Remembering and Forgetting Flashcards
What are the three processes involved with remembering
Encoding, understanding new info
Storage, keeping hold of encoded info
Retrieval, recovering the stored info
Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) Memory Model
- The amount of information transferred from short term memory to long term memory is determined by the amount of rehearsal.
What are the two types of rehearsal
- Maintenance rehearsal, repeating info until remembered
- Elaborative rehearsal, making associations to remember info i.e. linking someones name to things that remind you of this name
Maintenance Rehearsal and Long term recall
Glenberg, Smith, and Green (1977):
- Participants had to remember four digit numbers
- In between the numbers they had to repeat a distractor word
- varied how long they had to repeat distractor word
- After repeating word, they had to repeat the number
- Then they were asked the word (they weren’t told they needed to remember the word)
- Regardless of how many times you repeat the word, the maintenance stayed low. i.e. repeating words isn’t good for long term memory
Levels of processing theory
(Craik and Lockhart, 1972)
- Depends how deeply you process something
- You don’t have to try to remember something, it happens automatically.
- However, the extent to which you remember this varies depending on how deeply you process it.
Structurally- Long term retrieval won’t be great (only processing what it looks like)
Phonologically- linguistic features, retrieval will be better
Semantically - Deepest processing
Support for the levels of processing theory
Craik and Tulving (1975)
- Presenting list of words
- Each word was linked with one of the three types of encoding
3 conditions
1) Is the word in upper case? (Structural)
2) does the word rhyme with mat? (Phonological)
3) Does the word fit in this sentence? (semantic) - Then recognition task, recognition is better the deeper the word is processed.
Criticisms of Levels of processing theory
Eysenck, 1978
- There is no independent measure that participants did or didn’t process the words deeply
Transfer Appropriate Processing Theory
(e.g., Morris, Bransford, & Franks, 1977)
- Looks at the encoding process of memory and retrieval
- Levels of processing theory only looks at semantic processing being better than non semantic
- Encoding differs between each person
Testing Transfer Appropriate Theory
(Morris et al., 1977)
- Participants were either in semantic (deep) task or rhyme task (shallow)
- Does … have a silver engine
- Does … rhyme with car
- Then participants were either given standard recognition test or rhyme recognition test
- Results showed that semantic processing doesn’t always enhance memory
Encoding-Specificity Principle
(Tulving & Thomson, 1973)
- The likelihood of retrieval depends on the overlap between cues present at encoding and retrieval
- Relationship between the context of encoding and the context at retrieval
(Barclay et al., 1974) - depends on context of learning
- Man lifted piano showed better recall with something heavy
- Man tuned the piano showed better recall with melodious
- Participants encoded words with their context
What are the two types of contextual
(Hewitt, 1973):
Intrinsic- features that belong to stimulus i.e. coca cola being red label
Extrinsic- Other features i.e. georgaphical location
(Godden and Baddeley, 1975)
Context dependent memory
- Divers learn words on land or under water.
- Recall was best when the words were recalled in the same location they were learnt
State dependant recall
(Eich et al., 1975)
- Recall is better when your initial state when encoding is the same when recalling.
- If you’re high when encoding information you’ll perform better if you are also high when recalling information
Benefits of Organisation
Mandler (1967)
- Gave participants a pile of cards and they had to categorise their own piles.
- Group 1 just told about memory test and not asked to organise
- Group 2 told about memory test and asked to organise
- Group 3 just told to organise
- Information better retrieved when organised and not even told about a memory test than group that told about test and didn’t organise
What is forgetting
- When you are unable to retrieve memories in that specific moment.
- Doesn’t actually mean you have lost the memory
- Sometimes we can recognise certain things that we are unable to actually recall
Bahrick & Phelps, (1987) Testing memory
- Recognition and recall tests show that there is a lot of information available but it just depends on how you access that information
Why do we forget?
- Decay, for example, memories fade over time.
- Regarding the decay theory, the fading of memories has a fixed rate.
Interference Vs Decay
- Interference theory, forming new memories and learning new material gets in the way of old memories
- Hard to test this as you can’t stop people from processing new information.
- If forgetting is due to decay recall should depend on time interval
- But if forgetting is due to interference then recall should depend on what happens in the time interval
Is forgetting due to Decay or Interference
Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924)
- learn a list of made up words either before they wen’t to sleep or when they woke up in the morning.
- They were then tested immediately or after up to 8 hours
- Sleep group much less affected by the amount of time than the awake group.
- No interference when sleeping
Is forgetting due to Decay or Interference
Baddeley and Hitch (1977)
- Rugby players asked to recall teams they had played against
- ## The players who had played more games were less likely to recall the name of the teams rather than the ones who played less games
Retroactive Interference
- Baddeley and Hitch’s (1977) study represents this. Later learning interferes with earlier learning
- May cause problems with eye witness testimony.
Proactive interference
- Previous learning disrupts later learning
- For example in different countries hot and cold water taps may have different names such as italy.
- It is then hard to learn which tap is which when you have learnt something different before
Release from proactive interference
(Wickens, Born, & Allen, 1963)
- Harder to remember letters because you have already learnt the previous ones which are similar to the following information.
- When the group was given a different sort of material on the 4th trial, their recall is almost as good as the first trial because it’s new material - this is called release from proactive interference
