PSYCH 1XX3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Hermann Ebbinghaus, Frederic Bartlett, Nonsense Word
4 May 2018
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MEMORY
Introduction to Memory
Introduction to Memory
• Cognitive psychologists are interested in exploring the world of thoughts,
representations, and mental processes that make humans unique sentient beings
• Memory is the fundamental cognitive mechanism that allows you to encode, store, and
retrieve information
Introduction to Our Case Study
• What memory skills will help Amanda improve her study habits?
• Let’s consider two friends, Amanda and Jen, who have a healthy rivalry over who scores
better on tests in a biology course
• Amanda consistently falls just short of Jen’s performance
• Amanda is studying psychology and is interested to learn more about memory
o How can she apply her understanding of memory to improve her study plan?
o Can some simple changes lead to improved performance that will finally give her
an edge over Jen?
Common Memory Metaphors
• We are trying to understand a very abstract and complex system
• Common metaphors that are used to describe memory:
o Perhaps memory acts like a video camera which accurately preserves images
and audio to be played back at a later time
o Think of memory as a filing cabinet - we create memory files that are stored in an
organized folder system which can be later accessed to remember something
o Computer memory metaphor - specialized components responsible for handling
different memories at different times
• Does memory work in any of these ways?
• Is your memory an accurate portrayal of reality?
Problems With Memory Metaphors
• Frederic Bartlett realized that all of these metaphors about human memory have
something in common
• Memory metaphors are misleading because each assumes that memory can store
experiences in their original, undistorted form
• Each also assumes that memory retrieval is as simple as accessing an item that has
been kept in a specific place
• Memory is subject to interpretation and reconstruction
The Basics of Memory
Types of Questions
• Psychologists have generally asked three types of questions about memory:
o Questions about memory acquisition
▪ What will be stored in memory?
o Questions about memory storage
▪ How and where will it be stored?
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find more resources at oneclass.com
o Questions about memory retrieval
▪ How can memories be returned to consciousness?
The Importance of Cues
• We are able to navigate through a vast array of memories stored in our brain to access a
specific moment
• As two friends banter back and forth, one memory triggers another, which shapes the
flow of the conversation
• Like the cue-response mechanism studied by behaviorists, one memory acts as a cue to
trigger another memory
• Early focus of memory research concerned how cues interact with encoding and
retrieval mechanisms of memory
• To effectively study memory’s mechanisms, psychologists need to use the controlled
conditions of the lab
• Hermann Ebbinghaus -
o Operationally defined memory as a serial learning task
o As Ebbinghaus memorized nonsense word lists, he suggested that each word in
the list served as a cue that triggered the memory of the word that followed
o Each word connects to the words before and after it
• Cueing is an important concept in encoding specificity, by which encoding and retrieval
are linked through cues
Testing Our Hypotheses
• Psychologists rely on cognitive models to understand a complex and abstract process
like memory
• Models describe and organize data and make specific testable hypotheses that can be
studied in controlled lab experiments
Recall and Recognition
• A basic memory task involves two phases:
o The encoding phase: a subject learns a list of items, words, or pictures. For
example, in a simple experiment, a researcher presents the same list of items to
two different groups. She explicitly asks the experimental group to learn the
presented items, while a control group is distracted.
o The retrieval phase: subjects are tested for their memory of the items presented
in the encoding phase
Hermann Ebbinghaus
• Ebbinghaus used the basic encoding and retrieval design to learn about cueing and
forgetting of memories
• Using himself as a subject, Ebbinghaus memorized lists of “nonsense words” during the
encoding phase and later tested his recall ability during the retrieval phase
• Ebbinghaus used nonsense words to minimize the influence of his prior experience on
his test results
• Ebbinghaus wondered how long memories could be maintained
• He found that his ability to recall words was highest immediately following learning and
that over time he was able to remember fewer and fewer words
• From these observations, Ebbinghaus constructed the famous “forgetting curve,” which
describes the rapidly increasing rate of recall over time
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find more resources at oneclass.com
•
The Multi-Store Model
The Multi-Store Model
• Proposed by Atkinson & Shiffrin in 1968
• The multi-store model assumes that memory is composed of both short and long term
storage systems
• Incoming perceptual information is first stored in a short-term memory buffer
o Similar to how RAM operates on a computer
o Information in short term memory is available for online tasks but not stored
permanently
• Important information coded in short-term memory can be transferred to the long-term
memory system for more permanent storage, similar to how files are saved onto the
hard drive of a computer
•
George Miller
• Demonstrated that for most short-term memory tasks, like memorizing a random
sequence of numbers, people can remember about 7, plus or minus 2 items
• Beyond this load, the demand on short-term memory becomes strained
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Memory: cognitive psychologists are interested in exploring the world of thoughts, representations, and mental processes that make humans unique sentient beings, memory is the fundamental cognitive mechanism that allows you to encode, store, and retrieve information. Testing our hypotheses: psychologists rely on cognitive models to understand a complex and abstract process like memory, models describe and organize data and make specific testable hypotheses that can be studied in controlled lab experiments. Recall and recognition: a basic memory task involves two phases, the encoding phase: a subject learns a list of items, words, or pictures. For example, in a simple experiment, a researcher presents the same list of items to two different groups. She explicitly asks the experimental group to learn the presented items, while a control group is distracted: the retrieval phase: subjects are tested for their memory of the items presented in the encoding phase.
