Ebbinghaus’s Pioneering Studies of Memory It is sometimes said that “What you are is what you eat” Hermann Ebbinghaus studied his own ability to memorize but on the other hand “Who you are is what you new material remember.” • He invented over 2300 nonsense syllables and put them into We can know nothing about ourselves without reference random lists. to our . Our memories organize our past lives • Over 6 years he memorized thousands of lists of nonsense syllables. and make sense of them, while at the same time • Generally he found that delay between memorization and creating a context that influences how we live our resulted in the of a large portion of the material. future lives and what is important to us. Without our memories we would be hopelessly lost.

Memories, . . . . . Ebbinghaus and Serial Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) Longer lists take longer to learn • Desired to know how memories are formed N of List N of Readings Time per syllable • Assumed memories based on temporal associations formed between events • 7 1 .4 • Studied the process of association through serial learning. Approach • 10 13 5.2 similar to behaviorists. • 12 17 6.8 • AàBàCàD • 16 30 12 • Invented over 2300 nonsense syllables (bok, gaz, lup, wuc). Why • 24 44 17.6 did he need them? Why not use ordinary words? • 36 55 22 Once you learn a list you immediately begin to forget it. • Measured forgetting by Savings Method: Number of Times it takes to learn list correctly the first time - Number of Times it takes to relearn list correctly Amount of savings

“How soon we forget” Did Ebbinghaus Underestimate Memory?

• Interference problem. • He memorized thousands of nonsense syllable lists over 6 year period. Learning sets of similar materials makes it harder to learn new material and makes it harder to remember old material • Nonsense syllables. • If he used meaningful materials he would have shown better learning and retention. Memory related to nature of the information being retained, the level of interest in it, and its significance to that individual. • Memorizing in order. • Ebbinghaus required himself to repeat the syllables in correct order after memorizing them. We seldom are required to remember things in order. Is Repetition of an Experience Enough to A failure to encode Create a Memory? Which is the genuine penny? We don’t recognize the penny because it is unlikely that we bothered to “encode” the information. Memory is divided into three parts • – The process by which we transform our experience into a form that is memorable • – The means by which we retain memories over time • Retrieval – The process by which we recover our encoded memories from storage.

Storing Memories Atkinson & Shiffrin Model of Memory Sensory Memory Store Letters flashed on screen for 1/20 of a second, participants • The initial storage of sensory information could report about half correctly • Failure to encode all the letters or failure of memory? Retest with tone next to line to be remembered • Memory near perfect

Storing Memories Sensory Memory Store Atkinson & Shiffrin Model of Memory Sensory Memory Store • Memory for visual information • The initial storage of sensory information • Very short duration, less than 1 second • Very large capacity In moving to the next place for storage for memory, Short Term Memory, attentional processes become very important in determining what we remember. Daniel Levin-Change Blindness

Memory Stores Short Term Memory Duration

Short Term Memory Confusions over what is Short Term • Medium Duration 20-30 seconds • Short Term Memory is the memory of things in our immediate awareness • Small Capacity +- 7 items • If shifts, items in STM dissipate in approximately 20 • About the size of a telephone number seconds (Peterson study) – Rehearsal can increase the length of time memory retained or transferred to long term memory – To maintain items in STM they need to be rehearsed Demo: You will see 4 letters followed by 3 numbers. Start counting backwards by 3, until I say stop.

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Short Term Memory Short Term Memory

Demo: Remember as many letters as you can Capacity approximately 7 items plus or minus 2 • Capacity can be increased by “Chunking” • Anders Ericsson’s work • Chess masters and visual “chunks” Is Short Term Memory composed of only space for temporary storage or does it have other functions?

XIBMSATMTVPHDX

X IBM SAT MTV PHD X Short-term memory Short Term Memory or or Working memory? Short Term Memory might be better termed “Working memory” because space available for remembered items, changes depending on processing needs of the executive. Processing Storage Demo: Space Space Sing the “Happy Birthday” while spelling the word ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM --- Sing the “Happy Birthday” while drawing what your favorite house would look like. Why do 5 year old children have a STM of about 3 and adults, 7. Alan Baddeley (1986),

Overworking Working Memory

Have you noticed that when you attend lectures you know Book some thing about you remember so much more from Flower Telephone them? Why is that? Carpet The importance of a college education is often learning to Sky pay attention to those things which count but it often Basket takes a large store of knowledge to do that. Chimney Hammer Tree Coat

Picture Shoe Lamp Napkin Carrot

The Serial-Position Effect Long Term Memory The location where information is held for hours, days, weeks, or years. At your 50th high school reunion most of you will be able to recognize 90% of your classmates from the yearbook. • No known capacity, decay uncertain

What is responsible for Primacy effect? Recency effect? Children under 8 don’t show primacy effect but do show recency. Why?

Retrieval Memory and Retrieval Cues

Cue Target Retrieval from long term memory is different from STM or Sensory memory in which the memory decays Football Pass rapidly. Envelope Seal • In LTM the memory is stored and brought back to consciousness Board game Checkers by a retrieval cue that was associated with the memory when it Inches Feet was formed Social event Ball Encoding Specificity Principle Geometry Plane • Association you form at the time of learning material will be most Weather Fair effective cue in retrieving it. Tennis Racket Clergyman Cardinal Stone Rock U.S. Pol Bush Magic Spell

Memory Encoding Specificity Principle

Cue Cue2 Cue1 Target Football Football Football Pass Animal Animal Envelope Seal Board game Board game Board game Checkers Part of the body Part of the body Inches Feet Social event Social event Ball Social event Transportation Geometry Plane Transportation Weather Weather Fair Weather Crime Tennis Racket Crime Clergyman Clergyman Cardinal Clergyman Music Stone Rock Shrubbery U.S. Pol Bush Music Write Magic Spell Shrubbery Write

State Dependent Memory

Encoding specificity implies memory would be better if your physiological state is the same as what it was during the original learning Why would you do better on the psych exam if you take it in this room? The scuba diving • Participants learned list A while diving and list B while on shore. • Tested for Lists A & B in both places. Have you ever gone back to a place from your childhood?

• In therapy, patients remember many sad and unfortunate ways their parents treated them. When they recover they can remember many positive things that happened. Why is that? Levels of Processing (encoding)

Demo: Half the room close your eyes. Consider each of the items you will be shown as something you might possibly want for your dorm room and the reason why for your choice. Close your eyes Count the total number of CAPITAL LETTERS in all of the words you will be shown. Close your eyes Everyone open your eyes.

eleCtrIc drill sTereo heating pAd poPcorn poppEr teleVision refrigErator teLephone automoBile fryiNg pAn blenDer electric toOth brush RaDio

Encoding Information Depth of Processing Processing “HEN” How well we remember things depends on the how much Is it written in CAPITAL letters? SHALLOW we elaborate on the information when we encode it. SHALLOW This is also called the Depth of Processing Model, (Structural encoding, Physical signifying that information is processed at greater structure of stimulus) depths (elaborated) it is remembered better.

Does it RHYME with PEN? (Phonemic encoding, emphasizes sounds)

Would it fit in the following sentence? DEEP "She cooked the ______.“ (Semantic encoding, emphasizes meaning)

Encoding in Visual Images Deeper Processing Through Imagery

Further elaborations can occur if we convert what we "She cooked the ______." need to remember into a visual image. or "The great bird swooped down and carried off the struggling _____."

"He dropped the WATCH." or "The old man hobbled across the room and picked up his valuable WATCH that had dropped from his pocket.”

The second examples increases the elaborateness of the visual image for remembering it. The last one is remembered better. Evidence is that encoding without imagery involves the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, whereas encoding with imagery involves occipital lobe. Thus more resources devoted to memory, two places rather than one.

Studying for Devices and Levels of Processing • Using Flash Cards to memorize terms. Peg method • Talking about something you read or learned in class • One is a bun with your friends during lunch • Two is a shoe • Repeating the names of items you need to know over • Three is a tree and over again • Four is a door • Five is a hive • Creating a personal meaning for oneself with what you • Six is sticks want to learn • Seven is heaven • Taking quizzes until you get all the answers right • Eight is a gate • Writing a short summary in your notes about what • Nine is wine your instructor said • Ten is a hen Method of Loci • Store items in a well-learned geographic place, e.g., street were you live, or the inside of your house

Try to remember as many as you can

Pinto Siamese Manx Collie Goose Arabian Finch Mustang Swan Warbler Duck Shepherd Dachshund Persian Wren Terrier Memory and Organization Proactive and Retroactive Interference

Our memory for objects is aided if we use the natural One of the main reasons we forget is interference organizations that we use for categorizing things.

Childhood Memories

Is Memory a Tape Recording? Semantic Networks

Much knowledge is linked by meaning and similarity. Thinking Do our memories make an accurate copy of our about some concepts may stimulate others (Spreading activation) experience. • Brain stimulation - Penfield

Memory as a reconstructive Process • It would not be possible to have memory for every detail, instead we remember a few unique details and reconstruct the remainder based on our expectations. However, our expectations can create biased memories. Eyewitness testimony is susceptible to these effects • Events occur so quickly that the memory created is susceptible to disortion. Source memory not very good and becomes poorer with age – Can lead to errors in eyewitness accounts of accidents, robberies, etc., – Book’s example of the psychologist accused of rape when he actually was being interviewed on TV at the time. Suggesting False Memories

Experimentally implanting -Loftus • Various studies have shown that it is possible by suggestion to implant memories for events that did not occur. • About a quarter of subjects in several studies were convinced that they had been lost as children after a researcher suggested it to them. • Plausible events were more likely to be remembered, but the memories were somewhat vague, but these results were achieved after a single, brief suggestion. The “false” or “recovered” memory controversy • Reports of long-lost memories, prompted by clinical techniques, are known as recovered memories. Often these are memories of abuse that took place in early childhood. Some true but some not. – Are you depressed without a reason, have trouble concentrating, or experience sleepless nights? Then you may be a victim of child abuse.

Amnesia The Case of H. M. Temporal Lobe (Hippocampus) • In 1953, underwent surgery to stop seizures. Doctors removed • Time graded – memory loss greatest for memories acquire just parts of Medial temporal lobes, hippocampus and amygdala before injury, and least for distant time memories • Suffered some degree of retrograde amnesia for memories 1-3 • Ability to form long-term memories after injury, intact years before his operation • Anterograde Amnesia, STM Normal, LTM Normal, but he could • Short-term memory intact not transfer memories in STM and consolidate them to LTM • Long-term memory intact • He can carry on a conversation, he can read, and deal with new ’ • Inability to form long-term memories after injury information as long as it doesn t leave awareness • He has some awareness of this memory problem: • Related to temporal lobe damage and hippocampus – “right now, I’m wondering, have I gotten or said anything amiss? You see, at this moment everything looks clear to me, but what happened just before? That’s what worries me. It’s like waking from a dream. I just don’t remember.”

The Memory Maker

Hippocampus intimately involved in forming new memories • Aspects of our memories located in different areas, auditory, visual, etc., • To remember some part of the brain has to organized this amalgam of different information into a integrated cohesive memory • Hippocampus creates the recipe for our newly formed memories But a little mysterious because once we develop a solid memory, hippocampus no longer needed to remember it. Surprising learning in Amnesics Mirror Tracing

The tower puzzle. In this puzzle, all the colored disks must be moved to another post, without ever placing a larger disk on a smaller one. Only one disk may be moved at a time, and a disk must always be moved from one post to another (it cannot be held aside).

Organization of LTM Organization of Memory

Studies of brain damaged patients support idea of different types of stored memories -Conscious or the intentional act of remembering • -Who is the president of the US • -What did you eat yesterday for breakfast -Remembering without awareness. Past experience shows an influence that can be demonstrated by a change in a person’s actions • Effects--conditioned emotional responses (e.g., your heart beats faster as you approach your arch rival) • —motor skills, habits, tacit rules (e.g., riding a bike, swinging a tennis racket) • --implicit activation of concepts in long-term memory

Implicit Memory Memory for Traumatic Events

Priming Memory for traumatic events • Enhanced memory for a stimulus, after previous exposure to it • Repression. believed that it was possible to Fill in the blanks with the first thing that comes to : repress a painful memory, motivation or emotion, to remove it _ L _ _ P _ from consciousness so that it couldn’t cause psychic pain. _ N _ _ Z _ Contrary to Freud’s assertion it appears that the greater _ _ C the emotional arousal associated with an event, the greater the likelihood it will be remembered _ O _ E _ • Most people do not forget traumatic events if they happen later _ R _ _ P_ than age 3. _ _ P P _ • It may appear that people are repressing since people often don’t _ A _ H _ U _ want to talk about traumatic events, but they are trying to suppress them, not repress. These results suggest that the hippocampal structures damaged are not involved in implicit memory. Memory for Traumatic Events Memory and the Brain

Repression of traumatic events does not fit well with our Differences between intact hippocampus and amygdala understanding of the biological process of storing • Intact hippocampus but damaged amygdala memory. – When classically conditioned to fear stimulus like tone and shock, they do not show physiological response to CS although they Key player is the amygdala understand connection • There is survival value in remembering things that frighten or • Damaged hippocampus but intact amygdala scare us – No realization that CS signifies shock, but they respond • During stressful or emotional events, the amygdala encourages the physiologically. sympathetic nervous system to boost production of the stress Frontal-lobe damage hormones cortisol and adrenaline which lead to better memories. • Damage to the frontal lobes also affects memory because it is • Damage to the amygdala prevents the emotional arousal that responsible for strategies used in creating memories. creates stronger memories. • Frontal lobes help us to focus on what is to be remembered and helps to inhibit stimulation that might interfere with our remembering.

The Biochemistry of Memory

Hints on how memories are formed at the biological level

It is assumed that memories are formed as a result of a change between the synapses of neurons • If neuron A excites neuron B, the connection between them changes, so that it is easier for A to excite B in the future. • This strengthening called Long Term Potentiation (LTP), and can last hours or even weeks. • The hippocampus is an area of the brain where LTP is occurring more than any other (making memories). • If this process is interfered with memory formation is disrupted.