Unit 7 Memory Module 16 Types and Stages of Memory Introduction to Memory There are people who are capable of amazing feats of memory The Russian psychologist A R Luria has described the abilities of a man known as S who seems to have unlimited memory Idiot is an old term that was used to describe profound mental retardation Now we just say profound mental retardation Kim and people like him are called savants The term memory refers to our capacity to acquire store and retrieve the information and habits that guide our behavior This capacity is largely modulated by associative learning mechanisms Our memories allow us to do relatively simple things such as remembering where we parked our car or the name of the current president of the United States We can also form complex memories such as how to ride a bicycle or write a computer program Our memories define us as individuals memories are the records of our experiences our relationships our successes and our failures It provides us with the means to use mental time travel to access a lifetime of experiences and learning Our memories are not simply recording devices that input store and retrieve the world around us Rather we actively process and interpret information as we remember and recollect it and these cognitive processes influence what we remember and how we remember it Because memories are constructed not recorded when we remember events we don t reproduce exact replicas of those events Our prior knowledge can influence our memory We are influenced by the ease with which we can retrieve information from memory or by the information that we are exposed to after we first learn something Basic memory research has revealed profound inaccuracies in our memories and judgments Types of Memory Explicit and Implicit Type Description Explicit Semantic episodic Implicit Procedural priming classical conditioning Explicit Memory Explicit memory refers to knowledge or experiences that can be consciously and intentionally remembered Recalling when you have a dentist appointment or what you wore to senior prom relies on explicit memory There are two types of explicit memory episodic and semantic Episodic memory refers to the firsthand experiences or episodes that we have on a daily basis e g recollections of our high school graduation day the show we saw in New York last summer Semantic memory refers to our knowledge of facts and concepts about the world e g that the absolute value of 90 is greater than the absolute value of 9 one definition of the word affect is the experience of feeling or emotion Ways to Measure Memory Memory is assessed using measures that require an individual to consciously retrieve information A recall test is a measure of explicit memory that involves retrieving information that has been previously learned and it requires us to use a search strategy to perform that retrieval We rely on our recall memory when we take an essay test because the test requires us to generate previously remembered information A multiple choice test is an example of a recognition memory test a measure of memory that involves determining whether information has been seen or learned before Recall is more difficult than recognition Recall as on essay tests involves two steps first generating an answer and then determining whether it seems to be the correct one Recognition as on multiple choice tests involves determining which item from a list seems most correct Recall and recognition memory measures tend to be correlated Students who do better on a multiple choice exam will also by and large do better on an essay exam A third way of measuring memory is known as relearning Measures of relearning or savings assess how much more quickly information is processed or learned when it is studied again after it has already been learned but then forgotten If you have taken some Spanish courses in the past you might have forgotten most of the vocabulary you learned But if you were to work on your Spanish again you d learn the vocabulary much faster the second time around Relearning can be a more sensitive measure of memory than recall or recognition because it allows assessing memory in terms of how much or how fast rather than simply correct versus incorrect responses Relearning also allows us to measure memory for procedures like driving a car or playing a piano piece as well as memory for facts and figures Implicit Memory Implicit memory refers to knowledge that we cannot consciously access Implicit memory is nevertheless exceedingly important to us because it has a direct effect on our behavior Implicit memory refers to the influence of experience on behavior even if the individual is not aware of those influences There are three general types of implicit memory procedural memory classical conditioning effects and priming Procedural memory refers to our often unexplainable knowledge of how to do things It allows us to perform complex tasks even though we may not be able to explain to others how we do them The idea of implicit memory helps explain how infants are able to learn The ability to crawl walk and talk are procedures and these skills are easily and efficiently developed while we are children despite the fact that as adults we have no conscious memory of having learned them A second type of implicit memory is classical conditioning effects in which we learn often without effort or awareness to associate neutral stimuli such as a sound or a light with another stimulus such as food which creates a naturally occurring response such as enjoyment or salivation The memory for the association is demonstrated when the conditioned stimulus the sound begins to create the same response as the unconditioned stimulus the food did before the learning The final type of implicit memory is known as priming or changes in behavior as a result of experiences that have happened frequently or recently Priming refers both to the activation of knowledge e g we can prime the concept of kindness by presenting people with words related to kindness and to the influence of that activation on behavior people who are primed with the concept of kindness may act more kindly One measure of the influence of priming on implicit memory is the word fragment test in which a person is asked to fill in missing letters to make words Once a concept is primed it influences our behaviors for instance on word fragment tests Our everyday behaviors are influenced by priming in a wide