Chapter 5 Scientist divide working memory into two parts working memory brief immediate memory for material we are currently processing long term memory can retain info for decades Large capacity contains memory for experiences and information that we have accumulated throughout our life 3 components of memory Episodic events that have occurred to you personally it helps you go back and forth and reminisce about earlier situations that have occurred in your life Includes conversations that happened 10 years ago as well as 10 min ago Semantic Organized knowledge about the world Including words and other fractural Procedural knowledge on how to do something Ex Learning how to ride a bike 3 aspects of long term memory encoding you process the info and represent it in your memory Retrieval you locate information in the storage and you access it in your storage Autobiography process related information from your storage that is about yourself Levels of processing levels of processing show that people typically remember stimuli more accurately with deep meaningful processing rather than with shallow sensory processing deep processing encourages more accurate recall because of distinctiveness and elaborating self references show that if your memory is typically more accurate if you relate the stimuli to your own personal experience to obtain a valid assessment of the self reference effect the stimuli must be classified in terms of the participant s actual mental activities rather than in terms of the experimenter s instructions Self reference effect is effective for several reasons the self is a rich source of memory cues self references instructions encourage people to think about how their own characteristic s are interrelated self reference increases peoples rich complex rehearsal according to the encoding specificity effect our recall is more accurate if the context during retrieval is similar to the context during encoding Encoding specificity effect is most likely to operate in certain situations when memory is tested by recall instead of recognition when real life events are studied when the original event happened long ago when mental context is emphasized Encoding specify can modify the depth of processing effect Research on the influence of emotions and mood on memory shows that people generally recall pleasant stimuli more accurately than unpleasant stimuli people recall more information if they see the material during a pleasant media presentation rather than a violent media presentation unpleasant memories are more likely than pleasant memories to grow neutral as time passes Memory is more accurate when the material to be learned is congruent with a person s current mood Explicit memory task instructs participants to recall or recognize information Implicit memory task requires participants to perform a cognitive task such as completing a word that has missing letters research indicates that depth of processing typically has a major impact on an explicit memory task but it has 1 2 3 4 no affect on an implicit memory task individuals with retrograde amnesia have difficulty recalling events that occurred prior brain damage Individuals with anterograde amnesia have difficulty recalling events that occurred after brain damage They may recall almost nothing on test of explicitly memory however on test of implicit memory they typically perform accurately as people without brain damage Expertise has an important effect on LTM although expertise is context specific Compared to novices experts have cognitive advantages such as well organized knowledge structures and vivid visual images according to the research on the own ethnicity bias people are more accurate in recognizing faces from their own ethnic group in part because their expertise makes these faces more distinctive autobiographical memory is typically high in ecological validity this research shows that our memories are usually accurate although we may errors on some details and we may blend together information from different events memory schemas encourage us to make some errors in recalling events in addition we may reveal a consistency bias by exaggerating the similarity between our current self schema and our previous characteristics The research on source monitoring shows that we may have difficulty deciding where we learned some info the research on reality monitoring shows that we may have difficulty deciding whether something really happened instead of imagining it flashbulb memories are rich with information and we are often confident that they are accurate however even our memories for national tragedies are not especially accurate in eyewitness testimony the post events misinformation effect can occur if misleading information is introduced after the witness has seen an event The research is consistent with the constructive approach to memory Errors in eye witness memory are more likely to occur in stressful situations if the witness observed it long ago misinformation is plausible is social pressure was applied if positive feedback was supplied to the eye witness an eye witness self confidence is not strongly correlated with his or her memory accuracy Both sides of the recovered memory false memory controversy are at least partially correct some people may forget a painful childhood memory and recall it years later people apparently construct a memory of abuse that never really occurred and still people have accurately memory of events that occurred in their life years after Chapter 6 Metacognition is your knowledge and control of your cognitive processes Three important aspects of metacognition 1 Metamemory 2 the tip of the tongue phenomenon 3 metacomphrehensions a variety of factors influence peoples metamemory accuracy People are more accurate when they are judging individual items when their judgment is delayed when the judge their performance on multiple choice questions rather than performance on essays in a study by Knouse and her coauthors people with ADHD in their metamemory judgments both immediate and delayed students are not sufficiently aware that some memory strategies are more effective than others when task is easy students spend more time studying difficult material rather than easy material When the task s difficult and time is limited students typically study the material that they are most likely to master The research on the tip of the tongue phenomenon shows that even when people cannot
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