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Memory
Encoding,
Storage, Retention, and Retrieval
Memory is retention of information over a period of time. Ebbinghaus
studied memories by teaching himself lists of nonsense words and then
studying his retention of these lists over periods of hours to days. This
was one of the earliest studies of memory in psychology.
Contents:
1. Short Term Memory
2. Working Memory
3. Long Term Memory
4. Spreading Activation Model
5. Practice and Strength
6. Depth of Processing
7. Elaborative Processing and Text
8. Forgetting: Gone or Inaccessible?
9. Forgetting: Decay or Interference?
10.
Retrieval and Inference
11.
Other Facts about Memory
physiological process. The shape of the memory loss curves are the
same. Hence we don't need to postulate a special type of memory.
Instead, we need a theory of:
Working Memory
Here we address why we can rehearse only limited information at a time.
Articulatory Loop Rehearsal limitations are due to limits in how long it
takes verbal material to decay, not how many items we can store. Hence,
the faster we can rehearse, the more we can store (Baddeley, 1986).
Experimental support: word length effect. How long it takes to read
words predicts how many words will be remembered. Articulatory loop is
called the phonological loop due to evidence that it involves speech. We
can rehearse about 1.5 seconds of verbal material before it decays. Time
in the loop is not related to probability of coding in long term memory.
Baddeley's model proposes that we have a visual/spatial sketchpad as
well as the phonological loop. These hold information for use by a central
executive. There is evidence that a particular area of the frontal cortex is
involved in working memory.
Depth of Processing
Craik and Lockhart (1972) proposed that strength of memory depends on
how deeply information is processed, not on how long it is processed
Experimental support: Memory for words not improved by merely
repeating them for a longer period of time (Glenberg et al. 1977). A large
number of studies support the depth of processing conclusion. It applies
to subject matter learning as well as laboratory situations. Subsequent
work focused on what constitutes deep processing.
Processing Meaning:
Some lab studies compare tasks that require processing meaning of
words versus form (e.g., what letters do they have).
Consistent with this idea, various studies show that recall is better when
tested in the same context (physical or emotional) as in which learning
took place. Some benefit has been found studying for important exams in
the same room as they will be taken. However these results are variable.