deserves fudge).

Analogies - Compare it to something you know.

Charts - summarize and organize memory

- gives visual cues

Diagrams

- emphasize relationships between concepts.

- allow for visual encoding

- color code

Songs, Rhymes or Poems

Relate to Personal Examples

Stories

Be creative! - make it memorable!

Remarkable Autobiographical

Memory

Video

Jill Price remembers all the

sad and bad things in her life

– the death of loved ones, for

instance, like it’s happening

right now. Time heals all

wounds, but not for Jill

Price.

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Solomon ShereshevskiiThe Mind of a Mnenonist (Luria, 1968)

Eidetic memory - Solomon remembered nearly everything that ever

happened to him in his entire life, even his mother's face as she stood over

him in his crib as an infant. He could remember a passing car's license

plate number from twenty years past. He was able to memorize lists of

70 numbers after being read them once, then repeat them forwards and

backwards and retain them for upwards of 15 years.

Synesthesia - if a doorbell rang, he wouldn't just 'hear' it. He wouldn't

even 'hear' and 'feel' it. He would hear, see, taste, feel and smell the

doorbell. Anything that he experienced was not only stamped in his mind

for good, it was stuck there with a connection to all five of his senses.

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Solomon tried out several different methods of making his

memories less invasive. One method was to write down all

the things that he no longer wanted to remember and

then burn up the paper he'd written them on. Another was

to imagine covering up all the memories he didn't want with a

blank canvas in his mind. He was eventually able

to will some of his memory away, but not much.

Shereshevskii eventually quit his reporting gig and bounced

around from job to job for a while. He ended up becoming a

professional mnemonist, wowing folks with neat memory

tricks and getting paid for it.

Want to know more?

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