PART 8: Memory

24.3 Improving Memory

24-5 How can you use memory research findings to do better in this and other courses?

Biology’s findings benefit medicine. Botany’s findings benefit agriculture. So, too, can psychology’s research on memory benefit education. Here, for easy reference, is a summary of some research-based suggestions that can help you remember information when you need it. The SQ3R—Survey, Question, Read, Retrieve, Review—study technique used in this book incorporates several of these strategies:

Rehearse repeatedly. To master material, use distributed (spaced) practice. To learn a concept, give yourself many separate study sessions. Take advantage of life’s little intervals—riding a bus, walking across campus, waiting for class to start. New memories are weak; exercise them and they will strengthen. To memorize specific facts or figures, Thomas Landauer (2001) has advised, “rehearse the name or number you are trying to memorize, wait a few seconds, rehearse again, wait a little longer, rehearse again, then wait longer still and rehearse yet again. The waits should be as long as possible without losing the information.” Reading complex material with minimal rehearsal yields little retention. Rehearsal and critical reflection help more. As the testing effect has shown, it pays to study actively. Taking lecture notes in longhand, which requires summarizing material in your own words, leads to better retention than does verbatim laptop note taking. “The pen is mightier than the keyboard,” note researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer (2014).

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THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT

Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse?

24-4 Why are reports of repressed and recovered memories so hotly debated?

The research on source amnesia and the misinformation effect raises concerns about therapist-guided “recovered” memories. There are two tragedies related to adult recollections of child abuse. One happens when people don’t believe abuse survivors who tell their secret. The other happens when innocent people are falsely accused.

Some well-intentioned therapists have reasoned with patients that “people who’ve been abused often have your symptoms, so you probably were abused. Let’s see if, aided by hypnosis or drugs, or helped to dig back and visualize your trauma, you can recover it.” Patients exposed to such techniques may then form an image of a threatening person. With further visualization, the image grows more vivid. The patient ends up stunned, angry, and ready to confront or sue the remembered abuser. The accused person (often a parent or relative) is equally stunned and devastated, and vigorously denies the accusation.

Critics are not questioning most therapists’ professionalism. Nor are they questioning the accusers’ sincerity; even if false, their memories are heartfelt. Critics’ charges are specifically directed against clinicians who have used “memory work” techniques, such as “guided imagery,” hypnosis, and dream analysis. In his discussion of the “false memory wars” of the 1980s and 1990s, science writer Martin Gardner (2006) argued that “thousands of families were cruelly ripped apart,” with “previously loving adult daughters” suddenly accusing fathers. Irate clinicians countered that those who discredit recovered memories of abuse are adding to abused people’s trauma and playing into the hands of child molesters.

Is there a sensible common ground that might resolve psychology’s “memory war,” which exposed researcher and expert witness Elizabeth Loftus (2011) to “relentless vitriol and harassment”? Professional organizations (the American Medical, American Psychological, and American Psychiatric Associations; the Australian Psychological Society; the British Psychological Society; and the Canadian Psychiatric Association) have convened study panels and issued public statements, and greater agreement is emerging (Patihis et al., 2014a). Those committed to protecting abused children and those committed to protecting wrongly accused adults have agreed on the following:

Sex abuse happens. And it happens more often than we once supposed. Although sexual abuse can leave its victims at risk for problems ranging from sexual dysfunction to depression (Freyd et al., 2007), there is no characteristic “survivor syndrome”—no group of symptoms that lets us spot victims of sexual abuse (Kendall-Tackett et al., 1993).
Injustice happens. Some innocent people have been falsely convicted. And some guilty people have evaded responsibility by casting doubt on their truth-telling accusers.
Forgetting happens. Many of those actually abused were either very young when abused or may not have understood the meaning of their experience—circumstances under which forgetting is common. Forgetting isolated past events, both negative and positive, is an ordinary part of everyday life.
Recovered memories are commonplace. Cued by a remark or an experience, we all recover memories of long-forgotten events, both pleasant and unpleasant. What psychologists debate is twofold: Does the unconscious mind sometimes forcibly repress painful experiences? If so, can these experiences be retrieved by certain therapist-aided techniques? (Memories that surface naturally are more likely to be verified [Geraerts et al., 2007].)
Memories of events before age 3 are unreliable. We cannot reliably recall happenings from our first three years. As noted earlier, this infantile amnesia happens because our brain pathways have not yet developed enough to form the kinds of memories we will form later in life. Most psychologists—including most clinical and counseling psychologists—therefore doubt “recovered” memories of abuse during infancy (Gore-Felton et al., 2000; Knapp & VandeCreek, 2000). The older a child was when suffering sexual abuse, and the more severe the abuse, the more likely it is to be remembered (Goodman et al., 2003).
Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or the influence of drugs are especially unreliable. Under hypnosis, people will incorporate all kinds of suggestions into their memories, even memories of “past lives.”
Memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting. Both the accuser and the accused may suffer when what was born of mere suggestion becomes, like an actual trauma, a stinging memory that drives bodily stress (McNally, 2003, 2007). Some people knocked unconscious in unremembered accidents know this all too well. They have later developed stress disorders after being haunted by memories they constructed from photos, news reports, and friends’ accounts (Bryant, 2001).

So, does repression of threatening memories ever occur? Or is this concept—the cornerstone of Freud’s theory and of so much popular psychology—misleading? Other modules discuss this hotly debated issue. But this much appears certain: The most common response to a traumatic experience (witnessing a loved one’s murder, being terrorized by a hijacker or a rapist, losing everything in a natural disaster) is not banishment of the experience into the unconscious. Rather, such experiences are typically etched on the mind as vivid, persistent, haunting memories (Porter & Peace, 2007). As Robert Kraft (2002) said of the experience of those trapped in the Nazi death camps, “Horror sears memory, leaving . . . the consuming memories of atrocity.”

“When memories are ‘recovered’ after long periods of amnesia, particularly when extraordinary means were used to secure the recovery of memory, there is a high probability that the memories are false.”

Royal College of Psychiatrists Working Group on Reported Recovered Memories of Child Sexual Abuse (Brandon et al., 1998)

RETRIEVE IT

Question

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ANSWER: It will be important to remember the key points agreed upon by most researchers and professional associations: Sexual abuse, injustice, forgetting, and memory construction all happen; recovered memories are common; memories from before age 3 are unreliable; memories claimed to be recovered through hypnosis or drug influence are especially unreliable; and memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting.

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Thinking and memory Actively thinking as we read, by rehearsing and relating ideas, and by making the material personally meaningful, yields the best retention.

Make the material meaningful. You can build a network of retrieval cues by taking textbook and class notes in your own words. Apply the concepts to your own life. Form images. Understand and organize information. Relate the material to what you already know or have experienced. As William James (1890) suggested, “Knit each new thing on to some acquisition already there.” Restate concepts in your own words. Mindlessly repeating someone else’s words won’t supply many retrieval cues. On an exam, you may find yourself stuck when a question uses phrasing different from the words you memorized.

Activate retrieval cues. Mentally re-create the situation and the mood in which your original learning occurred. Jog your memory by allowing one thought to cue the next.

Use mnemonic devices. Associate items with peg words. Make up a story that incorporates vivid images of the items. Chunk information into acronyms. Create rhythmic rhymes (“i before e, except after c”).

Minimize interference. Study before sleep. Do not schedule back-to-back study times for topics that are likely to interfere with each other, such as Spanish and French.

Sleep more. During sleep, the brain reorganizes and consolidates information for long-term memory. Sleep deprivation disrupts this process. Even 10 minutes of waking rest enhances memory of what we have read (Dewar et al., 2012). So, after a period of hard study, perhaps just sit or lie down for a few minutes before tackling the next subject.

Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to find out what you don’t yet know. Don’t be lulled into overconfidence by your ability to recognize information. Test your recall using the periodic Retrieve It items and the numbered Learning Objective and Testing Effect questions in the Review sections. Outline sections using a blank page. Define the terms and concepts listed at each section’s end before turning back to their definitions. Take practice tests; the online resources that accompany many textbooks, including this one, are a good source for such tests.

RETRIEVE IT

Question

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ANSWER: Rehearse repeatedly to boost long-term recall. Schedule spaced (not crammed) study times. Spend more time rehearsing or actively thinking about the material. Make the material personally meaningful, with well-organized and vivid associations. Refresh your memory by returning to contexts and moods to activate retrieval cues. Use mnemonic devices. Minimize interference. Plan for a complete night's sleep. Test yourself repeatedly—retrieval practice is a proven retention strategy.