History of Memory Flashcards
Begins in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece
- Mnemosyne (“new-mow-seen”): Greek goddess of memory
- Thoth: Egyptian god of memory and wisdom
Philosophical Traditions: Nature versus Nurture
Nativist: Humans are shaped mainly by biological inheritance (nature).
- Fixed at birth
Empiricist: Humans are shaped mainly by experience (nurture).
- Endless possibilities
Plato
** was a supporter of nativism**: we are born with innate differences in
skill and talent (and ability to learn),
and suggested “sorting by quality”
soon after birth
Humans are shaped mainly by
biological inheritance (nature).
Aristotle
oposed that knowledge and talent are matters of training and experience, not inheritance (Empiricist)
(Believed the heart, not the brain, is
critical for memory)
Humans are shaped mainly by their
experience (nurture)
Aristotle and Memory
Aristotle’s theory of associationism
argued that memory depends on
forming linkages (“associations”)
between events or ideas.
Recalling or experiencing one bit
elicits a memory of the other
Theory of Associationism
aristoteles
Contiguity – Experiences near each other in time/space are joined (if you think of making coffee, you will think of drinking coffee)
Frequency – Experiences repeated together become connected (when we think of coffee, we think of donuts)
Similarity – Experiences similar to one another become connected (if you think of one of your birthday parties, you will think of the others)
John Locke (1632–1704)
children arrive in the world a blank slate (tabula rasa), to be influenced by experiences. (Empiricist)
Good education should be available to all,regardless of class or wealth
William James (1842-1910)
Taught the first course in psychology in America.
A proponent of associationism from Aristotle.
Elements of an event are linked in association networks. Similar events are also linked.
Per James, remembering one idea would spread along links, leading to the retrieval of a complex episode.
James speculated that these links are physically formed in the brain.
Early ideas about neuroscience and brain plasticity!
Current Approaches
Most modern researchers acknowledge that we are shaped by both nature and nurture.
Still, sharp disagreements persist over relative importance in different domains.
Women who Shaped the Field of Psychology
Mary Whiton Calkins
- PhD (not officially conferred)
- Denied PhD because she was a woman
- Harvard University (1894)
- Known for her work on “paired-associate” learning
- First female president of the American Psychological Association
- Worked alongside William James
- Would have been the first woman to receive a PhD in psychology (along with Margaret Floy Washburn)
Inez Beverly Prosser
- First black woman to receive a PhD in psychology
- PhD, University of Cincinnati (1933)
- Known for her work on learning, education, reform, racial identity
Hermann Ebbinghaus
conducted the first rigorous experiments of memory (mostly on himself).
According to him, the psychology of memory could become a rigorous natural science
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Human Memory
Experiments
Ebbinghaus was especially
interested in forgetting—that is, in how memory deteriorates over
time.
Ebbinghaus was famous for his
memory plots (”forgetting curves”),
showing that you lose a lot in the first 24 hours an then forgetting slows down a little
Pros and Cons of this approach?
Pros:
* advantage of using non sensical words (they are all nutreal)
Cons:
* it can be bad because its harder to remenber words that have no meaning to us
* he used himself in the study so it might not apply to everyone (generability)
Marigold Linton
reading!!: know the difference between both studies and pro and cons
- did a similar study then Ebbinghaus
- did it on herself
- some changes in intervals and other things like that
-
she didnt observed the same curve as he did )hers were more linear
*
Ivan Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Studies
was studying digestion. He is now
known for developing methods
for studying animal learning.
Classical conditioning: an
organism learns to respond to
a previously neutral stimulus
that has been repeatedly
presented alongside a
biologically significant stimulus
classical conditionin ex
- ring a bell, ice cream > u drool
- do it enoght
- ring bell > drool
Ivan Pavlov’s Conditioning Studies
In later studies, Pavlov and his assistants showed that they could weaken an animal’s trained response
in a process called extinction.
Extinction involves weakening a learned response to a stimulus by no longer pairing that stimulus with a reward or punishment
generalization
Pavlov also demonstrated that a dog will transfer what it has learned about one stimulus to similar stimuli
ex:
* blue square,ice cream > drool
* blue square>drool
* another similar tone to the blue (not the same) > drool
why is it important?
- it can help us understand different mental health conditions ex; PTSD
Edward Thorndike and the law of effect
Edward Thorndike (1874–1949),
student of William James.
Interested in how animals learn.
Thorndike observed how cats learn
to escape from puzzle boxes.
Instrumental conditioning:
organisms learn to make responses
to obtain / avoid consequence. The organism’s behavior is instrumental in determining whether the consequences occurs. Now it is
referred to as operant conditioning
the Law of Effect
Thorndike observed that the probability of a particular behavioral response would increase or decrease depending on the consequences, which he called the law of effect.
According to this law, an animal has a range of behaviors it can exhibit: behaviors that lead to positive
outcomes for the animal persist; those that do not die out
John Watson’s Behaviorism
john Watson (1878–1958)
founded behaviorism, a school
of thought that says psychology should study only observable behaviors and not try to infer mental processes.
Inspired by Pavlov as well as
John Locke’s idea of the
“tabula rasa”.
- little albert - created fear in albert of fluffy things by showing him a furry thing and adding a loud noise(something that scares them)
B. F. Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904–1990) advocated an extreme form of behaviorism, radical behaviorism, in which he asserted that free will is an illusion. In this view, humans, like other animals, simply produce learned responses to
environmental stimuli.
The Neo-Behaviorism of Edward Tolman
Edward Tolman (1886–1959)
believed that rats are like
humans; they are intrinsically
motivated to learn. He studied
how rats learn the general
layout of mazes by forming
what he called a cognitive
map, an internal representation of the spatial layout of the world.
cognitive map
Tolman demonstrated the value of cognitive maps for understanding how rats could apply what they have learned in novel situations;rats can find food in mazes via alternative routes if their preferred route is blocked.
Tolman argued that during their free exploration, rats were learning a cognitive map that they could use later.
He called this latent learning, that is, learning that is
unconnected to a positive or negative consequence and remains undetected (latent) until explicitly demonstrated
These ideas were important because…
it suggest:
(1) animals are not just learning behaviours;
**(2) we can use experimental approaches to infer a mental state. **
Provided a bridge between
cognitive and behavioural approaches
Endel Tulving
Although we will learn about Endel
Tulving (1927-2023) many times
in this class, I will first introduce
you to him in this lecture. He was
a Canadian memory researcher
(born in Estonia) who made many
contributions to memory. Do you
remember I told you that when
you match the study and test
context, you get better memory?
That idea is from Tulving. Also
introduced the concept of multiple
memory systems, which we will
learn more about later
Brain Structure: Early Ideas
Britannica
In the early days (e.g., mid 1800s), some scientists believed that
different areas of the brain were specialized for different functions (e.g.,
frontal lobes and language). Some extreme and highly problematic
views on brain localization were put forth around this time, including
phrenology - the notion that skull measurements can predict an individual’s personality and abilities.
Phrenology is a pseudoscience, used to promote sexism and racism.
Today, common phrases are associated with this pseudoscience
○ E.g., “well rounded”
**Neuropsychology **
ideas of “localization of function” came from studying brains that were missing tissue to see how such losses affected performance. Neuropsychology studies the relationship between brain function and behavior, often by examining the functioning of patients who have brain damage.
● Is this a good approach? Let’s discuss.
- yes, but it is not as clear cut some parts of the brain are just a pice of the system not eberything
- it can help us find treatments
location of the
engram—
Karl Lashley (1890–1958), was an American psychologist who searched for the location of the
engram—the physical change (or trace) in the brain that forms the basis of a memory.
In Lashley’s work, a group of rats were trained to navigate a maze. After learning, a different small area
of the cortex was removed. Yet, the rats could still do the task. Though Lashley noticed that bigger
lesions would cause bigger learning impairment, no single cortical area seemed to be more important than any other area. Conclusion of Lashley: learning is “simply not possible!”
some problems:
- only focused in the cortext(not the jippocampsue)
- just focused in one type of learning : maze learning
theory of equipotentiality
which states that memories are not stored in one area of the brain. Instead, the brain operates as a whole “unit” to store memories.
- we belive there is some speciallization but other types of the brain also plays a role in memory (in the middle)
Compare: to study do this!
● Localization of function versus the theory of equipotentiality.
● Issues with both ideas. Where does that lead us?
● No region is an “island” but Lashley’s view was too extreme (there is some degree of specialization)
Brenda Milner
studied patients with brain lesions, including a patient named Henry Molaison (patient HM) with severe memory loss following removal of his medial temporal lobes in 1953 to combat severe epilepsy. Milner is still working at McGill University
and the MNI continuing to make important discoveries
Important Modern Figures
Richard Wolfgang Semon (1859–1918) was an evolutionary zoologist who coined the terms engram.
Many modern researchers are studying the engram, as we will
learn in this course, including Steve Ramirez at Boston University
and the late Xu Liu from MIT
