MEMORY   August 31, 2007   LONDON (AP) — Diana was solemnly remembered Friday

at a service attended by the Queen, Prince Charles, her sons William and Harry, and her own family on the 10th anniversary of her death in a Paris car crash.

Memory: Good and Bad – AJ and EP

  A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering   Authors: Elizabeth S. Parker; Larry Cahill ; James L. McGaugh

  This report describes AJ, a woman whose remembering dominates her life. Her memory is "nonstop, uncontrollable, and automatic." AJ spends an excessive amount of time recalling her personal past with considerable accuracy and reliability. If given a date, she can tell you what she was doing and what day of the week it fell on. She differs from other cases of superior memory who use practiced mnemonics to remember vast amounts of personally irrelevant information. We propose the name hyperthymestic syndrome, from the Greek word thymesis meaning remembering, and that AJ is the first reported case.

  Neurocase, Volume 12, Issue 1 February 2006 , pages 35 - 49

  AJ   E.g.,

  She remembers

  She remembers

  And everything

  EP   61, grandfather type, likes to laugh   Amnesia – anterograde (can’t form new memories) and

retrograde (can’t remember old memories – since 1960)   Lives   15 years

  ate away his hippocampus (and adjoining areas) that form our memories

Mental Time Travel: Remembering (re-experience) and forecasting ahead (pre-experience)

  Addis, D.R., Wong, A.T., & Schacter, D.L. (2007). Remembering the past and imagining the future: Common and distinct neural substrates during event construction and elaboration. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1363-1377

In traveling through time, we use our episodic memories to simulate what might happen in the future, we “project ourselves into the future based on what we remember from the past” Schacter & Addis, 2007, p. 27).

fMRI study – similar brain locations used when remembering and imagining the future (cue word – past/future e.g., successful)

-although some differences, medial temporal, parietal and prefrontal regions showed increases in activity in remembering the past and imagining the future relative to the control conditions

Memory: Structure and Process

  -structure vs. process (alternative/complimentary)

  STRUCTURE   Sensory Memory   -   -

  Short Term Memory (STM)   -system that lasts less than 20 sec.

and holds infor. that is:

  Long Term Memory (LTM)   -permanent (?) and almost

unlimited capacity   and process

  Encoding, storage, retrieval, forgetting

SENSORY MEMORY   Sperling – visual sensory memory

  -everything, 1/10 of a second   example: to test capacity

G H Q T V I M C S B D N

  -problem of this method to test capacity hypothesis ????   -

  ….

  Sooo… its impossible to test capacity with this method

changes?? Partial Report Method

-training - if hear high tone ---- middle tone – low tone ---- Procedure – training – see matrix – hear

tone - recall

  gets around the problem by??

  -to test duration vary the interval between when see matrix and when see tone   conclude: very brief duration/ and

enormous capacity.

STM – “working memory”   inf’n from sensory memory or LTM   from sensory:

  automatic –

  intentional/controlled

  consciously select what to attend to

  to examine attention   use the shadowing task

unattended ear attended ear -word list -follow story

  -unaware except “special words”

STM – capacity   Miller 7 +/- 2

    recall = 6 or 7 out of 10     recall = 2 out of 2 “chunks”

  by chunking infor. can enhance memory – can work for studying (takes practice but pays off in the end)

  duration of STM – Peterson & Peterson task   word “filled” delay recall   list (no rehearsal)   if vary delay, can test duration = 18 sec.

  LTM   -transfer from STM   through – rehearsal: a) maintenance   b) elaborative *

Encoding…

  -semantic encoding – meaning

  schema:   “pre-existent cognitive structures

representing an organized body of knowledge concerning a specific class of objects”

Elaborative Rehearsal   ie.-giving additional meaning (often

idiosyncratic) to the to-be-remembered material   e.g. – through associations   through organization   for eg.   my course outline – chpt order   studying – reorganize the chapter content   elaborate on meaning by relating it to your

self e.g. operant conditioning of your dog   enhance “meaning” or “memorability”

Homework for next week

Schemas: Types of Social Schemas

  Person Schemas   persons e.g.,   types of people e.g.,   occupations – e.g.,

-   social roles e.g.,   racial/ethnic groups

  Event   Routine events: e.g. restaurant,

sequence of events

Other types of encoding   imagery (visual encoding)

  e.g., “method of loci”   (see illustration)   imagine words   types of images   (see illustration)

Individual Differences in Memory:

  How to test?   INSTRUCTIONS –

  Close eyes when asked

  1 2 3 4 5

Impossible very easy

  Why??

  Depth of processing theory   Can process (encode) infor in different

ways

  Orienting Task

Structural (# letters)

Acoustic

Visual imagery

Semantic (meaning)

Self (describes you?) deeper better encoding memory

Mnemonics: to increase memory

  imagery   method of loci   elaborative encoding

Modern Poets

Doug’s Poem

Storage:   -similar things are “stored”

together   -examine by “recall organization”   LIST:

  Bread, Ford, pencil, Mazda, bun, pen, dinner roll, Chevy, eraser

  RECALL ORDER:

LTM - retrieval   -use cues   e.g., what did you have for dinner

July 1, 2009   e.g., where were you   who were you with   what were you doing that day

List   Elephant   Shirt   Helicopter   Rose   Aluminum   Whiskey   Chair   Doctor   Purple   January   Alabama   Tennis   Elbow   Magazine   Trombone

-count backwards by 3’ from 177

  Recall as many as you can….

Cues to help in recall…. Try again!   Animal –   Clothing –   Vehicle –   Flower –   Metal –   Beverage –   Furniture –   Profession –   Color –   Month –   State –   Sport –   Reading material –   Musical instrument –   Part of the body -

More memory facts….

  -Serial Position Effect (primacy/recency)   (see illustration)

  Types of Long Term Memory   (see illustration)

Theories of Forgetting   Decay   **Retrieval Failure (ineffective/no

cues)   Motivated Forgetting (e.g.,

repression)   **Interference

  Proactive (old infor interferes with new)   Retroactive (new interferes with old)   (see illustration)

Proactive Interference

interference

Day one day two day three Study for study for take the biology test psychology psych test

On the psych test you keep remembering bio terms “old” information (bio) interferes with recall of “new” infor (psych)

Retroactive Interference

Day one day two day three Study for study for take the History test sociology History test

interference

On the history test you keep remembering sociology terms “new” information (soci) interferes with recall of “old” infor (Hist)

(Re)Constructive Memory

  Our memories are a construction, can be influenced   E.g., Elizabeth Loftus

  “Hit each other” “Smashed into each other”

Constructive Memory

  -in everyday recall, rarely remember things word for word/scene for scene/moment by moment

  -create summary/gist/labels (not detail)   -when remembering start with summary/gist

and construct memory around it   inf’n about people – often encode infor. In

terms of labels (summarizes what you know)   e.g., he’s aggressive, intelligent

  e.g. see someone on bus knock others

  coded in memory as: aggressive

  recall:

  Hmmmm, therefore, if can influence labels/summary can influence memory

Higgins & Rholes   Communication Rules – “message

modification”   e.g., (see illustration)   Positive effects:

  Avoid embarrassment, avoid conflict, its polite

  Negative effects: “saying is believing”

  LOGIC: if memory is constructive   Final memory is combination of

original stimulus information you are talking about and what you say (your message/summary)

  Thus, to the degree that message is biased/distorted, so will final memory

METHOD:   read infor. about Donald (ambiguous –

positive/negative)   give message about Donald to a listener   INDEP:

  ½ Ss talk about Donald to listener who likes Donald (should modify message and positively bias message)

  ½ Ss talk about Donald to listener who dislikes Donald (should modify message and negatively bias message)

  -after delay, surprise recall for what they read about Donald (“word for word”).

Dependent Measures:

  -message, distortion of information about Donald included in message

  -recall, distortion of information they read about Donald   Distortion determined by comparing

what they say/recall to what they originally read – positive or negative distortions counted

RESULTS

Message Distortions (comparing message to what Ss originally read)

Distortion Positive Negative Like 25% > 19% Dislike 3% < 28%

  Memory Distortions

Positive Negative Like 34% > 0% Dislike 4% < 31%

  “Saying is Believing”

  Memory is constructive