Memory: Unit I Introduction to Psychology of Memory, Universidad Europea

MEMORY: Unit I Introduction to Psychology of Memory

Memory and Learning Processes

ue 2024/2025 David Prada CrespoCONTENTS

Definition of memory

First scientific approaches

1. Ebbinghaus
2. Bartlett

Universidad EuropeaDefiniton of memory Universidad Europea

DEFINITION OF MEMORY

que Memory is the ability to codify, store and retrieve to consciousness the information that has been learned (Campos et al., 2018).

• It is an essential cognitive function composed of several systems (sensory memory, short-term/working memory and long-term memory) and processes (encoding, storage and retrieval of information) that depend on different brain structures.
• Learning processes and memory depend on other cognitive processes (attention, perception, etc.) and are influenced by previous knowledge.
• Memory helps us know everything necessary to adapt to our environment optimally (avoid risky situations, maintain social and ethical norms, understand who we are and what we lived in the past, learn new abilities, etc.).

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First Scientific Approaches

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FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: BARTLETT

The War of the Ghosts

One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals, and while they were there it became foggy and calm. Then they hear war-cries, and they thought: "Maybe this is a war-party." They escaped to the shore, and hid behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the noise of paddles, and saw one canoe coming up to them. There were five men in the canoe, and they said: "What do you think? We wish to take you along. We are going up the river to make war on the people." One of the young men said: "I have no arrows." "Arrows are in the canoe," they said. "I will not go along. I might be killed. My relatives do not know where I have gone. But you," he said, turning to the other, "may go with them." So one of the young men went, but the other returned home. And the warriors went up the river to a town on the other side of Kalama. The people came down to the water, and they began to fight, and many were killed. But presently the young man heard one of the warriors say: "Quick, let us go home: that Indian has been hit." Now he thought: "Oh, they are ghosts." He did not feel sick, but they said he had been shot. So the canoes went back to Egulac, and the young man went ashore to his house, and made a fire. And he told everybody and said: "Behold I accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellows were killed, and many of those who attacked us were killed. They said I was hit, and I did not feel sick." He told it all, and then he came quiet. When the sun rose he fell down. Something black came out of his mouth. His face became contorted. The people jumped up and cried. He was dead. Universidad Europea

FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES

How can we study memory?

Inside the laboratory vs. Beyond the laboratory

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) Frederick Bartlett (1886-1969) Universidad Europea

FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: EBBINGHAUS

• Ebbinghaus proved that memory could be studied using a rigorous scientific and experimental method.
• He thought that the only way to study the complex subject of human memory was to simplify the problem.
• In order to avoid prior knowledge he invented the nonsense syllable: consonant-vowel-consonant: zug, pij, tev ...
• He tested only one person: himself. He used controlled conditions.
• To better understand the human memory he created the savings method to study forgetting over time in a scientific way.

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FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: EBBINGHAUS

• You will see a series of nonsense words.
• You have to repeat them as many times as you need until you can reproduce them in the same order
• You have to do it aloud, in the same order and quickly

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FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: EBBINGHAUS

jih, baz, fub, yox, suj, xir, dax, leg, vum, pag, kel, wab, tuv, zof, gek, hiw Universidad Europea

FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: EBBINGHAUS

we Ebbinghaus studied how many syllables he could remember after different intervals of time: After 1 hour, After 8 hours, 24 hours ...

100 Percent retention 80 60 Forgetting curve EBBINGHAUS 40 20 0 20 min. 1 hour 8 hours 24 hours 48 hours 5 days 31 days He concluded that the most forgetting takes place soon after we learn something. Other authors have demonstrated that forgetting is not as extensive as Ebbinghaus thought. Universidad Europea

FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: EBBINGHAUS

How many trials do you need to re-learn the list? How long did it take to relearn?

1200 TIME TO RELEARN (SEC) Mean time to relearn after 24 hours (seconds) 1000 800 600 400 200 0 0 8 16 24 32 42 53 64 Number of repetitions on day 1 RATE OF LEARNING NUMBER OF REPETITIONS ON DAY 1 The amount learnt is a simple function of the amount of time spent on the learning

FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: BARTLETT

we

• Bartlett rejected the learning of meaningless words as a proper way of studying memory (prior knowledge, experiences, attitudes and emotions are left behind)
• Instead he used complex material that you could encounter in daily life such as stories.
• His approach constitutes an effort towards understanding memory beyond laboratory experiments (ecological validity).

BARTLETT'S CLASSICAL EXPERIMENT (1932) "THE WAR OF THE GHOSTS" CONDUCTED WITH CAMBRIDGE STUDENTS

Universidad EuropeaWrite down all the information you remember from the story you read ( "The War of the Ghosts") Universidad Europea

FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: BARTLETT

RESULTS

• The folk story came to look more like an english story: canoes became boats, foreign names disappeared, the supernatural elements dropped out and the whole narrative structure was adapted to English conventions (Wagoner, 2012).
• Participants used their own cultural "schemes" to change and reconstruct the story.
• Systematic errors and distortions produced in the participants' recalls were due to the intrusion of their schematic knowledge. Schema: a long-term structured representation of knowledge that was used by the rememberer to make sense of new material and subsequently store and recall it (Baddeley, et.al. 2009)

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FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: BARTLETT

we

• Bartlett gets rid of the notion that memory is primarily reproductive or reduplicative. Furthermore, elaboration and invention are common features of ordinary remembering.
• A central feature of Bartlett's approach was to stress the participant's effort after meaning; exactly the opposite of Ebbinghaus's explicit attempt to avoid meaning.
• The person plays an active role in the process of remembering.
• Socio-cultural elements influence our remembering.
• Memory is not 100% reliable! (importance in witnesses).

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FIRST SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES: BARTLETT

we

• Bartlett gets rid of the notion that memory is primarily reproductive or reduplicative. Furthermore, elaboration and invention are common features of ordinary remembering. Reconstructive memory: remembering is a re-construction of the past, not a direct copy.
• Dooling and Christiaansen (1977): Carol Harris's need for professional help: Carol Harris was a problem child from birth. She was wild, stubborn, and violent. By the time Carol turned eight, she was still unmanageable. Her parents were very concerned about her mental health. There was no good institution for her problem in her state. Her parents finally decided to take some action. They hired a private teacher for Carol. Participants were told a story. After one week, they were encouraged to remember the story. Some of them were told the original story was about another character (Hellen Keller, a deaf, dumb, and blind girl. She was a writer and activist), and a significant percentage of participants believed that.

Universidad EuropeaElizabeth Loftus: The fiction of memory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zaygvyk_twM CRI JENE DO NOT GRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS OSS CRIM para ocurra este tipo de contaminación en la memoria. Elizabeth Loftus: La ficción en la memoria | TED [Subtítulos en Castellano]