pp

• Memory


  Learning that persists over time
• Measures of retention


  • Recall - retrieving information not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time
  • Recognition - identifying information previously learned
  • Relearning - learning something more quickly when you learn it a second time
• Recalling information is hardest of the three, but signals better retention
• Recognition and relearning


  1. Read Word Repeatedly Various Numbers of Times

  2. Wait 24 Hours

  3. Relearn the list, and track how long it takes
• Word list may be forgotten (recall fails) after 24 hours but faster re-learning indicates a kind of memory retention. Some information has been stored.
• Recognition of the nonsense syllables when you see them is also a form of memory.
• Information Processing Model


  The mind as a computer
• Information Processing Model


  1. Encoding - Get information into our brain

  2. Storage - Retain that information over a period of time

  3. Retrieval - Retrieve that information when we need it
• The mind isn't really like a computer
• Connectionism


  Memories are a product of interconnected neural networks that arise from particular patterns of activation that are strengthened through experience
• Memory is reconstructed rather than retrieved (however the information processing model is still a useful analogy)
• Sensory memory


  Immediate, brief recording of sensory information
• Short-term memory


  Briefly activated memory of a few items to be stored or forgotten
• Long-term memory


  Relatively permanent and limitless archive
• Working memory


  Holding information in mind while we process and work with it to integrate into long-term memory
• Working memory capacity varies and is influenced by nature and nurture
• Heredity explains half person-to-person variation in working memory
• Stressful experiences in childhood may result in poorer working memory
• Practice cannot increase global working memory capacity only performance on specific task
• Central executive


  Attention is focused to integrate information from working memory into long-term memory
• Without focused attention, information fades
• Short-term/working memory capacity


  Most people can generally retain 7 +/- 2 pieces of information
• Short term/working memories have limited life (3-12 seconds)
• Capacity depends on variety of factors like age and attention
• Task switching reduces working memory
• Sensory memory


  Fleeting memory (extremely short-term storage) of images, sounds, and scents
• Iconic memory


  Fleeting sensory memory of visual stimuli, lasts for a few tenths of a second
• Echoic memory


  Fleeting sensory memory of auditory similar, lasts for 3 or 4 seconds
• Automatic processing


  Unconscious encoding of incidental information
• Implicit (nondeclarative) memories


  Learned skills, conditioned associations, routine details independent of conscious recollection
• Effortful processing


  Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort
• Explicit (declarative) memories


  Facts and memories that we can consciously know and declare
• What begins as effortful can become automatic (e.g., learning to read)
• Chunking


  Organizing information into familiar manageable units to help encode and recall information
• Chunking


  • "Try to remember 43 individual numbers and letters."
  • Sentence contains 43 letters/numbers but you chunk into individual words and a meaningful whole
• Mnemonics


  Memory aids that utilize imagery and organization devices
• Mnemonics


  • My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles (planets in order from the sun)
  • HOMES (North America's five great lakes)
• Hierarchies


  Organizing information into hierarchies composed of a very broad concept divided and divided into narrower concepts and facts
• Hierarchies


  • Creating categories of words from a list
  • Organizing information in a chapter into headings, sections, learning objectives
  • Breaking complex processes (like memory) down into narrower, related processes
• Distributed practice


  Retaining information better when encoding is distributed over time