Memory

Can you imagine a world without your memory? Memory is one of those things people don't usually think about, and we take it for granted far too much.

Sensory Memory

Sensory memory holds information just long enough for us to use them. We are bombarded with all the senses usin our ears, eyes, nose and mouth, and sometimes, there's too much!

SHORT TERM MEMORY!!!!

Now you know what sensory memory is. Let me tell you the next stage of memory which is the short term memory (STM). For your information, if an incoming sensory message is important enough to enter consciousness, that message will move from sensory memory to the next stage of memory, short term memory. So, what is short term memory? Short term memory is the memory system in which information is held for brief periods of time while being used.

Our friend Dory suffers from short term memory loss. It runs in the family.

So, how the information enters into the STM? The information can enter by selective attention. Selective attention is the ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory input (focusing on specific stimuli). With selective attention, it determines what is moved to the next level of memory. For example, when you are talking with your friends, do you really think that you remember everything what they said? Nope, right? This is because you are only paying attention at certain things of what they said. When this happened, you are using selective attention to enter your information into the STM. You get it? If you are still blurr, let me tell you other example. If you are in a party where there is a lot of noise and several conversations going on in the background, why would you still able to notice when someone says your name? This is because of selective attention too. In that situation, you are paying attention to those who are calling your names (Let say that at that party you know nobody and you need someone to talk). You may ask why you not aware when someone is calling your name. There is no other explanation. This is because at that time, you are focusing on something else. That is why you are not aware of people calling your name. Ok?

In the short term memory, there is a test to know how much information humans can hold in short term memory at any one time. This test was conducted by George Miller (1956). The test is known as digit-span test which is the memory test in which a series of numbers is read to subjects in the experiment who are then asked to recall the numbers in order. Each series gets longer and longer, until the subjects cannot recall any of the numbers in order. From this test, Miller concluded that the capacity of short term memory is about seven items or pieces of information, plus or minus two items, or from five to nine bits of information. Miller called this the magical number seven, plus or minus two. You can try doing this test too. This is exciting!   

When you are trying to remember a series a number, do you remember it all at one time? Nope, right? You must be separate the numbers into parts, right? This is what we call chunking in psychology. Chunking is bits of information are combined into meaningful units, or chunks, so that more information can be held in STM. For example, when you are trying to remember your phone number, you will use chunking so that you can remember easily. In order to remember your phone number, you must be always repeating the numbers, right? This is called as maintenance rehearsal. 

Maintenance rehearsal is a practice of saying some information to be remembered over and over in one’s head in order to maintain it in short-term memory (STMs tend to be encoded in auditory form). With this type of rehearsal, information will stay in short-term memory until rehearsal stops. When rehearsal stops, the memory rapidly decays and is forgotten. It is said that memory only lasts from about 12 to 30 seconds without rehearsal. For example, when you are revising your study, you will always repeat what you have read in order for you to remember. If you are not repeating it, you may easily forget it. But, if anything interferes with maintenance rehearsal, memories are also likely to be lost.  For example, when you are counting something, then there is someone else interrupts you, you will probably forget what the last number was and have to start all over again. Interference in STM can also happen if the amount of information to be held in STM exceeds its capacity. Information already in STM may be “pushed out” to make room for newer information. This is why you may easily remember the first few names of people you meet, but you may have problem remembering the others. When you are facing this kind of problems, you can try to remember the names according to their appearance. Or you can create a song about their names. I am sure when you are doing this, you will easily remember the names.

From this lesson, I can learn how to remember something easily. Now I know that if I am no longer focusing on something, I will hardly remember it. This is why it is really important for us to pay attention in the class and in whatever we do. Try to focus as much as we can!

Short Term Memory

The Long or Short Lost of Knowledge

Ali, a bright young man, is about to face the test of his lifetime: SPM. Knowing that it would be totally hard to score for the History subject, Ali went through History book thoroughly hoping that he would not forget anything.

However, during his studies, he had always listen to music. Bruno Mars, Linkin Park and Maroon 5 are his favourite celebrities.  What Ali don’t realise is that his attention was more to his music than his studies. In other words, he has more attention to his echoic memory instead of his iconic memory.

In that the exam, it includes question about dates which includes days, months and years. He thought that it was like a digit-span test because he had to memorise all of this numbers. So, he studied these dates at the last 5 minutes before entering the examination hall so he could really remember it. He practiced saying it over and over and over and over again so that he could so he could store it in his short term memory which is basically called maintenance rehearsal. He also chunks the numbers so that he could remember easily.

He was confident as he sit down on his desk when suddenly everything that he had just learned was lost. He could not remember any of this dates. Should Ali know that his STM just last about 12 to 0 seconds he would have never done that. Other questions was hard even though he had studied for them. Poor Ali. Nonetheless, he managed to get an A.

Long Term Memory

Long term memories (LTM) - the system of memory into which all the information is placed to                                                     be kept more or less permanently.

Elaborative rehearsal  - a method of transferring information from STM into LTM by making                                            that information meaningful in some way.

Retrieval of Long Term Memory: Cues to Help Remember

Retrieval cues are stimulus’ for that help you remember a certain memory. As students, we see retrieval cues when we answer multiple answer questions in tests. You will first see the question and then you see the answers right? Hopefully, one of those answers would be a retrieval cue to help you choose the correct answer!

Encoding specifity is the tendency for memory of information to be improved if related information when the memory is first formed is available is also available when the memory is being retrieved. I think that this information is golden and eye-opening because it means we will do better in tests taken in class rather than tests taken in the exam hall (which is ALWAYS FREEZING so maybe ADFP students should learn in freezing classes?). 

And, this also means that if we were to chew gum in class, we would do better in our tests if we were to chew the same flavored gum during a test of the same subject. O.O

State-dependent learning tells us that memories formed during a particular physiological state will be easier to recall while in a similar state. For example when a couple (ahem excuse me) is fighting, then they would only remember the bad things in their relationship where they experience the same state, which is angry. If they were to have a good time, then they'd remember the good times when they were in a happy state!

Recall

Then we have recall, a type of memory retrieval in which the information to be retrieved must be “pulled” from memory with very few external cues. Students recall when they are trying to write an essay during a test, and when they can’t, they experience retrieval failure. Retrieval failure is when an information is in the long term memory but you can't access it because there isn't any retrieval cues. 

Tip-of -the-tongue phenomenon. It happens all the time!

Huehuehue

During recall, we may experience the serial position effect, which is the tendency to more accurately remember the beginning and end of information, compared to the middle of it. Say you went to out with your friends for a fun day at Sunway Lagoon (wooooo!). It would be easier to remember how the day started and end, compared to what you did at the middle of it.

If you remember how you bought the tickets, booked the lockers, first stepped into the swimming pool, had your first ride, then that is the primacy effect. You remember the things at the beginning.

If you remember the last ride you went on, the changing room full of people, the setting sun, the dinner you had with your friends, then that is the recency effect. You are remembering the end.

Recognition

While recall is retrieving information, recognition is matching the information to a stored fact.

When recognizing something, we may experience a false postitive, the error of recognition in which people think they recognize something, but actually has never experienced it before.

Automatic Encoding and Flashbulb Memory

Automatic encoding is the tendency for certain information to enter long-term memory with no effort of encoding.

You don't try to remember what you ate for breakfast yesterday do you? But, most people could probably remember it without any effort. *amazed

Flashbulb memory is the type of automatic encoding that occurs because an unexpected event has strong emotional associations for the person remembering it.

These animals experience flashbulb memory too.

Being friendzoned by Derpette was unexpected and it has a strong emotional connection. The memory would probably be encoded by flashbulb memory.

Forgetting

In psychology, forgetting means when the information that we once had disappeared or no longer available in our memory. The information might not disappeared, but it can be retrieved.

            Now, let us start with encoding failure. Encoding is a process where new data is stored in the memory. Therefore, encoding failure is a situation where the data is failed to be stored in the memory. To understand more about encoding failure, let us ask the expert, the MEN IN BLACK!

I’m sure that many people have watched this famous movie. A story about 2 secret agent who fight the aliens and save the world! But, why MEN IN BLACK??

Because they are bad guy!

See, that bad device the man holds up there. It’s a forgetting machine! Every time their mission got exposed to the public, the device is used to make all the people forget about what had just happened. To prevent the public from knowing the fact that aliens was there on earth, both the men in black use the encoding failure concepts! So, stay away from MIB!

Different from memory decay and disuse. In decay and disuse of that particular memory, the data is there in the memory, but it might fades away over time, or because it is not used.

Decay is a type of forgetting that occurs when memories fade over time. This does NOT apply to Long Term Memory, but rather sensory storage and Short Term Memory. The main reason this occurs in sensory and/or short term memory is that we don't need to process and store all the information that we encounter in the world, so we simply don't attend to, recognize, or rehearse all the information, and this information just fades away not to be stored in our long term memories.

While disused memory also tend to be forgotten as well. For example, consider Manny Pacquiao,

a very famous boxer.

Right now, he had all the professional boxing moves in his memory, so, he can easily knock down his opponent. But, if Manny leaves boxing for a very long period, he surely will lose because all the skills he didn’t use will disappeared. So, never stop training!

Yeah! That’s an annoyed face when you get interfered. In psychology, interference also affects our memory, which tends to make us lose the information. Basically, there are 2 types of interferences in forgetting:

1.      Proactive interference

-          Inability to remember the new information, interfered by the old information.

2.      Retroactive interferences

-          Inability to remember the old information, interfered by the new information.

PROactive Interference:

For this part, let us consider Manny again.

If we are to put Manny, a boxer who’s attacking skills mainly focus only on the hands into a MMA match against the former MMA champion, Brock Lesnar. Even if Manny trained so hard in MMA, with all the new skills he need to learn-  the kicking, ground grappling, submissions, take down, etc, a situation called proactive interference will definitely occur, where Manny will be distracted by his boxing moves (old memory ) to learn the new MMA moves ( new information )

RETROactive interference :

For this, let’s take a look at a very simple example.

At first, the girl are studying French subject and after few days she studies the Spanish. When she has to take the Spanish mid-term exam, proactive interference occurs where her old knowledge interferes with the Spanish subject.

However, when she have learned Spanish subject thoroughly and suddenly she has to sit for the French mid-term, her new knowledge interferes with the French subject. This is what we call as retroactive interference.

This diagram might help you to understand better about proactive and retroactive interference.

Other than that, there are also some physical aspects of memory when we retrieve informations.

1.      Engram- the physical change that takes place in the brain when a memory is formed.

               When we are retrieving information into our brain, actually there are some
               physical changes in our brain. Just like we work out, there are physical changes    
                in the muscles.

1.      Hippocampus – area of brain responsible for the formation of LTMs.

Amnesia

¨  Retrograde amnesia - loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma backwards, or loss of memory for the past.

¨  Anterograde amnesia - loss of memory from the point of injury or trauma forward, or the inability to form new long-term memories (“senile dementia”)

This movie is the best example of the anterograde amnesia. Watch this movie if you want to know more about this kind of amnesia.

Therefore, we have learnt so much about memory, haven't we? Boston Psychology is great to have memory. :D

We can remember the good times, the great times, the fun times. And we can also remember the sad times, regretful times, angry times, although we might desperately want to forget such memories.

But our memories are precious la! Cannot just simply forget because it makes us who we are today.

Thank you for reading Boston Psychology and stay tuned for next week's post for more psychology wooo! We would greatly appreciate it if you would kindly give your responses and opinions on how to improve our blog so we can make it more fun and interesting for our readers to enjoy.

Goodnight everyone and study psychology!