2. Definition
• Memory is an active system that stores,
organizes, alters, and recovers
information (Baddeley, 1996)
• Memory is the availability of
information and the ability to retrieve
previously acquired skills or
information (Lefrancois, 2000)
3. There are three processes involved in memory:
i. encoding –transform or converting
information into a form that can be entered
into memory
ii. storage -- holding onto the information
over varying periods of time or creation of
a permanent record of the encoded
information
iii. retrieval -- locating and accessing specific
information when it is needed at later times
4. Ebbinghaus retention curve
• the amount a person learns depends on
the amount of time spent on learning
and order of information.
• The spacing effect suggests that more
information is retained when rehearsal is
distributed over time rather than through
mass study.
5. Ebbinghaus retention curve
• The serial position effect suggests that
people tend to recall the first and last
items on a list.
• The isolation effect, predicts that an item
that "stands out like a sore thumb" will be
more likely to be remembered than other
items.
6. Ebbinghaus’s memory
Functions
800
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200
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0
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Hours of delay
Time savings, %
Ebbinghaus's relearning
(practice) data
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0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Days of practice
Trials to relearn set of lists
0
0 20 30 40 55 150 744
Hours of delay
Time Savings Percentage
Retention
7. Classification of memories : Duration, nature (Information) and
acifi ssal C
retrieval of information (Temporal direction)
Duration
Information
type
Temporal
direction
i. Sensory memory
ii. Short-term memory
iii. Long-term memory
i. Declarative memory
• Episodic memory
• Semantic memory
i. Procedural memory
i. Retrospective memory
ii. Prospective memory
Classification of memories: Duration
8. Duration: Sensory memory
• The sensory information store has unlimited capacity,
and reacts to both visual and auditory information
– The duration of information in sensory memory is extremely
brief, perhaps only 300 miliseconds up to 5 seconds
– It is subject to rapid decay.
– Types: Iconic and echoic
• Iconic = Duration less than a second
= Pictographic
• Echoic = Duration estimates range up to three or four seconds
= Sound
Classification of memories: Duration
9. Let’s test your sensory
memory!
Classification of memories: Duration
10. G Z E P
R K O D
B T X F
Classification of memories: Duration
11. How many of you can
remember all of the 12
alphabets?
Classification of memories: Duration
12. • George Sperling demonstrated the
existence of sensory memory in an
experiment in 1960
• He found that subjects could only recall
four or five letters accurately (They knew
they had seen more letters, but they were
unable to name them)
Classification of memories: Duration
13. Duration: STM
• The ability to stores information briefly and
allows manipulation and use of the stored
information like rehearsing it through chunking
etc.
• Example: Suppose you look up a telephone
number in a directory. You can hold the number
in memory almost indefinitely by saying it over
and over to yourself. But if something distracts
you for a moment, you may quickly lose it and
have to look it up again
Classification of memories: Duration
17. What is the DHL
number?
Classification of memories: Duration
18. Duration: LTM
• The ability to store vast amounts of
information on a relatively enduring basis
• It is relatively permanent and practically
unlimited in terms of its storage capacity
• There seems to be no finite capacity to
long-term memory
Classification of memories: Duration
19. SM, STM and LTM
Classification of memories: Duration
20. Information type
• Declarative and procedural memory
• A) Declarative memory
– it consists of information that is explicitly
stored and retrieved
– Subtypes: semantic memory, which
concerns facts taken independent of context;
and episodic memory, which concerns
information specific to a particular context,
such as a time and place.
Classification of memories: Information type
21. Information type
• B) Procedural memory
• It is primarily employed in learning motor skills
(motor learning) like driving a car
• It is revealed when we do better in a given task
due only to repetition
• No new explicit memories have been formed,
but we are unconsciously accessing aspects of
those previous experiences
Classification of memories: Information type
22. Temporal direction: Retrospective
A) Retrospective memory
• Remembering information from the past
• Such as procedural memory and declarative
memory
• For example, remember the chemical
components for water (declarative – semantic
memory) or remember how to open the cap of a
bottle (procedural memory)
Classification of memories: Temporal Direction
23. Temporal direction: Prospective
B) Prospective memory
• Refers to remembering to remember
• It consists of recalling an action or an intention.
• This recall is triggered by either a stimulus or
'event' or a time
• For example, remembering to watch your
favorite TV programme at 10pm
Classification of memories: Temporal Direction
24. Models of memory
1. The primary models
– The modal model (Atkinson & Shiffrin)
– The working memory model (Baddeley)
2. Levels of processing model
– Craik & Lockhart
3. Tulving’s model
Models of Memory
25. The primary model
• A) The modal model
• It emphasizes the flow of information
through the cognitive system (how
information is transferred from one
storage area to another)
• It is assumed that information is received,
processed, and stored differently for each
type of memory
Models of Memory: The Primary Model
26. The modal model
• There are three storages
a. Sensory memory or store
• Divided into iconic memory (visual sensory memory),
echoic memory (auditory sensory memory) and haptic
memory (touch memory)
• Limited capacity to store information (in milliseconds)
b. STM or short term store
• stores a limited amount of information for a few seconds
c. LTM or long term store
• retain vast amounts of information for very long periods of
time
• information from LTM can pass back to STM when we
actively remember or work with that information again
Models of Memory: The Modal Model
28. The primary model
• B) The working memory model
• Memory composes of three main components;
– The phonological loop allows the rehearsal of
auditory or verbal information
– The visuo-spatial sketch-pad allows the rehearsal of
visual information.
– The central executive is in charge: it resolves
conflicts over what cognitive process should happen
next; it selects strategies for solving problems; and it
coordinates information form multiple sources
Models of Memory: The Primary Model
30. The Levels-of-Processing Model
(Craik & Lockhart, 1972)
• It focuses on the different kinds of cognitive processing
that people perform on information at the time of
encoding
• The depth of processing was postulated to fall on a
shallow to deep continuum
Shallow processing deep processing
• For example, the word “Blue”
– Shallow processing involves identifying the alphabets
that spell the word “Blue”
– Deep processing involves associating or giving
meaning to the word “Blue” (a type of color)
Models of Memory: The Level-of-Processing Model
31. The Levels-of-Processing Model
(Craik & Lockhart, 1972)
• Rehearsal is an important concept in this model
because it is the process of cycling information through
memory. There are two distinctions made of the types of
rehearsal:
a. Elaborative rehearsal
• A deeper, more meaningful analysis of the stimulus
• e.g. thinking of an image relating to a book
b. Maintenance rehearsal
• Repetition of analysis already carried out
• e.g. repeating the word ‘book’ over and over again
Models of Memory: The Level-of-Processing Model
32. Tulving’s Model (Tulving, 1972)
• It distinguishes memory into 3 kinds: episodic,
semantic and procedural
• Episodic memory
– Associated with a particular time and place (i.e. you
know when and where you acquired the material)
• Semantic memory
– This is the organized knowledge about the world.
• Procedural memory
– This involves knowing how to do something, or
learning connections between stimuli and response
Models of Memory: Tulving’s Model
33. Factors Influencing Memory
• Emotion
– Alafair Burke, Friderike Heuer, and Daniel
Reisberg (1992) used slide show in which
emotional and unemotional stimuli were
presented to a group of participants.
– The emotional slide was remembered
better by subjects as compared to non-emotional
slide
Factors Influencing Memory
34. Factors Influencing Memory
• Depth of processing
– Information with deeper processing is
store longer than information with shallow
processing
• E.g. The word “Protean” is remembered better
if the synonym and meaning is known
(Protean means versatile or variable)
Factors Influencing Memory
35. Why Do We Remember What We
Remember
• For short term memory, these will influence the
memory
a. Primacy effect
– Information that occurs first is typically remembered
better than information occurring later such as in list of
words and numbers
b. Recency effect
– Often the last bit of information is remembered better
because not as much time has past; time which results in
forgetting
c. Distinctiveness
– If something stands out from information around it, it is
often remembered better
Why do we remember?
36. Why Do We Remember What We
Remember
d. Frequency effect
– Rehearsal results in better memory such as to
memorize a math formula
e. Associations
– When we associate or attach information to
other information it becomes easier to
remember
f. Reconstruction
– Sometimes we actually fill in the blanks in our
memory
– E.g. when trying to get a complete picture in our
minds, we will make up the missing parts. Often
without any realization that this is occurring
Why do we remember?
37. Why Do We Remember What We
Remember
• For LTM, these will help to get access to memory
a. Recognition
– When provided with the information in memory
– Just double check that we’ve seen it before
– Includes: feelings of familiarity, matching, multiple, choice,
True/False on exams, recognizing someone you know ………
b. Recall
– Coming up with the information from memory yourself
– Includes: coming up with the name for person you recognized,
recalling where you were when President John Kennedy was
assassinated, fill-in-the-blank on exams
Why do we remember?
38. Why Do We Forget
1. Occlusion
– Memory is hidden or covered by another
memory
– E.g. when you move to a new city, whenever you
are asked what your phone number is, your old
phone number may consistently intrude, making
it difficult to remember the new number
Why do we forget?
39. Why Do We Forget
2. Unlearning
– The weakening of the association between a
cue and a target due to new learning – is
usually thought to occur because a cue is
practiced with a new target
– E.g. when I move to a new office, the
association between the cue “What is your
phone number?” and the target memory
“5533333” not only gets stronger, but the
association between that cue and my old
number “5522222” gets weaker.
Why do we forget?
40. Why Do We Forget
3. Decay / fading (trace decay) over time
– The link between a cue and a target memory
spontaneously decays over time
4. Repression
– The active forgetting of an episode for the
sake of self-protection: remembering it
would be too painful
Why do we forget?
41. Why Do We Forget
1. interference (overlaying new information
over the old)
2. retroactive interference – occurs when
newly learned associations interfere with
previously learned associations
3. proactive interference occurs when
previously learned associations interfere
with the learning of new associations
Why do we forget?
42. Why Do We Forget
4. lack of retrieval cues
5. interference (overlaying new
information over the old)
– retroactive interference – occurs when
newly learned associations interfere
with previously learned associations
–proactive interference occurs when
previously learned associations interfere
with the learning of new associations
Why do we forget?
43. Techniques to Enhance Memory
1. Acronyms
– Acronyms are words that are formed by using each
first letter from a group of words.
– E.g. SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater Breathing
Apparatus), JERI (Jasmani, Emosi, Rohani, Intelek
– Malay words about the development of a student);
SCRAM (sentence/acrostics, chunking, rhymes &
songs, acronyms, and method of loci)
Techniques to enhance memory
44. Techniques to Enhance Memory
2. Sentences / Acrostics
– Like acronyms, first letter of each word is
used, not to make a new word but a
sentence
– E.g. Richard of York Gains Battle In Vain
(red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
violet – colours of rainbow)
Techniques to enhance memory
45. Techniques to Enhance Memory
3. Rhymes & Songs
– Rhythm, repetition, melody, and rhyme can
all aid memory
– E.g. many children learn the letters of the
alphabet to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star.”
Techniques to enhance memory
46. Techniques to Enhance Memory
4. Method of Loci (loci = locations)
– Used by ancient orators to remember speeches,
and it combines the use of organization, visual
memory, and association.
– Mentally associating each piece of information that
you need to remember with one of these landmarks.
E.g. you are trying to remember a list of
mnemonics; you might remember the first—
acronyms—by picturing SCUBA gear in your dorm
room.
Techniques to enhance memory
47. 5. Chunking
– Technique generally used when remembering
numbers
– It is based on the idea that STM is limited in
the number of things that can be contained: a
person can remember 7 (plus or minus 2, i.e.
between5 and 9 things) “items” at one time.
– E.g. local telephone numbers have 7 digits –
this is convenient because it is the average
amount of numbers that a person can keep in
his mind at one time
Techniques to enhance memory
48. 6. Practice Makes Perfect
– Repetition plays an important role in this
technique.
– E.g. when remembering a list of things, you
might try remember 5 items on your list
without looking, then add a 6th, repeat the
whole list from the start, add a 7th, and so
on.
Techniques to enhance memory
49. Disorders of Memory
• Traumatic brain injury
– amnesia
• neurodegenerative diseases
– Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, Huntington’s
disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s
disease
– None of it act specifically on memory; instead
memory loss is often a casualty of
generalized neuronal deterioration
Disorders of
memory
