1. Psychology 3717 Dr. David Brodbeck

2. Introduction Memory is a part of cognitive psychology So, let ’ s start by defining cognition Matlin (1994) – Cognition, or mental activity involves the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of knowledge Gietman (1984) – What organisms know and how they know it

3. More definitions Ellis and Hunt (1983) – Cognitive psychology proceeds with its study of mental functioning through the scientific method… Tulving (1972) – One of the unmistakable characteristics of an immature science is [its] looseness of definitions

4. You have to think about these ideas in terms of the study of memory There are some commonalities about these definitions Pattern recognition for example Attention Knowledge about the world Autobiographical events imagery

5. More commonalities Problem solving Creativity You need to use memory, indeed to acquire, store and retrieve information in order to do any of these things We can look at memory as the persistence of learning

6. Pretty much everything we do as humans needs the use of memory So without memory we could not do those other cognitive things It may be said that memory is the core of cognition

7. Question about memory All science begins with the statement ‘ I do not know ’ Are memories permanent? Where are they stored? Can I improve my memory? How are they stored? If I forget stuff is it really gone? Is our memory similar to other species?

8. There is a catch We of course want to study it scientifically Science is about measurement, control and prediction Science is about experimentation Science is about cause -> effect relationships How do we measure and control something we ‘ can ’ t kick? ’

9. Operationalize! We have to say we will measure variable A, which we believe to be correlated with memory or the result thereof So, percentage of words recalled Word fragments completed Types of errors made

10. analogies Wax tablet The sieve The library The workbench The network The filing cabinet The computer

11. What is common about those? Memory is seen as a thing A kind of space if you will Encoding Storage Retrieval (some have more of each than others)

12. Attributes of memory Acquisition Representation Direct experiences are primary memory Previous states, working on stuff with other info is secondary memory William James said this and we still say it today!

13. Ebbinghaus Three different ways of retrieval Recollect the past intentionally Unintentional too Memory can show up without awareness Again we still use distinctions like this today!

14. Other attributes Memory can be reconstructive Basically memory is multidimensional There are many forms, everything from knowing the capital of Viet Nam to knowing how to ride a bike to knowing what you had for breakfast (and knowing what breakfast is)

15. Investigating memory There are some general principles – Forgetting curve – Power law of practice – Encoding specificity Free recall Recognition Sentence verification priming

16. More investigations… Practice effects Imaging Analysis of errors

17. Models, Atkinson-Shiffrin Sensory Register Short Term Memory Long Term Memory

18. Neural networks Separate processors or nodes Deal with recognizing different things, attributes, characteristics what have you Say from lines to letters to words to concepts Connections, MANY connections

19. Other models Episodic v semantic Procedural v declarative Working v reference Again, share some commonalities

20. conclusions Memory is a diverse and exciting field It is possible to measure memory, indirectly, and now, maybe directly There is a place for the neuro types, but the psychologists still need to be around