Memory

· What is?

§ Preserve our experience.

· How important

§ Very important

§ Almost everything we do depends on memory

§ Even our own identity

· You can lose memory by:

§ Alzheimer’s Disease

§ Amnesia

· Korsakoff’s syndrome (too much drinking)

§ Brain damages (remember Video clip with Clive has Anterograde)

How does it work?

· Two theories based on information processing model

§ Atkinson & Shiffrin’s “3-storage model”

§ Craik & Lockart’s “Levels of processing”

3-stage model

· Information goes through 3 stages

§ Sensory register

§ Short term memory

§ Long term memory

Sensory registers (memory)

· Very brief stage at the beginning of information processing

· Sensory specific (different ones for different organs)

§ Visual (Iconic memory) – lasts 250 milliseconds

§ Auditory (Echoic) – lasts 2-4 Seconds

· Does not seem to have a capacity limitation (can do a lot of processing)

§ A lot of information can be stored

Why we need it?

· Brain cannot react fast enough to process every piece of information

· Provide “buffer” (picks and chooses which to process)

· Effects

§ Moving pictures – we can connect a series of still pictures

§ Melody – we can connect a series of discrete sounds

Short term memory

· Second stage

· Also, temporary storage

· But, last longer – lasts about 18-20 seconds

· You can keep information indefinitely by

§ Rehearsal – use acoustic codes

· Has a capacity limitation

· Limitation is 7 plus/minus 2 (telephone numbers)

· But…..

Chunking

· Group items together

· Some people have an amazing ability to do that (guy who memorized 30thousand digits)

Why do we need it?

· Conscious memory

§ You can make what you know conscious

§ E.g., fish (When told to explain you bring info to conscious)

§ You can consciously manipulate information

· Relate things together à working memory

· Temporary Memory

§ Not all information should be kept permanently (Depressed Russian)

Long term memory

· Permanent memory

· No capacity limitation

· Mostly unconscious unless you activate a part of it and make it conscious

· Very organized (warehouse)

· Three types of long term memories

Episodic Memory

· Personal experience

· E.g., what did you eat yesterday?

· Unique to individual (first kiss different to each person)

· Organized by time of occurrence

Semantic Memory

· Stored fact knowledge (stored knowledge)

· Important for language use

§ E.g., Does a canary fly

· Organized by associative network

Procedural memory

· Stores skills and procedures

§ E.g., riding a bike

· Less susceptible to forgetting

· One of production memory