Memory Processes
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6 CHAPTER Memory Processes CHAPTER OUTLINE Encoding and Transfer of Information The Constructive Nature of Memory Forms of Encoding Autobiographical Memory Short-Term Storage Memory Distortions Long-Term Storage The Eyewitness Testimony Paradigm Transfer of Information from Short-Term Memory Repressed Memories to Long-Term Memory The Effect of Context on Memory Rehearsal Key Themes Organization of Information Summary Retrieval Retrieval from Short-Term Memory Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Parallel or Serial Processing? Creative, and Practical Questions Exhaustive or Self-Terminating Processing? Key Terms The Winner—a Serial Exhaustive Model—with Some Qualifications Media Resources Retrieval from Long-Term Memory Intelligence and Retrieval Processes of Forgetting and Memory Distortion Interference Theory Decay Theory 228 CHAPTER 6 • Memory Processes 229 Here are some of the questions we will explore in this chapter: 1. What have cognitive psychologists discovered regarding how we encode information for storing it in memory? 2. What affects our ability to retrieve information from memory? 3. How does what we know or what we learn affect what we remember? n BELIEVE IT OR NOT THERE’SAREASON YOU REMEMBER THOSE ANNOYING SONGS that strengthens the connections associated with that Having a song or part of a song stuck in your head is phrase. In turn, this increases the likelihood that you will incredibly frustrating. We’ve all had the experience of the recall it, which leads to more reinforcement. song from a commercial repeatedly running through our You could break this unending cycle of repeated recall minds, even though we wanted to forget it. But sequence and reinforcement—even though this is a necessary and recall—remembering episodes or information in sequen- normal process for the strengthening and cementing of tial order (like the notes to a song)—has a special and memories—by introducing other sequences. Thinking of useful place in memory. We constantly have to remember another song may allow a competing memory to crowd sequences, from the movements involved in signing our out the first one: Find another infectious song and hope name or making coffee in the morning, to the names of that the cure doesn’tbecomemoreannoyingthanthe the exits that come before the motorway turn-off we take to original problem. drive home every day. In this chapter, we will learn more about how we store The ability to recall these sequences makes many as- and recall information, as well as what makes us forget pects of everyday life possible. As you think about a snip- that information again. pet of song or speech, your brain may repeat a sequence Researchers John Bransford and Marcia Johnson (1972, p. 722) gave their partici- pants the following procedure to follow. Are you able to recall the steps outlined in this procedure? The procedure is actually quite simple. First, you arrange items into different groups. Of course one pile may be sufficient, depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step; otherwise, you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first, the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then, one can never tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life. How easy or difficult is it for you to remember all the details? Bransford and Johnson’s participants (and probably you, too) had a great deal of difficulty understanding this passage and recalling the steps involved. What makes this task so difficult? What are the mental processes involved in this task? 230 CHAPTER 6 • Memory Processes As mentioned in the previous chapter, cognitive psychologists generally refer to the main processes of memory as comprising three common operations: encoding, stor- age, and retrieval. Each one represents a stage in memory processing: • Encoding refers to how you transform a physical, sensory input into a kind of representation that can be placed into memory. • Storage refers to how you retain encoded information in memory. • Retrieval refers to how you gain access to information stored in memory. Our emphasis in discussing these processes will be on recall of verbal and pictorial material. Remember, however, that we have memories of other kinds of stimuli as well, such as odors (Herz & Engen, 1996; Olsson et al., 2009). Encoding, storage, and retrieval often are viewed as sequential stages. You first take in information. Then you hold it for a while. Later you pull it out. However, the processes interact with each other and are interdependent. For example, you may have found the Bransford and Johnson procedure difficult to encode, thereby also making it hard to store and to retrieve the information. However, a verbal label can facilitate encoding and hence storage and retrieval. Most people do much better with the passage if given its title, “Washing Clothes.” Now, read the procedure again. Can you recall the steps described in the passage? The verbal label, “washing clothes” helps us to encode, and therefore to remember a passage that otherwise seems incomprehensible. Encoding and Transfer of Information Before information can be stored in memory, it first needs to be encoded for storage. Even if the information is held in our short-term memory, it is not always transferred to our long-term memory. So in order to remember events and facts over a long period of time, we need to encode and subsequently transfer them from short-term to long-term storage. These are the processes we will explore in the forthcoming section. Forms of Encoding We encode our memories to store them. However, do short-term and long-term stor- age use the same kind of code to store information, or do their codes differ? Let us have a look at some research to answer this question. Short-Term Storage When you encode information for temporary storage and use, what kind of code do you use? This is what Conrad and colleagues (1964) set out to discover with an experiment. Participants were visually presented with several series of six letters at the rate of 0.75 seconds per letter. The letters used in the various lists were B, C, F, M, N, P, S, T, V, and X. There were no vowels included in order to ensure that letter combinations did not result in any words or pronounceable combinations that could be memorized more easily. Immediately after the letters were presented, parti- cipants were asked to write down each list of six letters in the order given. What kinds of errors did participants make? Despite the fact that letters were presented visually, errors tended to be based on acoustic confusability. In other words, instead of recalling the letters they were supposed to recall, participants substituted letters Encoding and Transfer of Information 231 that sounded like the correct letters. Thus, they were likely to confuse F for S, B for V, P for B, and so on. Another group of participants simply listened to single letters in a setting that had noise in the background. They then immediately reported each letter as they heard it. Participants showed the same pattern of confusability in the listening task as in the visual memory task (Conrad, 1964). Thus, we seem to encode visually pre- sented letters by how they sound, not by how they look. The Conrad experiment shows the importance in short-term memory of an acoustic code rather than a visual code. But the results do not rule out the possibility that there are other codes. One such code would be a semantic code—one based on word meaning. Baddeley (1966) argued that short-term memory relies primarily on an acoustic rather than a semantic code. He compared recall performance for lists of acoustically confusable words—such as map, cab, mad, man, and cap—with lists of acoustically distinct words—such as cow, pit, day, rig, and bun. He found that performance was much worse for the visual presentation of acoustically similar words. He also com- pared performance for lists of semantically similar words—such as big, long, large, wide, and broad—with performance for lists of semantically dissimilar words—such as old, foul, late, hot, and strong. There was little difference in recall between the two lists. If performance for the semantically similar words had been much worse, what would such a finding have meant? It would have indicated that participants were confused by the semantic similarities and hence were processing the words semantically. However, performance for the semantically similar words was only slightly worse than that for the semantically dissimilar words, meaning that semantics did not matter much for processing. Subsequent work investigating how information is encoded in short-term mem- ory has shown clear evidence, however, of at least some semantic encoding in short- term memory (Shulman, 1970; Wickens, Dalezman, & Eggemeier, 1976). Thus, encoding in short-term memory appears to be primarily acoustic, but there may be some secondary semantic encoding as well. In addition, we sometimes temporarily encode information visually as well (Posner, 1969; Posner et al., 1969; Posner & Keele, 1967). But visual encoding appears to be even more fleeting (about 1.5 sec- onds).