higher psychology assignment memory

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5 Module 5: Memory

Memory plays a key role in many areas of our lives, not the least of which is school. To understand why we remember and forget, you need to consider the entire memory process. Here’s a very simple description: First, you have to get information into your memory systems; call this process  encoding . When you need to get information out of memory (for example, when you are taking an exam, or telling a story), you use the process called  retrieval . In between encoding and retrieval we have, of course, memory  storage .

Failure to remember information—that is, forgetting—can occur because of a breakdown at any of the three points (encoding, storage, retrieval). The typical culprits in the failure to remember, however, are encoding and retrieval problems. That’s why most of this module is devoted to encoding and retrieval. But first you need to understand the basic layout of memory, which is a key element of cognition.

This module breaks psychologists’ basic understanding of memory into six sections. First it explains that not all forms of memory are alike and describes some of the different memory systems. The section introduces principles of encoding and explains how recoding is one of the keys to effective memory. The third section describes the processes that take place in the brain when information is encoded and stored in memory. The fourth section covers memory retrieval. The final section describes how memories are constructed and, sometimes, distorted.

5.1 Memory Systems

5.2 Encoding and Recoding

5.3 Memory Storage and Memory in the Brain

5.4 Memory Retrieval

5.5 memory construction and distortion.

encoding : putting information into memory systems

retrieval : taking information out of memory systems

storage :  keeping memories in the brain for future use

READING WITH PURPOSE

Remember and understand.

By reading and studying Module 5, you should be able to remember and describe:

• Distinctions among encoding, storage, and retrieval (5 introduction)
• Characteristics of sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory (5.1)
• Characteristics of procedural memory and declarative memory (5.1)
• Methods of rehearsal for encoding: repetition, auditory encoding, semantic encoding (5.2)
• Strategies for semantic encoding: elaborative verbal rehearsal, self reference, mental images (5.2)
• Organizing to encode (5.3)
• Concept map and neural networks (5.4)
• Parts of a neuron: axon, dendrites, cell body (5.4)
• Synaptic plasticity (5.4)
• Retrieval cues (5.5)
• Memory distortion (5.6)

By reading and thinking about how the concepts in Module 5 apply to real life, you should be able to:

• Identify different kinds of memory (5.1)
• Characterize your own typical study strategies in terms of encoding and retrieval principles (5.2, 5.3, 5.5)
• Recognize a memory from your own life that might be distorted (5.6)

Analyze, Evaluate, and Create

By reading and thinking about Module 5, participating in classroom activities, and completing out-of-class assignments, you should be able to:

• Devise a strategy for studying that uses encoding and retrieval principles (5.2, 5.3, 5.5)
• Recognize a situation in which you would suspect a memory distortion (5.6)
• Can you think of more than one kind of memory that you have drawn upon?
• Why can you remember a birthday party you attended years ago, but forget what your instructor said seconds ago? 
• Is it true that some memories can last a lifetime?
• Is it true that “you never forget how to ride a bicycle?” 

When you first start to think about it, memory might seem pretty simple.  But consider some of the memories you might have:

• What you had for breakfast this morning
• Your 10th birthday party
• The address someone just left on your voicemail
• Your phone number
• What your best friend looks like
• What a cat is
• How to read
• What you read in section 1.2 of this book
• The answer to question 3 on your History mid-term
• The name of the person you just met
• How to do a cartwheel

All of these phenomena are, at their core, memories, which means that they share some fundamental properties. Yet they have significant differences, too. It has been a major accomplishment of memory researchers to describe the different types of memory systems and processes, and determine the specific properties of each one.

Distinguishing by duration and purpose of the memory

We have two major memory systems that help to explain how memories are stored: working memory (sometimes referred to as short-term memory, although the actual meaning is not identical) and long-term memory. The process of creating a memory that you will remember for a test you will be taking next week and beyond involves both systems working together.

Soon after information is first encountered, it enters the system called working memory, simply by virtue of the fact that you pay attention to it (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974). The best way to understand working memory is to think of it as the current contents of your consciousness—that is, whatever you are thinking about right now. So as you are sitting at your desk staring at a textbook, the words that you pay attention to enter into working memory. You hold information in working memory either because you are going to use it (for example, to solve some problem) or because you will be trying to transfer, or encode it, into long-term memory.

Long-term memory is the memory system that holds information for periods of time ranging from a few minutes to many years. If you do not use or transfer the information in working memory into long-term memory, it will be forgotten, probably in less than thirty seconds (Peterson & Peterson, 1959).

One fact you should realize about working memory is that its capacity is limited. Psychologists had thought that people can generally hold about 7 pieces, or  chunk s, of information in working memory at one time (Miller, 1956). A chunk is a unit of meaningful information. For example, an individual letter might be a chunk. If the letters can be ordered to form words or abbreviations, then these are the chunks. More recently, however, researchers have proposed that memory capacity is a function of time, not quantity. Specifically, our working memory may hold the amount of information that we can process in about two seconds (Baddeley, 1986, 1996).

If you manage to get the information from working memory encoded into long-term memory, it is possible that you can retain that information for many years. It can even last a lifetime; picture a 92 year-old grandmother who still tells stories about her childhood in Italy. Also, although that “I can’t study any more because my brain is full” feeling may make you think otherwise, you can essentially store a limitless amount of information in long-term memory (Landauer, 1986).

One of the keys to good memory, then, is to have effective strategies for encoding information into long-term memory (see section 5.2). You typically store the general meaning of information in long-term memory, however, rather than precisely what you encountered (Brewer, 1977).

Working memory and long-term memory are not the only two memory storage systems. Another one is called  sensory memory , and it actually comes into play before working memory does (Sperling, 1960; Crowder & Morton, 1969). Sensory memory is an extremely accurate, very short duration system. It essentially stores the information taken in by the senses, vision and hearing, just long enough (about a second) to allow you to direct attention to it so you can get the information into working memory.

Distinguishing by the kind of information in the memory

Can you do a backflip? Former World’s Strongest Man Eddie Hall can.

Procedural Memory

This ability to do a backflip is a skill, or a memory, like riding a bicycle, tying one’s shoes, or hitting a tennis ball. These types of memories, however, seem very different from remembering what you had for dinner last night or remembering that Albany is the capital of New York.

Psychologists, too, have noticed this distinction and have given the two kinds of memories different names.  Procedural memory refers to skills and procedures. These are memories for things that you can do.  Declarative memory refers to facts and episodes (Cohen & Eichenbaum, 1993). Declarative memory is further subdivided into  semantic memory —your general store of knowledge, such as facts and word meanings, and  episodic memory — memory for events, or episodes from your life. So, if you remember that Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota, it is semantic memory, unless you remember the exact time that you learned this fact (in 5th grade social studies, for example), in which case it would be episodic memory. So you see, as the details about when we first learned some piece of information fade, episodic memories can become semantic memory.

Declarative Memory

Procedural memory seems to operate by different rules than declarative memory. For example, when we talk about transferring information from working memory to long-term memory (encoding) and retrieving information from long-term memory back into working memory, we are talking about declarative memory only. There is no working memory for procedures. Acquiring a procedural memory typically takes much more practice than acquiring a declarative memory does. But once a skill is acquired (that is, once it becomes part of your procedural memory), it may well be there to stay. So, at least for some people, it is probably true that you never forget how to ride a bicycle.

(See Module 9 for a related distinction called explicit and implicit memory)

chunk : a unit of meaningful information

declarative memory : memory for facts and episodes

episodic memory : the part of declarative memory that refers to specific events or episodes from someone’s life

long-term memory : an essentially unlimited, nearly permanent memory storage system

procedural memory : memory for skills and procedures

semantic memory : the part of declarative memory that refers to one’s general store of knowledge

sensory memory : a very short (about one second), extremely accurate memory system that holds information long enough for an individual to pay attention to it

working memory : a short-term memory storage system that holds information in consciousness for immediate use or to transfer it into long long-term memory

• Think about the last time you forgot something. Was the forgetting a problem with working memory or long-term memory?
• What is your most interesting procedural memory? Have you ever tried to teach it to someone else? If so, how did you do it?
• What is your earliest declarative memory? (Use an episode from your life rather than trying to figure out the first fact that you learned.) Do you think that your declarative memory is good or poor?

5.2 Recode to Encode

• Have you ever finished reading a short section from a textbook and immediately realized that you have already forgotten what you just read?
• Have you ever looked at the first question on an exam for which you thought you had studied well and thought, “I have never seen this concept before in my life; am I in the right room?”
• Do you find yourself able to remember unimportant material for a class (for example, material not on the test) and unable to remember important material?
• Please turn to the beginning of Module 5. Notice the description and list of all the sections that fit within the Module. Now go find a couple of textbooks from your other classes and look at the outlines in the first pages of some chapters or at least at the table of contents. (Seriously, go look! We’ll wait.) Why are these outlines included?

Think about your best friend for a moment. What were they wearing the last time you were together? You will often find yourself unable to remember information like this. Why? Because you probably never attempted to encode that information from working memory into long-term memory. You didn’t look at your friend and say, “Lisa looks so good today; I’m going to remember what she is wearing!”

Certainly, information sometimes makes it into long-term memory without you engaging in purposeful encoding. Perhaps you have an annoying song going through your head right now. It is not very likely that when you first heard the song, you said to yourself, “Hey, I better make sure I memorize this song.” (You might be interested to know that psychologists have studied this phenomenon of annoying songs you cannot get out of your head. They call them earworms –see Jakubowski et al. 2017). But do not count on this accidental encoding to provide you with a solid memory when you need it. The simple truth is if you want to be able to retrieve information from long-term memory, you have to do a very good job of putting it in there in the first place.

How do you effectively encode information into long-term memory?

The basic strategy that people use to encode information from working memory into long-term memory is  rehearsal. All of the encoding strategies in this module are kinds of rehearsal. The simplest kind of rehearsal is straight  repetition.  Imagine trying to learn your French vocabulary words by mentally running through the vocabulary list over and over until you get them all right. It works ok, as long as the test was soon after you finish studying (about 15 seconds seems to be the ideal delay; anything more than that and you start forgetting). Although it may be one of the most common rehearsal strategies and is the one favored by many students, repetition is probably one of the least effective. Call this encoding without recoding. And the advice about it bears repeating: Encoding without recoding (in other words, straight repetition) is a poor way to encode information from working memory into long-term memory.

One specific situation in which many people have difficulty encoding is when they read textbooks. Have you ever read a paragraph, realized that you have immediately forgotten it, and as a consequence decided to re-read it? Often, the problem is that you are merely reading the words over in your head, making sure you can “hear” yourself silently saying the words. In this case, you are  recoding : transforming the information from one form into another. But the transformation in this case is minor and not very useful. Psychologists call it  auditory encoding or  acoustic encoding . Auditory encoding is ok. Many students rely on it, and with enough effort they do fairly well at school.

In order to remember better, however, there is no question that you should try to move to the next level of recoding, in which you transform the information into something meaningful. For example, Craik and Tulving (1975) developed the idea of  semantic encoding (Craik & Tulving 1975). Semantic means “meaning,” so semantic encoding refers to mentally processing the meaning of information. For example, you should pay attention to patterns and relationships and their significance, rather than just the words or numbers themselves.

Psychologist F. I. M. Craik and his colleagues demonstrated the benefits of using semantic encoding in a famous series of experiments during the 1970’s (Craik and Lockhart, 1972; Craik and Tulving, 1975). These experiments examined what Craik termed  levels of processing. In a typical experiment, participants would read a list of words with instructions that would encourage one specific type of encoding. The shallowest encoding strategy (or level of processing) required participants to pay attention to the visual appearance and shapes of the letters only. For example, a shallow encoding strategy would be to count how many straight and curved letters there are in each word. Note that you do not even need to read the words in order to use this strategy, so it would seem to be quite a poor recoding strategy. Somewhat “deeper” encoding strategies were those that required participants to pay attention to more properties of the words, such as the auditory qualities. For example, judging whether the word rhymes with a specific word is a deeper encoding strategy, an acoustic one. Note that you do not need to encode the meaning of the words in order to use this strategy.

The deepest level of processing, the one that requires meaningful recoding, is semantic encoding, or paying attention to the words’ meanings. A specific task to encourage semantic encoding might be to judge whether the word makes sense in the following sentence: “The __ fell down the stairs.”

Craik’s research consistently showed that memory was better the deeper the processing. Semantic processing was better than acoustic processing, which was better than visual processing. This is a basic principle of memory that you can start using today to improve your memory: to effectively encode, you should recode information in a way that allows you to process the meaning of what you are trying to remember.

auditory (acoustic) encoding: encoding from working memory into long-term memory by paying attention to the sounds of words only

levels of processing: strategies that affect how well a memory is encoded. Craik and Tulving’s research demonstrates that deeper processing (that is, semantic encoding) leads to better memory than shallower processing (that is, encoding based on auditory and visual properties)

recoding : transforming information to be encoded into a different format

rehearsal: the basic strategy that people use to encode information from working memory into long term memory

semantic encoding: encoding from working memory into long-term memory by paying attention to the meaning of words

How Can You Recode for Meaning?

One main reason that recoding for meaning helps to create solid memories is that it takes advantage of the format of information when it is stored in long-term memory. Try this: Tell a few minutes of the story “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” or any other story you know from your childhood. Did you tell the story word-for-word the way it was told to you? Probably not. But still you remembered the characters and the sequence of events quite well. Typically (but not always), long-term memory stores information by meaning, taking advantage of patterns and creating links between concepts and people and events (Bransford, Barclay, & Franks; 1972; Brewer, 1977). This tendency allows you to recall the general story, but not the precise story, whether it is a children’s fantasy, a description in a textbook, or some event that happens to you. When you make special efforts to encode meaning, you are playing to the natural tendencies and strengths of your long-term memory.

Any way that you can make information meaningful should help make your efforts to remember more successful. Here are some useful strategies that you can use for reading textbooks and remembering lectures and other course material:

Elaborative Verbal rehearsal and Self-Reference

Try elaborative verbal rehearsal, which is basically restating what you have just read or heard in your own words. After reading a short section or paragraph, pretend that a friend has asked you to explain it. Or pretend that you are trying to teach the material to someone. Although this can be difficult to do, the payoff is tremendous. In one study that compared high-performing and low-performing students who were taking General Psychology, the use of elaborative verbal rehearsal was the most important difference (Ratliff-Crain and Klopfleisch, 2005).

Use the  self-reference effect by trying to apply the material to yourself (Forsyth & Wibberly, 1993; Fujita, & Horiuchi, 2004, Jackson et al. 2019). Suppose you were trying to teach some course content to someone else. You might decide to use some real-life examples to help your students understand the material. Well, it turns out that this strategy is extremely powerful for remembering the material yourself. Continually ask yourself, “Can I think of an example of this concept from my own life?” or even simply, “How does this apply to me?” Creating a mental link between the course material and what it means to you is one of the very best ways to encode meaning. With practice, you should be able to use this strategy in many of your courses. The self-reference effect is very robust; it has been demonstrated with children, college students, older adults (with and without mild cognitive impairment), and adults and adolescents with autism (Jackson et al 2019; Lind et al. 2019).

Keep in mind as you consider trying these strategies that they can be hard to do, at least at first. It is certainly harder, and more time consuming, to do elaborative verbal rehearsal than to simply read a textbook chapter once. But it is no more time consuming than re-reading a chapter a few times because you know you will not be able to remember it. Also keep in mind that, as you get better at using the strategies, they grow more effective and get easier to use.

elaborative verbal rehearsal : an encoding technique that encourages semantic processing by restating to-be-remembered information in your own words, as if teaching it to someone else

self-reference effect : an encoding technique that encourages semantic processing by applying to-be-remembered information to yourself

Organize information.

Imagine that you are visiting a city for the first time. You have only a vague idea of where you are and you need to get to the post office. What you need is a map. A map can help you to learn where important things are and can help you figure out how to find them.

That is what the organizational aids in this book are, as well as the chapter outlines (and tables of contents) in other books and even web sitemaps. They are maps. They are useful for helping you effectively transfer information from working memory into long-term memory because they organize that information in a meaningful way.

If you can organize information meaningfully (or take advantage of a meaningful organization provided for you), it will be more effectively encoded into long-term memory (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Halpern, 1986). The beauty of this strategy from a practical standpoint in school is that often the work is done for you. Someone has already gone to the trouble of coming up with a meaningful organizational scheme. Use the chapter outlines to plot your route through your textbook. Pay attention during the first five minutes of lecture when your professor gives you a preview of the day’s lecture and activities.

Signaling Meaning in Advance

One of the reasons that outlines and previews help you put information into long-term memory is that they alert you in advance to the types of information you’ll be encountering. Sometimes just a little bit of information goes a long way. Even something as simple as knowing the title of reading material before you start reading allows you to organize the information so that it makes sense and can be remembered.

John Bransford and his colleagues demonstrated this kind of effect by asking two groups of research participants to remember a paragraph. For the first group, the paragraph alone was presented. Here is one of their paragraphs. See how well you think you would remember it:

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. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run, this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity of this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell. 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 (from Bransford and Johnson, 1972).

Do you think you would do a good job on a memory test for this paragraph? Bransford and Johnson’s participants did very poorly. Although the individual sentences are meaningful, it is difficult to see how they are related to each other—in other words, how they are organized.

The second group of participants read the same paragraph, but before doing so, they were given the title “Doing the Laundry.” Now that you know the title, go back and read the paragraph again and see if it makes sense. If you are like most of Bransford and Johnson’s participants, providing a title makes the paragraph much easier to understand and remember.

What Bransford and Johnson demonstrated is that the title allows readers to make inferences—that is, to use their background knowledge to tie the paragraph together. For example, in the second sentence, the title allows you to draw the inference that the word “things” refers to “clothes.” Inferences like these relate the formerly meaningless paragraph to the knowledge about the world that you already have. By providing a title, Bransford and Johnson allowed participants to activate their own knowledge about the way the world is organized before they started reading the paragraph. The title gave them preexisting memory hooks on which to hang the new words that they were reading.

Highlighting Relationships

In order for the technique of organizing to encode to work, you have to find the organization meaningful. That is, you have to see the organization as more than simply a list of topics. You need to learn to recognize the typical relationships between concepts. An outline or a table of contents, with items indented different amounts and different formatting for various levels of headings, also shows the relationships among the topics: which concepts can be grouped together, which are more important than others. To a very large degree, organizing information to improve encoding is simply a matter of paying attention to these types of relationships.

One very important relationship is between a general principle and an example of that principle. Look for clues in the text of your book, such as introductory phrases (“for example,” “the main idea is,” and the like). When you have identified whether a given statement is a general principle or an example, try to generate the other. If you think it is the general principle, try to come up with a new example. If you think it is an example, make sure you can identify the general principle.

Here are three other types of relationships you should make a habit of distinguishing in the materials you want to remember:

• Causes and effects.  For example, if we were doing an experiment on violent video games and aggression, the independent variable, exposure to violent video games, is the supposed cause, and the dependent variable, aggressiveness, is the supposed effect (see sec 2.3).
• Parts and wholes.  For example, a neuron is essentially a small part of the brain (the brain is made up of billions of neurons). Neurons themselves are composed of parts, including the cell body, dendrites, and axons (see secs 5.3/11.1).
• Levels of a hierarchy. A hierarchy is an organization system in which lower-level, or subordinate categories are included under higher-level, or superordinate categories. For example, the levels of living things that you probably learned in biology—kingdom, phylum, class, order, etc.—are organized in a hierarchy.

Any organization scheme that you come up with yourself will be particularly effective. Because you find it personally meaningful, a self-generated scheme will be easily and effectively encoded into long-term memory. You would be doing yourself a tremendous favor if you adopted a good strategy for generating these organizational schemes.

• In your own words, why is rephrasing textbook material in your own words an effective strategy for encoding information into long-term memory?
• Why can it be difficult to assemble something using a poorly written instruction manual?
• Try to think of a situation in your life where you were unable to understand or remember something because you did not know how it was organized.
• Why is it difficult to understand or remember a movie for which you missed the first 30 minutes ?

5.3 Memory Encoding and the Brain

What do you think of when you think of “dog”? Diagram your thoughts about “dog” by following these directions:

• On a sheet of paper draw a small circle in the middle of the page and write the word “dog” in the circle.
• Draw a short line out from this first circle and draw another circle at the end of the line; inside the new circle write a word that relates to the word dog(perhaps “tail”).
• Continue to draw lines out from the concept of dog and draw circles into which you write words that are related to dog. Also, draw some lines out from some of the new concepts and add concepts related to them. For example, if you wrote down “tail” you might connect it to a circle with the word “wag.”
• When you are finished writing down new concepts, take a few minutes to draw lines connecting some of the concepts that seem to be related.

The network of interrelated items that you have just created is a  concept map . Yours might look something like this:

A concept map is, among other things, a good way to organize information for encoding into long-term memory. It signals the meanings of a number of related concepts and highlights the relationships among them (remember our discussion in section 5.3?). A concept map is also a simple representation of how networks of concepts are formed in the brain.

Creating Memories in the Brain: Activation and Synaptic Plasticity

You may already know that the brain is made up of billions of cells called  neurons. For now, you can think of the brain as simply a very large collection of neurons. The neurons are all connected to each other in an extraordinarily complex pattern (one neuron can be simultaneously connected to many other neurons, all of which can be connected to many other neurons, and so on down the line). Neurons are connected to each other by axons , which look like single long branches extending from the cell body, which is the round part of the neuron, and by  dendrite s, which are smaller branches splitting off from the cell body. (Each neuron has a single axon but many dendrites.) Electrical and chemical activity that takes place through pathways created by these interconnected neurons determines everything we say, think, feel, or do (see sec 11.1).

The neurons are involved in two significant ways when you encode information:

• Activation . When you encode information and move it into memory, many neurons throughout the brain become active. The neural activity is pulses of electricity that are caused by chemicals called ions (electrically charged particles) briefly changing locations in your brain. The ions (sodium, which is abbreviated Na+) rush into the axon of a neuron. This movement of ions produces a brief electrical charge inside the neuron, which is then transmitted to many other neurons (see Module 11 for details).
• Synaptic plasticity . In order to store information for a long time, the brain has to change its very structure—that is, the neurons themselves must change. Brain researchers currently believe that the change in structure can occur either within the individual neurons or through the connections among the billions of neurons in your brain. The connections are called synapses, hence the name synaptic plasticity. Changes that occur inside the neuron cause the neuron to produce more or fewer of the chemicals that it uses to communicate with other neurons, which are called neurotransmitters (see sec 11.3). The synapses are located at the spaces where the axon of one neuron is situated next to the dendrites of a neighboring neuron. Two things can happen in response to changing levels of neurotransmitters: the axons and dendrites can extend or retract, hence changing, ever so slightly, the structure of your brain; and the surface of the neuron can change by having more or fewer receptive areas for neurotransmitters.  Both of these events are forms of synaptic plasticity and occur whenever new information is encountered.

These two kinds of changes, especially activation, happen extremely quickly. And the changes of synaptic plasticity can last a very long time, perhaps even forever. Think about it: any time you have a new experience your brain immediately changes its electrical activity and changes its structure permanently.

activation : the electrical charging of a neuron, which readies it to communicate with other neurons

axon : the single tube in a neuron that carries an electrical signal away, toward other neurons

dendrite : one of the many branches on a neuron that receive incoming signals

neuron : the basic cell of the nervous system; our brain has billions of neurons

neurotransmitter : chemical that carries a neural signal from one neuron to another

synapse : the area between two adjacent neurons, where neural communication occurs

synaptic plasticity : the brain’s ability to change its structure through tiny changes in the surfaces of neurons or in their ability to produce and release neurotransmitters

Storing Memories Across the Brain: Neural Networks

So far, we have just been thinking about connections between two neurons. Let us return now to the idea that neurons are connected to each other in massive three-dimensional, dynamic, organic versions of the concept map. We call these many interconnected neurons  neural network s. Many neuroscientists believe that most memories are not stored in a specific area of the brain but are spread out in interconnected neural networks across many areas of the brain. In other words, brain activation and synaptic plasticity for memories travel throughout the brain.

This neural network idea offers an explanation for why encoding meaning works so well in forming long-lasting memories. When you start searching through your brain for information—a memory—you will have a greater chance of hitting a unit of that information with a neural network that is spread out and contains a lot of information. A larger, more detailed network that uses lots of neurons will be easier to activate and use than a smaller network.

• Describe in your own words the changes that take place in your brain when you encode new information into long-term memory.
• Draw a concept map that includes the concepts from this module.

Have any of the following ever happened to you?

• You know a fact but can’t come up with it. You have the feeling that it is on the “tip of your tongue.”
• You blank out on a test question. After a mighty struggle to remember, you give up and leave the question unanswered (or you make a wild guess). Then, the correct answer hits you on the way home like a slap in the head.
• You (temporarily) forget the name of someone who you know very well.
• You (temporarily) forget your own phone number.
• Is it true that you always find your keys in the last place you look for them? (Answer: Yes, because most people stop looking after they find what they were looking for.)

It is the day of the big Political Science mid-term. You have been studying for days. You feel as if your head is so full of political facts, principles, and theories that it is going to explode. Your professor walks in and asks if there are any questions before she hands out the exam. “Please,” you silently beg, “hand out the exam now, before I forget everything I studied.” After ten minutes of questions from classmates (that you don’t listen to because you are too nervous), you get your exam. Question #1: How much of the U.S. government’s budget is spent on foreign aid? You know this. You just studied it last night. It is in your head somewhere if you could only find it. Why can’t you remember? You are struggling with retrieval.

Understanding (and Improving) Retrieval

Memory retrieval (withdrawing information from long-term memory for use in working memory) is largely a matter of coming up with and using effective retrieval cues. In familiar terms, retrieval cues are reminders, any information that automatically leads you to remember something. More scientifically, you can think of retrieval cues as entry points into the neural network associated with a particular memory (see sec 5.3).

You might also think of retrieval cues this (decidedly less scientific) way:  Any specific memory you have floating around in your head (the amount of U.S. foreign aid, for example) is slippery. To pull it out of long-term memory and into working memory, you need a hook, something attached to the specific memory that you can grab onto. A retrieval cue is that hook. The very best hooks are ones that you put there yourself during recoding.

To create potential retrieval cues for yourself while you’re studying, you can use the encoding principles we have already described: encode meaning and organize information. The more cues you create through this recoding and the better they are, the better your chances of being able to “grab onto one” when you need it.

Now you might begin to understand why straight repetition is only a mediocre study strategy. To be sure, the repetition of a concept and its definition provide you with a possible retrieval cue. A formerly meaningless term and definition, completely disconnected from the rest of the knowledge in your head, is not the world’s greatest hook, however.

In contrast, consider a retrieval cue that is based on memories from your own life. For example, suppose when trying to encode the concept  procedural memory into your long-term memory, you remembered the time you helped your little sister learn how to tie her shoes. The formerly meaningless concept, procedural memory, now becomes part of your memory for this event.

Importantly, you would probably have a fairly detailed memory of such an event. Any of these details can serve you as a possible retrieval cue. Can you picture the smile on your little sister’s face when she finally got her shoes tied right? That can be your hook. Do you remember the feeling of frustration before she caught on? That can be your hook. And so on. Literally anything you might remember about the event can work to remind you of the concept  procedural memory.

That is the beauty of making the information personally meaningful (remember, it is called the self reference effect). It becomes embedded in a rich network of information that is the easiest stuff in the world for you to remember—information about yourself. The specific hook, or retrieval cue, can be any aspect of the event that you can recall. Add this to the recoding that you did based on organization (for example, attending to the relationship between procedural and declarative memory) and by rephrasing the material in your own words, and you have an extremely powerful set of potential retrieval cues, a set of hooks that give you an excellent chance of being able to grab one when you need it.

memory retrieval : withdrawing information from long-term memory into working memory

retrieval cue : a reminder that leads to the withdrawal of information from long-term memory into working memory

Providing a Match Between Encoding and Retrieval

Sometimes, even extensive encoding is not enough to give you a good retrieval cue when you need it. Or, perhaps, you didn’t do a careful job of encoding. What then? Is there still a way to make retrieval cues work in your favor? Fortunately, the answer is yes.

The general strategy that you use to make retrieval cues available and useful is to try to provide some kind of match between the encoding and retrieval situations. This idea is known as the encoding specificity principle (Tulving & Thomson, 1973). If your physiological state or the external environment (the context) is similar during both encoding and retrieval, you have a better chance of coming up with a retrieval cue (Murnane & Phelps, 1993; Smith, 1979). For example, suppose you drank four cups of coffee, each with an extra shot of espresso, when you were encoding information for a big test. You might consider ingesting a bit of caffeine before retrieval time.

Even seemingly trivial aspects of the external environment, such as your location in a room, can be just the match you need to give you a retrieval cue. But hold on before you decide to wear the same clothes every day to take advantage of the encoding specificity effect.  Think about what we are saying. The encoding specificity effect allows you to remember something in a situation that closely matches the situation at encoding. That might be helpful for an exam, but is that what you really want to accomplish? For example, suppose you are studying to be a nurse. Do you really want to remember some important medical concept ONLY when you are sitting at your desk, wearing your favorite blue shirt, and chewing peppermint flavored gum? We thought not. If you really want to learn something, to be able to retrieve it in many future situations, you would do best to simulate that when you encode it. In other words, engage in multiple encoding episodes, and vary the context in each (Bjork & Bjork 2011). This is hard. In fact, it is one of the list of strategies known as desirable difficulties . These are strategies that are difficult to use and make you feel as if you are not learning, but in reality lead to much more effective (and lasting) learning (Bjork & Bjork 2011; Smith, Glenberg & Bjork, 1978). You might also consider some of the strategies we have recommended previously (e.g., elaborative verbal rehearsal and generating self-references) to be other types of desirable difficulties. As we said previously, they can be hard to use, but they are extremely effective.

Saving the Best for Last: Retrieval Practice (and Spacing)

So, do you think that the principles we have shared so far can help you in your quest to improve your memory? Well, we have terrific news: We have saved some of the best news for last. There is one strategy that may have been first suggested by Aristotle and has been examined in research for over 100 years. Time and again, this strategy has been found to lead to better memory than re-studying material (Brown, Roediger, & McDermott, 2014). And very few students use this strategy (Karpicke, Butler, & Roediger, 2009). OK, have we kept you in enough suspense? Here it is: If you want to be able to retrieve information from memory, one of the most important things you should do is to PRACTICE retrieving that information (sorry for yelling, but this is that important. And not just once. You should practice retrieval over time, spacing out your practice sessions as much as you can. (Soderstrom, Kerr, and Bjork 2016; Karpicke and Roediger, 2008). Many students believe that it is more efficient to do all of their studying at one time, but the spacing effect shows that the very opposite is true.

This is obviously great news because you do not need to recode information or come up with new examples, or struggle with organization to use these strategies. You only need to intentionally practice and organize your time.

Just as a reminder or clarification: we are certainly not saying that you should only practice retrieval with the spacing effect. We are saying that it is the one strategy that may have the largest impact on your ability to remember. So, to summarize, allow us to present a guide to studying that is based on some the best principles of memory that psychologists have to offer.

• Spend some time surveying the material before you start reading it. Figure out how it is organized by reading previews and summaries, and paying attention to outlines.
• Recode for meaning while you read: periodically pause and reflect on what you have just read. Rephrase material and come up with examples from your own life (elaborative verbal rehearsal with self-reference). Note relationships between different concepts. Pay attention to how the current information fits into what you have already learned.
• Practice retrieving while you are reading. During some of your periodic pauses, cover up what you just read. Try to retrieve the definitions of key terms. Try to generate your elaborative verbal rehearsals without looking at the text.
• Practice retrieval after reading. Use practice quizzes, flash cards, quizlet, etc. It is far more effective if you have to come up with the answers yourself rather than just recognizing the answer (like in a multiple-choice question).
• Come up with a schedule that allows you to take advantage of the spacing effect.

desirable difficulties : strategies that are difficult to use and make you feel as if you are not learning, but lead to much more effective and lasting learning

spacing effect : the finding that information that is learned and practiced over a period of time (instead of all at once) is remembered better

• Try to remember a time that you had a temporary retrieval failure. What retrieval cue eventually helped you to remember?
• What specific types of retrieval cues do you think work best for you?
• Do you have any memories in which you see yourself in the third person, as if you were watching yourself on television? Doesn’t that seem odd, considering the fact that you never experience yourself that way?
• Have you ever had an argument with someone about an event that happened in which the main point of disagreement is that the two of you remember the event differently? Were you both sure that you were right?

College student Charles was always proud of his memory. In school, he rarely took notes and often had to read a chapter a single time only in order to remember it well enough to get a good grade on an exam. He also had many detailed autobiographical memories, several dating back to when he was a very small child. For example, he remembered his mother coming home from the hospital when his brother was born; he was two years, four months old. Or he remembered an early haircut, perhaps his first visit to the barber. He was sitting in the barber’s chair, eating a lollipop (covered with hair, no doubt), while his whole family stood around and watched.

One evening during Charles’s sophomore year, he and his family decided to watch some old videos from the family to celebrate his parents’ anniversary. Then, suddenly, Charles saw his memory on the television screen. It was his first haircut. His parents had obviously wanted to remember the event for the rest of their lives, so they decided to capture it on film. There in the family room Charles saw his entire memory played out on the screen, and he realized that he did not, in fact, have a memory of his first haircut. He had a memory of the home movie of his first haircut and had mistakenly believed that it was a memory of the actual event. Charles also knew this because he had just learned this concept in his psychology class. Forgetting the actual source of a memory is very common; it is called  source misattribution (Schacter, 2001). It is one form of memory distortion.

The early sections of this module emphasized how employing good encoding and retrieval skills can lead you to remember information more effectively. Somewhat hidden in those discussions, however, is an important observation about the way memory works. Although it is fair to accept the existence of different memory systems, such as working memory and long-term memory, it is not fair to assume that information gets copied into these systems perfectly, to be replayed accurately and in its entirety every time the correct retrieval cue is accessed. Memory, it turns out, is much more dynamic than that.

Instead of thinking of memory as something to be recorded and played back, it is more accurate to say you construct memories of events as you go along. The idea of  memory construction might be hard to accept at first, but it is the simplest way to explain how memories for events change over time. Not only do some of the details of memories fade (as you might realize), but new details also creep into them. For example, imagine that someone tells you a very unusual story that does not make a great deal of sense to you. The story is from a non-Western culture and is quite difficult for you to follow (assuming you are from a Western culture, of course). Over time, as you attempt to recall this story, it will begin to resemble stories that are more familiar to you, with many of the cultural idiosyncrasies forgotten and replaced by themes and details more typical of Western culture (see Window 2).

A number of factors may render a memory incomplete or inaccurate. The kind and amount of processing that takes place at encoding can have a huge impact on the contents of an eventual memory. Also, minor distortions that are consistent with one’s view of the world often creep in. Imagine that you are visiting your psychology professor’s office for the first time. After leaving, you are asked to report what was in the office. Most people have beliefs about what sorts of objects would be in a professor’s office (such as desk, telephone, books), and they would be likely to think they remembered seeing these objects even if they were not actually in the professor’s office. Nearly one-third of the participants in a study similar to the situation just described reported seeing books in a professor’s office—even though the office had been specifically set up without books to test if participants would falsely remember them (Brewer & Treyens 1981).

Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues have pioneered research on the  misinformation effect , perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of the way that memory can be distorted. Loftus’s research has demonstrated that information given to people after an event occurs, even at retrieval, can lead to memory distortions. For example, research participants who had been shown a slide show of a car accident were later misled to believe that a stop sign was pictured in one of the slides. Many of these participants on a subsequent memory test mistakenly reported that they had seen the stop sign (Loftus, Miller, and Burns, 1978).

In another experiment, research participants were asked one of two questions after viewing a videotape of an accident between two cars. In one condition, they were asked, “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” In the other condition, participants were asked, “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” One week later, participants who had been asked the “smashed” version of the question were more likely to report seeing broken glass in the video (Loftus, Schooler, and Wagenaar, 1985).

The misinformation effect has been demonstrated many times, even leading participants to remember events that did not occur at all, such as spilling a punch bowl or being lost in a mall as a child (Hyman and Pentland, 1996; Loftus and Pickrell, 1995).

• memory construction : the process of building up a recollection of an event, rather than “playing” a memory, as if it were a recording
• misinformation effect : a memory distortion that results when misleading information is presented to people after an event has occurred
• source misattribution : a memory distortion in which a person misremembers the actual source of a memory
• Can you think of a memory from your life that you would be willing to admit might be a memory distortion?

putting information into memory systems

taking information out of memory systems

keeping memories in the brain for future use

a short-term memory storage system that holds information in consciousness for immediate use or to transfer it into long long-term memory

an essentially unlimited, nearly permanent memory storage system

a unit of meaningful information

a very short (about one second), extremely accurate memory system that holds information long enough for an individual to pay attention to it

memory for skills and procedures

memory for facts and episodes

the part of declarative memory that refers to one’s general store of knowledge

the part of declarative memory that refers to specific events or episodes from someone’s life

an encoding technique that encourages semantic processing by restating to-be-remembered information in your own words, as if teaching it to someone else

an encoding technique that encourages semantic processing by applying to-be-remembered information to yourself

a pictorial representation of the relationships between a set of related concepts

the single tube in a neuron that carries an electrical signal away, toward other neurons

one of the many branches on a neuron that receive incoming signals

the electrical charging of a neuron, which readies it to communicate with other neurons

the brain’s ability to change its structure through tiny changes in the surfaces of neurons or in their ability to produce and release neurotransmitters

the basic cell of the nervous system; our brain has billions of neurons

chemical that carries a neural signal from one neuron to another

the area between two adjacent neurons, where neural communication occurs

interconnected group of neurons

withdrawing information from long-term memory into working memory

a reminder that leads to the withdrawal of information from long-term memory into working memory

strategies that are difficult to use and make you feel as if you are not learning, but lead to much more effective and lasting learning

the finding that information that is learned and practiced over a period of time (instead of all at once) is remembered better

a memory distortion in which a person misremembers the actual source of a memory

the process of building up a recollection of an event, rather than “playing” a memory, as if it were a recording

a memory distortion that results when misleading information is presented to people after an event has occurred

Introduction to Psychology Copyright © 2020 by Ken Gray; Elizabeth Arnott-Hill; and Or'Shaundra Benson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Memory Stages: Encoding Storage and Retrieval

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, Ph.D., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years experience of working in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

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“Memory is the process of maintaining information over time.” (Matlin, 2005) “Memory is the means by which we draw on our past experiences in order to use this information in the present’ (Sternberg, 1999).

Memory is the term given to the structures and processes involved in the storage and subsequent retrieval of information.

Memory is essential to all our lives. Without a memory of the past, we cannot operate in the present or think about the future. We would not be able to remember what we did yesterday, what we have done today, or what we plan to do tomorrow.  Without memory, we could not learn anything.

Memory is involved in processing vast amounts of information. This information takes many different forms, e.g., images, sounds, or meaning.

For psychologists, the term memory covers three important aspects of information processing :

Memory Encoding

When information comes into our memory system (from sensory input), it needs to be changed into a form that the system can cope with so that it can be stored.

Think of this as similar to changing your money into a different currency when you travel from one country to another.  For example, a word that is seen (in a book) may be stored if it is changed (encoded) into a sound or a meaning (i.e., semantic processing).

There are three main ways in which information can be encoded (changed):

1. Visual (picture) 2. Acoustic (sound) 3. Semantic (meaning)

For example, how do you remember a telephone number you have looked up in the phone book?  If you can see it, then you are using visual coding, but if you are repeating it to yourself, you are using acoustic coding (by sound).

Evidence suggests that this is the principle coding system in short-term memory (STM) is acoustic coding.  When a person is presented with a list of numbers and letters, they will try to hold them in STM by rehearsing them (verbally).

Rehearsal is a verbal process regardless of whether the list of items is presented acoustically (someone reads them out), or visually (on a sheet of paper).

The principle encoding system in long-term memory (LTM) appears to be semantic coding (by meaning).  However, information in LTM can also be coded both visually and acoustically.

Memory Storage

This concerns the nature of memory stores, i.e., where the information is stored, how long the memory lasts (duration), how much can be stored at any time (capacity) and what kind of information is held.

The way we store information affects the way we retrieve it.  There has been a significant amount of research regarding the differences between Short Term Memory (STM ) and Long Term Memory (LTM).

Most adults can store between 5 and 9 items in their short-term memory.  Miller (1956) put this idea forward, and he called it the magic number 7.  He thought that short-term memory capacity was 7 (plus or minus 2) items because it only had a certain number of “slots” in which items could be stored.

However, Miller didn’t specify the amount of information that can be held in each slot.  Indeed, if we can “chunk” information together, we can store a lot more information in our short-term memory.  In contrast, the capacity of LTM is thought to be unlimited.

Information can only be stored for a brief duration in STM (0-30 seconds), but LTM can last a lifetime.

Memory Retrieval

This refers to getting information out of storage.  If we can’t remember something, it may be because we are unable to retrieve it.  When we are asked to retrieve something from memory, the differences between STM and LTM become very clear.

STM is stored and retrieved sequentially.  For example, if a group of participants is given a list of words to remember and then asked to recall the fourth word on the list, participants go through the list in the order they heard it in order to retrieve the information.

LTM is stored and retrieved by association.  This is why you can remember what you went upstairs for if you go back to the room where you first thought about it.

Organizing information can help aid retrieval.  You can organize information in sequences (such as alphabetically, by size, or by time).  Imagine a patient being discharged from a hospital whose treatment involved taking various pills at various times, changing their dressing, and doing exercises.

If the doctor gives these instructions in the order that they must be carried out throughout the day (i.e., in the sequence of time), this will help the patient remember them.

Criticisms of Memory Experiments

A large part of the research on memory is based on experiments conducted in laboratories.  Those who take part in the experiments – the participants – are asked to perform tasks such as recalling lists of words and numbers.

Both the setting – the laboratory – and the tasks are a long way from everyday life.  In many cases, the setting is artificial, and the tasks are fairly meaningless.  Does this matter?

Psychologists use the term ecological validity to refer to the extent to which the findings of research studies can be generalized to other settings.  An experiment has high ecological validity if its findings can be generalized, that is, applied or extended to settings outside the laboratory.

It is often assumed that if an experiment is realistic or true-to-life, then there is a greater likelihood that its findings can be generalized.  If it is not realistic (if the laboratory setting and the tasks are artificial) then there is less likelihood that the findings can be generalized.  In this case, the experiment will have low ecological validity.

Many experiments designed to investigate memory have been criticized for having low ecological validity.  First, the laboratory is an artificial situation.  People are removed from their normal social settings and asked to take part in a psychological experiment.

They are directed by an “experimenter” and may be placed in the company of complete strangers.  For many people, this is a brand new experience, far removed from their everyday lives.  Will this setting affect their actions? Will they behave normally?

He was especially interested in the characteristics of people whom he considered to have achieved their potential as individuals.

Often, the tasks participants are asked to perform can appear artificial and meaningless.  Few, if any, people would attempt to memorize and recall a list of unconnected words in their daily lives.  And it is not clear how tasks such as this relate to the use of memory in everyday life.

The artificiality of many experiments has led some researchers to question whether their findings can be generalized to real life.  As a result, many memory experiments have been criticized for having low ecological validity.

Matlin, M. W. (2005). Cognition . Crawfordsville: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review , 63 (2): 81–97.

Sternberg, R. J. (1999). Cognitive psychology (2 nd ed.) . Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

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How Memory Works

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Memory is a continually unfolding process. Initial details of an experience take shape in memory; the brain’s representation of that information then changes over time. With subsequent reactivations, the memory grows stronger or fainter and takes on different characteristics. Memories reflect real-world experience, but with varying levels of fidelity to that original experience.

The degree to which the memories we form are accurate or easily recalled depends on a variety of factors, from the psychological conditions in which information is first translated into memory to the manner in which we seek—or are unwittingly prompted—to conjure details from the past.

On This Page

• How Memories Are Made
• How Memories Are Stored in the Brain
• How We Recall Memories
• False and Distorted Memories

The creation of a memory requires a conversion of a select amount of the information one perceives into more permanent form. A subset of that memory will be secured in long-term storage, accessible for future use. Many factors during and after the creation of a memory influence what (and how much) gets preserved.

Memory serves many purposes, from allowing us to revisit and learn from past experiences to storing knowledge about the world and how things work. More broadly, a major function of memory in humans and other animals is to help ensure that our behavior fits the present situation and that we can adjust it based on experience.

Encoding is the first stage of memory. It is the process by which the details of a person’s experience are converted into a form that can be stored in the brain. People are more likely to encode details of what they are paying attention to and details that are personally significant.

Retention, or storage, is the stage in which information is preserved in memory following its initial encoding. These stored memories are incomplete : Some of the information that is encoded during an experience fades during retention, sometimes quickly, while other details remain. A related term, memory consolidation , refers to the neurobiological process of long-term memory formation.

Sleep facilitates the retention of memories, though why exactly this is the case is not fully understood. Research has found that people tend to show better memory performance if they sleep after a phase of studying rather than staying awake. Researchers have proposed that sleep supports memory consolidation in the brain, though other explanations include tha t sleep aids retention by eliminating interference from memories that would be formed while awake.

While memories are usually described in terms of mental concepts, such as single packages of personal experience or specific facts, they are ultimately reducible to the workings and characteristics of the ever-firing cells of the brain. Scientists have narrowed down regions of the brain that are key to memory and developed an increasingly detailed understanding of the material form of these mental phenomena.

The hippocampus and other parts of the medial temporal lobe are critical for many forms of memory, though various other parts of the brain play roles as well. These include areas of the more recently evolved cerebral cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, as well as deep-seated structures such as the basal ganglia. The amygdala is important for memory as well, including the integration of emotional responses into memory. The extent to which different brain regions are involved in memory depends on the type of memory.

Memory involves changes to the brain’s neural networks. Neurons in the brain are connected by synapses, which are bound together by chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) to form larger networks. Memory storage is thought to involve changes in the strength of these connections in the areas of the brain that have been linked to memory. 

A memory engram , or memory trace, is a term for the set of changes in the brain on which a memory is based. These are thought to include changes at the level of the synapses that connect brain cells. Research suggests an engram is not located in one specific location in the brain, but in multiple, interconnected locations. Engram cells are groups of cells that support a memory: They are activated and altered during learning and reactivated during remembering.

After memories are stored in the brain, they must be retrieved in order to be useful. While we may or may not be consciously aware that information is being summoned from storage at any given moment, this stage of memory is constantly unfolding—and the very act of remembering changes how memories are subsequently filed away.

Retrieval is the stage of memory in which the information saved in memory is recalled, whether consciously or unconsciously. It follows the stages of encoding and storage. Retrieval includes both intentional remembering, as when one thinks back to a previous experience or tries to put a name to a face, and more passive recall, as when the meanings of well-known words or the notes of a song come effortlessly to mind.

A retrieval cue is a stimulus that initiates remembering. Retrieval cues can be external, such as an image, text, a scent, or some other stimulus that relates to the memory. They can also be internal, such as a thought or sensation that is relevant to the memory. Cues can be encountered inadvertently or deliberately sought in the process of deliberately trying to remember something.

Multiple factors influence why we remember what we do. Emotionally charged memories tend to be relatively easy to recall. So is information that has been retrieved from memory many times, through studying, carrying out a routine, or some other form of repetition. And the “encoding specificity principle” holds that one is more likely to recall a memory when there is greater similarity between a retrieval cue (such as an image or sound in the present) and the conditions in which the memory was initially formed.

After a memory is retrieved, it is thought to undergo a process called reconsolidation , during which its representation in the brain can change based on input at the time of remembering. This capacity for memories to be reformed after retrieval has been explored as a potential element of psychotherapeutic interventions (for dampening the intensity of threatening memories, for example).

“Flashbulb memories” are what psychologists have called memories of one’s personal experience of significant and emotionally intense events, such as the 9/11 attacks and other highly distinctive occurrences. These memories may seem especially vivid and reliable even if the accuracy of the remembered details diminishes over time.

Priming is what happens when being exposed to one stimulus (such as a word) affects how a person responds to another, related one. For example, if someone is shown a list of words that includes nurse , he may be more likely to subsequently fill out the word stem nu____ with that word. Measures of priming can be used to demonstrate implicit memory, or memory that does not involve conscious recollection.

Memories have to be reconstructed in order to be used, and the piecing-together of details leaves plenty of room for inaccuracies—and even outright falsehoods—to contaminate the record. These errors reflect a memory system that is built to craft a useful account of past experience, not a perfect one. (For more, see False Memories .)

Memories may be rendered less accurate based on conditions when they are first formed, such as how much attention is paid during the experience. And the malleability of memories over time means internal and external factors can introduce errors. These may include a person’s knowledge and expectations about the world (used to fill in the blanks of a memory) and misleading suggestions by other people about what occurred.

False memories can be as simple as concluding that you were shown a word that you actually weren’t , but it may also include believing you experienced a dramatic event that you didn’t. People may produce such false recollections by unwittingly drawing on the details of actual, related experiences, or in some cases, as a response to another person’s detailed suggestions (perhaps involving some true details) about an imaginary event that is purported to be real.

It probably depends on the kind of memory. Minor manipulations like convincing people they saw a word that they did not see seem to be fairly easy to do. Getting people to conclude they had an experience (like spilling punch at a wedding) that was in fact made up  seems to require more work—including, in one study, a couple of conversations and encouragement to think more about the “memory”—and may fully succeed only for a minority of people. Still, researchers who have investigated the implanting of false memories argue that in some cases, enough outside suggestion could result in the creation of false or distorted memories that have serious legal consequences.

Déjà vu, a French phrase that translates to “already seen,” is the sense of having seen or experienced something before, even though one is in fact encountering it for the first time. While the cause is not fully understood, one explanation for why déjà vu happens is that there is some resemblance between a current experience and a previous one, but the previous experience is not readily identified in the moment. Others have suggested that déjà vu may result from new information somehow being passed straight to long-term memory, or from the spontaneous activation of a part of the brain called the rhinal cortex, involved in the sense of familiarity.

For those burdened by their past, relief can be found not in the science of memory but in the recognition of our ability to shape the very nature of our personal histories.

Working memory, the gateway to all learning, is vulnerable and under assault like never before—but we can protect it.

The saying goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” At a minimum, it breeds malaise. Fight the tendency to become unresponsive to the familiar so you can fully experience emotion.

Stroke patients with visual area damage claim blindness to images projected there, yet they can detect some features. Others may have a similar ability to see what they don’t see.

Finding forgotten items by going back into the same rooms and retracing all your steps using brain networks may help with memory retrieval in Alzheimer's.

Why are some things remembered easily, and others only with difficulty and delay? And why do some memories intrude into consciousness when we’re not looking for them?

Aromas and flavors switch on a neural wayback machine that accesses deep recollection.

Our memory reflects our motives and is subject to external influences and manipulation. The fallibility of our memory is magnified exponentially in the social media era.

Metacognition, or thinking about how they think, can help teens understand their strengths and weaknesses and the strategies that are most useful to them in specific situations.

Our political identity is quite fluid, subject to the vagaries of time and memory. It updates and reforms itself in unpredictable ways.

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• Prof. John D. E. Gabrieli

Departments

• Brain and Cognitive Sciences

As Taught In

• Cognitive Science

Learning Resource Types

Introduction to psychology, short term memory.

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Resources: Course Assignments

Assignment: memory.

Step 1:  To view this assignment, click on  Assignment: Memory.

Step 2:  Follow the instructions in the assignment and submit your completed assignment into the LMS.

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