The Processes of Memory and Learning
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Learning and Memory Series 101 The Processes of Memory and Learning amplfire / Knowledge Factor Publication, © copyright 2017, all rights reserved CONTENTS Poor Shereshevsky The new synthesis A memorable history The four stages of memory The “problem” of memory—transience Ebbinghaus launches psychology Short and long-term memory Consolidation Working memory The multi-component model Long-term memory Two kinds of LTM—explicit & implicit Two kinds of explicit memory—episodic & semantic Semantic memory—how is it stored? Hierarchical model Multi-property model Schemas Retrieving memories Cues Signal Strength Familiarity and recollection Forgetting Trace decay Interference Permastore Retrieval slows forgetting Learning Memory Switches Repetition Elaboration Emotion Attention Retrieval 2 oor Solomon Shereshevsky couldn’t help but create world with the molecular machinery in nerve cells, and to the detailed memories of nearly everything that entered behavior of people. The work will not be complete for another Phis unusual brain. He never forgot. He could be given century, if ever, but we can now discuss memory and learning long lists of numbers, words, and non-sense syllables and at the deepest levels beginning with the molecules that remember them perfectly years later—and backwards, no less. regulate gene expression. From there, we can see how genes While that talent seems like a blessing, and it certainly was control neurons that change their structure during learning responsible for his career as a mnemonist and showman, to form memory. Continuing up the physical hierarchy, we the neuro-physiologist Alexander Luria, who studied discover that modular regions of the brain are tasked with Shereshevsky in the 1920s, found that he was handicapped specific functions. Lastly, we see how the overall integration by this remarkable ability. Every experience, even the most of the functional regions create the psychology of people, mundane, consisted of the reliving of countless associated their myriad behaviors, and the memories that constitute a details. The simple act of asking a street vendor for a scoop life lived. From genes, to neurons, to brain, to behavior and of ice cream brought forth remembered imagery of such personality; this spectacular and humbling new knowledge is intensity that the transaction was quickly brought to a halt. the foundational science from which the Amplifire learning Intelligence tests revealed an average IQ, yet interestingly, architecture was built. Shereshevsky could not easily create abstract thought. The To grasp the innovations contained in Amplifire, it is level of detail that plagued his conscious attention precluded necessary to get a handle on the basic principles of learning him from forming general principles by which to conduct a from the perspective of psychology and neuroscience. It’s not normal and happy life. as intimidating as it sounds since the journey is really one of So, why do the rest of us forget? Why is memory transient self discovery. After all, we have all learned countless items —here today, faint in a few weeks, gone in a year or two? Is through the act of living and every bit has been perceived and transience due to faulty wiring or the cellular limitations of the interpreted through a mind. How that happened and continues brain? Maybe it’s just like the old marketing joke about bad to happen is both fascinating and enlightening. This paper software code, except in this case it’s true—forgetting is not a will concentrate on the view from psychology. It will then bug, it’s a feature. Are there different types of memory? How hand off to the view from neuroscience. does a brain store memory and what can be done to improve it? Beginning with psychological research in the 1870s and A memorable history leading up to the very latest theories and working models, this paper examines the key discoveries of the most influential The four stages of memory experimental psychologists. Over many decades of toil, their To begin with, the science of memory breaks down the work has revealed how we learn and remember—perhaps the process of learning into four sequential components that are biological activity that makes us most human. As Noble Prize easily understood in the first instance yet contain a wealth of winning neurobiologist, Eric Kandel proclaims, detail if one cares to explore the terrain. The basic operations that turn information into memory are encoding, storage, “ For me, learning and memory have proven to be retrieval, and forgetting. endlessly fascinating mental processes because Encoding can be thought of as the transformation of the they address one of the fundamental features of sensory inputs coming in from the real world into signals human activity: our ability to acquire new ideas stored as memory in organic tissue. An organism’s task is to from experience and to retain these ideas in somehow convert the activity in the environment into a format memory. In fact, most of the ideas we have about that is suitable for storage in a brain composed of 100 billion the world and our civilization we have learned so neurons. To truly learn something, we must pay attention that we are who we are in good measure because to the stimulus and go over it in our minds from multiple of what we have learned and what we remember.” perspectives while trying to associate it with other, already —Erik Kandel, Nobel Prize Lecture, 2000 learned information. This activity forms a memory trace that is stored in patterns of neurons bound by their synapses—the language of encoding. The new synthesis Storage consists of changes in patterns of neurons at various In the last few decades, psychology and neuroscience have locations throughout the brain. As we’ll see, the evidence been joined together in a search for an understanding of suggests that there is no one place that any memory is stored the workings of the human brain. The wealth of theoretical for the long term. Rather, it is distributed among the many confirmation from observation and experimentation on this sensory pathways and brain structures that initially encoded unbelievably complex structure (100 billion neurons forming the information. So, if you remember the orange you had for 1,000 trillion connections) is a profound accomplishment. breakfast, the color is distributed at many points in the vision As predicted by Harvard biologist, E.O. Wilson, a consilient regions, the flavor resides in regions devoted to processing view of human mind and human nature is forming at this very tastes, and the texture of the fruit is stored in the tactile moment—a new synthesis. Incredibly, it connects the outside processing regions. 3 Retrieval is the conscious or unconscious act of reassembling all an armchair and a quiet place in which to think. the disparately stored components of a memory into a consistent Ebbinghaus changed psychology by introducing an elegant yet whole—like reassembling the memory of the whole orange from rigorous methodology. He invented 2,000 nonsense words and the many locations where different aspects of it are stored. created random lists of between 6 and 30 words. Then, he set Forgetting seems like an error in the brain’s design, but as we’ll about to memorize them. He discovered that learning a list of see, it’s really a feature with many advantages. Life without six or seven new words took place very quickly, often in just forgetting would be nearly intolerable. On the other hand, one session. Longer lists, however, required repeated sessions. forgetting important things like the rules for solving algebra There seemed to be a perfect correlation between the number of equations during an SAT exam can be quite detrimental to times he repeated the word lists and his ability to recollect them attaining one’s life goals. The task at hand is to find methods that later. In effect, Ebbinghaus was the first scientist to empirically encode important information into long-term memory storage so demonstrate that practice makes perfect. retrieval is effortless, while letting the less important bits fall He then plotted out the rate at which words fell out of memory away in due course. and made another set of discoveries. First, that memory seemed Amplifire is designed to enhance the encoding, storage, and to fade in two distinct stages—a steep decline that takes place in retrieval processes while slowing the forgetting process. These the first hour after learning and then a far more gradual decline processes are native to the brains of normally functioning that takes place over a period of a month or so. human beings and are capable of modification by the appropriate technology. To see how, we must acquire a bit more detail on the ways that brains learn and remember. 100 90 “ Whether or not something that is perceived will be 80 remembered later is determined by a number of 70 factors, the most important of which operate around 60 the time of learning: the number of times the event 50 or fact is repeated, it’s importance, the extent to 40 which we can organize it and relate it to knowledge 30 that we already have, and the extent to which we 20 rehearse the material after it has first been presented.” 10 Kandel & Squire—Memory, from Mind to Molecules—2008 Retained Percentage 0 1 day 0 min The “problem” of memory - transience 2 days 6 days 9 hours 31 days 20 mins 60 mins In a well known experiment, students were asked to write down their location and circumstances upon hearing about the O.J. Retention Interval Simpson verdict on the very day he was found not guilty. Just Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve three year later, they were only 30% accurate when recalling those circumstances.