ALHT106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Dementia, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Sketchpad
ALHT week 6 online lecture Memory and Cognition
- In essay, don’t diagnose injury to parts of brain – talk only about function not
anatomy
- Memory is very much looked at through a cognitive perspective
What is Memory
Cognition
- “Cognition” is an umbrella term, which essentially means ‘mental processes’, or in
more modern terminology, ‘information processing in the brain’
- The term has historical value, as many psychological phenomena were thought to
not depend on the manipulation of information or knowledge structures
- Today it is appreciated that ‘cognition’ is a common factor in every major aspect of
psychology, collectively consisting of:
oPerception/sensation
oMemory/learning
oEmotion/motivation
oReasoning/problem solving
Neural rewiring
- Our brains and wider nervous systems are comprised of vast arrays of
interconnected neurons
- Connections = synapses
- Neural rewiring is the basis of memory and learning
- Electrochemical signals shared between neurons allow our brains to process
information, based on the patterns and sensitivities of synaptic connections
- These patterns are not set in stone, and are modified by lived experience
- We lose connections (even neurons) in a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ process of maintenance
- Those neurons we keep also become more sensitive at synaptic sites that are more
frequently used, and can even stretch out to form entirely new connections
Memory and learning
- These are the same underlying processes in both domain-specific memory, and the
various processes of conditioning and learning
- In humans, we have so many specialised applications of memory that the distinction
is useful, but in most creatures with simple nervous systems, learning = memory
Encoding, Storage and Retrieval
Good and Bad Metaphors
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
- The phenomena of memory, if regarded literally, are far too distributed and
immensely complex to comprehend or organise with the kinds of brains we have
- We will make extensive use of metaphor to speak about how memory works on a
functional level, but do not all into the mistake of thinking there is a direct,
anatomical analogue
oImprinting a shape into soft wax Renee de Carte
Memory leaves an impression on you
You imprint certain memories at various points
oCalling specific birds in an aviary Aristotle
You pick up different memories from your lived experiences and
they’re somewhere lurking around inside your mind
The difficult thing is in the moment when you need them, how do you
call the right memory to you
In an aviary, without adequate training and disciplinary, you can’t
make the right bird come at the right time
oSet of objects in a storage warehouse/filing cabinet
This metaphorical lens has been around since the cognitive revolution
in the 1960s
Your memories are objects that are put away in storage warehouses
oRewindable videotape/filmstrip
Ordering of your memory and how you re-experience them
oComputer with a hard-disk and RAM
Hard-disk = where long-term memories are stored
RAM = whatever you’re actively thinking about at the time
- All these metaphors have benefits to them, but also have limitations:
oImprinting a shape into soft wax:
Gives a broad idea of structurally reshaping memory from experience
but it’s far too simplistic
oCalling specific birds in an aviary:
Very non-mechanical
oSet of objects in a storage warehouse:
Infinite regress because if you know where to go look for them, is that
then a memory that must be stored in another place, etc.
oRewindable videotape/filmstrip:
Completely wrong
oComputer with a hard-disk and RAM:
Close, but with important differences
Functional Metaphor
- Encoding (or acquisition) How does information get into memory?
- Storage (or maintenance) How is the information maintained once encoded?
- Retrieval (or recovery) How is the information ‘brought back out’?
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Memory =
retrieving
details of the past at some point in the future
Encoding
- The basis of memory is perception and sensation, only something that has been
perceived from the environment or felt as an internal judgement or sensation can be
remembered
- However, the vast majority of everything we perceive, think and feel is not
remembered, and what is remembered is no accident
- The main determining factor is attention you have to be paying attention to
something to be capable of encoding it
- Attention is the focusing of awareness onto particular subsets of our experience
- While our attention is reactive (eg: loud bangs) and passively aware (background
retrospective awareness of our attention) (eg: the sound of your own name),
humans have a degree of voluntary control over selective attention
- It is essential for everyday functioning, and it is key in memory
- Our active, selective attention acts to ‘filter out’ the abundance of environmental
information that we do not find relevant at any given moment
- Disruption of attention (either ‘early’ in processing with distraction, or ‘late’ in
processing with overloading) almost always results in significant disruptions to
memory encoding
- Memory is affected by the ‘depth of processing’
- The more features and contexts of meaning are processed during perception, the
more successful encoding will likely be
- For example, attending superficial features may lead to memory, but attending to
semantic meaning or narrative placement produces far greater remembering
- Extending these two principles, encoding is improved by:
oElaboration linking the stimulus to other ideas or events
oVisual imagery holding a relevant image in the ‘mind’s eye’
oSelf-relevance framing information as relevant to oneself
oMotivation to remember explicitly thinking about possible future contexts
when it may be useful
Storage
- In layperson language, we often use terms like ‘short-term memory’, ‘long-term
memory’ and ‘muscle memory’
- While inelegant, these terms reflect an underlying truth: human memory is ‘stored’
in multiple modalities that appear to be relevant in different contexts (eg: an event
vs. how to drive)
Retrieval
- While we typically like to imagine ‘remembering’ as an active, wilful process of
‘pulling out’ old memories, the retrieval of memories relies very heavily on stimuli
from the environment
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Alht week 6 online lecture memory and cognition. In essay, don"t diagnose injury to parts of brain talk only about function not anatomy. Memory is very much looked at through a cognitive perspective. Cognition is an umbrella term, which essentially means mental processes", or in more modern terminology, information processing in the brain". The term has historical value, as many psychological phenomena were thought to not depend on the manipulation of information or knowledge structures. Today it is appreciated that cognition" is a common factor in every major aspect of psychology, collectively consisting of: perception/sensation, memory/learning, emotion/motivation, reasoning/problem solving. Our brains and wider nervous systems are comprised of vast arrays of interconnected neurons. Neural rewiring is the basis of memory and learning. Electrochemical signals shared between neurons allow our brains to process information, based on the patterns and sensitivities of synaptic connections. These patterns are not set in stone, and are modified by lived experience.
