Encoding Memory
- Mnemonic devices: memory strategies that help you remember; method of loci: memory palace; visual cues; acronyms
- Chunking: combining concepts into groups; other grouping techniques: categories + hierarchies
- Spacing effect: massed vs. distributed practice: fast but easy to forget vs. solid learning
- Serial position effect: primacy effect; recency effect - start & end are the easiest to remember
Storing Memory
- Rehearsal: meaningful rehearsing (elaborative rehearsal) promotes memory retention
- Autobiographical memory: memories connected to our own lives or selves; more memorable
- Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve: memory decays fast (50-80%) in first days, and then slower
- Infantile amnesia: inability to recall the first two to three years of lives; normal development process; shows memory is affected by developmental limitations
Storage processes affected by physical impairment
- Retrograde vs. Anterograde amnesia: forgetting the past vs. unable to form new memory
- Alzheimer's disease: a brain condition that affects memory, thinking, and behavior, common cause of dementia
Retrieving Memory
- Retrieval: Recall (remembering without cues, e.g. essay) vs Recognition (relies on retrieval cues; e.g. multiple choice)
- Retrieval cues: a cue/clue to remind you, to help you retrieve memory
- Overlearning: rehearsing/practicing something so well that it's resistant to forgetting
- Priming: a cue encountered earlier activates similar concepts -> identify/respond to them faster
- Context-dependent memory: recall is easier in the same environment of encoding, e.g. classroom
- Mood-dependent memory: recall is easier in the same mood of encoding, e.g. happy/angry
- State-dependent memory: recall is easier in the same physical state of encoding, e.g. drunk
- Testing effect: taking tests during the learning phase facilitates long-term retrieval
- Metacognition: thinking about thinking; understanding of your thinking/memory strategies
Forgetting and Others Challenges
- Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: you know something, but jsut can't recall it at the moment
- Proactive vs Retroactive interference: what you learn earlier vs later can affect your learning
- Repression: burying traumatic memory into unconscious (psychodynamic theory)
- Misinformation effect: wording of questions asked to retrieve our memory influences our memory itself -> memory reconstruction / confabulation
- Source amnesia: sometimes we forget how/where our declarative memory comes from
- Constructive memory (memory reconstruction/confabulation): changing your memory when recall, due to influence or to fit a schema