PSYC 3610 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Hermann Ebbinghaus, Frederic Bartlett, Ebers Papyrus
20 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY
OF MEMORY
Memory Is Critical
Ways of Remembering
The Science of Memory
History of Memory Research
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Effect of Retention Intervals on
Memory
Overlearning
Spacing Effect
Mary Calkins
Behaviourism
Frederic Bartlett
Endel Tulving
Cognitive Psychology
Elizabeth Loftus
Cognitive Neuroscience
Methods of Studying Memory
Experiment
Features in an Experiment
Memory Measures
Recall
Recognition
Implicit Memory Tests
Reaction Time
Source Judgements
Metamemory Judgments
Methods Drawn from the
Neuroscience Perspective
Neuropsychology
Animal Models
Cognitive Neuroscience Methods
Improving Memory Efficiency
Prospective Memory
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Memory Is Critical
• Remembering important information
• Who you are – name, identity, past
o Being able to recall the characteristics of our own personality and
back it up with actual memories is an important part of developing our
sense of self.
• The thought of losing or forgetting certain memories is scary and painful.
o Losing the ability to learn (more common) or losing the memory of the
personal past and hence their personality (not common)
o Some memories are “treasures” in a way more closely connected to
our sense of self than physical objects.
▪ E.g., objects that have sentimental values
• Knowledge needed for school, job, hobbies
o Though we place a tremendous demand on the memories of students,
little scientific information is provided about how memory works and
how we can improve upon our ability to encode.
• Names and faces
Ways of Remembering
• Recall
• Recognition (familiarity)
The Science of Memory
• Empirical evidence: results of scientific research; results of the scientific
process
o To be empirical evidence, data must be verifiable – another scientist
must be able to get the same results by conducting the same or a
similar experiment.
o Can and should be replicable
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• Experiments and empirical evidence form the basis of what we know about
human memory from a scientific perspective.
o Stories and anecdotes do not constitute science.
• The goal of memory science is to make generalizations about how memory
works in the real world.
o Under careful and controlled lab conditions – allow for making causal
connections between variables
o Trade-off between absolute control and ecological validity (real-life
applications)
History of Memory Research
• Early human beings showed evidence of introspective behaviour at least as
long as 40,000 years ago.
o It is likely that some of the from the early Stone Age art reflect their
own memories.
• An ancient Egyptian medical manual, known as Ebers Papyrus, from 1500
BCE describes the nature of memory deficits after injury.
• Nearly 2,500 years ago, in classical Greece, Plato and Aristotle described
theories of memory that sound surprisingly modern.
• Plato (428 – 347 BCE) used two metaphors to account for memory.
o Compared human memory to a wax tablet, a common technology for
showing the written word in his day – allows memory to be encoded,
retrieved, and altered if the wax gets altered
o Compared human memory retrieval to a birdcage – we reach our
hands into a cage to remove a bird, just as we reach into our memory
to retrieve a particular event or item; sometimes the memory may be
difficult to retrieve, just as the bird may be difficult to catch
• Philosophers such as John Locke and George Berkeley emphasized how the
mind creates associations between one idea and another.
o Shaped much of the original science on human memory
Document Summary
It took less total time to master a list that had been given distributed practice than one that received massed practice. Zeitgeist a particular belief system in a particular time setting in a particular set of people: kept psychology from evolving as science earlier, e. g. , dualism, a view that the mind and body are distinct from each other. Endel tulving: taking first the perspective of cognitive psychology and later cognitive neuroscience, tulving has introduced to the field many of the theoretical ideas on which all memory researchers now rely. Cognitive psychology: an approach to psychology which emphasizes hidden mental process, memory scientists started switching from s-r models to models emanating from the new science of cognitive psychology. Methods of studying memory: to study memory objectively, we must apply the scientific method, can make generalizations about how memory works in human beings and get reasonable estimates of measurable individual differences.
