Memory

Storage, retrieval, eye witness testimony

Can we trust eye witness testimony? (p165)

• Piaget’s “abduction”• Wording impacts an eye-witnesses response• Problem of selective focus• Ethnic-racial biases• Power of suggestion• Should we rely on them for lack of an

alternative?

Processes of Memory

en·gramengram1. a hypothetical permanent change in the brain accounting for the existence of memory; a memory trace

po·ten·ti·a·tionpotentiation1. the increase in strength of nerve impulses along pathways that have been used previously, either short-term or long-term.

Storage

• Definition: maintenance of encoded information over time.– Characteristics: rely on strategies to help properly

maintain encoded material.– Maintenance Rehearsal: repetition of information• Relatively “poor” effectiveness

– Elaborative Rehearsal: connecting new information to what you already know• Relatively effective. (Example?)

Storage

• Filing Systems: categorize information (US History events).– Can hinder elaborative learning

• Freud’s “Eternal City”: The mind is like a city in which all things ever built still stand.– Make it difficult to navigate

• Filing Errors: place information in inappropriate categories.

Freud’s “Eternal City” Analogy, Civilization and Its Discontents

• Class Reading• http://sites.middlebury.edu/individualandthes

ociety/files/2010/09/civ-and-its-discon.pdf• P725-727– Beginning paragraph, “This brings us to the more

general problem…”

Retrieval

• Definition: locating sorted information and bringing it back into conscious thought.

• Characteristics– Simple Retrieval: your name, DOB– Complex Retrieval: methods of encoding and

storage to reconstruct information– Context-Dependent Memories: situation of the

event’s occurrence is mimicked and the event is recalled.

Retrieval

• Godden & Baddeley, Context-Dependent Experiment

1. Group A asked to memorize a word list in a pool.

2. Group B asked to memorize outside of the water.

3. During recall, each group remembered the list better when in their initial environments

Retrieval

• State-Dependent Memories: recall based on the conscious state in which an event occurred.

• Emotions help you recall other times you felt the same way. (Drug comrades)

• Tip-of-the-tongue Phenomenon: feeling of remember or knowing with the inability to verbalize.– Result of poor organization or incomplete encoding