Episodic and semantic B 1 4/5/2010 The Forgetting Curve and Consolidation • Most forgetting occurs in the first few hours or days • After a few days, forgetting tends to taper off with small declines • Memories that remains tends to last for a long period of time. o Rehearsal and review tends to increase the likelihood that the memories will be retained over a long period of time. Episodic and semantic B 2 4/5/2010 The Forgetting Curve and Consolidation • Squire tested adult memory for one season TV shows from 1 to 15 years prior. o Participants’ remembered more than 75% of the previous season’s shows. o Participants’ recollection dropped from 2 to 9 years. o Participants’ remembered almost as many shows from 15 years ago as from 10 years ago. Declarative memories may have a consolidation period— length of time during which new memories may be lost. • In study, rats had severe memory loss from electroconvulsive shock (ECT) 20 seconds after training. • ECT shock an hour after training had little effect on the loss of new memories Episodic and semantic B 3 4/5/2010 The Forgetting Curve and Consolidation Squire and colleagues also tested depressed patients’ memory for one-season TV shows from 2 to 15 years prior. Tests were conducted right before ECT and a week after ECT. BEFORE the ECT therapy, patients remembered recent shows fairly well, and memory for older shows dropped like the healthy patients. A week AFTER ECT, there was temporary retrograde amnesia for the TV shows from 2 to 4 years ago. Episodic and semantic B 4 4/5/2010 Interference The details of our memories fade as time passes. As our lives move forward, new memories can interfere with old ones. Retroactive Interference: Later learning impairs memory for information acquired earlier; backward- acting memory interference Information Information Information yesterday today tomorrow Psychology of Language, Learning Thought and Intelligence Proactive Interference: Earlier learning impairs memories for information acquired later; forward- acting memory interference. Information Information Information yesterday today tomorrow Psychology of Psychology of Memory Learning Episodic and semantic B 5 4/5/2010 Interference The details of our memories fade as time passes. As our lives move forward, new memories can interfere with old ones. Retroactive Interference: Later learning impairs memory for information acquired earlier; backward- acting memory interference Information Information Information yesterday today tomorrow Vice President Dick Cheney Proactive Interference: Earlier learning impairs memories for information acquired later; forward- acting memory interference. Information Information Information yesterday today tomorrow Senator Hillary Clinton Episodic and semantic B 6 4/5/2010 Memory as Information Processing Psychologists use the metaphor that the mind is an information processor that • encodes, • stores and • retrieves information. A rough analogy is that memory is like computer processes. Episodic and semantic B 7 4/5/2010 Memory as Information Processing The analogy doesn’t capture other features of memory such as that people forget and distort information and sometimes remember events in a way that is different than how the event actually occurred. Memory is NOT like a video tape that records everything. It is more like a jigsaw puzzle where we remember certain events and reconstruct the missing pieces. Episodic and semantic B 8 4/5/2010 What memories are real? It is very difficult to distinguish between “actual memories” and reconstructed memories. Reconstructed memories are potentially inaccurate. A student example: In middle school I was asked to write a paper on the earliest memory I could recall. I whacked my brain for hours trying to remember something from my early childhood, when suddenly it came to me: I was running along the coast on a very cold and drizzly day, wearing an aqua green quilted jacket, and I could see my long hair escaping on both sides of the hood, flying in the wind. Episodic and semantic B 9 4/5/2010 Reconstructed Memories Episodic and semantic B 10 4/5/2010 Applying Your Knowledge .