Chapter 8: Memory Flashcards
Memory reflects…
- The capacity to retain and retrieve information.
- The changes in the structures that account for this capacity
- Reconstructive processes
Source Misattribution
the inability to distinguish an actual memory of an event from information you learned about the event elsewhere.
Flashbulb memory
Characterized by surprise, illumination, and seemingly photographic detail
- Unusual, shocking, or tragic events may hold a special place in memory
- Events seem frozen in time and detail
- But even flashbulb memories have errors!
I.e., 911
Confabulation
- Confusion of an event that happened to someone else with one that happened to you.
- Belief that you can remember something when it never actually happened.
- False memories can be as stable over time as true ones.
Conditions of Confabulation
You have thought, heard, or told others about the imagined event often (imagination inflation).
- The image of the event contains lots of details that make it feel real
- The event is easy to imagine
What factors influence eyewitness testimony?
Cross-race identification, the wording of questions, leading questions, misinformation, suggestive comments.
Explicit Memory
Conscious, intentional recollection of an event or of an item of information.
Assessed using recall and recognition tasks
Recall: the ability to retrieve and reproduce from memory previously encountered material (e.g., State the different psychological perspectives).
Recognition: the ability to identify previously encountered material (e.g., multiple choice questions).
Implicit Memory
Unconscious retention in memory, as evidenced by the effect of a previous experience or encountered information on current thoughts or actions.
Common method is priming where a person is exposed to information and later tested to see if this influences behaviour or performance on another task.
- Also tested using the relearning method: comparing times required to relearn material with initial learning.
Information Processing Models
- Cognitive processes involve computer ideas of encoding, storing, and retrieving information
- Information represented as concepts, propositions, images, or cognitive schemas
- Includes the three-box model of memory
Parallel distritubed processing
Knowledge is represented as connections among thousands of interacting processing units, distritubed in a vast network operating in parallel.
Three-Box Model of Memory
Argues that information processing begins in sensory memory, moves to short-term memory, and eventually moves to long-term memory.
Sensory register
- A memory system that momentarily preserves extremely accurate images of sensory information.
- Large capacity
- Specific to each sense (0.5 - 2 seconds duration)
- Identification of stimulus based on info in LTM
- Information not transferred quickly to STM is lost
Short-Term Memory (STM)
- A limited-capacity memory system involved in the retention of information for brief periods (up to 30 seconds if no rehearsal).
- Used to hold information retrieved from LTM for temporary use (referred to as working memory)
- Capacity of STM is limited, as reflected in Miller’s magic number 7 +/- 2 units (other estimates claim capacity is 2 to 20 items)
- Enhance capacity by chunking
- Meaningful and emotional items will transfer quickly to LTM, others require more effort to transfer this material.
Chunking
Creating meaningful units of information, often composed of smaller units
E.g., CBC is one chunk of information, C3PO, 1776, etc.
Working Memory
A form of short term memory that actively retains information for brief periods, and keeps it available for current use.
Retains information for about 30 seconds, although some researchers think that the maximum interval may extend a few minutes for certain tasks.
Material is no longer an exact sensory image, but as an encoding of one, such as a word or phrase. This material either transfers into long-term memory or decays, and is lost forever.
STM also functions as working memory
