3/22: Memory

• Memory: persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information
• Personally Constructed
• events with more Personal Meaning = more easily remembered
• Function of Synaptic Changes
• Experience strengthens and makes more efficient neural connections= Long term potentiation
• more sensitized receptors, sending neuron needs less prompting to release nt
• Flashbulb memory: clear memory of emotionally significant moment or event
• may be function of emotion-triggered hormonal changes
• may be accurate directly after event
• not as accurate years later
• Stimulus----Sensory Memory--Attention---Short Term Memory---Encoding----Long-term Memory
• Sensory memory: immediate, inital record of sensory info
• Short-term memory: holds few items briefly
• Long-term memory: relatively permanent and limitless storehouse
• retrieval- process from long-term to short-term memory to access memory
• Encoding
• Automatic Processing: unconscious encoding of incidental info like space, time, frequency
• little-no effort
• Effortful Processing: encoding that requires attention and conscious effort
• Rehearsal helps
• Recency vs Primacy effects
• Recency-  just saw it,  in sensory memory
• Primacy- had time to rehearse, in short-term memory
• Durable and Accessible memories often produced
• info audible during sleep, not remembered; 1 hour before sleep - optimal memory
• Retain info better = Distributed over Time
• Many different pathways to encode info
• Visual Encoding: encoding to picture images
• more powerful with concrete imagery than abstract
• Acoustic encoding: encoding of sound
• Semantic encoding: encoding of meaning
• Craik and Tulving study: learning is easier when something has meaning
• ?Best: Imagery + Semantic
• Self-reference effect
• link meaning of something to yourself makes learning easier
• Mnemonic devices help remembering
• Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units
• Hierarchies: subdividing concepts broad---narrow e.g. outline
• Storage
• Short-term: about 7 (giver or take 2) or 4
• Long-Term: limitless
• Memory does not reside in one single spot
• probably occurs in synapses and their neurotransmitters and hippocampus
• Arousal can enhance
• tragic, vividly remembered
• Weaker emotions, weaker memories
• flashbulb memories
• Retrieval
• Recall: ability to retrieve info not in conscious awareness
• Retrieval cues: help call stored info
• come from associations during encoding
• Priming
• elderly study
• Context effects: context of encoding = context retrieves info, remember better
• Deja vu: current situation, similar cues to earlier experience
• Mood-congruent memory: mood of storage = mood of recall, remember better
• Forgetting
• Absent-mindedness: inattention to details produces encoding failures
• Transience: storage decay over time
• Blocking: inaccessibility of stored info
• Misattribution: confusing info source
• Suggestibility: lingering effects of misinfo
• Bias: belief-colored recollections
• misconstruing past info
• Causes of Forgetting
• failure to encode info
• storage decay
• Retrieval failure: 
• lack of relevant cues
• tip of tounge phenomenon
• not enough cues to access all
• Proactive interference: learning earlier info can interfere learning later info
• Retroactive interference: new info takes place of old info
• hour before sleep is an exception
• Motivated Forgetting: remembering things differently than happened
• motivated cognition: memory portray self in positive light
• Repression: defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts,feelings, memories
• Memory Improvement Tips
• Overlearn
• Actively rehearse and think about material
• make material personally meaningful
• use mnemonic devices
• recreate encoding situation and mood
• study before sleeping or no other interference
• test knowledge
• Amnesia
• results from many kind of brain damage, particualry hippocampus
• two main types
• Anterograde amnesia:new info cannot be stored in long-term memory
• Retrograde amnesia: can't recall events preceding accident
• also cause by damage to prefrontal cortex
• Korsakoff's sydnrom
• alcohol runs down vitamin 
• Confabulations
• making things up to fill the gap in memory\
• Can show signs of implicit memory but not explicit memory
• implicit: how to do something (unconscious)
• other brain areas including cerebellum
• unable to declare
• skills 
• explicit: memory of facts and experiences that one can know and declare (conscious)
• hippocampus