MEMORY

Memory:

In psychology, memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain and recall information.

E.g. We use memory all the time. You are having a class quiz tomorrow and u decide to study late night. It will involve several different kinds of memory like remembering all the different steps involved in opening your bag, taking out relevant course book and checking the chapter content. Recalling teacher’s lecture, remember her sound, remembering the examples given by teacher and discussion by students. When you remember the lecture you will remember what dress you were wearing, what color of lipstick you used on that day and what you ordered in cafeteria on that particular day. So the list is endless.

Stages of Memory:

1. Encoding: Processing and combining of received information.

2. Storage: Creation of a permanent record of the encoded information.

3. Retrieve: Calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in a process or activity.

Classification of Memory:

Memory is classified into three types:

1. Sensory Memory:

Sensory memory corresponds approximately to the initial 200 - 500 milliseconds after an item is perceived. The ability to look at an item, and remember what it looked like with just a second of observation, or memorization, is an example of sensory memory. With very short presentations, participants often report that they seem to "see" more than they can actually report.

There are two types of sensory memory:

• Iconic memory:

It is related with vision and images. Its duration is 0.5-1.0 seconds.

• Echonic memory:

It is related with auditory or hearing sounds. Duration is 4-5 seconds.

2. Short Term Memory:

Information from sensory memory is transferred to short term memory. Duration is 1 minute without rehearsal. And capacity is limited. Its capacity can be determined by a magical number 7±2 which shows that we can minimum memorize 5 item and maximum 9 items. Memory capacity can be increased by chunking.

3. Long Term Memory:

When we do rehearsals then information from the short-term memory goes into long-term meory through the process of consolidation. Here the data is permanantly stored and can be recalled any time. Capacity is unlimited and duration is also unlimited. We can keep information for a whole life.

Characteristics of Memory:

Ebbinghaus performed a research in which he used trigrams – nonsense syllables consisting of consonant, then a vowel and a consonant again. They resemble some words but didn’t have meanings. He developed a systematic method of leaning these words by allowing some time for looking at each syllable. They used a method in which trigrams were written on cards which were turned over and they have to anticipate what it would be. This method is known as anticipation. When research participants were able to recall the whole list then they will become successful in learning.

E.g. Non sense syllables were consonant – vowel – consonant

V O B, Z I D, T U L, H E X

Forms of Remembering:

Ebbinghaus has identified four different forms of remembering:

1. Recall: Remember and then reproduce.

E.g. We recall whatever is in our mind such as when we are reading, writing, playing video game, cooking, talking, meeting someone, typing, going to office, singing a song, watching TV, driving, swimming and performing other similar activities.

2. Recognition: Before recall identification comes.

E.g. A lady has just watched a cooking show and learned a new recipe. When she tries to cook it she forgets whether the trainer has put tomatoes or yogurt in the dish. Then she identifies by recalling and suddenly remembers that she used yogurt in the dish.

3. Reconstruction: Able to reproduce from start.

E.g. When a child is recalling 2 times table in front of teacher and suddenly he forgets what is 2x6 then he will say teacher I want to recall from the start then he will again recall from the start and then when he comes on 2x6 he will immediately say 12.

4. Re-learning Savings: Memorizing previously learned material saves time.

E.g. If a student have already prepared one chapter for a quiz it will take three hours for extensive study and in final exams when he is revising that particular chapter it will take one hour to re-learn that chapter.

Primacy and Recency Effects:

Primacy effect occurs when we tend to remember those items which we encounter first.

E.g. If there is a list of words. We will pay more attention to the words which are in the start of the list because they are new to us.

Recency effect occurs when we tend to remember those items which come last.

E.g. If there is a list of words. We are able to recall the words that come last in the list because these words are in the end and there were no more words. There was no interference in the end.

Primacy and recency effects occur same like forming impression about people.

E.g. Jim left the house to buy stationery. He walked out into the street with two of his friends. Jim entered the stationery store, which was full of people. Jim talked with an acquaintance while he waited for the clerk to catch his eye. On his way out, he stopped to chat with a school friend who was just coming into the store. Leaving the store, he walked toward school. On his way out, he met the girl to whom he had been introduced the night before. They talked for a short while, and then Jim left for school.

After school Jim left the class room alone. Leaving the school, he started on his long walk home. The street was filled with sunshine. Jim walked down the street on the shady side. Coming down the street toward him, he saw the pretty girl whom he had met on the previous evening. Jim crossed the street and entered a candy store. The store was crowded with students and he noticed a few familiar faces. Jim waited quietly until the counter man caught his eye and then gave his order. Taking a drink he sat down at a side table. When he had finished the drink he went home.

Problem: What kind of impression you will form about the person named Jim.

Massed and Spaced Practice:

Massed learning means learning in a shorter period of time with less or no gap.

E.g. Exams are going on and a students plan to study for 4 hours with no break. He will continuously study for 4 hours. Psychologically he will get cognitive overload in which he will feel burden in mind. Physically his muscles will be tensed and he will feel fatigued and will get tired soon.

Spaced learning means learning over a longer period of time with great gaps.

E.g. Exams are going on and another student plan to study for 4 hours with breaks it will become 6 hours. Psychologically he will relax his mind for an hour, change will create healthy effects and attention will be more focused after break. Physically he will walk for a while which will relax the muscles and energy will be retained.

Proactive and Retroactive Interference:

Proactive interference is when something which is already learned (old) interferes with later learning (new).

E.g. I have trouble recalling my new phone number, because I get it mixed up with my old number.

E.g. A student finds a new concept to be hard to understand because she confuses it with similar ideas she has already learned.

Retroactive interference involves new leaning (new) interfering with the recall of previously learned (old) information.

E.g. I have trouble recalling my old phone number, because I get it mixed up with my new number.

E.g. A student understood a concept last week but can no longer discuss the concept correctly, because he confuses it with other concepts studied since that time.

Interference is similar to forgetting in which recall of certain item interferes with recall of other items.

Memory as an Active Process:

When we watch a movie in a cinema we enjoy it and later when we recall the movie we can remember the details in the film. The details will be different from the movie that we have already watched if we watch the movie again.

1. Changes in the significance: People tend to focus on one aspect of the story even if that aspect was not the case in the original.

E.g. There was a Hollywood movie named Titanic, people watched it and gave comments according to their perceptions such as that was romantic movie, tragic movie, religious people said there was mummy of pharaoh in the ship that’s why the ship sank and some said the ship sank because they were over confident about the ship that it will never sank and God gave them punishment.

2. Affective distortion: People’s own feelings and reactions influence their memory.

E.g. There was a Bollywood movie Gajani, some people focused on the part where hero and heroine met and they said it was a romantic movie and some people focused on last part where the heroine was dead and hero took revenge by killing the villain so they said it was a tragic movie.

1. Drift: Meaning of the passage changed gradually from one reproduction.

E.g. There is a woman in a crime story who killed her husband. She killed him because she is having extra-marital affair and wanted to marry him. She took all the money with her and ran away. The person may interpret that she killed her husband because she wanted all the money.

           

2. Shortening: When details are omitted which were not understandable.

E.g. A person before going outside told her wife that I am just coming back within one hour. He didn’t came back whole night. Police arrives for investigation. Wife will say he didn’t tell me anything where he is going and when he will come back.

3. Coherence: Changes are made to make sense to the person. It includes adding new information or changing the sequence of the event.

E.g. There is a child who is kidnapped. The reporter is gathering evidence from people. One man reported I saw the child eating something, one person said he was talking to a stranger, one person said I saw him going that way. Now all these views are not in a sequence. The reporter will change and arrange it is a sequence to make a meaningful story. The child was playing and a stranger came to him and gave him something to eat and took him to the West direction an hour ago.

4. Conventionality: Replace the original phrasing according to culture context.

E.g. There is a rape case. People according to our culture will not use the word rape instead they will use other words such as abuse or hurt or simply killed etc.

5. Loss of names and numbers: Forget the names and numbers or change it if they are familiar.

E.g. If you are watching a crime movie and there your name was used by the character or any other familiar name is used you will tend to forget the name.

Rumor and Serial Reproduction:

A rumour or rumor is often viewed as "an unverified account or explanation of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern."

If people don’t have much information to go on, they will fill in the gaps, so that it makes a more consistent story.

E.g. There is a girl in university who is wearing a new dress. She is looking decent. Other girl she is jealous of her she may feel that the girls is not looking good and she on the other day tells her friend, who was absent yesterday that the girl was not looking good. The other girl who was absent will tell another of her friend that she was not looking good. People add their feelings in telling about any event and the other person interprets the event from the perspective of other’s feelings.

Serial reproduction is a method of testing people’s memories for events which also allowed him to analyze the kinds of errors which people made. People read or hear a story and then reproduce it or as much of it as they could remember.

E.g. Chinese whispers is a game where someone whispers a message to someone and then he further whispers the message to someone else. By the time message reaches the end of a line, it has changes completely.

Schemata:

Schemas are the mental frameworks which we use to make sense out of the social world.

E.g. In a class you don’t like a particular person. This is your schema that he is bad. You hear from someone that the person has helped your friend by giving him money so that he can buy books. You will say he is not good, he has some selfish concerns. May be he wants to show he is generous.

Confabulation:

Confabulation is a process by which we adapt our memories to fit with our existing expectations or schemata.

E.g. In a research a film of car accident was shown to the participants. There were two groups and each was asked slightly different questions.

1. How fast were the cars going when they hit each other? (first group)
2. How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other? (second group)

A week later, the research participants were asked about the film again, so they have to think and remember it. They asked them question.

3. There had been any broken glass in the film?

The first group didn’t remember any broken glass in the film but the second group remembered watching glasses in the movie.

Conclusion: The words hit and smashed were the cues that developed their expectations. They produced information that fitted their expectations.

Rigidity in Confabulation:

People tend to stick to their memories, even if they have been shown that they were inaccurate.

In a research participants were asked to read a passage and the write it as they remember it. After that they heard the same passage for one in a week for seven weeks. Each week participants produced the same passage each time. Although there was a quite difference between the original version but they didn’t felt it.

E.g. There is a family who have a tradition that when they fix marriage of a boy with a girl they don’t prefer that both meet before marriage. Some families prefer that boy and girl must meet before marriage in order to know each other. They also had some experience of early marriages where they were unable to develop understanding and they know their views are inaccurate but they will stick to it.

Eye-witness Testimony:

People will tend to interpret what they see in terms of what they expect to happen and their memories will reflect it.

There is a famous joke among police officers that if you have twenty eye witnesses of an accident according to their recall you will feel there are twenty accidents.

In this process of recalling people convince themselves that their memory is true. They are able to visualize the scene clearly and even remember the small details. But this memory contains scene of events and their imagination as well. Sometimes this relationship has no link with the actual event.

The reasons are anxiety and high motivation. During the occurrence of the event people are in a state of anxiety and they are unable to recall true event. Sometimes people feel anxiety of being victim of suspicion so that’s why they are unable to recall.

Personal Factors in Memory:

Personal factors can influence how much we remember.

E.g. There is one group who likes cricket and other group who likes hockey. The instructor gives all the information related to cricket and then asks both groups to recall the information or guess the performance of the cricket team. The group who likes cricket will respond quickly. While the other group has no interest at all.

The cricket lovers were familiar with the history and names of the players. They were highly motivated to perform well in recalling. They connected the new information with the old information.

Emotions and Memory:

Our emotions can affect memory.

• Mood Congruence:

We remember an event that matches our current mood.

When we are in good mood we remember pleasant event.

E.g. When a person is in good mood he will fantasize all events such as achievements, married life, children and spouse. People will remember their first day of school, college and university life. Winning a debate or quiz competition. Securing highest marks and remembering the engagement ceremony and meeting spouse for the first time.

When we are in bad mood we remember unpleasant events.

E.g. When is a person is in bad mood he will fantasize or recall events such as fight with a friend, victim of bullying at first day of school, punishment received by parents of teachers, break up with a friend or lover, ending relationships, death of loved one’s, loosing any precious item, disrespectful event or embarrassing event of their life.

Our everyday life activities also changes according to our moods. When we are in good mood we listen music, read books and enjoy our food likes to go out and we find enjoyment in every aspect of the world. But when we are in bad mood we eat less, we like to be alone and we find world a dull place.

• Mood Dependence:

Remembering an event is greater when we evoke the emotional state which we were experiencing when the event occurred.

E.g. 8^th October 2005 was the date when Pakistan was hit by earthquake. When a person hears this date he will immediately feel fear and all the images related to that scene will appear in his mind.

Strong emotions are associated with the events that’s why we are able to recall that events more accurately. They sometime impair our memory in that case we are unable to recall that event due to emotional arousal.

Emotionally charged events are remembered better.

E.g. When you are aggressive you will remember fight with your friend or spouse, all the misbehaviors of people such as children watching TV while they were doing homework, spicy food made by spouse and you got irritated, boss getting upset on your work and colleague who is absent and you got over burdened due to his absence.

E.g. When you are in romantic mood you will remember your friends such as your first love, your spouse and your pheoncee. All the time you spend with them will be recalled. You went for a picnic, trip, honeymoon time, birthday celebration and outings.

E.g. Fear is associated with earthquakes, robbery, murder, physical abuse, hurricane, bomb blasts and accidents.

E.g. Anxiety is associated with exams, interviews for job and presentations.

Theories of Forgetting:

These theories are related to decay of the memory trace, brain damage or disease, motivated forgetting and interference from other material. There are some factors in memory which can cause forgetting such as context, cues and processing of information.

Decay of the Memory Trace:

The Decay theory, or deterioration theory states that when something new is learned, a neurochemical "memory trace" is formed, but over time this trace tends to disintegrate, unless it is occasionally used.

Decay theory suggests that the passage oftime always increases forgetting (most scientists believe that [neurons] die off gradually as we age.) However, there is one circumstance where old memories can be stronger than more recent ones. Older memories are sometimes more resistant to shocks or physical assaults on the brain than recent memories.