Chapter Review: Memory

Test yourself by taking a moment to answer each of these Learning Objective Questions (repeated here from within the chapter). Research suggests that trying to answer these questions on your own will improve your long-term memory of the concepts (McDaniel et al., 2009).

Studying Memory

Question 7.18

What is memory, and how do information-processing models help us study memory?

  • Memory is the persistence of learning over time, through the storage and retrieval of information.
  • Psychologists use memory models to think about how our brain forms and retrieves memories. Informationprocessing models involve three processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Question 7.19

What is the three-stage information-processing model, and how has later research updated this model?

  • The three processing stages in the Atkinson and Shiffrin classic threestage model of memory are sensory memory, short-term memory, and longterm memory.
  • More recent research has updated this model to include two additional concepts: (1) working memory, to stress the active processing occurring in the second memory stage, and (2) automatic processing, to address the processing of information outside of conscious awareness.

Building Memories: Encoding

Question 7.20

How do explicit and implicit memories differ?

  • Through parallel processing, we process many things at once, on dual tracks.
  • Explicit (declarative) memories are our conscious memories of general knowledge, facts, and experiences. They form through effortful processing.
  • Implicit (nondeclarative) memories are our unconscious memories of skills and classically conditioned responses. They happen without our awareness, through automatic processing.

Question 7.21

What information do we automatically process?

  • In addition to skills and classically conditioned associations, we automatically process incidental information about space, time, and frequency.

Question 7.22

How does sensory memory work?

  • Sensory memory feeds some information into working memory for active processing there.
  • An iconic memory is a very brief (a few tenths of a second) picture-image memory of a scene; an echoic memory is a three- or four-second sensory memory of a sound.

Question 7.23

What is the capacity of our short-term and working memory?

  • Short-term memory capacity is about seven items, give or take two, but this information disappears from memory quickly without rehearsal.
  • Working-memory capacity varies, depending on age and other factors.

Question 7.24

What are some effortful processing strategies that can help us remember new information?

  • Effective effortful processing strategies include chunking and mnemonics
  • Such strategies help us remember new information because we then focus our attention and make a conscious effort to remember.

Question 7.25

Why is cramming ineffective, and what is the testing effect?

  • Massed practice, or cramming, results in poorer long-term recall than encoding that is spread over time. Psychologists call this result of distributed practice the spacing effect.
  • The testing effect is the finding that consciously retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information enhances memory.

Memory Storage

Question 7.26

What is the capacity of long-term memory? Are our long-term memories processed and stored in specific locations?

  • We have an unlimited capacity for storing information permanently in long-term memory.
  • Memories are not stored intact in the brain in single specific spots. Many parts of the brain interact as we encode, store, and retrieve memories.

Question 7.27

What roles do the hippocampus and frontal lobes play in memory processing?

  • The frontal lobes and hippocampus are parts of the brain network dedicated to explicit memory formation.
  • Many brain regions send information to the frontal lobes for processing. The hippocampus registers and temporarily holds elements of explicit memories before moving them for storage elsewhere.

Question 7.28

What roles do the cerebellum and basal ganglia play in memory processing?

  • The cerebellum and basal ganglia are parts of the brain network dedicated to implicit memory formation. The cerebellum is important for storing classically conditioned memories.
  • The basal ganglia are involved in motor movement and help form procedural memories for skills.

Question 7.29

How do emotions affect our memory processing?

  • Emotional arousal causes an outpouring of stress hormones, which lead to activity in the brain’s memory-forming areas. Significantly stressful events can trigger very clear flashbulb memories.

Question 7.30

How do changes at the synapse level affect our memory processing?

  • Long-term potentiation (LTP) appears to be the neural process for learning and memory. It involves an increase in a synapse’s firing potential as neurons become more efficient and more connections between neurons develop.

Retrieval: Getting Information Out

Question 7.31

How do psychologists assess memory with recall, recognition, and relearning?

  • Psychologists assess memory by studying evidence of it in the recall, recognition, and relearning of information:
    • Recall is memory demonstrated by retrieving information we learned earlier (as on a fill-in-the-blank test).
    • Recognition is memory demonstrated by identifying items previously learned (as on a multiple-choice test).
    • Relearning is memory demonstrated by more quickly mastering material that has been previously learned.

Question 7.32

How do external events, internal moods, and order of appearance affect memory retrieval?

  • Retrieval cues, such as context and mood, are information bits linked with the original encoded memory. These cues activate associations that help us retrieve memories; this process may occur without our awareness, as it does in priming.
  • Returning to the same physical context or emotional state (mood congruency) in which we formed a memory can help us retrieve it.
  • The serial position effect accounts for our tendency to recall best the last items (which may still be in working memory) and the first items (which we’ve spent more time rehearsing) in a list.

Forgetting

Question 7.33

Why do we forget?

  • Normal forgetting can happen because we have never encoded information (encoding failure); because the physical trace has decayed (storage decay); or because we cannot retrieve what we have encoded and stored (retrieval failure).
  • Retrieval problems may result from proactive (forward-acting) interference, when prior learning interferes with recall of new information, or from retroactive (backward-acting) interference, when new learning disrupts recall of old information.
  • Freud believed that motivated forgetting occurs, but researchers have found little evidence of repression.

Memory Construction Errors

Question 7.34

How do misinformation, imagination, and source amnesia influence our memory construction? How do we decide whether a memory is real or false?

  • We construct our memories, using both stored and new information as well as our imaginations.
  • Misinformation (exposure to misleading information) and imagination effects corrupt our stored memories of what actually happened.
  • Source amnesia leads to faulty memories of how, when, or where we learned something, and may help explain déjà vu.
  • False memories feel like real memories and can be persistent but are usually limited to the gist (the general idea) of the event.

Question 7.35

How reliable are young children’s eyewitness descriptions, and why are reports of repressed and recovered memories so hotly debated?

  • Children’s eyewitness descriptions are subject to the same memory influences that distort adult reports. Children are susceptible to source amnesia and the misinformation effect, but if questioned in neutral words they understand, they can accurately recall events and people involved in them.
  • Incest and abuse happen more than was once supposed. But unless the victim was a child too young to remember, such traumas are usually remembered vividly, not repressed.

Improving Memory

Question 7.36

How can you use memory research findings to do better in this course and in others?

  • Memory research findings suggest the following strategies for improving memory: Study repeatedly, make material meaningful, activate retrieval cues, use mnemonic devices, minimize interference, sleep more, and test yourself to be sure you can retrieve, as well as recognize, material.