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MEMORY PSYC1001
LECUTRE 6
 Why cognition?

• Basic learning processes and behaviorism

• Behavior as the unit of study/ analysis

• Classical and operant conditioning

• Is the human mind but a black box? Can cognitive processes

be involved?

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Bandura’s observation

• Many children imitated the behavior of the adult model

• Some even grabbed a toy gun, which the adult model did not do

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Four components in Observational Learning
Attention Reproducing the behavior

It is easier to model the behavior of Physical capabilities

familiar and/ or powerful targets
Shaping is needed
Cartoon characters, parents

Retention in memory Motivation

Delayed imitation Children can learn the consequence

by observing the model
A challenge to behaviorism
Vicarious punishment/
reinforcement

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Memory Test
• Does Rich Uncle Pennybags, aka the Monopoly Man, wear a monocle?

Enter your response below

↓↓↓

https://goo.gl/TUqLBX
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Memory and false memory

• We remember a lot of things!

• Adaptive functions
• Food retrieval/ water locations
• Drawback – Energy consumption, head size

• Our memory fails us sometimes

• Collective false memory (The Mandela Effect)
• Theory 1 – The existence of parallel universes
• Theory 2 – False memory

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Memory and false memory

• We remember a lot of things!

• Adaptive functions
• Food retrieval/ water locations
• Drawback – Energy consumption, head size

• Our memory fails us sometimes

• Collective false memory (The Mandela Effect)
• Theory 1 –Parallel universe
• Theory 2 – False memory

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What is memory &
How does it work?

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What Is Memory?

• The information processing

approach

• Three functions of memory

• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval
The Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of Memory

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Encoding at the sensory memory

• The first stage of memory that holds a large amount

of incoming data for a brief amount of time

• What do you see in the following picture

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What did you see?

• Unprocessed sensory image

• You see everything (large capacity) – Light travels very fast

• It took 0.0000001 second to reach you if you were 30 meters from the screen

• The image fades out very quickly

• Frequent updating

• Imagine you are still seeing that picture now (?!)

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Sensory memory

• We pick up useful information from the sensory memory

• Attention directs us to attend to useful information

• Passing to short-term memory for further processing

• There is a number in the top left corner of the picture, what is it?

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Short-term memory

• The second stage of memory that holds a small

amount of information for a limited time if it is
not further processed

• How long would the memory of “2” last if you just

leave it there?

• The decay curve discovered by Peterson and

Peterson (1959)
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§ Peterson & Peterson’s decay curve (1959)

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Short-term memory

• Capacity
• Miller’s magical number (1956) 7 plus or minus 2
• Some people hold more information in the STM than
others
• Indicator of cognitive capabilities

• Why are password rules so ridiculous nowadays?

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Ridiculous
password rules

• How to effectively utilize the

magic number?

• Chunking – grouping similar or

meaningful information tgt

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From STM to working memory

• STM is for storage only

• Working memory as a processing

unit

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Long-term Memory

• It is hard to estimate how much information we

store in the LTM

• Large capacity, long duration – There appears to be

no limit

• Rehearsal is a crucial process for STM to become

LTM

• A higher level of processing leads to better

encoding into the LTM (Craik & Tulving, 1975)

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Craik & Tulving, 1975

• Participants were SUGAR

required to process the
word stimuli in one of the
three levels • Level 1 processing (visual)
• Is the word printed in capital letters?

• Level 2 processing (rhyme)

• A higher level of process • Does the word rhyme with “Timber”?
leads to better recalling of
• Level 3 processing (meaning/ semantic)
the stimuli in a later trial • Does the word fit into this sentence?
• Mary adds ______ to her tea

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Working vs. Long-term Memory

• Serial-position effect

• Differential impairments in
patients

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Different types of LTM

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Declarative (explicit) memories

• Something that you can declare, or verbalize

• Semantic memory – a general knowledge that you do not necessarily

have experience of
• What is a durian?
• When was the universal declaration of human rights written?
• What is the psychoanalytic theory all about?

• Episodic memory – a time-oriented knowledge that originates from

personal experience
• First day in HKU
• First date
• First trip

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Nondeclarative (implicit) memories

• Something that is difficult to verbalize

• Procedural memory/ skilled movements (you cannot really learn how to ride
a bicycle by reading a manual)/ conditioned responses

• Which procedural memory is more familiar to you?

• Name the 12 months in chronological order

• Name the 12 months in alphabetical order

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The weird experience of touch typing

• You can type, but you can’t tell

• Semantic questions
• Where is the key “N” on the keyboard?
• Is the key “T” above or below the key “V”

• In learning touch typing, you don’t really spend time reciting the position of
each key (which is semantic). The procedures are practiced over and over
again, which becomes a reflex without semantic processing
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Priming
• A change in a response to a
stimulus as a result of exposure
to a previous stimulus

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How is LTM stored?

• LTM is NOT stored independently

• It is instead organized in an activation

network

• Plus – It provides cues for retrieving

information

• Minus – Unwanted activation of certain

cues may lead to false memory

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 • Nathan is a pianist from Cuban. He’s going to perform in a concert
tonight

• What kind of concert is he performing?

• Note how our schemas about musicians and ethnicity may alter our
perception and memory of someone

Caution

Schema à Stereotype à Prejudice à Discrimination

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How do we retrieve
memories?

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Retrieval from short-term memory

c a f h k c a f h k

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Retrieval form long-term memory

• How to study the Graduate record

exam

• Specifically the vocabulary (no one

cares about the math part)

• Words that you only see once in your

life, which is the GRE exam

The red book

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 Imagine you need to memorize 3000
peculiar English words in 1 month

• Retrieval cues (The activation network)

• Activating one cue will lead to retrieval of the meaning of the word

Arraign – To accuse someone of a particular crime in a court of law and to ask the
accused to state guilt or innocence

raign à rain à it’s miserable to be in the rainà being charged

Use part of the word as a retrieval cue

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Choice of cues

• Self-generated cues are better

• More time-consuming
• Customized to your own activation network (e.g. reciting your own
notes rather than reciting the lecture handouts)
• Higher-level of processing involved

• Encoding specificity

• Don’t study in your bed

• The study context also provides retrieval cues

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Reconstruction during
retrieval

• Passive recall vs. active reconstruction

• Memory is subject to subtle changes

• Fuzzy trace theory

• Verbatim

• Gist

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Retrieval of emotional events

• Memory repression (Freudian defense?)

• Flashbulb memory

• An especially vivid and detailed memory of an emotional event

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Why do we forget?

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Decay

§ Revise before it is too

late

§ The more times you

revise, the slower the
later decay

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Interference

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Motivated forgetting

• Freudian defense of repression

• Reconstructing memory consistent with experience

• E.g. cognitive dissonance

• Difficulties in research

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The biology of memory

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Different levels of biology

• Synapses
• Long-term sensitization
• Long-term potentiation

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Different levels of biology

• Long-term memory and the brain

• Neurotransmitters – Acetylcholine, Caffeine

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How can we improve
memory?

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Improving memory

• Distribute practice over time

• Taking tests

• Exercise and sleep

• Effective recitation

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Memory techniques

• Mnemonics – Linking new information to well-established

knowledge network

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Mnemonics – The peg system

• Get familiar with the peg system

• Other systems exist, such as the use of location
(the method of loci, pp. 353)

• When given a list of items, hook up each

item to the well-established pegs in order

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Let’s try remembering the Island Line

1. Kennedy town
2. HKU
3. Sai Ying Pun
4. Sheung Wan
5. Central
6. Admiralty (Gold bell)
7. Wan Chai
8. Causeway Bay (Copper
Gong Bay)
9. Tin Hau
10.Fortress Hill
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Conclusion

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Conclusion

• Decomposing human cognition

• Biological approach

• Information processing approach (SM -> STM -> LTM)

• Memory as a building block of higher-level behaviors

• Knowledge organization

• Intelligence

• And others that are not discussed here

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References

• Textbook
• Chapter 9

• Research
• Craik, F. I., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of
words in episodic memory. Journal of experimental Psychology:
general, 104(3), 268-294.
• Peterson, L., & Peterson, M. J. (1959). Short-term retention of individual
verbal items. Journal of experimental psychology, 58(3), 193-198.

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