CH. 6. The Acquisition of Memories and the Working-Memory System

Question 1

Acquisition, Storage, and Retrieval

Answer 1

ACQUISITION – The process of gaining information and placing it into memory.

• Before there can be a memory, you need to gain, or “acquire,” some new information.

STORAGE – Once you’ve acquired this information, you need to hold it in memory until the information is needed.

RETRIEVAL – Locate the information in the vast warehouse that is memory and you bring it into active use. Finally, you remember!

• Can’t separate claims about memory acquisition from claims about memory storage. This is because how you learn (acquisition) depends on what you already know (information in storage).

Question 2

Model Model

Answer 2

MODAL MODEL – Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory proposed in 1968 (Since been updated with two major revisions)

• Multi-store model of memory
• Is a structural model
• Memory consisted of three stores:
  
  1. Sensory Register – When information first arrives, it is stored briefly.
     
     • This form of memory holds on to the input in “raw” sensory form — an ICONIC MEMORY for visual inputs.
     • and an ECHOIC MEMORY for auditory inputs.
     • A process of selection and interpretation then moves the information into:​​
  2. Short-Term Memory (STM) – Place where you hold information while you’re working on it.
     
     • Some of the information is then transferred into:
  3. Long-Term Memory (LTM) – Much larger and more permanent storage place – the vast repository that contains all of your knowledge and all of your beliefs

Needs to be updated:

• REVISION: The idea of “sensory memory” plays a much smaller role in modern theorizing, so modern discussions of perception often make no mention of this memory.
• REVISION: Working memory (short-term memory) is not a place, it is a status of activation.
  
  • Don’t think of working memory as a “place” at all. Instead, working memory is simply the name we give to a status. Therefore, when we say that ideas are “in working memory,” we simply mean that these ideas are currently activated and being worked on by a specific set of operations.

Working memory and long-term memory differ from each other.

• DIFFERENCES:
  
  • ​Working memory is limited in size.
  • Long-term memory is enormous.
    
    • Long-term memory also contains all of your “EPISODIC KNOWLEDGE” — that is, your knowledge about events, including events early in your life as well as more recent experiences.
• Getting information into working memory is easy.
• Getting information into long-term memory often involves some work.
• Getting information out of working memory is also easy.
  
  • Since (by definition) this memory holds the ideas you’re thinking about right now, the information is already available to you.
• Finding information in long-term memory, in contrast, can sometimes be difficult and slow — and in some settings can fail completely.
• Contents of working memory are quite fragile.
  
  • If your thoughts shift to a new topic, therefore, the new ideas will enter working memory, pushing out what was there a moment ago.
• Long-term memory, in contrast, isn’t linked to your current thoughts, so it’s much less fragile — information remains in storage whether you’re thinking about it right now or not.

FREE RECALL – Free to report the words in any order they choose.

PRIMARY EFFECT – Likely to remember the first few words on the list.

RECENCY EFFECT – Likely to remember the last few words on the list.

• SERIAL POSITION – Resulting pattern is a U-shaped curve describing the relationship between positions within the series – Primacy at the beginning of the U and Recency at the end of the U with minimal recall in the middle of the U.

Question 3

Working Memory and Long-Term Memory: One Memory or Two?

Answer 3

RECENCY EFFECT – uses working memory – limited in size, capable of holding only five or six words.

• Placing the words just heard into working memory
• Bump the previous words out of working memory.
  
  • As a result, Likely to remember only the most recent 5-7 words on the list.

PRIMACY EFFECT – Likely to remember the first few words on the list.

• As participants hear the list, they do their best to be good memorizers, and so when they hear the first word, they repeat it over and over to themselves – MEMORY REHEARSAL – When the second word arrives, they rehearse it, too. Likewise for the third, and so on through the list.
  
  • So the first few items on the list are privileged because they . are the only words participants have to worry about, so they have 100% of their attention; no other word receives this privilege.
    
    • Words arriving later in the list receive even less attention.
    • Participants need to divide their attention among all these words, which means that each one receives only a small fraction of the participants’ focus. As a result, words later in the list are rehearsed fewer times than words early in the list.
  • This means that the early words have a greater chance of being transferred into LTM — and so a greater chance of being recalled after a delay.

SERIAL POSITION CURVE (U-Curve) leads to many predictions:

• The recency portion of the curve is coming from working memory.
• Other items on the list are being recalled from LTM.
  
  • Manipulations of working memory should affect recall of the recency items but not items earlier in the list.
• The simple chore of counting backward will eliminate the recency effect because the counting takes the place of the items in working memory.
  
  • In general, an activity inserted, between the list and recall essentially eliminates the recency effect, but it has no influence elsewhere.
  • Only when NO new materials comes in, and nothing pushes the recency items out of working memory, is a normal recency effect is observed.
• The counting task will not interfere with LTM because LTM, unlike working memory, isn’t dependent on current activity.
• Manipulating long-term memory rather than working memory should affect all performance except for recency.
  
  • EX: Slowing down the presentation of the list gives participants more time to spend on all of the list items, increasing the likelihood of transfer into more permanent storage, improving recall for all items coming from LTM with no effect on the recency effect.
• Using more familiar or more common words also improves LTM, but it has no effect on recency
• Recency and LTM parts of the Serial Curve have different mechanisms.
  
  • Memory for early items on a list depends on brain areas in and around the HIPPOCAMPUS – that are associated with long-term memory; memory for later items on the list do not show this pattern.

Question 4

Function of Working Memory

Answer 4

WORKING MEMORY – A stage of activation in memory that allows about 7 chunks of data to be worked with at any given time before either being discarded or moved to Long-Term Memory.

• There’s no specific location within the brain that serves as working memory. Instead, working memory is associated with a wide range of brain sites.

HOLDING CAPACITY – Some people are able to hold on to (and work with) more elements or chunks of data, and some with fewer.

DIGIT SPAN TASK – Research participants hear a series of digits read to them (e.g., “8, 3, 4”) and must immediately repeat them back.

• The number of digits the person can echo back without errors is referred to as that person’s digit span – usually around 7 items +/- 2 – “7 plus-or-minus 2”.

CHUNKING – grouping bits of data into easily remembered chunks allows much more data to be held in working memory.

• Imagine that we test someone’s “letter span” rather than their “digit span,” using the procedure already described. So the person might hear “R, L” and have to repeat this sequence back, and then “F, C, H,” and so on. Eventually, let’s imagine that the person hears a much longer list, perhaps one starting “H, O, P, T, R, A, S, L, U. . . .” If the person thinks of these as individual letters, she’ll only remember 7 of them, more or less. But she might reorganize the list into “chunks” and, in particular, think of the letters as forming syllables (“HOP, TRA, SLU, . . .”). In this case, she’ll still remember 7 plus-or-minus 2 items, but the items are syllables, and by remembering the syllables she’ll be able to report back at least a dozen letters and probably more.
  
  • However, let’s be clear that what has changed through practice is merely this person’s chunking strategy, not the capacity of working memory itself.
• George Miller – proposed, working memory holds 7 plus-or-minus 2 packages, and what those packages contain is largely up to the individual person.

OPERATION SPAN – A measure of working memory when it is “working.”

• Several ways to measure operation span:
• WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY, or WMC.
  
  • People with a larger span (i.e., a greater WMC) do better in tasks that require the coordination of different pieces of information as well as in tests of reasoning, assessments of reading comprehension, standardized academic tests
    
    • ​This is because the greater WMC allows the juggling of processes, as the participant moves from one part of a task to the next, exactly what working memory must do in day-to-day life.
  • READING SPAN – is another way to measure WMC.
• This shows that our traditional tests of “Intelligence” are mostly tests of WMC.

WORKING-MEMORY SYSTEM – Working memory is not a single entity but is instead, a system built of several components. At the center is a set of processes:

• The executive control processes govern the selection and sequence of thoughts.
• These processes are called the “CENTRAL EXECUTIVE” – the set of mechanisms that run the show.
  
  • The central executive is needed for the “work” in working memory;
  • If you have to plan a response or make a decision, these steps require the executive.
    
    • But in many settings, you need less than this from working memory – allowing you to rely on the executive’s “HELPERS,” leaving the executive free to work on more difficult matters.
• Working memory’s most important HELPERS:
  
  • ARTICULATORY REHEARSAL LOOP – Subvocalizing data items to keep them in working memory or to transfer them to LTM.
    
    • EX: Try reading the next few sentences while holding on to these numbers: “1, 4, 6, 3.” Got them? Now read on. You’re probably repeating the numbers over and over to yourself, rehearsing them with your inner voice. But this takes very little effort, so you can continue reading while doing this rehearsal. Nonetheless, the moment you need to recall the numbers (what were they?), they’re available to you.
      
      • In this setting, the four numbers were maintained by working memory’s helper, and with the numbers thus out of the way, the central executive could focus on the processes needed for reading.
      • That is the advantage of this system: With mere storage handled by the helpers, the executive is available for other, more demanding tasks.
  • Rehearsal loops are executed using SUBVOCALIZATION – silent speech — to launch the rehearsal loop.
    
    • This production by the “inner voice” produced a representation of the target numbers in the PHONOLOGICAL BUFFER – a passive storage system used for holding a representation (essentially an “internal echo”) of recently heard or self-produced sounds. Many lines of evidence confirm this.
      
      • EX: When people are storing information in working memory, they often make SOUND-ALIKE ERRORS: Having heard “F,” they’ll report back “S.” When trying to remember the name “Tina,” they’ll slip and recall “Deena.” The problem isn’t that people mishear the inputs at the start;
      • Similar sound-alike confusions emerge if the inputs are presented visually. So, having seen “F,” people are likely to report back “S”; they aren’t likely in this situation to report back the similarlooking “E.”
        
        • With CONCURRENT ARTICULATION – making sounds aloud (EX: “ta-ta-ta-ta-ta”) while attempting to remember something – though, the rehearsal loop isn’t available for use, so we’re now measuring the capacity of working memory without the rehearsal loop. Concurrent articulation, even though it’s extremely easy, cuts memory span drastically.
          
          • Span is ordinarily about seven items; with concurrent articulation, it drops by roughly a third — to four or five items.
          • Also, with concurrent articulation and visual presentation of the items, sound-alike errors are largely eliminated.
  • CONCURRENT ARTICULATION obviously requires the mechanisms for speech production. Therefore, those mechanisms are not available for other use, including subvocalization, which empowers the rehearsal loop.
    
    • For this task people are relying on the rehearsal loop, which involves a mechanism (the “inner ear”) that stores the memory items as (internal representations of) sounds. That’s why errors, when they occur, are shaped by this mode of storage.
    • In other words, you created an auditory image in the “inner ear.” This image started to fade away after a second or two, but you then subvocalized the numbers once again to create a new image, sustaining the material in this buffer.
• When research participants are doing a verbal memory task and using the ARTICULATORY LOOP, activation increases in areas ordinarily used for language production and perception.
• A very different pattern is observed when participants are doing a task requiring memory for spatial position.
  
  • Notice, then, that the “inner voice” and “inner ear” aren’t casual metaphors; instead, they involve mechanisms that are ordinarily used for overt speech and actual hearing.

Question 5

Working-Memory System

Answer 5

WORKING MEMORY SYSTEM – Relies on other helpers in addition to the rehearsal loop.

• VISUOSPATIAL BUFFER – used for storing visual materials such as mental images, in much the same way that the rehearsal loop stores speech-based materials.
• EPISODIC BUFFER – A mechanism that helps the executive organize information into a chronological sequence.
  
  • So that, for example, you can keep track of a story you’ve just heard or a film clip you’ve just seen.

People who have been deaf since birth rely on a different helper for working memory:

• They use an INNER HAND (and covert sign language) rather than an “inner voice” (and covert speech).
  
  • As a result, they are disrupted if they’re asked to wiggle their fingers during a memory task (similar to a hearing person saying “Tah-Tah-Tah”), and they also tend to make “same hand-shape” errors in working memory (similar to the sound-alike errors made by the hearing population).

Question 6

Long-Term Storage: The Need for Engagement

Answer 6

TWO TYPES OF REHEARSAL:

• MAINTENANCE REHEARSAL – In which they simply focus on the to-be-remembered items themselves, with little thought about what the items mean or how they relate to one another.
  
  • NOT EFFICIENT – This is a rote, mechanical process, recycling items in working memory by repeating them over and over.
• WE DON’T REMEMBER THINGS WE DON’T PAY ATTENTION TO.

RELATIONAL or ELABORATIVE REHEARSAL – involves thinking about what the to-be-remembered items mean and how they’re related to one another and to other things you already know.

• Relational rehearsal is vastly superior to maintenance rehearsal for establishing information in memory.
• Usually, maintenance rehearsal provides no long-term benefit at all.
  
  • This isn’t because you forgot the information, but rather because you never actually established the memory in the first place because Maintenance Rehearsal is insufficient for that task.
    
    • EX: This is the issue with forgetting. People focus on the result as the problem (forgetting) feeling hopeless because forgetting is unsettling. But the real issue is not that they forget but rather that they never committed it to memory in the first place. If people focused on the input (where the memory should be committed) rather than the output (the perceived forgetfulness) then they could actually do something about it – take action and be more deliberate about committing to memory those things that are important!
• The idea, then, is that if you think about something only in a mindless and mechanical way, the item won’t be established in your long-term memory.
• Similarly, long-lasting memories aren’t created simply by repeated exposures to the items to be remembered. If you encounter an item over and over but, at each encounter, barely think about it (or think about it only in a mechanical way), then this, too, won’t produce long-term memory.
• It’s scrutiny that matters for memory — or, more broadly, we remember what we pay attention to and think about.

Question 7

Long-Term Storage: Need for Active Encoding

Answer 7

ACTIVE ENCODING – it takes work to get information into long-term memory. Merely having an item in front of your eyes (passive) isn’t enough — even if the item is there over and over and over.

• Likewise, repeatedly thinking about an item does NOT, by itself, establish a memory. That’s evident in the fact that maintenance rehearsal seems ineffective at promoting memory.
• Greater levels of brain activity (especially in the hippocampus and regions of the prefrontal cortex) were reliably associated with greater probabilities of retention later on.
  
  • Learning is NOT a passive process. Instead, activity is needed to lodge information into long-term memory, and, apparently, higher levels of this activity lead to better memory.

Question 8

Incidental Learning, Intentional Learning, and Depth of Processing

Answer 8

INTENTIONAL LEARNING – Learning that is deliberate, with an expectation that memory will be tested later.

• Intention to learn does NOT add very much; memory can be just as good without this intention, provided that you approach the materials in the right way – through engagement.

INCIDENTAL LEARNING –Learning in the absence of any intention to learn.

SHALLOW PROCESSING – They engaged the material in a superficial way – the information is remembered poorly if at all.

DEEP PROCESSING – Processing that requires some thought about what the words mean.

ENGAGEMENT – attention to meaning and the relation between the information being learned with knowledge already held – THIS IS THE KEY.

• What matters seems to be the level of engagement;
• Higher engagement leads to deeper processing (i.e., more attention to meaning) leading to better memory.

Question 9

Gender Differences

Answer 9

GENDER DIFFERENCES – We do find some differences.

• Some studies suggest an advantage for women in remembering verbal materials, and other studies suggest an advantage for men in remembering spatial arrangement.
• Other differences in what the genders remember are the consequence of CULTURAL FACTORS.
• Bear in mind that people tend to remember what they paid attention to, and don’t remember things they didn’t attend.
  
  • All these differences probably reflect the “attention priorities” that Western culture encourages for men and women, priorities that derive from the conventional roles assumed (for better or worse) for each gender.
    
    • It’s crucial to bear in mind that what you remember now is dependent on what you paid attention to earlier. Therefore, if people differ in what they focus on, they’ll remember different things later on.

Question 10

Meaning and Memory

Answer 10

MEANING AND MEMORY – If you want to remember the sentences you’re reading in this text, or the materials you’re learning in the training sessions at your job, you should pay attention to what these materials MEAN.

• Understanding the meaning leads to deep processing and good recall.

CONNECTIONS PROMOTE RETRIEVAL – Benefits of deep processing may not lie in the learning process itself. Instead, deep processing may influence subsequent events.

• More precisely, attention to meaning helps you retrieve memories later on.
• Multiple Rich CONNECTIONS are created through ENGAGEMENT, MEANING, UNDERSTANDING and RELATIONSHIPS to currently stored KNOWLEDGE, create multiple paths to the memory for future retrieval.
  
  • MEMORY CONNECTIONS – Connections allow one memory to trigger another, and then that memory to trigger another so that you’re “led,” connection by connection, to the sought-after information.
    
    • This triggering will happen only if the relevant connections are in place — and establishing those connections is a large part of what happens during learning.
• KEY: attention to meaning involves thinking about relationships:
  
  • Meaning creates connections and relationships!!!
    
    • When trying to learn something, ask yourself these types of questions to force yourself to think about the material and create connections:
      
      • “What do I know that is related in meaning to the idea I’m now considering?
      • What ideas have contrasting meanings?
      • What is the relationship between the start of this story and the way the story turned out?”

ELABORATE ENCODING PROMOTES RETRIEVAL – The deeper you think about something – the more connections you make, the deeper the idea is processed, and the easier it is to recall at a later date.

• The more elaborate your consideration is for the thing you’re trying to learn, the greater the number of connections.
• Why? The richness of the encoding offers the potential for many connections as it calls other thoughts to mind, each of which can be connected to the target idea.
  
  • These connections, in turn, provide potential RETRIEVAL PATHS — paths that can guide your thoughts toward the content to be remembered.
    
    • Superficial attempts at encoding evoke fewer connections and so establish a narrower set of retrieval paths if any.

Question 11

Organizing and Memorizing

Answer 11

ORGANIZING AND MEMORIZING

• You memorize well when you discover the order within the material.
• Conversely, if you find (or impose) an organization on the material, you will easily remember it.

Question 12

Mnemonics

Answer 12

MNEMONICS STRATEGIES – Strategies to organize the to-be-remembered material.

• ACRONYM – Using the first letter of words you need to remember.
  
  • EX: ROY G. BIV to memorize the sequence of colors in the rainbow (red, orange, yellow . . .)
• INTERACTIVE IMAGERY – creating images with interactions that help you remember specific associations.
  
  • EX: imagine a student trying to memorize a list of word pairs. For the pair eagle-train, the student might imagine the eagle winging back to its nest with a locomotive in its beak.
    
    • This type of interactive visualization is very powerful.
  • It’s important that the images show the objects in some sort of relationship or interaction — again highlighting the role of organization.
• SKELETON – provides a known structure upon which you can build NEW associates for the sake of remembering the new material.
  
  • EX: Imagine that you want to remember a list of largely unrelated items — perhaps the entries on your shopping list, or a list of questions you want to ask your adviser. For this purpose, you might rely on one of the so-called PEG-WORD SYSTEMS:
    
    • ​ These systems begin with a well-organized structure, such as this one:

One is a bun.

Two is a shoe.

Three is a tree.

Four is a door.

Five is a hive.

Six are sticks.

Seven is heaven.

Eight is a gate.

Nine is a line.

Ten is a hen.

• This rhyme provides ten “peg words” (“bun,” “shoe,” etc.), and in memorizing something you can “hang” the materials to be remembered on these “pegs.” Let’s imagine that you want to remember the list of topics you need to discuss with your adviser. If you want to discuss your unhappiness with chemistry class, you might form an association between chemistry and the first peg, “bun.” You might picture a hamburger bun floating in an Erlenmeyer flask. If you also want to discuss your plans for after graduation, you might form an association between some aspect of those plans and the next peg, “shoe.” (You could think about how you plan to pay your way after college by selling shoes.) Then, when meeting with your adviser, all you have to do is think through that silly rhyme again. When you think of “one is a bun,” it’s highly likely that the image of the flask (and therefore of chemistry lab) will come to mind. With “two is a shoe,” you’ll be reminded of your job plans. And so on.
  
  • Hundreds of variations on these techniques
  • To remember a list with no apparent organization, you impose an organization on it by using a tightly organized skeleton or scaffold.
  • They help you remember individual items, and they also help you remember those items in a specific sequence.
  • Mnemonics work because they impose an organization on the materials you’re trying to memorize.
• The downside to mnemonics in educational settings. When using a mnemonic, you typically focus on just one aspect of the material you’re trying to memorize spending little time thinking about other possible connections, including those that might help you understand the material.
  
  • This trade-off will be fine if you don’t care very much about the meaning of the material. But the trade-off is troubling if you’re trying to memorize material that is meaningful.

Question 13

Understanding and Memorizing

Answer 13

UNDERSTANDING AND MEMORIZING – your memory for events, or pictures, or complex bodies of knowledge is enormously dependent on your being able to organize the material to be remembered.

• With these more complicated materials, though, we’ve suggested that your best bet for organization isn’t some arbitrary skeleton like those used in mnemonics.
  
  • Instead, the best organization of these complex materials is generally dependent on UNDERSTANDING.
    
    • You remember best what you understand best.
• Since understanding is important for memory, then the higher someone’s grade in a course, the more likely that person is to remember the course contents.

Question 14

Memory and Previous Knowledge

Answer 14

PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE – Learning depends on making connections, but connections to what? If you want to connect the to-be-remembered material to other knowledge, to other memories, then you need to have that other knowledge — you need to have other (potentially relevant) memories that you can “hook” the new material on to.

• This point helps us understand why sports fans have an easy time learning new facts about sports, and why car mechanics can easily learn new facts about cars.
  
  • In each situation, the person enters the learning situation with a considerable advantage — a rich framework of existing knowledge that the new materials can be woven into.
    
    • If someone enters a learning situation with little relevant background, then there’s no framework, nothing to connect to, and learning will be more difficult.
    • Plainly, then, if we want to predict someone’s success in memorizing, we need to consider what other knowledge the individual brings into the situation.

Question 15

The Links among Acquisition, Retrieval, and Storage

Answer 15

THE LINKS AMONG ACQUISITION, RETRIEVAL, AND STORAGE:

• Claims about acquisition cannot be separated from claims about storage and retrieval. For example, why is memory acquisition improved by organization?

These create connections for storage and retrieval:

• Engagement
• Understanding
• Organization
• Background knowledge

Question 16

How should i study?

Answer 16

HOW SHOULD I STUDY?

• The intention to memorize, on its own, has no effect.
• Focus on making sure you understand the material, because if you do, you’re likely to remember it.
• Quiz yourself about what you’ve just learned.
• Rephrase the material you encounter, putting it into your own words. Doing this will force you to think about what the words mean — again, a good thing for memory.
• Memories are produced by active engagement with materials, not by passive exposure.
• Explain things, you’re forced into a more active role.
• Spread your studying out across multiple occasions — using Spaced Learning (e.g., spreading out your learning across several days)
  
  • Spaced learning may be more difficult (because of the forgetting in between sessions), but this difficulty leads to better learning overall.
    
    • “Desirable Difficulty” — difficulty that may feel obnoxious when you’re slogging through the material you hope to learn but that is nonetheless beneficial because it leaves you with a more complete, more long-lasting memory.
• Rather than Massed Learning (essentially, “cramming” all at once), which is ineffective.
• Vary your focus while studying — working on your history assignment for a while, then shifting to math, then over to the novel your English professor assigned, and then back to history
  
  • Changing focus will make it likely that you’ll bring a somewhat different perspective to the material each time you turn to it. This new perspective will let you see connections you didn’t see before; and — again — these new connections provide retrieval paths that can promote recall.
• Focus on understanding the material first.
  
  • Then use mnemonics for memorizing dates, place names, or particular bits of terminology.