Unit 2

 Working memory (short-term memory) – the brief immediate memory for the limited amount of
material that you are currently processing and a part of working memory also actively
coordinated your ongoing mental activities.
 Long-term memory: has a large capacity and contains the memory for experiences and
information that have accumulated throughout your lifetime. It has no limit.

George Miller’s “Magical Number Seven”

 ‘The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing
Information’
 Miller proposed that only a limited number of items can be held in our short-term memory. We
can usually remember between five to nine items.
 Chunk: the term used to describe the basic unit in short-term memory, a chunk is a memory unit
that consists of several components that are strongly associated with one another.
 Short-term memory approximately holds seven chunks and several adjacent numbers or letters
can become a single chunk.

Brown/Peterson and Peterson Technique

 In a standard setup, this technique presented some items that the students were instructed to
remember; then the students performed a distracting task; and finally they were asked to recall
the original items.
 The research participants were instructed to study three unrelated letters (CHJ) then the
participants saw a three-digit number, and they counted backward by threes from this number
for a short period. This counting activity prevented them from rehearsing the 3-letter sequence
during the delay and finally, the participants tried to recall the letters they had already seen.
 The retrieval was effective for most letters in the few initial trials however, after several trials,
the previous letters produced interference, and the recall was poor. A mere 5-second delay made
people forget approximately half of the letters they had seen.

The Recency Effect

 Serial-position effect: refers to the U-shaped relationship between a word’s position in a list and
its probability of recall. The curve shows the recency effect, with better recall for items at the
end of the list and it also shows the primacy effect, with enhanced recall for the items at the
beginning of the list.
 Recency effect: accurate retrieval of items at the end of the list means that the items were still in
short-term memory at the time of recall. In addition, the items did not move to a permanent form
of memory which is why counting the number of items at the end of the list is a good way of
measuring the size of short-term memory.
 Primacy effect: the early items are presumably easy to remember for two reasons – a) they don’t
need to compete with any earlier items and b) people rehearse these early items more frequently.
 There is less accuracy in the retrieval of middle items
Semantic similarity of items in the short-term memory

 Semantics: meaning of words and sentences

 Proactive interference (PI): means that people have trouble learning new material because
previously learned material keeps interfering with their new learning.
 Example: you had previously learned three items – XCJ, HBR, and TSV and you will have
trouble remembering the fourth item, KRN, because the three previous items keep interfering.
However, if the experimenter shifts the category to simple geometric shapes the memory will
improve.
 This is because of the release from proactive interference and it could be obtained when the
researchers shift the semantic category of the items.

Atkinson and Shiffrin’s Model

Memories are composed of three primary stages and

three different processes. The stages are the sensory
register, the short-term memory, and the long-term
memory, while the processes are encoding, storage, and
retrieval.

 Sensory register: it contains the information

obtained from the five senses and while the capacity for holding information is large, its potential
to retain information at that amount of time, is usually no more than a second.
 Short-term store: the information from the sensory register is transferred to the short-term store
because it received attention. The capacity of storage is limited to 7 (plus or minus 2) at a
particular time. The duration is longer than the sensory register (about 30 seconds to a minute). It
is the form of memory that people can actively use. Rehearsal of the information in the short-
term store reinforces its duration; if it is rehearsed enough, it might get transferred to the long-
term store.
 Long-term store: repeated information gets permanently encoded in the long-term memory
store its duration and capacity are limitless. This memory store can be impacted in the case of
illness or injury (like Alzheimer’s).

The Working-Memory Approach (Alan Baddeley)

 Working memory simply doesn’t store information, but it actively works with that information
 According to the approach, our immediate memory is a multi-part system that temporarily holds
and manipulates information while we perform cognitive tasks.
  Baddeley emphasizes that we manipulate information so the working memory is essentially like
a workbench where the material is constantly being handled, combined, and transformed. And it
holds both new material and old material that is retrieved.
 Research evidence (that working memory is not unitary): the study suggested that people can
indeed perform two tasks simultaneously – for instance, one task that requires verbal rehearsal
and another that requires visual or spatial judgments. Evidence from other related studies
indicate that visual and verbal task can interfere with each other.
 In a study, a string of random numbers was presented to participants, who rehearsed the numbers
varied in length from zero to eight times. At the same time participants see the two letters were
correct or incorrect. To the surprise of the participants as well as researchers, participants
performed well on both tasks simultaneously and the error rate remained 5%, no matter how
many numerals the participants rehearsed.

Components of the working model

Phonological loop

 The phonological loop processes language and other sounds you make and/or hear. It can process
a limited number of sounds for a short period of time.
 It is active during subvocalization – when you silently pronounce the words that you’re reading
 Tasks: pronunciation time and memory span; acoustic confusion in the phonological loop
 Acoustic confusions: when people are likely to confuse similar-sounding stimuli
 A research study showed participants two kinds of lists of the English alphabet one featured
similar-sounding letters (C, T, D, G, V, B) and other list had different-sounding letters (C, W, Q,
K, R, X) and participants recalled items on the second list more correctly.
 Explanation: people “translate” the visual stimuli into a format based on the acoustic properties
of the letters. People confuse acoustically similar sounds when they are rehearsing the items, not
when these items are simply being stored.
 Neuroscience evidence: the phonological-loop tasks activate part of the frontal lobe and part of
the temporal lobe in the left hemisphere of the brain, which is more likely to process information
related to language as compared to the right hemisphere.

Visuospatial sketchpad (Visuospatial working memory, short-term visual memory)

 This working memory model processes both visual and spatial information. It allows you to
gather visual information about objects and landmarks. It also allows you to navigate from one
location to another.
 Allows you to store a coherent picture of both the visual appearance of the objects and their
relative positions in a scene. Also stores visual information encoded from a verbal description.
 Like the phenomenological loop, this element also has a limited capacity. When too many items
enter the visuospatial sketchpad, all of them cannot be represented accurately enough to recover
them successfully.
 It is impossible to perform one task requiring a mental image – with both visual and spatial
components – at the same time.
  Neuroscience evidence: visual and spatial tasks typically active more regions of the right
hemisphere of the cortex rather than the left hemisphere, along with the various regions of the
frontal cortex associated with attention and perception. Additionally, occipital region is also
associated with activation of strong visual component

Central executive

 Central executive is an Attentional controller that coordinated information held in the

phonological loop, the episodic buffer, visuospatial sketchpad, and long-term memory.
 Functions: focusing attention and switching between tasks, suppressing irrelevant information,
selecting strategies, and coordinating behavior. It helps to secede what to do next, and also what
not do so that one does not get sidetracked from the primary goal. It also has limited ability in
performing simultaneous tasks.

The central executive is where the major work of working memory occurs.

● The central executive pulls information from long term memory and coordinates the activity of the
phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad by focusing on specific parts of a task and switching
attention from one part to another.

● One of the main jobs of the central executive is to decide how to divide attention between different
tasks.

● For example, imagine you are driving in a strange city, and a friend in the passenger seat is reading
your directions to a restaurant while the news is being broadcast on the car radio.

● As your phonological loop takes in the verbal directions, your sketch pad is helping you visualize a
map of the streets leading to the restaurant , and the central executive is coordinating and combining
these two kinds of information.

● In addition, the central executive might be helping you ignore the messages from the radio, so you can
focus your attention on the directions.

Episodic buffer

 Episodic buffer serves as a temporary storehouse that can hold and combine information from
your phonological loop, your visuospatial sketchpad, and long-term memory. These memories
will be about events that have happened to you and describe episodes from your life.
 While central executive plans and coordinated various cognitive activities, it doesn’t actually
store any information – episodic buffer does. It combines auditory, visual, and spatial
information with the information from the long-term memory.
 Episodic buffer actively manipulates information so as to interpret an earlier experience and
solve new problems and it also helps bind together concepts that had not previously being
connected.
 It has limited capacity; it is a temporary memory system and allows us to create a richer and
more complex representation of an event, which can then be stored in our long-term memory.
Long-term memory

Long-term memory can retain material for many decades and has a large capacity; it contains memory
for experiences and information that has been accumulated throughout the lifetime.

 Episodic memory: focuses on the memories for events that have happened to an individual
personally; it allows for us to travel backward in subjective time to reminiscence about the
earlier episodes of our life
 Semantic memory: describes the organized knowledge about the world, including the
knowledge about words and other factual information.
 Procedural memory: refers to the knowledge about how to do something. For example, how to
ride a bicycle, how to send an e-mail to a friend

Three aspects of long-term memory

 Encoding: information is processed and represented in the memory

 Retrieval: the information is located in storage and can be accessed
 Autobiographical memory: refers to the memory for experiences and information that is related
to an individual on a personal level

Levels of processing approach (LOPA)

 It is also known as the depth-of-processing approach and it argues that deep, meaningful
processing of information leads to more accurate recall than shallow, sensory kind of
processing.
 Recall is more accurate when deep level of processing is used in terms of meaning and the
recall would be comparatively weaker or less accurate when physical appearance is considered
 People achieve a deeper level of processing when they extract more meaning from a stimulus;
thinking of a meaning may lead us to remember other associations, images, and related past
experiences.
 Deep levels of processing encourage recall because of two factors:
o Distinctiveness: a stimulus is different from other memory traces. Providing a
distinctive encoding for a stimulus would make it easier to remember.
o Elaboration: requires rich processing in terms of meaning and interconnected
concepts.
  Deep processing also enhances are memory for faces. You are more likely to recognize faces if
they have been judged on the basis of characters like honesty as compared to superficial factors
like nose width.

 Self-reference effect: we are likely to remember more information if we relate that information
to ourselves because we develop a particularly memorable coding for that word. The self-
reference task requires organization and elaboration and people are more likely to recall
information that does apply to them, as compared to the one that doesn’t
 In a study, participants were asked to process each English work according to the specified
instruction. They processed words according to a) their visual characters, b) their sound
(acoustic) characters, or c) their semantic (meaning) characters, and the fourth category was
according to d) self-reference instructions. The recall was expectedly better in the last to
categories.
 The self-reference effect is so efficient that research participants might sometimes ‘cheat’ when
they have been instructed to use relatively shallow processing for stimuli and they might use
self-reference instead. Even when instructed to employ shallow visualization participants ended
up inserting themselves in that visualization.
 Factors responsible for the self-reference effect:
o The “self” produces an especially rich set of cues and these cues can easily be linked
with new information that one is trying to learn; these cues are also distinctive.
o The self-reference instructions encourage people to consider how their personal traits are
connected with one another.
o The material is rehearsed more frequently if it is associated with oneself.

The effects of context: the encoding-specificity principal

 The encoding-specificity principle states that recall is better if the context during retrieval is
similar to the context during encoding. When these contexts do not match, one is likely to
forget the items.
 Research: people in Chile who were fluent in both English and Spanish who made up the sample
and they listened to four stories about four stories (two in English; two in Spanish). Then these
participants listened to questions about each story. Half the questions were asked in the language
that matched the language of the story (English-English; Spanish-Spanish) and the other half did
not (English-Spanish). People were relatively accurate if the former aspect as compared to the
latter.
 Two methods that typically test memory:
o recall task: participants produce the items they learned earlier
o recognition task: participants must judge whether they a saw a particular item at an
earlier time
 The encoding-specificity effect is more likely to occur in memory that a) assess you recall, b) use
real-life incidents, and c) examine events that happened a long time ago.
  The encoding-specificity principal is more relevant to the mental context associated with the
retrieval as compared to the physical context. It may depend on how similar the two
environments ‘feel’ rather than how similar they ‘look’.
 Encoding specificity can modify LOP effect because in some cases of memory retrieval, the
match between encoding and retrieval is even more important than deep processing. Shallow
processing can be effective in the cases of superficial information.

Emotions, mood and Memory

Mood: refers to a more general, long-lasting experience

Emotion: a reaction to a specific stimulus

Memory for items differing in emotion

 Pollyanna principle: pleasant items are usually processed more efficiently and more accurately
than the less pleasant items.
 In a study, people learned a list of words that were pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. Then their
recall is tested after a delay of several minutes to several months. The pleasant items are often
recalled well than negative items, particularly if the delay is long. But the recall for neutral
stimuli in general (in literature) was substantially lower.
 Over time, unpleasant memories fade more than pleasant memories. A study involving
undergraduate students to record one personal event each day for about 14 weeks and rate both
the pleasantness and the intensity of the event. Three months later, the participants returned, one
at a time, for a second session. A researcher then read each event from the particular list, and the
student was instructed to rate the current pleasantness of the event.
 The analysis revealed that, a) rating did not change for neutral events, b) pleasant rating was
slightly less pleasant, and c) originally unpleasant events were now considered much less
unpleasant.
 Positivity effect: people tend to rate unpleasant past events more positively with the passage of
time.
 Mood congruence: material is more accurately recalled if it is congruent with an individual’s
current mood. Pleasant material will be recalled well if the mood is also pleasant, whereas a
person in an unpleasant mood, should remember unpleasant material better.

Retrieval in Long-term memory – explicit versus implicit memory tasks

 Explicit memory tasks involves researcher directly asking you to remember some information
and that leads to the realization that ‘our memory is being tested’ and the test requires us to
intentionally retrieve some information that was previously learned.
 The most common explicit test is recall (reproducing items that were learned earlier) and other is
recognition (identification of items that were presented earlier).
  Implicit memory task involves the presentation of a material (a series of words or pictures) and
later, the participants are instructed to complete a cognitive task that does not directly ask for
recall or recognition.
 Implicit memory shows the effects of previous experience that creep out automatically – during
normal behavior – when no conscious effort is being made to remember past events.
 Repetition priming task: recent exposure to a word increases the likelihood of an individual
thinking about a particular word, and presentation of some cue that can evoke many different
words.
 Dissociation: dissociation occurs when a variable has a large effect on one kind of test, but little
or no effect on another kind of test. For instance, supporting research proves that depth of
processing has a large positive effect or even a negative effect on an explicit memory task but it
has no effect or even a negative effect on memory scores of an implicit memory task.

Individual differences: anxiety disorders and performance on explicit and implicit memory tasks

The broad category of anxiety disorders includes: 1) generalized anxiety disorder (person experiences at
6 months of intense, long-lasting anxiety and worry); 2) PTSD (persistent re-experience of an extremely
traumatic event); and 3) social phobia (person becomes extremely anxious in social situations.

 According to studies conducted by Mitte (2000) people with anxiety disorders remember
threatening words more accurately, compared to those without these disorders. However, most
studies report otherwise.
 Results might be dependent of the nature of memory task. She conducted a meta-analysis of
research about implicit memory tasks and the two categories of explicit memory tasks (recall
and recognition)
 On the data for implicit memory, high anxious and low anxious people performed similarly and
the same was derived in the results for recognition tasks.
 In the case of recall tasks, high anxious people were more likely than low anxious participants to
recall the negative, anxiety-arousing words. And they were less likely than low anxious
participants to recall both the neutral words and the negative words.
 This could be because a) anxious individuals pay more attention to threatening words, or b) the
recall bias may be linked to a well-developed network of concepts related to the threatening
words.

Individuals with Amnesia

 Retrograde amnesia: loss of memory for events that occurred prior to brain damage; the
deficit is especially severe for events that occurred during the years before the damage.
 Anterograde amnesia: loss of the ability to form memories for evetns that have occurred after
brain damage. People with anterograde amnesia often recall almost nothing on tests of explicit
memory.
 In a study, researchers presented a list of English words to individuals with anterograde
amnesia then a series of recall and recognition tasks were administered. Compared to control-
group participants, the participants with amnesia did much more poorly on both kinds of
 explicit memory tasks. But to everyone’s surprise, both the participants with amnesia and
control-group participants were correct 45% of the time, in the case of an implicit memory
task.
 Dissociation was inevitable because the memory-status variable (amnesic v/s control) had a
major effect when measured by explicit memory tests. However the same variable had no
effect when measured by implicit memory tests.

Expertise

 People with expertise demonstrate impressive memory abilities, as well has consistently
exceptional performance on representative tasks in a particular area. A key to acquire this
expertise is deliberate, intensive practice – on a daily basis.
 Research proves a strong correlation between knowledge in an area and memory performance in
that area. Although, people who are experts in one area may not display outstanding general
memory skills. And they do not receive exceptional scores on tests of intelligence.
 The ways in which experts have better memory than novices:
o Experts possess a well-organized, carefully learned knowledge structure, which assists
them during both encoding and retrieval.
o They are more likely to reorganize the new material that they must recall, forming
meaningful chunks in which related material is grouped together.
o Experts typically have more vivid images for the items they must recall
o Experts work hard to emphasize the distinctiveness of each stimulus during encoding.
o They rehearse in a more strategic manner. (actor might rehearse lines by focusing on
words that are likely to trigger recall)
o They are better at reconstructing missing portions of information from material that they
partially remember.
o Experts are more skilled at predicting the difficulty of a task and at monitoring their
progress on this task.
 Own-ethnicity bias: you are generally more accurate in identifying members of your own
ethnic group than members of another ethnic group.

Autographical memory

 It’s the memory for events and issues related to oneself. Autobiographical memory usually
includes a verbal narrative along with imagery about these events, emotional reactions, and
procedural information.
 A study has ecological validity if the conditions in which the research is conducted are similar
to the natural setting to which the results will be applied.
 Schema: consists of general knowledge or expectation, which is distilled from past experiences
with someone or something. We use schemas to guide our recall.
  Consistency bias: we tend to exaggerate the consistency between our past feelings and beliefs
and our current viewpoint. We tell our life stories so that they are consistent with our current
schemas.
 Historian Emily Honing interviewed Chicana garment workers who had participated in a strike
and shortly after the strike; these women viewed the event as life-transforming that had changed
them into fearless activists from timid factory workers. Years later when Honing returned to
interview these same women, the women recalled that they had always been assertive and non-
conforming, even prior to the strike. These workers were retelling their past instances with the
perceptions.

Source monitoring and reality monitoring

 This process of trying to identify the origin of a particular memory is called source monitoring
 In a study, college students were asked to discuss an open-ended question on a topic such as
methods for improving their university and they returned a week later. Then they were asked to
identify whether each item on the list had been their own idea or someone else’s. They seldom
made the error of claiming that an idea by another person had been their own.
 Sometimes people might plagiarize inadvertently. In some legal cases, a songwriter believes that
he or she has composed a truly new song may actually be based on an already existing melody.
 Reality monitoring is when you try to identify whether an event really occurred, or whether you
actually imagined the event.

Flashbulb memories

 The term flashbulb memory refers to your memory for the circumstances in which you first
learned about a very surprising and emotionally arousing event. Many people believe that they
can recall all the minor details about what they were doing at the time of this event. And research
suggests that people’s flashbulb memories are much accurate than memories of less surprising
events.
 9/11 attacks: Jennifer Talarico and David Rubin conducted a study on people’s memory of this
event. A day after the attacks, (September 12) they asked the students at a North Carolina
University to report specific details about how they had learned about the attacks. The students
also provided similar information for an ordinary event that had occurred at about the same time.
 All these students returned a week later for recall-testing sessions. Some returned a week later,
others returned 6 weeks later, and 32 weeks later.
 The details provided on 12th September served as a baseline for the number of consistent details.
The consistency drops over time for each of the three testing sessions. And the size of the drop
was similar for the 9/11 memory and the every memory.
 These “flashbulb memories” can be explained through rehearsal frequency, distinctiveness, and
elaboration. And like ordinary memories, flashbulb memories grow less accurate with the
passage of time.
Eyewitness testimony

 Post-event misinformation effect: people first view an event; then they are given misleading
information about the event; later on, they mistakenly recall the misleading information.
 Proactive interference: people have trouble recalling new material because previously learned;
old material keeps interfering with new memories.
 Retroactive interference: people have trouble recalling old material because some recently
learned; new material keeps interfering with old memories.
 Experiment by Loftus: Loftus and her co-authors showed participants a series of slides. In
sequence, a sports car stopped at an intersection then it turned and hit a pedestrian. Half the
participants saw a slide with a yield sign and the other half saw a stop sign.
 20 minutes to a week after they had seen the slides, the participants answered a questionnaire
about the details of an accident. One of the important questions contained information that was
consistent (yield sign), inconsistent (stop sign), or neutral with the detail (no information about
the sign) of the original slide.
 People who had seen the inconsistent information were much less accurate than people in the
other two conditions.
 Factors affecting the accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony
o People may create memories that are consistent with their schemas
o People make errors in source monitoring
o Post-event misinformation may distort people’s recall
o Eyewitnesses make errors when the crime is being committed during a stressful
circumstance.
o When there’s a long delay between the original event and the time of the testimony. As
time passes, recall accuracy decreases for most of our ordinary memories.
o If the misinformation is plausible, there are more chances of errors and also, if the
decision has to be made under social pressure
o Eyewitnesses make more errors if someone has provided positive feedback.
 Memory confidence and memory accuracy: participants are almost as confident about their
misinformation-based memories as they are about their genuinely correct memories. But memory
confidence is not strongly correlated with memory accuracy.

The recovered-memory/False-Memory controversy

A good portion of research on false memories is focused on childhood instances of sexual abuse. These
memories can be forgotten for many years and then recovered during adolescence or adulthood.

 Recovered-memory perspective: individuals who experienced sexual abuse during childhood

managed to forget that memory for many years. A child would be especially likely to forget
these traumatic events if the abuser was a close relative or a trusted adult. At a later time, this
presumably forgotten memory may come flooding back into consciousness.
  Betrayal trauma: how a child may respond adaptively when a trusted parent or caretaker
betrays him or her by sexual abuse. The child depends on this adult and must actively inhibit
memories of abuse in order to maintain an attachment to this person
 False-memory perspective: proposes that most of these recovered memories are actually
incorrect memories; in other words, they are constructed stories about events that never occurred

Memory strategies

Mental activities that help in improving encoding and retrieval

Strategies emphasizing practice

1. The total-time hypothesis

The amount learned depends on the total time that is devoted to learning. Simply re-reading the
material will not be helpful, the quality of study strategies is important. 1 hour spent actively
learning the behavior through deep levels of processing will be much more efficient than two
hours of just reading
2. The retrieval-practice effect
You try to recall important concepts from memory; if retrieval is difficult – and you succeed-
your learning is enhanced
3. The distributed-practice effect
More material will be learned if the learning trials are spread over time (spaced learning) as
compared to when all material is learned all at once, or ‘cramming’ (massed learning).
Why is distributed practice efficient?
o Desirable difficulties: a learning situation that is somewhat challenging, but not too
difficult
o If several minutes are allowed to pass before the second repetition, one pays more
attention to that concept. Additionally, the task will be slightly more difficult because we
would’ve started to forget the concept. Some mistakes would be made and we would not
be overconfident about mastering the concepts
4. The testing effect
Taking a test is an excellent way to boost long-term recall for academic material. When we take
a test, it provides practice in retrieving the relevant material. The test also produces desirable
difficulties and will make sure that we are not overconfident.

Mnemonics using imagery

  Mnemonics are mental strategies designed to improve memory. Some mnemonics emphasize
mental imagery (we mentally represent objects, actions, or ideas that are not physically present)
and research has shown that imagery is particularly effective when the recalled items are shown
as interacting with each other.
 Visualization mnemonics are effective because they are motivating and interesting.
 Keyword technique: for learning a new English word, you identify a word (keyword) that
sounds similar to the word that you want to learn; then you create an image that links the
keyword to the meaning of this new word.
 For remembering items in a specific order, establish a series of familiar locations and next you
create a mental image of each item that you want to remember. Then you place a mental image
of each item in one of those locations.

Mnemonics using organization

 Organization is a memory strategy that involves bringing systematic order to the material that
one wants to learn. Deep-processing is required to sort items into categories and retrieval is
easier when a well-organized framework is constructed
 Chunking: several small units are combined into larger units. Recall is much better when
material is grouped according to meaningful, familiar units, rather than in arbitrary groups of
three
 Hierarchy technique: items are arranged in a series of classes from the most general classes to
the most specific. An outline is an example of a hierarchy as it is divided into general categories,
and each category is further subdivided.
 First-letter technique: first letter of each word is taken to compose a word or a sentence.
Research does not consistently show that this technique is effective but this method does enhance
retrieval.
 Narrative technique: instructs people to make up stories that link a series of words together.

Prospective memory

 Unlike retrospective memory (information acquired in the past), prospective memory focuses
on remembering something that has to be done in the future
 Prospective memory tasks include two components – a) you must establish that you intent to
accomplish a particular task sometime in the future, and b) at that future, you must fulfill your
original intention. The primary challenge is to remember the actual content of the action.
 Prospective tasks are focused on action and retrospective memory is likely to focus on
remembering information and ideas. Despite that, they are governed by the same variables and
show the same rates of forgetting, and both rely on regions in the frontal lobe.
 Prospective-memory task represent a divided-attention situation – you have to focus on the
ongoing activity as well as the task that you need to remember in the future
  Absentminded behavior is likely to happen when the prospective memory task requires us to
disrupt a customary activity and these errors are more likely in familiar surroundings when a task
is performed automatically.
 External memory aid: any external device that facilitates memory in some way. The placement
of this memory aid is also helpful however; these external memory aids are only helpful if they
can be used easily and serve as successful reminders.

Metacognition

Metacognition refers to the knowledge and control of your cognitive processes. It supervises the way we
select and use our memory strategies and it is an active process.

Metamemory: people’s knowledge, monitoring, and control of their memory

Factors that influence people’s Metamemory accuracy

 People tend to be overconfident when they estimate a total number of correct items. People’s
metamemory will be highly accurate when they predict which individual items they’ll remember
and which one’s they’ll forget
 If these memory estimates are made immediately after learning, they are not as accurate as the
estimates that are made after a delay because that will allow the access of long-term memory
 The accuracy is better predicted on multiple-choice questions as compared to essay questions

ADHD and metamemory

Calibration measures people’s accuracy in estimating their actual performance. People with ADHD can
make highly accurate judgments about an important component of memory (in a particular situation).

Metamemory about factors affecting memory accuracy

 College students are not sufficiently aware of strategic factors that can influence their memory
performace and the people who score low are likely to use no specific memory strategies in
learning material for an exam and they might even believe that “all memory strategies are
created equal”
 Students may believe that some factors don’t have an effect on memory, although they do and it
could be the other way round as well. They also believe that factors like font size, and volume
also makes a difference.

Metamemory and the regulation of study strategies

 Allocating time when the task is easy: students allocate more study time for the items they
believed would be difficult to master; they did not passively review all the material equally and
used an active, strategic approach to this cognitive task.
  Sometimes, students spend longer than necessary on material that is relatively easy and not
enough time studying the items they have not yet mastered this could be because they are not
very accurate in judging whether their mastery of material has actually improved when they
spend more time studying it.
 Allocating time when the task is difficult (with time pressure): students spend majority of their
time on the material that they considered easy so that they can master more material within the
limited time frame. Compared to ‘novices’, ‘expert’ students chose to concentrate their time on
more challenging material.

Metamemory and the likelihood of remembering a specific target

The tip-of-the-tongue effect

 It is the subjective experience of knowing the target word for which you are searching but fail to
recall it at the moment
 In a conducted study, researchers gave people the definition for an uncommon English word and
asked them to identify the word. Sometimes people supplied the appropriate word immediately,
sometimes they didn’t know the word and in other cases, the definition produced a tip-of-the-
tongue state. In that case they were asked to provide a word that resembled the target word in
terms of sound, but not meaning.
 Their knowledge is fairly accurate as they identify the first letter and other attributes and even
similar sounding words that resemble the target word.
 Young adults have approximately one tip-of-the-tongue effect in a week; bilingual people
experience the effect more frequently, and so on.
 Deaf community has the tip-of-the-finger effect which is the subjective experience of knowing
the target sign, but it is temporarily inaccessible.
 Embodied cognition: emphasizes the way our abstract thoughts are often expressed by our
motor behavior. For example during the tip-of-the-tongue effect, people make exaggerated faces,
jiggle their feet, or hold their heads in their hands, and so on.

Feeling of knowing

 Subjective experience of knowing some information but failing to recall it right now.
 This is very similar to the previous experience, if a less extreme and it more likely to be
associated with the left prefrontal cortex as opposed to the right one for tip-of-the-tongue effect.

Metacomprehension

 It refers to your thoughts about language comprehension

 In general, college students are not very accurate in their metacomprehension skills and they
often believe that have understood something they have read because they are familiar with the
general topic. However, they fail to retain specific information, and they may overestimate how
they will perform.
 A test assesses metamemory when there’s a delay between the reading task and the questions,
and the reference or source material was no longer present.
 Students are overconfident and irrelevant features may lead students to overestimate their
understanding of a comprehensive material.
 Effective strategies for improving metacomprehension is to read a passage, wait a few minutes,
and try to explain the passage to yourself, without looking at the written passage. This ensures
active reading and less likely chances of ‘zoning out’.