PSYC 213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Encoding Specificity Principle, Retrograde Amnesia, Interference Theory
16 May 2018
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Lecture 011 - 02/15
Last class:
• Memory system
o Sensory memory (fraction of a second) Vs. short term/ working memory (
30 seconds) Vs. long term memory (minutes to years)
• How we forget information:
o Ebbinghaus: forgetting curve, spacing effects, serial position effects
o Decay theory Vs. Interference theory
▪ Proactive Vs. retroactive interference
• How we learn and are cues to remember
o Levels of processing: shallow Vs. deep processing
o Encoding specificity principle: state mood and environment context effects
This class:
• Mnemonics
• Further explore long term memory
o Implicit memory
o Explicit memory
▪ Episodic vs semantic
o How we remember complex events
▪ Flashbulb memories
▪ Schemas and memory distortions
• Other general rules related to forgetting related to personal events:
o Jost’s law of forgetting: if two memories are equally strong but come from
different time periods: the more recent memory is more prone to be
forgotten
o Ribot’s law of retrograde amnesia: older (remote) memories are less likely
to be lost as a result of brain damages than newer (recent) memories
• In general: older memories have more time to consolidate so they are more
resistant to forgetting
• Mnemonics: strategies to provide meaning or organization to the to-be-
remembered information → use this to improve encoding of information
• Method of Loci (memory/ mind palace):
o You associate pieces of information with a visual image of a location
o It’s a higher level form of chunking
• Method of Loci in non-experts: 3 training groups in this study
o Mnemonics training groups: learned method of loci
o Active control group: play simple memory games
o Passive control group: nothing
• Had to memorize a lost of 72 words → tested after 20 minutes, 24 hours and 4
months where they analyze changes in remembering before and after training in
the brain
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
o For each time: people with mnemonic training did much better than the
rest
• Implicit memory:
• Priming = when prior exposure of something facilitates information processing
but just below the level of awareness
o Can test with the word fragment completion tasks → people study a list of
words and later on will complete a word fragments and participants are
likely to use studied words without awareness (they don’t consciously
recall having seen the word earlier on)
• Procedural memory: recalling well established procedures and skills complicity, it
does not require conscious thought (ie: riding a bike or writing)
o Tacit knowledge
o Some brain parts are very important: the striatum in the basal ganglia and
the prefrontal cortex
• Habits are a type of procedural memory: activities that may begin as relying on
declarative memory but with training or exposure this becomes habitual
o Ie: putting the password in your phone at first is conscious but then you
can unlock your phone w/o explicitly thinking of the code
• Habits can be
o Motor action sequences
o Repetitive thought and emotions
• Habits are good because we don’t have to use a lot of processing but habitual;
acts can be dangerous and are related to OCD, addiction and other disorders
• Study interested in forming & breaking habits
• Rats trained on a T shaped maze: at the decision point, they learned they would
be rewarded for turning left or right based on tones
o They formed a habit by going on one direction
• When they removed one of the rewards, the rats still ran through the maze as
determined by the tones and then when one reward was mixed with a substance
that made the rat sick, they still ran the maze the same way
o Showed that habit formation is very difficult to break
• They researched used optogenetics to inhibit specific cells in the prefrontal brain
(a region related to addiction and repetitive behavior) and then the rats stopped
engaging in habitual maze running
• Declarative memory: episodic & semantic
• Episodic memory: remembering specific events & episodes
o Retrieval is accompanied with the context in which something was
originally learned (the what, where and the when)
▪ Ie: remembering the high school prom
• Semantic memory: remembering facts and general info about the self and the
world: retrieval is independent of the context in which it was originally learned
▪ Ie: remembering that proms occurs at the end of high school
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Last class: memory system, sensory memory (fraction of a second) vs. short term/ working memory ( 30 seconds) vs. long term memory (minutes to years: how we forget information, ebbinghaus: forgetting curve, spacing effects, serial position effects, decay theory vs. Interference theory: proactive vs. retroactive interference, how we learn and are cues to remember, levels of processing: shallow vs. deep processing, encoding specificity principle: state mood and environment context effects. This class: mnemonics, further explore long term memory. Ie: remembering the high school prom: semantic memory: remembering facts and general info about the self and the world: retrieval is independent of the context in which it was originally learned. Ie: remembering that proms occurs at the end of high school. Ie: tying your shoe: noetic consciousness: semantic memory, you have an awareness of knowledge, no personal engagement but feeling of familiarity or knowing.
