You and Your Memory

What if you became like Jason Bourne (Matt Damon's character) in the 2002 movie?

What would it be like to wake up some morning here at Le Moyne (or at home) with the kind of memory loss of Jason Bourne, that is, you can DO various things, but you haven't the slightest clue who or where you are? What would that be like? What would you do?

Memory = Central to who we are as human beings and takes many different forms

• Long-term memory:
  
• Memory for facts and general knowledge (explicit, semantic or declarative memory)
  
• Memory for personal experiences (autobiographical memory)
  
• Memory for HOW to do something (e.g., ride a bike, drive a car; implicit or rote or procedural memory)

• Short-term memory: keeping in mind what just happened a little while ago

If any one of these kinds of memory no longer works right, you will be a very different kind of person

Three Processes or Activities involved in Memory

• Encoding: Forming a new memory code
  
• Storage: Maintaining encoded information in memory over time
• Retrieval: Recovering information from memory storage

A. Encoding

• The role of attention is central
• Attention = focusing upon a narrowed or limited range of stimuli or events
• "Multitasking" & divided attention
  

• Levels of Processing Theory (see diagram on right)
• Shallow processing: Structural focus on physical qualities
• Intermediate processing: Phonemic focus on what a word sounds like
• Deep processing: Semantic emphasis on what the meaning of the words are

Craik & Tulving (1975) Experiments

• Students shown a list of 60 words on a screen with each word presented for 6 seconds
• Each student was asked to pay attention to one of three questions about each word
  

• One category of questions (shallow) were about how the word were presented visually (Word: "Is the word shown in CAPITAL LETTERS?").
  
• The second category of questions (intermediate) were about the phonemic qualities of the word ("Does the word rhyme with the word "bee"?). 
• The third category of questions (deep) were presented so that the reader was forced to think about what the word means or what category the word falls in [semantic] ("Can you meet one in the street [a friend]"?)
  

Example words and questions used

Word	Format "is the word capitalized?"	Rhyme "does it rhyme with...?"	Question "Is it...?"
Speaking	SPEAKING	leaking	a way to communicate
Gun	gun	fun	a type of weapon
Grass	GRASS	class	a type of plant
Witch	witch	pitch	something associated with magic

• After seeing the words, they were given a list of 180 words (60 they had seen and 120 they had not seen). They were asked if they had seen them or not (Yes or No). How well they recalled the words was directly related to the level they first processed each word:
  

• Implication for studying in college?

• Can encoding be enriched further?
  

• Elaboration: Linking what you need to remember to other information, e.g., examples help to encode information
  
• Visual Imagery: Using visual images in the imagination that are linked to what needs to be remembered
• Allan Paivio's Dual-Coding Theory: Using both vision & audition [sound] to learn something is better than using either one alone. Similarly, when you are writing out your notes by hand on paper or typing, you are using another pathway, that is, your somatosenory system.
  

B. Storage = Maintaining Information in Memory

   1. Atkinson & Shiffrin Model of Memory (1971)

A. Sensory Memory = Information is maintained in its sensory form (visual, auditory, etc.) for a very brief period of time (ca. 0.25 secs.)

B. Short-term Memory (STM) = a limited capacity story that can maintain unrehearsed information for up to about 20 seconds

• Rehearsal

• Capacity of Storage
• George A Miller's "Magic Number 7 +/- 2" (1956)
  
• More recent work suggests that the capacity of STM is probably smaller than Miller suggested (4 plus/minus 1).
  
• Chunking of information: grouping familiar or similar stimuli as a single unit
• Could you memorize this string of numbers easily? 177618121861189819171941
• 1776 • 1812 • 1861 • 1898 • 1917 • 1941

• For example: Until the second half of the 20th century, every US "telephone number" was actually a combination of 7 numbers and letters. The first three elements of the telephone number indicated the telephone exchange center or building where the call would be processed and the last 4 elements (always numbers) were the specific address at that telephone exchange. Those first three elements often were a combination of two letters and one number, for example, my phone number as a boy started with SP-7 (which stood for the exchange Spring 7 which was equivalent to the numbers 777). In some wealthy areas of Manhattan fifty years ago, people wanted to have a telephone number that started with the abbreviation BU-8 which stood for "Butterfield 8" (equal to the numbers 288) and was considered to be a prestige telephone number. When the Bell Telephone Company introduced area codes (those three numbers before the local telephone number) the number of digits grew to 10. But, ultimately what people actually had to remember were only 6 chunks of information. So, if you had the number (212) BU-8-6452, what you had to remember was (212) is Manhattan, NY, BU-8 was the exchange, and 6452 completed the number you would dial.

2. Allan Baddeley's "Working Memory" (2001) Model (see diagram)

Working memory = a modular system for the temporary storage and manipulation of information

Four components

• Phonological rehearsal loop
• Visuo-spatial sketch pad
• Episodic buffer (temporarily pulling in information from Long Term Memory)
• Executive Control System

Working memory capacity (WMC) = the ability to hold & manipulate information in conscious attention

• Stable personal trait
• Can be reduced by situational factors like stress or worry.
  

3. Long-term Memory (LTM)=

LTM = an unlimited capacity store that can hold information over lengthy periods of time

• Flashbulb Memories (see image above) = when experiencing dramatic and important events, people report unusually vivid and detailed recollections.

• For example, e.g., Kennedy Assassination in 1963; Human landing on moon in 1969; Death of Princess Diana in 1997; the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the election of Barack Obama (2008) & Donald Trump (2012), the deaths of Kobe Bryant or George Floyd (2020)

• Research has shown that these memories are neither as accurate nor complete as people either think or early theorists believed.

• Vividness ≠ accuracy

C. Retrieval: Getting Information out of Memory

1. Using Cues to Aid Retrieval

• Tip of the Tongue phenomenon
  
• Retrieval cues
  

2. Reinstating the Context of an Event

3. Relying on Schemas

Schema = an organized cluster of knowledge about a particular event or object abstracted from previous individual instances or experiences.

• What are the schemas for college professor? high school jock? lawyer? clergy? Army soldier?

Consider what you might think an NFL professional football player looks like. Suppose you saw a 10-second video clip of a player being interviewed in a locker room. What would you tend to remember?

• We tend to remember facts consistent rather than inconsistent with our schemas
  
• You might remember that he was wearing his uniform or carrying his helmet, but would probably not remember that he was holding a copy of a newspaper in his hand.
  
• HOWEVER, we tend to remember facts that are clash significantly with our schemas
• If that football player was holding a bouquet of roses in his hand or putting on a fur coat, we'd probably remember that fact.
  

4. Reconstructing Memories

• KEY NOTION: Contemporary psychology shows that memories are NOT like a videotape machine playing back something that was previously recorded. Our brains are not stamped with exact copies of our experiences.

• Rather, recalled memories are reconstructions !!!!!!!  of what we have experienced in the past at varying levels of accuracy. We rebuild again each time we remember something.

• Misinformation Effect = a participants recall of events is altered by misleading information introduced after the event
• First described by psychologists Elizabeth Loftus
• Eyewitness testimony is probably the weakest type of evidence.

YouTube Video explaining her work (begin at 1.48 until 6:50): from Psychology Unlocked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tbwrUYqytQ) 

5. Source Monitoring

• Mistakes in memory retrieval are often due to source-monitoring errors
  

• For example, you may have read some story about a celebrity or a politician and failed to notice that the story came from a suspect source such as the National Enquirer or some other gossip publication.
  

• "Fake-News": Look over some of the suspect stories on a site like the Tampa Bay Times' Politifact.com ("Pants on Fire" Lie list). Particularly in the last 10 years, there have been all sorts of made-up or phony stories and, even, "deepfake" images & movies posted online. For example, using Photoshop a fake photo of Obama shaking hands with the President of Iran was circulated by various anti-Obama politicians. The actual photo from 2011 was Obama meeting the Prime Minister of India to discuss nuclear arms control. In the age of Artificial Intelligence, this is only getting more common.
  Another excellent source to check if something online is true is Snopes.com (https://www.snopes.com)  [NOT Snopes2.com]