CHAPTER 8 MEMORY AND INFORMATION PROCESSING

1. CHAPTER 8 MEMORY AND INFORMATION PROCESSING

2. Chapter 8: Figures & Tables SR7e Image Figure 8.1 (A model of information processing) SR7e Image Figure 8.7 (Cognitive development may resemble overlapping waves more than a staircase leading from one stage to another)

3. Learning Objectives • How do information-processing theorists propose that our memory is organized? • How is information learned, remembered, and recalled? • What is the difference between implicit and explicit memory?

4. Information-Processing Approach • Emerged amid evidence that the behaviorist approach could not account for performance on all learning and memory tasks • The analogy is the computer, with its ability to systematically convert input to output • Emphasizes basic mental processes in attention, perception, memory, and decision-making

5. Memory Systems • The sensory register logs input, holds an environmental stimulus for a fraction of a second • With attention, information is moved to short-term memory • Holds about 7 chunks of information • Short-term memory may be passive or active • Active short-term memory is working memory • Stores information while actively working on it • Remembered information is moved to long-term memory

6. Caption: A model of information processing

7. Memory Systems • Memory processes • Encoding – getting information into the system • Consolidation – processing and organizing information in a form suitable for long-term storage • Consolidation transforms a sensory-perceptual experience into a long-lasting memory trace • Facilitated by sleep • Storage – holding information in a long-term memory store • A constructive process, not a static recording • Retrieval – information is obtained from long-term memory

8. Memory Systems • Retrieval can be accomplished in various ways • Recognition memory – choose from among the options • Example: a multiple-choice question on an exam • Recall memory – active retrieval without the aid of cues to remember • Example: “How did Atkinson and Shiffrin describe the human information-processing system?” • Cued recall memory – retrieval is facilitated by a hint or a cue • Example: “How did Atkinson and Shiffrin describe the movement of information from one stage to the next in their three-stage model of information processing?”

9. Implicit and Explicit Memory • Two distinct components of long-term memory – implicit and explicit – respond differently depending upon the nature of the task • Implicit memory (procedural memory) occurs unintentionally, automatically, and without awareness • Example: how to ride a bicycle • Remains intact and capacity does not change over the lifespan

10. Implicit and Explicit Memory • Explicit memory (declarative memory) involves deliberate, effortful recollection • Includes two forms • Semantic – memory for general facts • Episodic – memory for specific experiences • Damage to the medial temporal brain structures can impair creation of episodic memories • Capacity of explicit memory increases from infancy to adulthood

11. Problem-Solving • Problem-solving is using the information-processing system to reach a goal or make a decision • Problem-solving uses executive control processes in planning and monitoring cognition • Selection • Organization • Manipulation • Interpretation of information

12. Learning Objectives • How do researchers assess infant memory? • What information can infants typically remember? • What are the limitations of infants’ memory?

13. The Infant – Memory • Researchers have used infants’ capacity for imitation to assess their memory capabilities • Imitation • Infants have been observed sticking out their tongues and moving their mouths in ways consistent with a model • Infants as young as 6 months display deferred imitation, the ability to imitate a novel act after a delay

14. The Infant – Memory • Researchers have used infants’ capacity for habituation to assess their memory capabilities • Habituation • Learning not to respond to a stimulus, such as eventually not hearing the drip of a leaky faucet • From birth, humans habituate to repeatedly- presented lights, sounds, smells • Newborns are capable of recognition memory and prefer a new stimulus to a familiar one

15. The Infant – Memory • Researchers have used infants’ capacity for operant conditioning to assess their memory capabilities • Operant conditioning • Rovee-Collier and colleagues tied a ribbon to infants’ ankles and to mobiles • The infants quickly learned that leg kicking brought about the positively reinforcing consequence of a jiggling mobile • Also used cued recall: 2-4 weeks later, infants who were shown the mobile kicked vigorously when the ribbon was attached to their ankles • Demonstrated that early memories are cue-dependent and context-specific

16. The Infant – Recall • As infants age, they demonstrate recall or deferred imitation over longer periods • Infants as young as 6 months can imitate novel behaviors after a 24-hour delay • By age 2, events can be recalled for months and recall is less cue-dependent • Language helps memory performance • By age 2, infants have become verbal and can use words to reconstruct events that happened months earlier

17. The Infant – Recall and Problem-Solving • As infants age, they demonstrate recall or deferred imitation over longer periods • Infants as young as 6 months can imitate novel behaviors after a 24-hour delay • By age 2, events can be recalled for months and recall is less cue-dependent • Language helps memory performance • By 14 months, infants have learned that adults can help them solve problems • Infants pay attention to cues provided by adults and will solicit help from adults by pointing, etc.

18. Learning Objectives • What are the four major hypotheses about why memory improves during childhood? • What evidence supports each hypothesis?

19. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • Four major hypotheses improvements in learning and memory during childhood • Changes in basic capacities • Neural advances in the brain permit more working memory space and faster processing of information • Changes in memory strategies • Older children use effective strategies for storing and retrieving information • Increased knowledge about memory • Older children know more about their memory • Increased knowledge about the world • Material to be learned is more familiar and familiar material is easier to learn

20. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • Across childhood and into adolescence, there are improvements in short-term or working memory • There are not improvements in the basic capacities of long-term memory or the sensory register • Improvements in the capacity of short-term memory between ages 6-7 and ages 12-13 • Corresponds to maturation of the hippocampus and other parts of the brain involved in consolidation of memory

21. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • Across childhood and into adolescence there are improvements in short-term, or working memory • The speed and efficiency of mental processing in short-term memory improves with age • Allows simultaneous mental operations • Basic mental processes become automatic, which frees working memory for other purposes • Greater knowledge of a domain (e.g., math) increases the speed with which new, related information can be processed • Changes correspond to maturation of the frontal lobes of the brain

22. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • Memory or encoding strategies develop in predictable order during childhood • Perseveration errors decline by age 4 • Continued use of a strategy that was successful in the past despite the strategy’s current lack of success • Children increase their use of rehearsal • Repeating items to be learned and remembered • Children master organization later in childhood • Classifying items into meaningful groups • Elaboration is the last strategy to develop • Actively creating meaningful links between items to be remembered

23. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • According to Miller and colleagues, children typically progress through four phases on the way to successful strategy use • Initially, children have a mediation deficiency – they cannot spontaneously use or benefit from strategies • Then production deficiency occurs – children can use strategies they are taught but cannot produce them on their own • Then there is utilization deficiency, in which children produce a strategy, but its use does not benefit task performance • In the final stage, children can produce and benefit from using a memory strategy

24. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • During childhood, there are improvements in metacognition • Knowledge of the human mind and of the range of cognitive processes • Children with greater metamemory awareness demonstrate better memory ability • Knowledge of memory and understanding how to monitor and regulate memory processes

25. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • Children’s knowledge of a content area – their knowledge base – affects learning and memory performance • Expertise allows children to form more and larger mental chunks, which allows them to remember more

26. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • Conclusions about the development of learning and memory in childhood • Older children are faster information processors and can juggle more information in working memory • Maturation of the nervous system leads to improvements in consolidation of memories • Older and younger children, however, do not differ in terms of sensory register or long-term memory capacity

27. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • Conclusions • Older children use more effective memory strategies in encoding and retrieving information • Acquisition of memory strategies reflects qualitative rather than quantitative changes • Older children know more about memory; good metamemory may help children choose more appropriate strategies and control and monitor learning more effectively

28. The Child – Explaining Memory Development • Older children know more in general, and their larger knowledge base improves their ability to learn and remember • A richer knowledge base allows faster and more efficient processing of information related to the domain of knowledge

29. Learning Objectives • When do autobiographical memories begin, and what possible explanations can account for childhood amnesia? • How do scripts influence memory? • How do problem-solving capacities change during childhood? • What explanation does Siegler propose for changes in problem-solving?

30. Autobiographical Memories • Older children and adults have childhood or infantile amnesia; few autobiographical memories from their first years of life • Infants and toddlers may not have enough space in working memory to hold multiple pieces of information needed to encode and consolidate a memory about an event • May lack sufficient language skills • Early verbatim memories are unstable and likely to be lost

31. Autobiographical Memories – Scripts • Children construct scripts – general event representations (GERs) – of routine activities • Represent the typical sequence and guide future behaviors • Children as young as 3 years use scripts to report familiar events • Report what happens in general, rather than exactly what occurred during a specific event

32. Autobiographical Memories – Eyewitness Memory • Children’s scripts affect their memory for future events as well as their recollection of past events • Has implications for eyewitness memory • Children can demonstrate accurate recall when asked clear and unbiased questions • Research has demonstrated that children’s memory of past events can be affected by prompting, by directed questions, and by repeated questioning

33. Problem-Solving • Siegler proposed that children’s problem-solving uses a rule assessment approach • Children take in information about a problem and formulate rules to account for the information • Children’s selection and use of problem-solving strategies becomes more efficient • Through a natural selection process, the most adaptive ways of thinking survive

34. Problem-Solving • Siegler proposed that children’s problem-solving develops in overlapping waves • Overlapping waves theory – “process of variability, choice, and change” • Knowing and using a variety of strategies, becoming increasingly selective with experience about which strategy to use, and changing/adding strategies as needed

35. Caption: Cognitive development may resemble overlapping waves more than a staircase leading from one stage to another

36. Learning Objective • What developments occur in adolescents’ basic capacities, learning and memory strategies, and metacognition?

37. The Adolescent – Strategies • New strategies emerge • Elaboration • Strategies such as note-taking that are relevant to school learning • Strategies are used deliberately and selectively • Become better at moving irrelevant information from working memory so that it doesn’t interfere with task performance

38. The Adolescent – Basic Capacities • Adolescents can perform cognitive operations more quickly than children do • Maturational changes in the brain allow adolescents to process information more quickly and to simultaneously process more chunks of information

39. The Adolescent – Metamemory and Knowledge Base • The knowledge base continues to expand during adolescence – adolescents perform better because they know more • Metamemory and metacognition improve • Can tailor reading strategies to different purposes (skimming vs. studying) • Strategy of elaboration is recognized as more effective than rote repetition • Can monitor whether study time is sufficient • Adolescent girls use more metacognitive strategies than boys • Students from higher SES backgrounds use more metacognitive strategies than lower SES peers

40. Learning Objectives • In what ways do memory and cognition change during adulthood? • What factors help explain the declines in abilities during older adulthood? • What can be done to minimize losses with age? • How are problem-solving skills affected by aging?

41. The Adult – Developing Expertise • Adults often function best cognitively in domains in which they have expertise • Takes about 10 years to become an expert and to build a rich, well-organized knowledge base • The expert knows more and thinks more effectively than a non-expert • Remembers more new information • Able to solve problems effectively and efficiently • Expertise can compensate to some extent for age-related losses in information-processing capacities

42. The Adult – Autobiographical Memory • Bauer identified four factors that may influence autobiographical memories • Personal significance of an event has almost no effect on one’s ability to later recall the event • Greater distinctness or uniqueness of an event is consistently associated with better recall • Emotional intensity: highly negative or highly positive emotions are recalled better than events experienced in the context of more neutral emotions • Life phase: the best recall of memories is from the recent past and from adolescence and early adulthood (ages 15-25)

43. The Adult – Memory and Aging • Older adults learn new material more slowly, may learn it less well, and may remember less • But our knowledge about adult memory and aging is qualified • Research is based on cross-sectional studies • Declines typically are not noticeable until the 70s • Difficulties are most noticeable and most severe among the oldest persons • Not all people experience difficulties • Not all kinds of memory tasks cause difficulty

44. The Adult – Memory and Aging • Older adults perform less well when their memory is time-tested • Older adults perform less well when material to be learned is unfamiliar or cannot be linked to existing knowledge (it is meaningless) • Older adults perform significantly worse in laboratory contexts and often perform better in naturalistic contexts

45. The Adult – Memory and Aging • Older adults are likely to be more deficient on tasks requiring recall than on tasks requiring only recognition • Problem with retrieval • Older adults have more trouble with explicit memory tasks that require mental effort than with implicit memory tasks that involve more automatic mental processes • Retain fairly good semantic memory but show steady declines in episodic memory

46. The Adult – Explaining Declines in Old Age • Older adults’ memory problems are not caused by deficiencies in their knowledge base • Metamemory is largely intact across the lifespan, but older adults express more negative beliefs about their memory skills than do younger adults • Possible influence of culture and its views of aging upon performance

47. The Adult – Explaining Declines in Old Age • Many older adults do not spontaneously use memory strategies (organization, elaboration) • However, the biggest problem is with effective retrieval, not with the original encoding of an event • Illustrated by “tip-of-the-tongue” episodes in which something is known but cannot be retrieved

48. The Adult – Explaining Declines in Old Age • Changes in basic processing capacities may explain why older adults fail to use effective memory and retrieval strategies • Decline in the capacity to use working memory to operate actively and simultaneously on multiple pieces of information • May have more trouble ignoring irrelevant task information • Limitations in working memory capacity most likely are rooted in neural transmission both early and late in life

49. The Adult – Explaining Declines in Old Age • Older adults experience declines in sensory abilities • Visual and auditory skills often are better predictors than processing speed of cognition among older adults

50. The Adult – Explaining Declines in Old Age • Contextual theorists emphasize that performance on learning and memory tasks is the product of interaction among • Characteristics of the learner • Education, IQ, health, lifestyle • Characteristics of the task or situation • Characteristics of the broader environment, including culture, in which a task is performed