7 MEMORY

CHAPTER PREVIEW

• Forming Memories
• Types of Memory
• Memory and the Brain
• Malleability of Memory
• Forgetting and Memory Loss
• Bringing It All Together:
Making Connections in Memory

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Memory Video
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FORMING MEMORIES

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MEMORY

Without memories our entire sense of self, our

personalities, and our relationships would not
be possible.
Memory: the ability to take in, solidify, store,
and use information.
• Also the store of what has been learned and
remembered.
Memory is not one process, nor is there only
one kind of memory.
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FOUR STEPS IN FORMING MEMORIES

Encoding: the brain attends to, takes in, and

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integrates new information; the first stage of
long-term memory formation.
• Automatic processing: occurs with little effort or
attention.
• Effortful processing: occurs with careful attention
and conscious effort.
• A common way to encode deeply is to use a
mnemonic device, such as a rhyme or acronym.
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FOUR STEPS IN FORMING MEMORIES

Consolidation: establishing, stabilizing, or

2
solidifying a memory; the second stage of
long-term memory formation.
• Once the necessary proteins have formed in the
brain, resistant to distraction and decay.
• Sleep promotes memory consolidation.

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FOUR STEPS IN FORMING MEMORIES

Storage: the retention of memory over time; the

3
third stage of long-term memory formation.
• Hierarchies: ways of organizing related pieces of
information from the most specific feature they have
in common to the most general.
– Human, hominid, primate, mammal, animal.
– Association binds the concepts together.
• Associative network: a chain of associations
between related concepts.
– Each concept or association is a node.
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FOUR STEPS IN FORMING MEMORIES

An associative network. Associative networks are chains of

association between related concepts or nodes that get
activated. The closer concepts are to each other, the more
directly related they are and the more likely they are to activate
the other node. The network for “fire engine” is a rich
associative network of related concepts (Collins & Loftus, 1975).
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FOUR STEPS IN FORMING MEMORIES

Retrieval: the recovery of information stored in

4
memory; the fourth stage of long-term memory.
• The ease of retrieval is determined by the previous
stages: encoding, consolidation, storage.
• Some memories require conscious effort for retrieval.

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AIDS TO MEMORY FORMATION

Attention is essential; and processing

information deeply is one of the best ways
to recall it.
Levels of processing:
the concept that the more
deeply people encode
information, the better
they will recall it.

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AIDS TO MEMORY FORMATION

Results of levels of processing and recall.

These results show that the more deeply people process
information, the better they recall it. If people are presented a
word list twice, the effect of depth of processing on recall is even
stronger (Craik & Lockhart, 1972).
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AIDS TO MEMORY FORMATION

Sleep is an aid to learning and memory.

• Emotional events benefit from sleep.
• Memories are protected and made more accessible.
• Retention is best the sooner a person falls asleep after
taking in the information.
Emotions help us encode and retrieve memories.
• Flashbulb memory: a detailed snapshot of what we
were doing when we first heard of a major, public, and
emotionally charged event.
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IMPEDIMENTS TO MEMORY FORMATION

Being distracted is the key to poor memory

formation.
• Divided attention and multitasking interfere with the
first necessary steps of memory formation.
Emotion can help us remember events; but
sometimes emotions distort our memories.
• Emotional memories are often held with great
confidence but with blindness to their inaccuracy.
• There is a positive bias in autobiographical recall.
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TYPES OF MEMORY

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BRENDA MILNER AND “H. M.”

Being unable to consciously recall experiences

doesn’t mean there is no memory of an event.

With the hippocampus on both sides of his brain removed, H. M. lost the
ability to form new memories. Although this prevented him from recalling
ever having completed the star-tracing task shown here (a), he got better at it
over time (Kandel, 2006; Kandel, Kupferman, & Iversen, 2000).
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SENSORY MEMORY

Three-stage model of memory: classifies three

types of memories based on how long the
memories last.
• Sensory memory.
• Short-term memory
• Long-term memory.

Sensory memory: holds information in its

original sensory form for a brief period of time,
usually about half a second or less.
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SHORT-TERM MEMORY

Short-term memory: temporarily (2 to 30

seconds) stores a limited amount of information
before it is stored or forgotten.
• Short-term memory used in the service of a problem or
action makes use of our working memory.
• The short-term memory capacity of most people is
between five and nine units or chunks of information.
• Chunking: breaking down a list of items to be
remembered into a smaller set of meaningful units.
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SHORT-TERM MEMORY

Alan Baddeley’s model of working memory. Images and spatial

relations are stored in one storage center; events and experiences
in another; and language and sounds in another (Baddeley, 2003).
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 SHORT-TERM MEMORY

Serial position effect: the tendency to have

better recall for items in a list according to their
position in the list.
People have the best recall of
items that are in the beginning of
a series (primacy) or at the end
of a series (recency). The recency
effects go away if people are
given a distracting task, such as
having to recall digits before
recalling the words in a list.
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LONG-TERM MEMORY

Long-term memory: the capacity to store vast

amounts of information for as little as 30
seconds and as long as a lifetime.
At the broadest level there are two types of
long-term memory:
• Implicit memory—how to ride a bike or add.
• Explicit memory—where you left your car keys.

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LONG-TERM MEMORY

Implicit memory: knowledge based on

experience, such as skills, outside conscious
awareness.
• Also known as non-declarative memory.
• Comes in two forms: procedural and priming.
• Procedural memory: almost any behavior or physical
skill we have learned.
• Priming: arises when recall is improved by earlier
exposure to the same or similar stimuli.
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LONG-TERM MEMORY

Explicit memory: the conscious recall of facts

and events.
• Also known as declarative memory.
• Comes in two forms: semantic and episodic.
• Semantic memory: recalls facts and general
knowledge, such as what we learn in school.
• Episodic memory: recalls the experiences we have
had; more personal and autobiographical than
semantic memory.

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LONG-TERM MEMORY

Highly superior autobiographical memory

(HSAM): occurs when people can recall in
considerable detail personal events from almost
any day of their life.
• Associated with a high incidence of obsessive–
compulsive behavior.

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 MAJOR TYPES OF MEMORY
TOGETHER

When our sense organs are stimulated, the nervous system forms
a trace of what we experienced (sensory memory). If we don’t
attend to it, we forget it immediately. If we pay attention, the
information is passed on to short-term memory. If we rehearse the
information, it is processed more deeply and passed on to long-
term memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1971).
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MAJOR TYPES OF MEMORY
TOGETHER

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MEMORY AND THE BRAIN

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NEUROPLASTICITY AND MEMORY

Donald Hebb proposed the concept of long-term

potentiation (LTP): the strengthening of synaptic
connection when a synapse of one neuron
repeatedly fires and excites another neuron.
• Repeated stimulation of a group of neurons leads to
the formation of cell assemblies.
• Neurons that fire together, wire together.
• Use it or lose it.

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 NEUROPLASTICITY AND MEMORY

Neural formation of new memory—long-term potentiation.

Source: Adler, Jerry. “Erasing Painful Memories: Drug and Behavioral Therapies Will Help Us Forget Toxic © McGraw-Hill Education
Thoughts.” Scientific American, (May 2012): 60. Reprinted by permission of Emily Cooper. Permission required for reproduction or display
NEUROPLASTICITY AND MEMORY

Eric Kandel, using sea slugs, found that

“Conversion from short-term to long-term
memory storage requires spaced repetition.”
• Practice makes perfect.
• Repeated stimulation of a neuron actually triggers the
development of new synapses, which stabilize a new
memory.

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NEUROPLASTICITY AND MEMORY

How memories stick.

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BRAIN REGIONS INVOLVED IN MEMORY

The prefrontal cortex plays an important role in

attention, appropriate social behavior, impulse
control, and working memory.
Three of the five sensory memory systems have
a dedicated sensory cortex for processing.
• Occipital lobes (vision).
• Temporal lobes (hearing).
• Parietal lobes (touch).
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BRAIN REGIONS INVOLVED IN MEMORY

Memory is consolidated through rehearsal and

repetition in the hippocampus.
• Attention and focus also require the
prefrontal cortex.
Three systems handle long-term memory:
• Procedural-implicit;
• Emotional; and
• Declarative-explicit.
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BRAIN REGIONS INVOLVED IN MEMORY

Brain regions involved in working memory.

The prefrontal cortex focuses attention on sensory stimuli and
holds information long enough for us to solve a problem.

Prefrontal cortex

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BRAIN REGIONS INVOLVED IN MEMORY

Brain regions involved in working memory.

Then the information is transferred to the hippocampus for
memory consolidation.

Prefrontal cortex

Hippocampus

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BRAIN REGIONS INVOLVED IN MEMORY

Brain regions involved in working memory.

The temporal and occipital lobes, as well as Wernicke’s area, are
active in the rehearsal of the auditory and visuospatial
information needed by working memory.
Wernicke’s area

Occipital lobe

Prefrontal cortex

Hippocampus

Temporal lobe

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BRAIN REGIONS INVOLVED IN MEMORY

Three long-term memory systems. Memories begin with

parallel output from cortical sensory association areas, such as
the auditory or visual association areas. Depending on the kind
of memory system involved, the output goes to different brain
regions (Eichenbaum, 2010).

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BRAIN REGIONS INVOLVED IN MEMORY

Brain regions involved in long-term memory. Implicit

Explicit
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CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS IN
BRAIN STIMULATION AND MEMORY
Drugs can enhance or dampen memory
formation; can electrical charges do the same?
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS):
a method of treatment that can stimulate both
cortical and deeper brain structures.

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MALLEABILITY OF MEMORY

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RECONSOLIDATION

Reconsolidation: occurs when reactivation of a

memory weakens the original memory and a
new consolidation happens.
• Results in a slightly different memory.
• With reconsolidation, then, the process of
remembering changes our original memory.

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SELECTIVE AND DIVIDED
ATTENTION
Attention is the first step of getting an
experience into memory; but attention by its
very nature is selective.
• Different people attend different aspects of the same
event, and thus remember it differently.
Divided attention exists when we are trying to
focus on more than on activity at once.
• Memory performance is worsened.

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SUGGESTIBILITY

Suggestibility occurs when memories are

implanted in our minds based on leading
questions, comments, or suggestions.
• Eyewitness testimony is unreliable.
• False memories: events that never happened by
were suggested by someone or something.
• Recovered memories: can be from real events or the
product of suggestion.
• Misinformation effect: when information learned is
wrong but is incorporated into memory as true.
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FORGETTING AND MEMORY
LOSS

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FORMS OF FORGETTING

Interference: disruption of memory because

other information competes.
• Retroactive interference: new experiences or
information are the cause.
• Proactive interference: previously learned
information is the cause.
Forgetting curve: a graphic depiction of how
recall steadily declines over time.

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FORMS OF FORGETTING

Interference: disruption of memory because

other information competes.
• Retroactive interference: new experiences or
information are the cause.
• Proactive interference: previously learned
information is the cause.
Forgetting curve: a graphic depiction of how
recall steadily declines over time.

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FORMS OF FORGETTING

The forgetting curve. Forgetting happens in a predictable way

over time. The forgetting curve shows that, with each passing
day, we remember less, though the rate of decline slows
(Slamecka & McElree, 1983).

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FORMS OF FORGETTING

Absent-mindedness: a form of forgetfulness

that results from inattention.
• Increases with age.
• Buffers include aerobic exercise, higher education,
and certain personality traits.
Blocking: the inability to retrieve some
information that once was stored.
Repression: the unconscious act of keeping
threatening memories from conscious thoughts.
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MEMORY LOSS CAUSED BY
BRAIN INJURY AND DISEASE
Amnesia: memory loss due to brain injury or
disease.
• Anterograde amnesia: the inability to remember
events and experiences that occur after an injury or
the onset of disease.
• Retrograde amnesia: the inability to recall events or
experiences that happened before the onset of
disease or injury.
Severe memory loss occurs with dementia.
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BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

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BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER:
MAKING CONNECTIONS IN
MEMORY
Different cultures develop and emphasize
different kinds of memory systems.
A number of factors may be involved:
• Different styles of coping.
• Perceptual differences.
• Cultural influences on the formation of the brain.
• Racial biases.
• Varied levels of health and rates of dementia.
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