4.2 Memory

4.2.1 Important memory distinctions

• Implicit v.s. explicit
  • Explicit memory is what you consciously know; you know your name, you know the capital of Canada, you know what you had for breakfast this morning.
  • Implicit memory is what you may not be conscious of. You might, for instance, forget that you’ve ever been to a place, but at some level, know your way around. There may be a word that is unfamiliar to you consciously, but at gut level, you know what it means.
• semantic memory v.s. episodic memory
  • Semantic memory are facts. Again, the capital of Canada.
  • episodic memory is about episodes of your life
• encoding, storage, and retrieval.
  • Encoding is what happens to get information into your head
  • storage is keeping it in your head, and retrieval is getting out of your head.
• recall v.s. recognition
  • The recall is freely recounting what you’ve experienced
  • Recognition is from a set of options
• sensory memory v.a. short term memory v.s. long term memory.

4.2.2 Encoding

How to get things into long-term memory

• Depth of process: the deeper you think about something, the more sense you add to it, the easier to remember
• Mnemonics: give the a word more connection. for example, a rhyme. Memory context
• Understanding: understand the material

4.2.3 Remembering

• Retrieval cues
• The compatibility principle: learn words on the boat and underwater
• Search strategies: the more you look at it from different angles, the more you can remember

4.2.4 Forgetting

Why do we forget?

• Decay: Memory is a physical thing, so they decay
• Interference: similar things overlay upon previous memory
• Changes of retrieval cues : you move houses

Forgetting through brain damage

• Retrograde amnesia: loss of memories prior to stroke or accident
• Anterograde amnesia: loss of capacity to form new memory

It used to be thought that few of these amnesias simply can’t form new memories. They can’t form new explicit memories. But they can form new implicit memories and in particular, new skills. They learn new things, but they don’t know that they learned new things.

• Recommend movie: Memento

4.2.5 False memories

How do our memories become distorted?

• Expectations: People have done studies where they tell people stories for instance about somebody who goes to a dentist’s office. And then later asked them what they remember of the story. They tend to fill in the details that typically occur even though they didn’t. So the story might not mention paying the bill. But somebody later will confidently remember that they’ve been told a person paid the bill because they put in that fact
• Leading questions will shape how you remember a scene: If you ask them questions like, did you see the children getting into a school bus? Later on, just asking that question makes them much more likely to remember the school bus in the film. (experiment by Elizabeth Loftus)
• Hypnosis: hypnosis regression (ask people to go back to recall a crime scene for example)
• Repressed memories: wipe some unpleasant memories. debates on if that really exists
• Flashbulb memories: a dramatic event like 911, vivid memories, but not accurate. You talk about that so often and that becomes not just memory but stories.