Theories on Memory

A THEORY OF GENERAL MEMORY FUNCTIONS

One theory, a simple one agreed by most psychologists, was used in the definition of memory.

Three distinct processes of memory have been identified. These are an encoding process, a

storage process, and retrieval. Encoding is the process of receiving sensory input and

transforming it into a form, or code, which can be stored; storage is the process of actually

putting coded information into memory; and retrieval is the process of gaining access to stored,

coded information when it is needed.

To illustrate these three memory processes, imagine that on the way to work, your car was

bumped by a bus and slightly dented. You encoded your visual impressions of the accident in a

form that you could store in your memory. Later, when you talk to the insurance adjuster, you

will retrieve what you stored.

This simple process theory helps explain why your memory of an accident may be inaccurate.

The encoding you do may be faulty, perhaps due to the emotion and distress you experience at

the time of the accident; important encoded information may not be well fixed in your memory,

or it may be distorted by events occurring after the accident; your retrieval of the information

stored in your memory may be biased; or, since the processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval

are related, all three memory processes may be faulty. Memory is seldom an accurate record of

what was experienced.

INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORIES

Imagine yourself a device something like a digital computer that takes items of information in;

processes them in steps, or stages, and then produces an output. Models of memory based on this

idea are called information-processing theories. A number of such models of memory have been

proposed. We will use one of the most prominent and influential of these models the
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information-processing theory developed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968)-to

guide our discussion.

In the Atkinson-Shiffrin theory, memory starts with a sensory input from the environment. This

input is held for a very brief time-several seconds at most-in a sensory register associated with

the sensory channels (vision, hearing, touch, and so forth). Information that is attended to and

recognized in the sensory register may be passed on to short-term memory (STM), where it is

held for perhaps 20 or 30 seconds. Some of the information reaching short-term memory is

processed by being rehearsed that is, by having attention focused on it, perhaps by being

repeated over and over, or perhaps by being processed in some other way that will link it up with

other information already stored in memory. Information that is rehearsed may then be passed

along to long-term memory; information not so processed is lost. When items of information are

placed in long-term-memory, they are organized into categories where they may reside for days,

months, years, or for a life-time. When you remember something, a representation of the item is

withdrawn, or retrieved, from long-term memory.

There are some interesting parallels between this information processing theory and some of the

brain processes involved in memory. This model of memory fits well with our subjective

impressions when we are trying to remember something. Imagine yourself asking someone for a

telephone number you d not know. (It's in the other person's long-term memory, but not in

yours.)

The person tells you the number and off you go to dial it. Unless you rehearse number you will

probably forget it soon after hearing it. If something interrupts you on your way to the telephone,

thus interrupting your rehearsal you will probably forget the number. Or imagine yourself at a

party: Unless you take pains to rehearse the names of the new people you meet you will not

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remember them long. Without rehearsal and with the information overload caused by all the

things happening at the party, transfer to long-term memory will not occur.

Retrieval from long-term memory is also experienced subjectively.Try to remember where your

bedroom was located in all of the houses or apartments you have lived in. As you do this, you

will find yourself searching through your long-term memory, and you will probably develop

search strategy. Perhaps you will search chronologically from the first Be you remember to later

ones. You may then imagine the house and locate your bedroom in relation to the other rooms. If

you cannot remember a bedroom using one search method, you may shift to another search

strategy. In any case, you will have the subjective impression of having searched through your

storehouse of memories.

The Sensory Register

Information can be held for a very brief time in the sensory channels themselves. This storage

function of the sensory channels is called the sensory register. Most of the information briefly

held in the sensory register is lost; what has been briefly stored simply decays from the register.

However, we pay attention to and recognize some of the information in the sensory register;

when we do this, the attended-to information is passed on to short-term memory for further

processing.

Some ingenious experiments have shown that the visual sensory register holds information for

up to about 1 second, while the auditory (hearing) register holds information somewhat longer-

up to about 4 or 5 seconds. Studies with the visual sensor register have also shown that it can

hold at least 11 to 16 items of information during the second before it loses the information

through decay. Furthermore, in vision at least, the sensory storage seems to be in the form of a

faint image called an iconic image (from the Greek word meaning "likeness") which is a copy of

the visual input,

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Eidetic imagery: Research suggests that after only a quarter of a second, old information is

replaced by new information. Although it is rare, some people do have what is properly called

eidetic imagery, or the ability to access a visual sensory memory over a long period of time.

Although the popular term photographic memory is often used to mean this rare ability, some

people claiming to have photographic memory actually mean that they have an extremely good

memory. Having a very good memory and having eidetic imagery ability are two very different

things. People with eidetic imagery ability might be able to look quickly at a page in a book, then

by focusing on a blank wall or piece of paper, “read” the words from the image that still lingers

in their sensory memory.

Echoic Sensory Memory Another type of sensory memory is echoic memory, or the brief

memory of something a person has heard. A good example of echoic memory is the “What?”

phenomenon. You might be reading or concentrating on the television, and your

parent,roommate, or friend walks up and says something to you. You sit there for a second two,

and then say “What?

Echoic memory’s capacity is limited to what can be heard at any one moment and is smaller than

the capacity of iconic memory, although it lasts longer—about 2 to 4 seconds. Echoic memory is

very useful when a person wants to have meaningful conversations with others. It allows the

person to remember what someone said just long enough to recognize the meaning of a phrase.

Short-term memory

Short-term memory is a limited capacity store that can maintain and rehearse information for

about 20 to 30 seconds. It is first of the two main systems for storing information and also known

as working or active memory.

Because the information that is stored briefly in our sensory memory consists of representations

of raw sensory stimuli, it is not meaningful to us. In order for us to make sense of it and to allow
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for the possibility of long-term retention, the information must be transferred to the next stage of

memory short-term memory. Short-term memory is the memory store in which material first has

meaning, although the maximum length of retention is relatively short.

It appears that short term memory can encode only about seven separate items (plus or minus

two) - limited capacity and can hold them for only a limited time. Estimates of how long

information can be retained in STM vary from about a few seconds to almost a minute. Since

seven in the typical number of separate items in a telephone number, STM is often referred to as

telephone number memory. Thus, if you were verbally given a phone number, you could most

probably you could hold it in STM long enough to pick up the phone and dial the number,

However, if the other party didn't answer the ring or there was a busy signal, you probably could

not recall the number long enough to dial a second time.

Even though STM is restricted to about seven items; the items may be grouped together or

chunked in this way several items may be packaged together and processed as a single element.

For example you might be asked to repeat a series of nine digits, a number that is pushing the

limit of the magical value of seven plus or minus two by chunking the digits into groups of three,

however you then have to hold only three separate items in mind, not a difficult task The same is

true for letters Whereas a random set of seventeen letters pushes for beyond its limit, by

chunking the letters, retention can be made easy. Take the letters OPECIBMSONARRADAR,

which is a total of seventeen letters. If you chunk them into OPEC, IBM, SONAR, and RADAR,

the task of remembering them falls far short of STM capacity.

Although it is possible to remember seven or so relatively complicated sets of information

entering short-term memory, the information cannot be held there very lang. Most psychologists

believe that information in short-term memory is lost after fifteen to twenty-five seconds-unless

it is transferred to long-term memory by rehearsal

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Rehearsal: Rehearsal is the repetition of information that has entered short- term memory,

Rehearsal accomplishes two things. First, as long as the information repeated, it is kept alive in

short-term memory. More important, however, rehearsal allows us to transfer the material into

long-term memory.

Whether the transfer is made from short-to long term memory seems to depend largely on the

kind of rehearsal that is carried out. If the material is simply repeated over and over again-as we

might do with a telephone number while we rush from the phone book to the telephone-it is kept

current in short-term memory, but it will not necessarily be placed in long-term memory. Instead,

as soon as we stop dialing, the number is likely to be replaced by other information and will be

completely forgotten.

On the other hand, if the information in short-term memory is rehearsed using a process called

elaborative rehearsal, it is much more likely to be transferred into long-term memory.

Elaborative rehearsal occurs when the material is considered and organized in some fashion. The

organization might include expanding the information to make it fit into a logical framework,

linking it to another memory, turning it into an image, or transforming it in some other way. For

example, a list of

vegetables to be

purchased at a store

could be woven

together in memory

as items being use to

prepare an elaborate

salad; they could be

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linked to the items bought on an earlier shopping trip; or they could be thought of in terms of the

image of a farm with rows of each item.

Working Memory: The components of Short-Term Memory

Although short-term memory has traditionally been considered as a single. system, more recent

evidence suggests that it may actually consist of several components. According to psychologist

Alan Baddeley, short-term memory is better thought of as a three-part working memory. In this

view, one component is the central executive, which coordinates the material to focus on during

reasoning and decision-making. The central executive makes use of two sub-components: the

visuo-spatial sketch pad and the phonological loop. The visuo-spatial sketch pad concentrates on

visual and spatial information, while the phonological loop is responsible for holding and

manipulating material relating to speech, words, and numbers.

Some researchers suspect that a breakdown in the central executive may result in the memory

losses that are characteristic of Alzheimer's disease, the progressively degenerative disorder that

produces loss of memory and confusion

LONG-TERM MEMORY: Memories for Upto a Life Time

Long-term Memory (LTM) is an unlimited capacity store that can hold information over lengthy

periods of time. The information from STM can be passed along to be processed and

consolidated into long-term memory (LTM). Encoding into LTM can typically take upto twenty

minutes, but this time interval can be dramatically shortened in certain situations such as in flash

bulb storage. LTM has the potential for holding the encoded information for a lifetime. Material

that makes its way from short-term memory to long-term memory enters a storehouse of almost

unlimited capacity. Like a new book delivered to a library, the information in long-term memory

is filled and cataloged so that it can be retrieved when we need it.

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TWO LTM SYSTEMS

Researchers in the area both cognitive and brain science are now suggesting that we may have at

least two long term memory systems, one for declarative memory and the other for procedural

memory. The declarative memory has episodic

memory and semantic memory it can be

represented diagrammatically as follows.

1. Declarative Memory

Declarative memory represents the storehouse of

factual in formations such as dates, names, facts,

places, faces, and past experiences. It is called"

declarative" because it can be brought to mind and

stated or declared in the sense of a fact, proposition, or image. There are two types of declarative

memories a) episodic and b) semantic memory.

a. Episodic memory: It is Γ also known as "autobiographical memory. As its name implies

consists of one's memory for personal past episodes in one's life. It is made up mostly of images

from personal experiences organized on the basis of when and where they occurred -

chronologically organized.

It is as though our lifetime experiences were on a long reel of movie film, and we rewind the reel

to go back and look at the images on a few frames. Your ability to recall what you did last night

or last week or even years ago is based on your retrieval of episodic memory.

Try to remember your childhood home, its colour and shape, your bedroom and where your

parents slept. Or you can recall your school days, the classroom you were in, the area you played

in at recess and your first fight with your neighbourhood bully. These memories are stored as

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images and are related to one another by space and time, and so if you shut your eyes and relax,

you can probably imagine many of those childhood scenes.

b. Semantic memory: It contains our storehouse of words and the meaning of words, facts

general information, concepts, and the rules for learning most of the things that we were

supposed to learn in school. Because of semantic memory we remember that 2 x2 =4 and

“memoree" is misspelled.

The organization of this memory is grounded, not on an ordered - time basis, but on net works of

interconnected relationships and ideas called schemata, as a plural, or schema in the singular. For

example you might have a schema which covers virtually everything you know about football:

that there are referees, that there are eleven players on each side, that players may get injured,

that a touchdown counts for six points and soon. That is, anybody of information to a central

core concept represents a schema.

2. Procedural memory

It contains memory of motor skills, typically learned through repetitive practice and

conditioning. A person relies on procedural memory when tying shoes, playing a musical

instrument, riding a bicycle, hitting a ball and typing

Any one who doubts that procedural memory is a valid phenomenon should try asking typists

where certain letters on the keyboard. Watch as their fingers flex out the answer. That this

memory system is separate from declarative memory is evidence by a series of reports on

individuals who have undergone bruin surgery and apparently, on occasion, lost one type of

memory but not the other. Also, patients with Alzheimer's disease often show no impairment of

their procedural memory, but cannot recall the names of their children.

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Recalling from long-term- memory

Have you ever tried to remember someone's name, convinced that you knew it but unable to

recall it no matter how hard you tried. This not infrequent occurrence- known as the tip-of the

tongue phenomenon-exemplifies the difficulties that can occur in retrieving information stored in

long-term memory. Thus is the inability to recall information that one realizes one knows-a

result of the difficulty of retrieving information from long-term memory.

a. Retrieval Cues

The capacity of long-term memory is vast, given the broad range of people's experiences and

educational backgrounds. For instance, if you are like the average college student, your

vocabulary includes some 50,000 words, you know hundreds of mathematical "facts," and you

are able to conjure up images-such as the way your childhood home looked-with no trouble at

all. In fact, simply cataloging all your memories would probably take years of work.

How do we sort through this vast array of material and retrieve specific information at the

appropriate time? One of the major ways is through the use of retrieval cue. A retrieval cue is a

stimulus that allows us to recall information that is located in long-term memory more easily It

may be a word, an emotion, a sound, whatever the specific cue, a memory will suddenly come to

mind when the retrieval cue is present. For example, the smell of rousting turkey may evoke,

memories of Thanksgiving or family gatherings.

Retrieval cues guide people through the information stored in long-term memory in much the

same way as the cards in a card catalogue guide people through a library. They are particularly

important when we are making an effort to recall information, as opposed to our being asked to

recognize material stored in memory. In recall, a specified piece of information must be

retrieved-such as that needed to answer a fill-in-the-blank question or write an essay on a test. In

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contrast, recognition occurs when people are presented with a stimulus and asked whether they

have been exposed to it previously, or are asked to identify it from a list of alternatives.

b. Flashbulb memories

Flashbulb memories are memories centered on a specific, important, or surprising even that are

so vivid it is as if they represented a snapshot of the event. Several types of flashbulb memories

are common among college students. For example, involvement in a car accident, meeting one's

roommate for the first time, and the day of graduation are all flashbulb memories.

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