8.1 Studying and Encoding Memories

Please continue to the next section.

Studying Memory

memory the persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.

8-1 What is memory, and how is it measured?

Memory is learning that persists over time; it is information that has been acquired and stored and can be retrieved. Research on memory’s extremes has helped us understand how memory works. At age 92, my [DM] father suffered a small stroke that had but one peculiar effect. He was as mobile as before. His genial personality was intact. He knew us and enjoyed poring over family photo albums and reminiscing about his past. But he had lost most of his ability to lay down new memories of conversations and everyday episodes. He could not tell me what day of the week it was, or what he’d had for lunch. Told repeatedly of his brother-in-law’s death, he was surprised and saddened each time he heard the news.

Memory Olympians Participants in a worldwide memory competition view and then reproduce long strings of numbers, words, and cards. The competitors have an unusual capacity for focused attention, which they can enhance by blocking out distractions.

At the other extreme are people who would be gold medal winners in a memory Olympics. Russian journalist Solomon Shereshevskii, or S, had merely to listen while other reporters scribbled notes (Luria, 1968). You and I could parrot back a string of about 7—maybe even 9—digits. S could repeat up to 70, if they were read about 3 seconds apart in an otherwise silent room. Moreover, he could recall digits or words backward as easily as forward. His accuracy was unerring, even when recalling a list 15 years later. “Yes, yes,” he might recall. “This was a series you gave me once when we were in your apartment…. You were sitting at the table and I in the rocking chair…. You were wearing a gray suit….”

Amazing? Yes, but consider your own impressive memory. You remember countless faces, places, and happenings; tastes, smells, and textures; voices, sounds, and songs. In one study, students listened to snippets—a mere four-tenths of a second—from popular songs. How often did they recognize the artist and song? More than 25 percent of the time (Krumhansl, 2010). We often recognize songs as quickly as we recognize someone’s voice.

So, too, with faces and places. Imagine viewing more than 2500 slides of faces and places for 10 seconds each. Later, you see 280 of these slides, paired with others you’ve never seen. Actual participants in this experiment recognized 90 percent of the slides they had viewed in the first round (Haber, 1970). In a follow-up experiment, people exposed to 2800 images for only 3 seconds each spotted the repeats with 82 percent accuracy (Konkle et al., 2010). Some “super-recognizers” display an extraordinary ability to recognize faces. Eighteen months after viewing a video of an armed robbery, one such police officer spotted and arrested the robber walking on a busy street (Davis et al., 2013). And it’s not just humans who have shown remarkable memory for faces (FIGURE 8.1).

Figure 8.1
Other animals also display face smarts After repeatedly experiencing food rewards associated with some sheep faces, but not with others, sheep remember those faces for two years (Kendrick & Feng, 2011).

How do we accomplish such memory feats? How does our brain pluck information out of the world around us and tuck that information away for later use? How can we remember things we have not thought about for years, yet forget the name of someone we met a minute ago? How are memories stored in our brains? Why will you be likely, later in this chapter, to misrecall this sentence: “The angry rioter threw the rock at the window”? In this chapter, we’ll consider these fascinating questions and more, including tips on how we can improve our own memories.

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Measuring Retention

Remembering things past Even if Taylor Swift and Leonardo DiCaprio had not become famous, their high school classmates would most likely still recognize them in these photos.

To a psychologist, evidence that learning persists includes these three measures of retention:

Long after you cannot recall most of the people in your high school graduating class, you may still be able to recognize their yearbook pictures from a photographic lineup and pick their names from a list of names. In one experiment, people who had graduated 25 years earlier could not recall many of their old classmates. But they could recognize 90 percent of their pictures and names (Bahrick et al., 1975). If you are like most students, you, too, could probably recognize more names of Snow White’s seven dwarfs than you could recall (Miserandino, 1991).

Our recognition memory is impressively quick and vast. “Is your friend wearing a new or old outfit?” “Old.” “Is this five-second movie clip from a film you’ve ever seen?” “Yes.” “Have you ever seen this person before—this minor variation on the same old human features (two eyes, one nose, and so on)?” “No.” Before the mouth can form our answer to any of millions of such questions, the mind knows, and knows that it knows.

Our speed at relearning also reveals memory. Pioneering memory researcher Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) showed this more than a century ago, using nonsense syllables. He randomly selected a sample of syllables, practiced them, and tested himself. To get a feel for his experiments, rapidly read aloud, eight times over, the following list (from Baddeley, 1982), then look away and try to recall the items:

JIH, BAZ, FUB, YOX, SUJ, XIR, DAX, LEQ, VUM, PID, KEL, WAV, TUV, ZOF, GEK, HIW.

The day after learning such a list, Ebbinghaus could recall few of the syllables. But they weren’t entirely forgotten. As FIGURE 8.2 portrays, the more frequently he repeated the list aloud on Day 1, the less time he required to relearn the list on Day 2. Additional rehearsal (overlearning) of verbal information increases retention, especially when practice is distributed over time. For students, this means that it helps to rehearse course material even after you know it.

Figure 8.2
Ebbinghaus’ retention curve Ebbinghaus found that the more times he practiced a list of nonsense syllables on Day 1, the less time he required to relearn it on Day 2. Speed of relearning is one measure of memory retention. (From Baddeley, 1982.)

The point to remember: Tests of recognition and of time spent relearning demonstrate that we remember more than we can recall.

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RETRIEVAL PRACTICE

  • Multiple-choice questions test our ______________. Fill-in-the-blank questions test our ______________.

recognition; recall

  • If you want to be sure to remember what you’re learning for an upcoming test, would it be better to use recall or recognition to check your memory? Why?

It would be better to test your memory with recall (such as with short-answer or fill-in-the-blank self-test questions) rather than recognition (such as with multiple-choice questions). Recalling information is harder than recognizing it. So if you can recall it, that means your retention of the material is better than if you could only recognize it. Your chances of test success are therefore greater.

Memory Models

8-2 How do psychologists describe the human memory system?

Architects make miniature house models to help clients imagine their future homes. Similarly, psychologists create memory models to help us think about how our brain forms and retrieves memories. An information-processing model likens human memory to computer operations. Thus, to remember any event, we must

parallel processing the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain’s natural mode of information processing for many functions.

Like all analogies, computer models have their limits. Our memories are less literal and more fragile than a computer’s. Moreover, most computers process information sequentially, even while alternating between tasks. Our agile brain processes many things simultaneously (some of them unconsciously) by means of parallel processing. To focus on this multitrack processing, one information-processing model, connectionism, views memories as products of interconnected neural networks. Specific memories arise from particular activation patterns within these networks. Every time you learn something new, your brain’s neural connections change, forming and strengthening pathways that allow you to interact with and learn from your constantly changing environment.

To explain our memory-forming process, Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968) proposed a three-stage model:

  1. We first record to-be-remembered information as a fleeting sensory memory.

    sensory memory the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system.

  2. From there, we process information into short-term memory, where we encode it through rehearsal.

    short-term memory activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while calling, before the information is stored or forgotten.

  3. Finally, information moves into long-term memory for later retrieval.

    long-term memory the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Other psychologists have updated this model (FIGURE 8.3) with important newer concepts, including working memory and automatic processing.

Figure 8.3
A modified three-stage processing model of memory Atkinson and Shiffrin’s classic three-step model helps us to think about how memories are processed, but today’s researchers recognize other ways long-term memories form. For example, some information slips into long-term memory via a “back door,” without our consciously attending to it (automatic processing). And so much active processing occurs in the short-term memory stage that many now prefer the term working memory.

working memory a newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory.

Working Memory Alan Baddeley and others (Baddeley, 2001, 2002; Barrouillet et al., 2011; Engle, 2002) extended Atkinson and Shiffrin’s view of short-term memory as a small, brief storage space for recent thoughts and experiences. This stage is not just a temporary shelf for holding incoming information. It’s an active desktop where your brain processes information by making sense of new input and linking it with long-term memories. Whether we hear eye-screem as “ice cream” or “I scream” will depend on how the context and our experience guide our interpreting and encoding the sounds. To focus on the active processing that takes place in this middle stage, psychologists use the term working memory. Right now, you are using your working memory to link the information you’re reading with your previously stored information (Cowan, 2010; Kail & Hall, 2001).

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For most of you, what you are reading enters working memory through vision. You might also repeat the information using auditory rehearsal. As you integrate these memory inputs with your existing long-term memory, your attention is focused. Baddeley (1998, 2002) suggested a central executive handles this focused processing (FIGURE 8.4).

Figure 8.4
Working memory Alan Baddeley’s (2002) model of working memory, simplified here, includes visual and auditory rehearsal of new information. A hypothetical central executive (manager) focuses attention and pulls information from long-term memory to help make sense of new information.

Without focused attention, information often fades. If you think you can look something up later, you attend to it less and forget it more quickly. In one experiment, people read and typed new bits of trivia they would later need, such as “An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.” If they knew the information would be available online they invested less energy and remembered it less well (Sparrow et al., 2011; Wegner & Ward, 2013). Sometimes Google replaces rehearsal.

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE

  • What two new concepts update the classic Atkinson-Shiffrin three-stage information-processing model?

(1) We form some memories through automatic processing, without our awareness. The Atkinson-Shiffrin model focused only on conscious memories. (2) The newer concept of a working memory emphasizes the active processing that we now know takes place in Atkinson-Shiffrin’s short-term memory stage.

  • What are two basic functions of working memory?

(1) Active processing of incoming visual-spatial and auditory information, and (2) focusing our spotlight of attention.

Encoding Memories

Dual-Track Memory: Effortful Versus Automatic Processing

8-3 How do explicit and implicit memories differ?

For a 14-minute explanation and demonstration of our memory systems, visit LaunchPad’s Video: Models of Memory.

explicit memory memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare.” (Also called declarative memory.)

effortful processing encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model focused on how we process our explicit memories—the facts and experiences that we can consciously know and declare (thus, also called declarative memories). But our mind has a second, unconscious track. We encode explicit memories through conscious effortful processing. Behind the scenes, other information skips the conscious encoding track and barges directly into storage. This automatic processing, which happens without our awareness, produces implicit memories (also called nondeclarative memories).

automatic processing unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings.

implicit memory retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection. (Also called nondeclarative memory.)

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Automatic Processing and Implicit Memories

8-4 What information do we process automatically?

Our implicit memories include procedural memory for automatic skills (such as how to ride a bike) and classically conditioned associations among stimuli. If attacked by a dog in childhood, years later you may, without recalling the conditioned association, automatically tense up as a dog approaches.

Without conscious effort you also automatically process information about

Our two-track mind engages in impressively efficient information processing. As one track automatically tucks away many routine details, the other track is free to focus on conscious, effortful processing. Mental feats such as vision, thinking, and memory may seem to be single abilities, but they are not. Rather, we split information into different components for separate and simultaneous parallel processing.

Effortful Processing and Explicit Memories

Automatic processing happens effortlessly. When you see words in your native language, perhaps on the side of a delivery truck, you can’t help but read them and register their meaning. Learning to read wasn’t automatic. You may recall working hard to pick out letters and connect them to certain sounds. But with experience and practice, your reading became automatic. Imagine now learning to read reversed sentences like this:

.citamotua emoceb nac gnissecorp luftroffE

At first, this requires effort, but after enough practice, you would also perform this task much more automatically. We develop many skills in this way: driving, texting, and speaking a new language.

Sensory Memory

8-5 How does sensory memory work?

Sensory memory (recall Figure 8.3) feeds our active working memory, recording momentary images of scenes or echoes of sounds. How much of this page could you sense and recall with less exposure than a lightning flash? In one experiment, people viewed three rows of three letters each, for only one-twentieth of a second (FIGURE 8.5). After the nine letters disappeared, they could recall only about half of them.

Figure 8.5
Total recall—briefly When George Sperling (1960) flashed a group of letters similar to this for one-twentieth of a second, people could recall only about half the letters. But when signaled to recall a particular row immediately after the letters had disappeared, they could do so with near-perfect accuracy.

Was it because they had insufficient time to glimpse them? No. George Sperling cleverly demonstrated that people actually could see and recall all the letters, but only momentarily. Rather than ask them to recall all nine letters at once, he sounded a high, medium, or low tone immediately after flashing the nine letters. This tone directed participants to report only the letters of the top, middle, or bottom row, respectively. Now they rarely missed a letter, showing that all nine letters were momentarily available for recall.

iconic memory a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second.

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echoic memory a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.

Sperling’s experiment demonstrated iconic memory, a fleeting sensory memory of visual stimuli. For a few tenths of a second, our eyes register a photographic or picture-image memory of a scene, and we can recall any part of it in amazing detail. But if Sperling delayed the tone signal by more than half a second, the image faded and participants again recalled only about half the letters. Our visual screen clears quickly, as new images are superimposed over old ones.

We also have an impeccable, though fleeting, memory for auditory stimuli, called echoic memory (Cowan, 1988; Lu et al., 1992). Picture yourself in conversation, as your attention veers to your smartphone screen. If your mildly irked companion tests you by asking, “What did I just say?” you can recover the last few words from your mind’s echo chamber. Auditory echoes tend to linger for 3 or 4 seconds.

Capacity of Short-Term and Working Memory

8-6 What is the capacity of our short-term and working memory?

Recall that working memory is an active stage, where our brains make sense of incoming information and link it with stored memories. What are the limits of what we can hold in this middle stage?

After Miller’s 2012 death, his daughter recalled his best moment of golf: “He made the one and only hole-in-one of his life at the age of 77, on the seventh green … with a seven iron. He loved that” (quoted by Vitello, 2012).

George Miller (1956) proposed that we can store about seven bits of information (give or take two) in short-term memory. Miller’s magical number seven is psychology’s contribution to the list of magical sevens—the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven primary colors, the seven musical scale notes, the seven days of the week—seven magical sevens.

Other researchers have confirmed that we can, if nothing distracts us, recall about seven digits, or about six letters or five words (Baddeley et al., 1975). How quickly do our short-term memories disappear? To find out, Lloyd Peterson and Margaret Peterson (1959) asked people to remember three-consonant groups, such as CHJ. To prevent rehearsal, the researchers asked them, for example, to start at 100 and count aloud backward by threes. After 3 seconds, people recalled the letters only about half the time; after 12 seconds, they seldom recalled them at all (FIGURE 8.6). Without the active processing that we now understand to be a part of our working memory, short-term memories have a limited life.

Figure 8.6
Short-term memory decay Unless rehearsed, verbal information may be quickly forgotten. (Data from Peterson & Peterson, 1959; see also Brown, 1958.)

Working memory capacity varies, depending on age and other factors. Compared with children and older adults, young adults have more working memory capacity, so they can use their mental workspace more efficiently. This means their ability to multitask is relatively greater. But whatever our age, we do better and more efficient work when focused, without distractions, on one task at a time. The bottom line: It’s probably a bad idea to try to watch TV, text your friends, and write a psychology paper all at the same time (Willingham, 2010)!

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For a review of memory stages and a test of your own short-term memory capacity, visit LaunchPad’s PsychSim 6: Short-Term Memory.

Unlike short-term memory capacity, working memory capacity appears to reflect intelligence level (Cowan, 2008; Shelton et al., 2010). Imagine seeing a letter of the alphabet, then a simple question, then another letter, followed by another question, and so on. In such experiments, those who could juggle the most mental balls—who could remember the most letters despite the interruptions—tended in everyday life to exhibit high intelligence and an ability to maintain their focus (Kane et al., 2007; Unsworth & Engle, 2007). When beeped to report in at various times, they were less likely than others to report that their mind was wandering. Those with a large working memory capacity—whose minds can juggle multiple items while processing information—tend also to retain more information after sleep and to be creative problem solvers (De Dreu et al., 2012; Fenn & Hambrick, 2012; Wiley & Jarosz, 2012).

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE

  • What is the difference between automatic and effortful processing, and what are some examples of each?

Automatic processing occurs unconsciously (automatically) for such things as the sequence and frequency of a day’s events, and reading and comprehending words in our own language. Effortful processing requires attention and awareness and happens, for example, when we work hard to learn new material in class, or new lines for a play.

  • At which of Atkinson-Shiffrin’s three memory stages would iconic and echoic memory occur?

sensory memory

Effortful Processing Strategies

8-7 What are some effortful processing strategies that can help us remember new information?

Several effortful processing strategies can boost our ability to form new memories. Later, when we try to retrieve a memory, these strategies can make the difference between success and failure.

CHUNKING Glance for a few seconds at the first set of letters in FIGURE 8.7, then look away and try to reproduce what you saw. Impossible, yes? But you can easily reproduce set 2, which is no less complex. Similarly, you will probably remember sets 4 and 6 more easily than the same elements in sets 3 and 5. As this demonstrates, chunking information—organizing items into familiar, manageable units—enables us to recall it more easily. Try remembering 43 individual numbers and letters. It would be impossible, unless chunked into, say, seven meaningful chunks, such as “Try remembering 43 individual numbers and letters.”

Figure 8.7
Effects of chunking on memory When Doug Hintzman (1978) showed people information similar to this, they recalled it more easily when it was organized into meaningful units, such as letters, words, and phrases.

chunking organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

Figure 8.8
An example of chunking—for those who read Chinese After looking at these characters, can you reproduce them exactly? If so, you are literate in Chinese.

Chunking usually occurs so naturally that we take it for granted. If you are a native English speaker, you can reproduce perfectly the 150 or so line segments that make up the words in the three phrases of set 6 in Figure 8.7. It would astonish someone unfamiliar with the language. I am similarly awed at a Chinese reader’s ability to glance at FIGURE 8.8 and then reproduce all the strokes; or of a varsity basketball player’s recall of the positions of the players after a 4-second glance at a basketball play (Allard & Burnett, 1985). We all remember information best when we can organize it into personally meaningful arrangements.

mnemonics [nih-MON-iks] memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

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MNEMONICS To help them encode lengthy passages and speeches, ancient Greek scholars and orators developed mnemonics. Many of these memory aids use vivid imagery, because we are particularly good at remembering mental pictures. We more easily remember concrete, visualizable words than we do abstract words. (When we quiz you later, which three of these words—bicycle, void, cigarette, inherent, fire, process—will you most likely recall?) If you still recall the rock-throwing rioter sentence, it is probably not only because of the meaning you encoded but also because the sentence painted a mental image.

The peg-word system harnesses our superior visual imagery skill. This mnemonic requires you to memorize a jingle: “One is a bun; two is a shoe; three is a tree; four is a door; five is a hive; six is sticks; seven is heaven; eight is a gate; nine is swine; ten is a hen.” Without much effort, you will soon be able to count by peg words instead of numbers: bun, shoe, tree … and then to visually associate the peg words with to-be-remembered items. Now you are ready to challenge anyone to give you a grocery list to remember. Carrots? Stick them into the imaginary bun. Milk? Fill the shoe with it. Paper towels? Drape them over the tree branch. Think bun, shoe, tree and you see their associated images: carrots, milk, paper towels. With few errors, you will be able to recall the items in any order and to name any given item (Bugelski et al., 1968). Memory whizzes understand the power of such systems. A study of star performers in the World Memory Championships showed them not to have exceptional intelligence, but rather to be superior at using mnemonic strategies (Maguire et al., 2003).

When combined, chunking and mnemonic techniques can be great memory aids for unfamiliar material. Want to remember the colors of the rainbow in order of wavelength? Think of the mnemonic ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Need to recall the names of North America’s five Great Lakes? Just remember HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior). In each case, we chunk information into a more familiar form by creating a word (called an acronym) from the first letters of the to-be-remembered items.

spacing effect the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice.

HIERARCHIES When people develop expertise in an area, they process information not only in chunks but also in hierarchies composed of a few broad concepts divided and subdivided into narrower concepts and facts. (Figure 8.12 ahead provides a hierarchy of our automatic and effortful memory processing systems.) Organizing knowledge in hierarchies helps us retrieve information efficiently, as Gordon Bower and his colleagues (1969) demonstrated by presenting words either randomly or grouped into categories. When the words were grouped, recall was two to three times better. Such results show the benefits of organizing what you study—of giving special attention to chapter outlines, headings, numbered Learning Objective questions, Retrieval Practice questions, section reviews, and end-of-chapter Test Yourself questions. Taking lecture and text notes in outline format—a type of hierarchical organization—may also prove helpful.

Distributed Practice We retain information better when our encoding is distributed over time. More than 300 experiments over the past century have consistently revealed the benefits of this spacing effect (Cepeda et al., 2006). Massed practice (cramming) can produce speedy short-term learning and a feeling of confidence. But to paraphrase early memory researcher Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885), those who learn quickly also forget quickly. Distributed practice produces better long-term recall. After you’ve studied long enough to master the material, further study at that time becomes inefficient. Better to spend that extra reviewing time later—a day later if you need to remember something 10 days hence, or a month later if you need to remember something 6 months hence (Cepeda et al., 2008). The spacing effect is one of psychology’s most reliable findings, and it extends to motor skills and online game performance, too (Stafford & Dewar, 2014). Memory researcher Henry Roediger (2013) sums it up: “Hundreds of studies have shown that distributed practice leads to more durable learning.”

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Distributing your learning over several months, rather than over a shorter term, can even help you retain information for a lifetime. In a 9-year experiment, Harry Bahrick and three family members (1993) practiced foreign language word translations for a given number of times, at intervals ranging from 14 to 56 days. Their consistent finding: The longer the space between practice sessions, the better their retention up to 5 years later.

“The mind is slow in unlearning what it has been long in learning.”

Roman philosopher Seneca
(4 b.c.e.–65 c.e.)

testing effect enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information. Also sometimes referred to as a retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning.

One effective way to distribute practice is repeated self-testing, a phenomenon that researchers Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke (2006) have called the testing effect. Testing does more than assess learning: It improves it (Karpicke, 2012; McDaniel, 2012). In this text, for example, the Retrieval Practice and Test Yourself questions offer such an opportunity. Better to practice retrieval (as any exam will demand) than merely to reread material (which may lull you into a false sense of mastery). Roediger (2013) explains, “Two techniques that students frequently report using for studying—highlighting (or underlining) text and rereading text—[have been found] ineffective.” Happily, “retrieval practice (or testing) is [a] powerful and general strategy for learning.” As another memory expert explained, “What we recall becomes more recallable” (Bjork, 2011).

Making things memorable For suggestions on how to apply the testing effect to your own learning, watch this 5-minute animation: tinyurl.com/HowToRemember.

The point to remember: Spaced study and self-assessment beat cramming and rereading. Practice may not make perfect, but smart practice—occasional rehearsal with self-testing—makes for lasting memories.

Levels of Processing

shallow processing encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words.

8-8 What are the levels of processing, and how do they affect encoding?

deep processing encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention.

Memory researchers have discovered that we process verbal information at different levels, and that depth of processing affects our long-term retention. Shallow processing encodes on a very basic level, such as a word’s letters or, at a more intermediate level, a word’s sound. Deep processing encodes semantically, based on the meaning of the words. The deeper (more meaningful) the processing, the better our retention.

In one classic experiment, researchers Fergus Craik and Endel Tulving (1975) flashed words at people. Then they asked questions that would elicit different levels of processing. To experience the task yourself, rapidly answer the following sample questions:

Which type of processing would best prepare you to recognize the words at a later time? In Craik and Tulving’s experiment, the deeper, semantic processing triggered by the third question yielded a much better memory than did the shallower processing elicited by the second question or the very shallow processing elicited by the first question (which was especially ineffective).

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Making Material Personally Meaningful If new information is not meaningful or related to our experience, we have trouble processing it. Put yourself in the place of the students who were asked to remember the following recorded passage:

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do…. After the procedure is completed, one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life.

When the students heard the paragraph you have just read, without a meaningful context, they remembered little of it (Bransford & Johnson, 1972). When told the paragraph described washing clothes (something meaningful), they remembered much more of it—as you probably could now after rereading it.

Can you repeat the sentence about the rioter that we gave you at this chapter’s beginning? (“The angry rioter threw …”)? Here is another sentence we will ask you about later: The fish attacked the swimmer.

Perhaps, like those in an experiment by William Brewer (1977), you recalled the sentence by the meaning you encoded when you read it (for example, “The angry rioter threw the rock through the window”) and not as it was written (“The angry rioter threw the rock at the window”). Referring to such mental mismatches, some researchers have likened our minds to theater directors who, given a raw script, imagine the finished stage production (Bower & Morrow, 1990). Asked later what we heard or read, we recall not the literal text but what we encoded. Thus, studying for an exam, you may remember your lecture notes rather than the lecture itself.

We can avoid some of these mismatches by rephrasing information into meaningful terms. From his experiments on himself, Ebbinghaus estimated that, compared with learning nonsense material, learning meaningful material required one-tenth the effort. As memory researcher Wayne Wickelgren (1977, p. 346) noted, “The time you spend thinking about material you are reading and relating it to previously stored material is about the most useful thing you can do in learning any new subject matter.”

Psychologist-actor team Helga Noice and Tony Noice (2006) have described how actors inject meaning into the daunting task of learning “all those lines.” They do it by first coming to understand the flow of meaning: “One actor divided a half-page of dialogue into three [intentions]: ‘to flatter,’ ‘to draw him out,’ and ‘to allay his fears’.” With this meaningful sequence in mind, the actor more easily remembers the lines.

We have especially good recall for information we can meaningfully relate to ourselves. Asked how well certain adjectives describe someone else, we often forget them; asked how well the adjectives describe us, we remember the words well. This tendency, called the self-reference effect, is especially strong in members of individualist Western cultures (Symons & Johnson, 1997; Wagar & Cohen, 2003). Information deemed “relevant to me” is processed more deeply and remains more accessible. Knowing this, you can profit from taking time to find personal meaning in what you are studying.

The point to remember: The amount remembered depends both on the time spent learning and on your making it meaningful for deep processing.

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE

  • Which strategies are better for long-term retention: cramming and rereading material, or spreading out learning over time and repeatedly testing yourself?

Although cramming may lead to short-term gains in knowledge, distributed practice and repeated self-testing will result in the greatest long-term retention.

  • If you try to make the material you are learning personally meaningful, are you processing at a shallow or a deep level? Which level leads to greater retention?

Making material personally meaningful involves processing at a deep level, because you are processing semantically—based on the meaning of the words. Deep processing leads to greater retention.

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REVIEW: Studying and Encoding Memories

REVIEW Studying and Encoding Memories

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE Take a moment to answer each of these Learning Objective Questions (repeated here from within this section). Then click the 'show answer' button to check your answers. Research suggests that trying to answer these questions on your own will improve your long-term retention (McDaniel et al., 2009).

8-1 What is memory, and how is it measured?

Memory is learning that has persisted over time, through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. Evidence of memory may be recalling information, recognizing it, or relearning it more easily on a later attempt.

8-2 How do psychologists describe the human memory system?

Psychologists use memory models to think and communicate about memory. Information-processing models involve three processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Our agile brain processes many things simultaneously (some of them unconsciously) by means of parallel processing. The connectionism information-processing model focuses on this multitrack processing, viewing memories as products of interconnected neural networks. The three processing stages in the Atkinson-Shiffrin model are sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. This model has since been updated to include two important 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.

8-3 How do explicit and implicit memories differ?

The human brain processes information on dual tracks, consciously and unconsciously. Explicit (declarative) memories—our conscious memories of facts and experiences—form through effortful processing, which requires conscious effort and attention. Implicit (nondeclarative) memories—of skills and classically conditioned associations—happen without our awareness, through automatic processing.

8-4 What information do we process automatically?

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

8-5 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) sensory memory of visual stimuli; an echoic memory is a three- or four-second sensory memory of auditory stimuli.

8-6 What is the capacity of our short-term and working memory?

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

8-7 What are some effortful processing strategies that can help us remember new information?

Effective effortful processing strategies include chunking, mnemonics, hierarchies, and distributed practice sessions. The testing effect is enhanced memory after consciously retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information.

8-8 What are the levels of processing, and how do they affect encoding?

Depth of processing affects long-term retention. In shallow processing, we encode words based on their structure or appearance. Retention is best when we use deep processing, encoding words based on their meaning. We also more easily remember material that is personally meaningful—the self-reference effect.

TERMS AND CONCEPTS TO REMEMBER

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE Match each of the terms on the left with its definition on the right. Click on the term first and then click on the matching definition. As you match them correctly they will move to the bottom of the activity.

Question

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