Memory Flashcards
What is memory
Ability of the brain to encode, store and retrieve information when required
3 types of memory
Sensory - visual and auditory info received for few seconds
Short term- can hold about 7 items for 30 seconds
Long term - can hold unlimited amount for very long time
Sensory memory to short term to long term
Sensory takes in all visual and auditory information received for a few seconds and only a fraction of sensory images formed are then committed to short term memory. These are then either transferred from STM to LTM or discarded.
How can memories be lost?
Displacement - older info pushed out by new
Decay - memory traces breakdown when groups of neurons are activated
Short term memory
Limited capacity and can only hold info for a short period of time
How to increase short term memory
Chunking
Rehearsal
Working memory
Chunking
break down larger pieces of info into several smaller pieces.
Rehearsal
increase length of time info stored in stm
involves repeating info over and over again
maintain info and increases chance becoming ltm
working memory
our working memory is an extension of our short term memory. It is able to process and manipulate data in our stm. Useful for performing simple cognitive tasks such as remembering individual steps of a recipe when cooking a meal.
Serial Position Effect
Shows that when given a list of things to remember, we are more likely to recall those at start of lost (called primary effect)and those at end of list (recency effect) but struggle with those in middle.
serial position effect items position and memory type
Items at start are recalled easier as they have been rehearsed many times and may have already already been committed to ltm
Items at end of list still in stm and easily recalled
items in middle - more likely to have been displaced
Long term memory
Unlimited capacity and can hold info for long time. Once encoded in stm it can be transferred to ltm to be stored.
how can stm to ltm be transferred?
Rehearsal, organisation, elaboration
Transferring STM to LTM techniques
Rehearsal - going over info repeatedly
Organisation - putting info that has to be transferred into logical categories which makes it easier to transfer LTM.
Elaboration - Addition of further info or meaning which results in informtion being more meaningful and interesting to easier to transfer to LTM.
Info retrieved from LTM
When info is encoded we use contextual cues to make memory more powerful which is easier to recall later in life - reorganising into lists or categories to make more sense of it, or recalling additional related memories to make info more memorable and easier to retrieve
