Memory

"Memory is the treasury and guardian of all

things.“ - Cicero (Roman orator)

1. Hermann Ebbinghaus: Memory

2. Frederic Bartlett: Meaning and Memory
3. Lloyd and Margaret Peterson: Short-term
forgetting
4. Gordon Bower: State Dependent Memory
Hermann Ebbinghaus: Memory

 1850 —1909
 German psychologist who is one of the founders of modern experimental
psychology
• He pioneered experimental study of memory.
• He got a copy of Fechners book on psychophysics and tried to adapt the study of higher mental processes,
MEMORY
• He tried to adapt the method of measuring memory .
• He established a laboratory & published new method of testing mental ability in school children Ebbinghaus
completion test.
• Began with Locke theory “ mind is a network of associations among elements”
• 2 events occur together association is formed and LEARNING occurs.
 How association is strengthened?

Through repetition! Through repetition! Through repetition!

 Scientific study of memory

• The scientific study of memory started

• published in 1885 in the book
• Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology Ebbinghaus was
a careful, cautious researcher who followed simple but logical
procedures
• He presented himself with items to memorize, waited for a precise amount of
time, and then tested himself to see how much he remembered
• experiments he conducted on himself to describe the process of forgetting
• This basic procedure is still used in most research on memory
• discovered the forgetting curve
 According to Ebbinghaus

 Mind is a network of associations among elements.

 If two events occur together, the one is associated with the
other in the mind
 Forming such associations is what learning is all about
 Once the associations are formed, they are available
thereafter, which is called memory.
Research on memory and learning

 He wanted to study memories that are new

 So that their formation and decay remains uncontaminated by a person’s prior

knowledge.

 Wanted to study memories that are truly built up from zero strength.
 Nonsense syllables

 Nonsense syllables – two consonants with a vowel between them.

 letter combinations like RIY and TPR
 E.g. MEB, DAK, FUT, RIY, TPR

• that were supposedly meaningless

• He rejected the idea of using prose (ordinary writing) or poetry

• because people would have too many associations to the material

• might affect their memory

 Why did Ebbinghaus use nonsense syllables?

They were stimuli nobody had seen before

to study material being learned for the first time
so, if one learns these nonsense syllables, he or she will
start from zero strength of memory.
 Who was Ebbinghaus's main subject?

Ebbinghaus worked primarily with one subject: himself

What is a "trial" in memory research?

 During his experiments, he memorized over 2,000 nonsense syllables.
 He called each presentation of nonsense syllable a trial. Ebbinghaus gave himself repeated trials until he learned
the material to a criterion level of memorization.

 In his case, the criterion was two perfect (error-free) recalls of the list.
 What is a retention interval?

 After reaching his criteria of learning, he waited for a length of time called the
retention interval during which the information had to be held (retained) in memory.

 The retention interval is defined as the time from the last presentation of the material
(the last trial) to the test. He experimented with retention intervals ranging from several
minutes to several days.
 measurement technique

 After the retention interval, memory has to be tested in some way. He tested his memory by relearning
the same list.

 Naturally, he required fewer trials to learn the list a second time. He measured the strength of memory
by the savings that occurred between the first and second learning periods.
 If it took 10 trials to learn a list to the criterion of two perfect recalls the first time and 5 trials the second
time, he called this 50% savings.
Savings = 1st learning time - 2nd learning time
1st learning time

E.G = 12 trials (1st time) - 8 trials (2nd time)

12 trials (1st time)
= 4/12
 = 33.3% savings
 relearning a powerful measure of
memory?
The savings measure is not used very much in today's memory research
However, it represents a powerful way of measuring memory called relearning
Relearning can show the effects of experience long after other types of memory vanish
For example, a student who is exposed to a foreign language as a child may find that
he or she learns the language quickly in a college course, compared to other students
Even if little conscious memory remains, memory for the language is revealed by
"savings" or unusually rapid learning the second time
Using the savings measure of memory he discovered
that the greatest amount of forgetting occurred soon
after learning the list.

Then the memory slowly weakened with time. The

curve Ebbinghaus discovered is called the forgetting
curve.
 The Forgetting Curve

 The forgetting curve revealed a relationship between forgetting and time. Initially, information
is often lost very quickly after it is learned.

 The forgetting curve also showed that memory does not continue to decline until all of the
information is lost. At a certain point, the amount of forgetting levels off.
Discovered that the greatest amount of forgetting occurred soon after learning the list. Then the
memory slowly weakened with time

 It indicates that information stored in long-term memory is surprisingly stable.

Memory retrieval cues
Mnemonics
MEANING AND MEMORY
BY
FREDERIC BARTLETT
 HIST
LIFE

ORY
 British psychologist
 B.A in philosophy from University Of London
 M.A in moral sciences at Cambridge
 Become director of Psychological Laboratory at Cambridge
University in 1922
 1931 become professor of experimental psychology and remained
there until 1952
 By 1948 he held honorary doctorates from seven universities
 RLY
ADI

FIG
NG

UR

DA
TH

EA
LE

YS
IN
E

E
British psychologist and the first professor of experimental psychology at the University of
Cambridge.

 most significant work : memory research

 He applied strictly scientific methodology

 He was one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology.

 Remembering (1932) – reporting a series of experiments dealing with memory.

 human beings invoke more than mechanical processes in remembering information

 ed the

syllab
tradit

nonse
ion of
Reject

using

nse

les
 isolate the memory process from other cognitive and social influences

 regarding those influences as crucial to understanding human memory

 Bartlett's work revealed that the storage of memories in the human

brain is not simple and it involves "schemata"
 ORGANISED STRUCTURES
THAT CAPTURE KNOWLEDGE
AND EXPECTATIONS

Schemata
OF SOME ASPECT OF THE
WORLD
(BARTLETT, 1932)
HOOKS TO HANG THINGS ON
SOMETHING FAMILIAR TO RELATE IT TO
 Schema/Schemata

 Schemata – pre existing knowledge structures, in terms of which we

interpret what we see or remember – a hook to hang things on.
 Schema of mother, teacher, doctor, scientist, stepmother and so on.
 The meaning that material has for us.

 We relate the input to concepts or images that we already have available.

The mind does not just passively register inputs. It goes forth to meet the inputs
as they come in, organizing and transforming them.
SCHEMATA ARE PREEXISTING KNOWLEDGE
STRUCTURES
IN TERMS OF WHICH WE INTERPRET WHAT WE
SEE OR REMEMBER
INFLUENCED BY

our past
our attitudes
experience
Sche
social cultural
mata
situation factors
Bartlett paid special attention to

the role of personal attitudes

interests, and
social conventions
on memory recall
Effects of past experiences on memorization
and memory retention

 In his approach to memory problems

 Bartlett broke away from the German tradition : using nonsense syllables
 he gave meaningful material to the subjects to memorize
 He was not interested in mere recall of the material
 his purpose was to study the effects of past experiences
 on memorization and memory retention
PROCEDURE
BARTLETT USED TWO METHODS
IN HIS STUDY

In the first
the method of repeated reproduction

the participants were given a picture or told a

story

which they needed to reproduce several times

over several weeks
In the second

the method of serial reproduction

the participants were given a picture or told a story

which they needed to pass it on to another participant

Expe
rime
nt
His best known experiment was a study of memory
among subjects of European ancestry for a native
American folk legend called
“THE WAR OF GHOSTS”
The participants read the story through to themselves
twice, and then tried to reproduce it 15 minutes later.
 HERE IS THE STORY

One night two young men from egulac went down to the river to hunt seals and while they
were there it became foggy and calm. Then they heard war-cries, and they thought: "maybe
this is a war-party“
They escaped to the shore, and hid behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the
noise of paddles, and saw one canoe coming up to them. There were five men in the canoe,
and they said:
"what do you think? We wish to take you along. We are going up the river to make war on
the people. "One of the young men said, “ I have no arrows " "arrows are in the canoe,"
they said.
I WILL NOT GO ALONG. I MIGHT BE KILLED. MY RELATIVES
DO NOT KNOW WHERE I HAVE GONE. BUT YOU," HE SAID,
TURNING TO THE OTHER, "MAY GO WITH THEM." SO ONE
OF THE YOUNG MEN WENT, BUT THE OTHER RETURNED
HOME. AND THE WARRIORS WENT ON UP THE RIVER TO A
TOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF KALAMA
 The people came down to the water and they began to fight and many were killed But
presently the young man heard one of the warriors say "Quick, let us go home: that
Indian has been hit." Now he thought: "Oh, they are ghosts.“ He did not feel sick, but
they said he had been shot. So the canoes went back to Egulac and the young man went
ashore to his house and made a fire and he told everybody and said:
"Behold I accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellows were killed,
and many of those who attacked us were killed. They said I was hit, and I did not feel
sick."
 He told it all, and then he became quiet. When
the sun rose he fell down. Something black came
out of his mouth. His face became contorted. The
people jumped up and cried. He was dead.
Bartlett's participants read the story
through themselves twice

After that they

few days and in
were check for This time could be
one case it was six
varying degrees of few minutes
years
time
 The recollections of the story showed consistent changes

 Shorter, some details were lost

 Altered, some details were added/changed.
 Omissions, unfamiliar words were omitted.
 Replaced unfamiliar words with common words.
 The story line was changed so as to resemble the format of a European folk tale.
 Addition, some details added

 The memory drifted towards what was familiar – they were hung on
whatever hooks were already available to the participants.
 Re

lts
su
• we recall not the literal text but the mental model we constructed from
it.

• Remembering: involves reconstructing past events using presently

existing schemes.

• Newly encoded information undergoes modifications and changes as the

result of interactions with information already in memory and through
reinterpretations of existing data forced by the acquisition of subsequent
knowledge with frequent reproductions continuing omissions
simplification, and transformation of items into more familiar detail.
 Discussion of results

 Many participants reported that their memories were not for the words of the story as they had
read it.

 Rather, they remembered their visual images of the story’s events and reconstructed the
story from those.
 Reconstruction is the key – the participants might say : ‘If these are the images I have of
the story, then this must have been what the story said.’
 Remembering is based on inference and deduction.

 Based on the bits and pieces the participants remember now, they deduce what
they must have read when the story was first presented.

 And the deductions were based on their ideas of what stories and events were like
– their schemata.
 Every sentence in the above passage is intelligible. Understanding it in the first
place and recalling it later will be extremely difficult.

 But if the participants are given a title for the above paragraph, ‘Washing Clothes’,
they might report less confusion because they will have this ‘Schema’ as a hook to
hang things on.

 They might do better at recalling the passage.

 A final word on schemata

 If schemata are essential to memory, they can also lead memory astray.

 If the person is inferring now what must have happened then, then these
inferences may be influenced and distorted by what is going on now.

 Related to early recollections idea and other therapeutic techniques.

 Case Scenario: Witness to a Car Accident
 You're walking down the street when you hear a screech of tires and the sound of a crash. You turn
to see two cars tangled up in the intersection. As you rush to help, you take in the scene: a red sedan
and a blue SUV, both with significant damage.
 Later, you're interviewed by the police about what you saw:
 Police: Can you describe the accident?
 You (witness): Well, it was a typical rear-end collision. The blue SUV slammed into the back of the
red sedan as it was trying to make a left turn at the intersection.
 Police: Are you sure about that?
 You (witness): Yes, that's what I remember. The SUV was definitely following too closely, and the
sedan had its left turn signal on