Memory

What psychology teaches us about studying

Encoding strategies
Storage in Iconic, Short-term and Longterm memory (and retrieval)

Which is most useful?

7, 2 or 6?

they benefit learners of different ages and abilities and have been shown to
boost students performance across many criterion tasks and
even in educational contexts.

despite their promise, they fell short of a high utility assessment because the
evidence for their efficacy is limited. For instance, elaborative interrogation and
self-explanation have not been adequately evaluated in educational contexts,
and the benefits of interleaving have just begun to be systematically explored,
so the ultimate effectiveness of these techniques is currently unknown...

these techniques do not consistently boost students performance, so other

techniques should be used in their place (e.g., practice testing instead of
rereading).

According to the book, the reason we do not

need to study to remember events in our
lives, they way we study for a test is that:
[Link] day events are easier to imagine
visually than material for a test
[Link] memories are constructed, not
recorded
[Link] automatically use elaborative
encoding for our experiences
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Different types of encoding strategies rely on

different brain areas. Organizational encoding seems to
rely on _________, and this part of the brain is more active
during ___________.
[Link] frontal lobe; the encoding of items that are later
better remembered.
[Link] temporal lobe; the retrieval of items that are
remembered.
[Link] parietal lobe; the process of categorizing information
according to relationships.
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 How do you think having done a trial run

influenced your test performance?

How do you think having done a selfcorrection may affect your performance
on the final exam?

Memory Storage

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 Sensory Memory
Iconic visual store (Echoic memory for
auditory)
(Sperling, 1960)
[Link]
m5/Iconic
%20Memory/PsychSim_Shell.html

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Iconic memory
Very large capacity
Fast decaying
Attention can help (knowing where to look,
either in advance or very soon after
information is gone)

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 I am going to read a list of words to you. I

want you to pay very close attention
because you will be asked to recall as many
words as possible from the list. When I
finish the list I will say Go.
At that time, and not before, you are to
write down immediatly as many words as
you can remember from the list, in any
order.
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Serial position curve

Murdock (1962) suggested that
words early in the list were put
into long term memory (primacy
effect) because the person has
time to rehearse the word,
and words from the end went into
short term memory (recency
effect).

Atkinson&ShiffrinMultiStoreModel,1968

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Some problems with multi-store model

LTM appears to not be a unitary story (e.g., brain damage
can affect semantic memory facts- or episodic memory
events- only)
Flow of events can go the other way (LTM info can help
organize in STM). E.g., chunking 106619381945 as 3 years.

Does not really anticipate the difference between implicit

(skills) and explicit (intentional recollection) memory
dissociations found in amnesics.

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Short term memory

Rehearsal helps
keep information
in STM
(e.g., a phone number)

how can we measure

how long things stay in
STM without rehearsal??

Duration is 15-20 seconds

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Short term memory

What about images?

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Demo
(VSTM)

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Number of objects encoded

Visual short term memory has a limited capacity

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2
2

Set Size

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Posterior parietal lobe correlates with the

capacity of visual short-term memory
Todd & Marois, 2004

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Short term memory (STM)

Traditionally, STM was studied using verbal
material only (72 chunks capacity).
Rehearsal is critical to keeping information in
STM.
Later, visual short term memory (VSTM) was also
investigated.
Capacity is less then verbal STM ~3 to 4 items
(depends on their complexity).
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Retrieval is the process of

bringing to mind information that
has been previously encoded and stored
(Often, when we say we have forgotten something, the
problem is that we cannot retrieve the information.
The best evidence is when the information can be retrieved
later, or with some hint)

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Active retrieval efforts matter

Studentsmemorizedwords,thengiven1,2,3,or4lettercues
duringthepracticetest."C________vs"COGN_____").
Duringthefinal,allthestudentssimplywrotedownasmanyofthe
wordsastheycouldremember.

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Carpenter&DeLosh,2006

Lets do a demo about RETRIEVAL

Groups 1 vs. 2

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TransferAppropriateProcessing
Test
Rhyming

Meaning

Rhyming

Good

Poor

Meaning

Poor

Good

Study

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Transfer appropriate processing

Memory is better when the retrieval cues

match the manner in which the information
was processed at encoding.

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Implications
The characteristics of an exam should
determine how you prepare for it:
Essay: Practice recalling answers in
response to test questions.
Fill-in-the-blank: Recall names/terms in
response to definitions.
Multiple choice: Practice on other multiple
choice questions.
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<p>I seem to have trouble

understanding exactly how
synapses translate to memory.

Dont think about a synapse as a gap, but as a

connection that can be strengthened.
Memories are stored in groups of neurons that are
connected in different ways. To learn, you have to
change the connections.

Learning at the synapse can occur through various

mechanisms, one of them being Long-term
potentiation, which is the strengthening of a synapse
Partially because of what a
after the neuron PRE and POST the synapse have
synapse is - just a gap between
been repeatedly activated together. The learning
two neurons - but also because
could come from more neurotransmitter being
I do not fully understand how,
released or from more receptors to receive the
if firing the synapse changes
neurotransmitter.
the synapse, firing a synapse
multiple times strengthens and
enforces that memory. It

seems unintuitive and counter

productive.</p>

(the specifics of LTP will not be covered in this

course, but you can easily find sources to read about
this)
Not all synapses will be equally sensitive to learning,
but it is important to note that every experience you
have leaves a trace, changes you a little, and this
happens through plasticity in your synapses

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It's a little confusing how a

consolidated memory can become
vulnerable due to the retrieval
process. In computer terms, I
thought that retrieving a memory is
like making a word document; there
is always a backup copy that is
saved every few seconds just in
case of something corrupting it.
However, it's more like that the file
is being changed, and the memory
is always the original memory and
no backup exists. In this sense, even
old memories can be changed and
you may only remember certain
aspects of old fond memories due to
retrieval changing the memory, ie,
you hated your middle school
teacher, but loved your friends in
the class, over time you may forget
you even hated the teacher and
think you really liked her too. This
then brings the idea, are any of my
old memories even accurate?

You are correct, memory in the

brain is not like in a computer, it is
a reconstruction and memories are
changed, each time they are
accessed. There are LOTS of
evidence of false memories being
created, and that is the cost to
mechanisms that are designed to
LEARN constantly (we are NOT
optimized to be faithful records,
but to adapt to the most recent
conditions. You will learn more
about the limits of memory in the
next section).

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Does state-dependent retrieval

account for going blank on a
test? For example, a student is
happy while studying, but
becomes overly nervous or
stressed on a specific question.
The student then forgets the
right way to think about the
question, or blank, even if
they had thoroughly studied
that specific information the
night before. I'm just confused
on the way in which statedependent retrieval affects
everyday life. I understand the
explanation about the drunk
student taking the test, but I do
not fully understand the
emotional side of this specific
retrieval of memory (e.g.
thinking happy thoughts while
sad, etc.).

You example works:

everything else being equal,
you will remember better the
material if you are retrieving
it in the same state, for
instance the same mood, as
you were when you studied it.
Clearly if you studied drunk, I
dont think you should show
up drunk for the test, and this
doesnt mean you should try
to make yourself sad on
purpose ;-) its an effect
you may have relatively little
control over in practice
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I need some clarification on

theaforementionedprocesses
of consolidation and
reconsolidation. Do they
undergo the same neurological
processes in the hippocampus?
Also, when reconsolidation
occurs do the memories being
restored from consolidation get
manipulated from the current
state of the person, hence the
reason why sometimes our
long-term memories become
distorted over time?

The process is not exactly the same (but the

mechanism in both cases is protein
synthesis.): during reconsolidation,
memories that are already in cortex are
being re-activated, and during that process
they become a little more fragile or
susceptible to change. Note that the
memory becomes susceptible to change, the
reason is so that it can be strengthened, but
to make that possible it becomes plastic,
and it can be changed in other ways that
can impair later recognition.

Yes, long term memories can change over

time, and part of it is that you integrate the
new thoughts about it the second time
around with the original encoding. In many
situations this is beneficial, its the
underlying basis for learning.

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I don't understand exactly why

individuals who have trouble
with their episodic memory
would be unable to imagine
the future. I feel like imagining
the future is as simple as
conjuring a situation in your
head you perceive as likely to
occur. Although I do get that it
is similar to recombining past
experiences in new ways, I just
don't get why it would be so
difficult.

I guess this work tells

us that imagining the
future isnt so easy
after all, and that part
of how we can do this
is to use our
memories of the past
to understand how
things change over
time, and project
them in the future
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 One thing I didn't completely

understand was the process of
how a memory would go from
short term to long term? For
example, if you were asked to
remember a phone number,
and you repeated it to yourself
so you don't forget it, if you
kept repeating the number,
how long would it take before
you could recall that number
years later?

As patient HM shows us, STM does

not require hippocampus: so
moving things in LTM means the
hippocampus gets involved.
You move things to LTM through
rote learning (repetition) or
through understanding (creating
links to other information)
Remembering something for years
isnt just a function of how much
you repeat it, but many other
things, like using it often, its
relation to other information,
emotional content etc
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I did not understand retrievalinduced forgetting. I

understand that sometimes
after a while a person can
forget an event or details. But
I did not understand how this
impairs subsequent recall of
related items. Does this mean
that they get confused because
they have learned similar
topics? Or because the
memory has been stored away
for such a long time that when
the memory is brought up
some of it becomes not as
clear just because of how long
it has been since the memory
happened?

Remember the process of

reconsolidation? Well, RIF is an
effect that is thought to occur
because of that process. When you
re-activate the memory of what
you had for lunch last Monday, and
in the process think about all the
other lunches since then, that
Monday lunch memory might get a
little confused
The book also talks about how
when you need to try NOT to recall
a given item, this makes it harder
to retrieve it later it becomes sort
of tagged with a do not recall
signal

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