8/27/13

Chapter 6:
Learning and Remembering

Learning and Remembering

n

Declarative / Explicit Memory:

Nondeclarative / Implicit Memory:

Long-term knowledge that can be retrieved and then

reflected on consciously.
Performance affected by prior experience with no
necessary awareness of this influence.

8/27/13

Learning and Remembering

n

Episodic Memory:

Long-term memory for personally experienced

information

Example: memory of receiving your high school diploma

Integrated mental representations: different bits and

pieces of information from different parts of our
conscious and unconscious
n

Semantic Memory:
Long-term memory for general world knowledge
Example: knowledge of what a high school diploma is

Mental Encyclopedia

Metamemory
n

Metamemory:
Knowledge about (meta) one s own memory, how it works, and
how it fails to work.

Metacognition:
Knowledge about one s own cognitive system and its
functioning.

Two important issues:

The importance of self-monitoring and awareness or
metacognitive awareness.
Accurately assessing ones own mental abilities
The issue of control or self-regulation, what you do with your
metacognitive awareness.
Recognizing bad/good performance and taking appropriate
steps afterwards

8/27/13

Mnemonic Devices
n

Active, strategic learning devices or methods.

Formal Mnemonics: use pre-established sets of memory aids and
need considerable practice to be effective.
Informal Mnemonics: those you invent yourself, less elaborate,
and are suited to smaller amounts of information.

Strengths of mnemonics:
The material to be remembered is practiced
repeatedly.
The material is integrated into an existing memory
framework.
The device provides an excellent means of retrieving
the information.

Mnemonic Devices
n

Method of loci.

To-be-remembered items are mentally placed into a set of prememorized locations, with retrieval being a mental walk through
the locations.
Example: Assign needed grocery items to landmarks between
your work and the grocery store
Broccoli hanging from the UNLV sign
Bananas lining the airport tunnel
Milk flowing down the Windmill exit ramp

Peg Word:
A pre-memorized set of peg words is used to remember new
information; the peg words typically used are One is a bun,
Two is a shoe, Three is a tree and so on.
Example: imagine needed grocery items with the rhymed word
Broccoli within a hot dog bun
A shoe filled with Milk
Bananas hanging from a tree

8/27/13

Mnemonic Devices
n

The Three Mnemonic Principles:

1. It provides a well-established mental structure for
learning, for acquiring the information.
2. Using visual images, rhymes, or other kinds of
associations and the effort and rehearsal necessary
to form them, the mnemonic helps form a durable
and distinctive record of the material in memory.
3. The mnemonic guides you through retrieval by
providing effective cues.

The Ebbinghaus Tradition

n

Ebbinghaus wanted to study the fundamental properties of

memory and forgetting
Created all memory tasks, experimental stimuli, and procedures.
Was the only participant in his studies (introspection).
Began with the publication of Uber das Gedachtnis (Memory: A
Contribution to Experimental Psychology) in 1885.

Relearning task:
a list is originally learned, set aside for some period of time, then
later relearned to the same criterion of accuracy: one perfect
recitation of the list, without hesitations.

Savings score:
Measure of learning
The reduction, if any, in the number of trials necessary for
relearning, compared to original learning.

8/27/13

The classic forgetting curve from Ebbinghaus. The figure shows the
reduction in savings across increasing retention intervals (time between
original learning and relearning).

The Ebbinghaus Tradition

n

Although Ebbinghaus was important in establishing

cognitive psychology, his introspective study of nonsense syllables had little real-world usefulness.

The Current view of Memory Research:

People will invent meaning, regardless of the experimenter s
wishes. Memory relies heavily on meaning. Research should not
ignore this.
People in experiments are active. They do not passively recite
syllables, but are intent on using mental resources and
strategies to learn.
There is an issue of ecological validity. Our traditional laboratory
results need to apply to real-world situations that involve
meaningful material.
Memory research in the laboratory should lead to actual insight into
memory of classroom material

8/27/13

Storing Information in Episodic Memory

n

Isolation Effect or von Restorff effect:

Improved memory for one piece of information that is
made distinct from the information around it.
Such as underlining a word in red ink, or changing
its size, using a highlighter
Distinctiveness causes an increase in mental effort to
process info
Led to the theoretical idea that increased mental
effort increases memory.

Rehearsal:

Rehearsal

A deliberate recycling or practicing of the contents of the shortterm store.

n

Two effects of rehearsal:

Rehearsal maintains information in the short-term store,
preventing it from being lost or displaced by other information.
The longer an item is held in short-term, the greater the
probability that it will be stored in long-term memory.

Hellyer (1962) used the

Brown-Peterson task to examine
the effects of rehearsal.
Rehearsal of information
leads to better long-term
retention
n

8/27/13

Rehearsal & Levels of Processing

n

Maintenance rehearsal:
Low-level, repetitive recycling. Typically leads to
poorer memory.
Elaborative rehearsal:
More complex rehearsal that uses information
meaning to aid memory storage.
Levels of Processing:
More deeply processed information is typically
remembered better.
Information that gets only maintenance rehearsal
is processed shallowly.
Information that gets elaborative rehearsal is
processed deeply.

Organization in Storage
n Organization:

Structuring or restructuring information as it is

stored in memory.
The way material is stored governs the way it
is recalled.
n

Subjective Organization:
Organization developed by a person for structuring
and remembering a list of items without
experimenter-supplied categories.

8/27/13

Imagery
n

Visual Imagery:

The mental representation of visual information.

Forming mental images is not an automatic process, extra
mental effort boosts memory

Dual coding hypothesis:

imaged words can be encoded into memory twice.

Verbal code
Image code
Easier to create image codes for concrete objects (shoe, tree)
than abstract concepts (truth, justice)

Better memory for emotionally intense information

More brain regions are active during the encoding of emotional
material.

Better memory for information if it is encoded based on

its survival value.

Encoding Specificity
n

Information is better remembered when the retrieval

context matched the encoding context.
Contextual information is stored as part of the memory trace.
The context serves as a retrieval cue.

Context effects are not limited to environmental context.

State-dependent learning:
Memory is better when the
physiological state at encoding
and retrieval are similar.

Mood-congruent learning:
Memory is better when a
person s mood at encoding
and retrieval are similar.

8/27/13

Retrieving from Episodic Memory

n

Decay:
The older a memory trace is, the more likely it has been
forgotten
Difficult to prove, could be that time doesnt cause forgetting, its
what happens during that time that causes forgetting.

Interference:
Memories go through a period of consolidation to make them
permanent.
Newly encountered information uses the same neural processes
and therefore interferes with the consolidation process of older
information.
Memory improves during sleep because the consolidation
process of older information is not disrupted by new information.

Cognitive Research Methods

n Paired-associate

learning:

A task in which pairs of items are learned. Upon

presentation of a stimulus, the response is recalled.
The basic elements of a P-A learning task are as
follows:
A list of stimulus terms is paired with a list of
response terms.
After learning, the stimulus terms prompt the recall
of the proper response terms.

Allows testing of proactive and retroactive

interference

8/27/13

Retrieval Failure
n

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon

A momentary inability to recall some information that is known
to be stored in long-term memory.
A sense of familiarity without recalling the specific info

Available:
Information stored in long-term memory remains there
permanently.

Accessibility:
The degree to which information can be retrieved from memory.

Memory retrieval is facilitated when the appropriate cues

are present.
Cues provide a means of accessing information in long-term
memory.
Cues can be any kind of related information.

Testing as Learning
n

Testing Effect
Being tested for information boosts memory of that
information.
The additional exposure to material rehearses the
information.
Testing strengthens the retrieval and recall process of
memory.
Can be more beneficial than simply rereading.
How will you study for the test?
Immediate feedback strengthens the testing effect

10

8/27/13

Amnesia and Implicit Memory

n

Amnesia:

The catastrophic loss of memory or memory abilities caused by

brain damage or disease.
The permanent cases of amnesia or more helpful for research
purposes.

Retrograde Amnesia:

The loss of memory for events before brain injury.

Anterograde Amnesia:

The disruption of memory for events occurring after brain injury

inability to acquire new long-term memories.

Dissociation:

Disruption in one component of the cognitive system but no

impairment of another.

Doubly dissociated:

Two mental processes are doubly dissociated when a deficit

in one of them does not produce a deficit in the other
process and vice versa.

Special Cases
n

Patient K.C.:

A patient who experienced serious brain injury, especially in the

frontal regions.
Showed a seemingly complete loss of episodic memory but a
completely functional semantic memory.
Episodic and semantic memory are dissociated

Patient H.M.:
Severe anterograde amnesia as a result of brain surgery to prevent
seizures, damage to hippocampus.
Lost ability to form new memories, his memory of events before
surgery remained complete
Any task that required him to retain information across a delay
showed severe impairment, especially if the delay is filled with a
distractor task.
Evidence suggests that H.M. s procedural memory was normal. He
could improve on procedural tasks over weeks and still have no
recollection of ever performing the task.
Implicit learning was still functioning.

11

8/27/13

n
n

Mirror-tracing task: participant traces between the two outlines of

the star while viewing his or her hand in a mirror.
Patient H.M. shows clear improvement in motor learning star task
after several days of practice. Even on the third day, H.M. had no
memory of doing the task before.
An instance of implicit learning and memory

12