Psychology
Structures of Memory
"Structures of Memory" refer to the organization and storage of information in the human memory system. This concept encompasses the various components and processes involved in encoding, storing, and retrieving memories, including sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Understanding the structures of memory is essential for comprehending how information is processed and retained in the mind.
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11 Key excerpts on "Structures of Memory"
eBook - PDFLearn to Teach
Teach to Learn
- Catherine Scott(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
82 Chapter objectives Understanding the structure of human memory • Sensory memory • Working memory • Working memory in the classroom • Tracking down • g Long-term memory • How school improves memory • Cognitive tools in the classroom Chapter 5 Chapter 5 Cognitive tools in the classroom 83 Introduction In this chapter we will discover something about how the human cognitive system – that is, the mind – works, with a focus on memory. Understanding memory will help you to use teaching methods that ensure your students learn well. Learning is mem- ory, after all, so understanding how it works is essential for educators. Memory is the essence of what it means to be human. Our identity depends on our fund of personal memories; and our ability to imagine ourselves in the future and our ability to plan for that future depend on what we have learned and remembered. Much of what we know about memory, how it is structured and how it works is the result of studying cases where people have suffered illnesses or brain injuries that have affected their memories. In many of these cases, the experience of being human is profoundly altered and disrupted by the damage to their memory processes or structures. Structures and processes Theories about how memory works use two sets of explanatory concepts: structures and processes. Structures are used to explain where material contained in memory is stored, while processes explain how material enters, is retained in and then retrieved from these storage modules. In this chapter we learn about the structures that neurologists hypothesise compose human memory. In Chapter 6, we will learn about the memory processes thought to govern how memories are stored in the brain. The three storage struc- tures are sensory memory, working memory (previously called short-term memory) and long-term memory. While the standard model of how memory is structured has been presented here, it is important to remember that this model is still a work in progress.
eBook - ePub- John Henderson(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Part II The Structure and Processes of Human Memory Pure Aspects
Passage contains an image
2 How do we study memory?
DOI: 10.4324/9780203977651-2Approaches to the study of memory
There is no doubting the fact that our ability to remember information is an integral part of our lives. Even when we are not striving to remember a particular event, a person’s name, a fact for an examination or whatever, our day-to-day lives rely on constantly referring to our past and linking it to our present and our future. Whilst simply engaging in a conversation with a friend, we are required to produce and comprehend language at high speeds. For this we must access words, ideas and experiences from our memories and shape them into a series of sentences using a structure and grammar that is also represented in our permanent memories.Yet we do all this so effortlessly! The processes involved in accessing memories happen in an instant, and usually without our conscious awareness of them. This makes the scientific study of such processes highly problematical. Under everyday conditions we can merely speculate about how memories really work, and this is a frustration that is shared by those who theorise in all areas of cognitive psychology—thinking, perception, language and attention.Over the years, however, cognitive psychologists have made the best of the situation. Typically, they have adopted one of three general approaches to study, although sometimes these approaches have overlapped. They are, however, discussed individually.Computer approaches
A rapidly expanding area in which psychologists are developing expertise is called cognitive science
eBook - PDF- Arthur Wingfield, Dennis L. Byrnes(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours, or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures. Can we explain these differences? (p. 643) 240 Chapter Seven Short-;ertn, Memory Short-Term Memory as a Structural Store Process Views of Memory James' question was how to conceptualize this distinction and how to derive a useful framework for its systematic investigation. By the end of the 1940s, John Watson's behaviorism had clearly estab-lished its influence in American psychology, and with it, the concept of consciousness had all but disappeared from the research vocabulary. To be sure, memory research in the 1950s wished to understand those mental events which occurred between a stimulus and a response. Thus, Watson's behaviorism no longer dominated the exploration of memory. Nevertheless, one vestige of his arguments remained; the concept of consciousness was not to be found in the models and theories of this period. Rather, as we saw in Chapter 5 memory function was divided into a series of discrete, structural memory stores, each with its own characteristics and role to play in the processing of memory information. Figure 5-1 showed the role of short-term memory in this system as a structural entity for temporarily holding recent information selected from sensory memory and prior to its transfer to long-term memory. This structural theory thus claimed two different kinds of memory, or infor-mation stores beyond sensory memory: short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM). At any one time, what we remember may be in STM or LTM, or perhaps sometimes, in both. This structural view of information processing led psychologists to ask questions about the capacity of these stores, how their content was coded, and how information was either lost from each store or trans-ferred from one store to another.
eBook - PDFCognition
The Thinking Animal
- Daniel T. Willingham, Cedar Riener(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Organization allows us to retrieve the right memory from the storehouse. Our memory system does not merely allow us to find the desired memory quickly. If what is desired is not in memory, the system provides something close in meaning, or it provides material that may help us guess about the desired information. One early theory of memory organization, the 170 Long-Term Memory Structure hierarchical model, suggested that concepts were placed in a taxonomic hierarchy (animal above bird, bird above canary). When data suggested that concepts were not necessarily organized in a rigid hierarchy, later models proposed that memory was structured in networks of mutual associ- ation, whereby thinking about one concept would bring semantically related concepts to mind (e.g., thinking about the concept doctor makes it a little more likely that you’ ll think of the related concept patient). A third type of model uses distributed representation, meaning that one concept is represented by many units of the model; in fact, one unit participates in the representation of many concepts, and which concept is represented at any moment depends on the state of the entire model. Philosophers have speculated about the structure of knowledge. Educators have wondered how to teach history or science so that it makes sense; how do we teach new content so that it “fits” into what we already know? To cognitive psychologists, these questions translate to “how is explicit memory organized?” Although “memory” means more to cognitive psychologists than conscious memory for events and facts, there is no doubt that our conscious memory is a primary object of study when we consider organization. The storehouse metaphor works well for explicit memory. (To a point. When we take up the storage and retrieval of memories, it won’ t work as well.) We each have an amazing amount of material stored in memory, although it doesn’ t always feel that way.
eBook - PDF- Ronald Comer, Elizabeth Gould, Adrian Furnham(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Cog- nitive psychologists have identified structures called schemas (Brewer & Treyens, 1981), bases of knowledge that we develop based on prior exposure to similar experiences or other bases of knowledge. Schemas can be helpful in allowing us to attend to and encode a lot of information in a hurry. Think about the first time you walked into a new restaurant. Did it feel awkward or strange because you were not sure of the rules or what to order? If you had visited other, similar restaurants before that one, the schemas you developed during your experiences at those restaurants probably helped you know what to do and what to order in the new restaurant with less effort than you would have needed if you had never been in a restaurant at all. schemas knowledge developed from prior exposure to similar experiences or other knowledge bases. In need of a schema. This young boy enjoys watching a model train at Round House Restaurant in Brno, Czech Republic. The Round House’s unusual use of a model train to deliver food and drinks to its customers will not feature in its customers’ schemas of visiting a restaurant. Source: Tomas Hajek/isifa/Getty Images, Inc. How Do We Store Memories? LEARNING OBJECTIVE 3 Describe how we organize and store information in working and long-term memory and how we can enhance our long- term memory. As you have seen, after entering the working memory system, information remains there for only a short time, sometimes only a matter of seconds. In contrast, when information moves to the long-term memory system, it can remain there for hours or a lifetime. The retention of information, whether brief or long, in either of these memory systems is called storage. Storage in Working Memory Information may enter working memory from two major sources. New information, as we have seen, can be encoded after a short trip through the sensory memory system.
eBook - PDF- Nancy Ogden, Michael Boyes, Evelyn Field, Ronald Comer, Elizabeth Gould(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
By keeping a record of our past, our memory takes us out of an infinite present. What Is Memory? LEARNING OBJECTIVE 1 Define the basic activities of memory and describe two major models of memory. Simply put, memory is the faculty for recalling past events and past learning. This definition is perhaps the only thing about memory that is simple. Although psychologists often differ in their ideas about memory, they generally agree that it involves three basic activities: • Encoding—Getting information into memory in the first place • Storage—Retaining memories for future use • Retrieval—Recapturing memories when we need them For example, when you attend a concert, you may transform the sights and sounds produced by the performing band into a kind of memory code and record them in your brain (encoding). This information then remains stored in the brain until you retrieve it at later times—such as when you see photos of the band online, watch their music videos, or decide which of the band’s songs to download. At times of retrieval, the original concert event, including the feelings of exhilaration and joy that you experienced at the concert, may come rushing back. How do we manage to encode, store, and retrieve information? Psychologists have devel- oped a number of models of explanation, including the information-processing model and the parallel distributed-processing model, or connectionist model. The information-processing model of memory has its roots back in early computer science (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) and was intended to chart the ways that, like computers, humans process information from their senses into memory. The information-processing model of memory holds that information must pass through three stages, or systems, of mental functioning to become a firmly implanted memory—sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory (see Figure 8.1) (Estes, 2014b; Kandel, Dudai, & Mayford, 2014; Dudai, 2011).
eBook - PDFEssentials of Psychology
Concepts and Applications
- Jeffrey Nevid(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
We rely on visual coding to remember visual MODULE 1 Identify and describe the basic processes and stages of memory. 2 Identify and describe the different types of long-term memory. 3 Explain the roles of the semantic network model and levels-of-processing theory in memory. 4 Apply constructionist theory to explain memory distortions. 5 Identify factors influencing the reliability of eyewitness testimony. 6 Explain why the concept of recovered memory is controversial. Remembering 6.1 Retrieval Bringing to mind information stored in memory Retaining information in memory Storage Converting information into a form usable in memory Encoding Information 1 2 3 FIGURE 6.1 Three Basic Processes of Memory Human memory can be represented as an information processing system consisting of three basic processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. CONCEPT 6.1 The three basic processes that make memory possible are encoding, storage, and retrieval. memory The system that allows us to retain information and bring it to mind. memory encoding The process of converting information into a form that can be stored in memory. Copyright 2022 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. MODULE 6.1 219 patterns, such as picturing in our minds the arrangement of furniture in our living room or the faces of people we meet. Encoding information semantically—by meaning—involves transforming sounds and visual images into meaningful words.
eBook - PDF- Mike James(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Newnes(Publisher)
5 The structure of memory A large part of every computer is concerned with storing data. However, computer memory and human memory are very different. Information that is stored in the brain is accessible in a way that information in a computer is not. Currently computer memory is used more like an electronic equivalent of a book than the brain. If you need a piece of information held in a computer then you have to know exactly where it is stored. For example, if you want to find out the telephone number of someone and you know the name then you can use a computer data base in the same way that you use a telephone directory. However, if you know various things about the person, but not his name, then the computer data base is a useless as a telephone directory. Even if you have a photograph of the person and a complete life history the only thing that will ensure the retrieval of his telephone number from a computer data base is his name. Compare this to the many ways in which the same information can be retrieved from the human memory. A photograph, a description or just a fragment of the name is often enough to recall a telephone number. The difference seems to stem from the way that human memory is much more closely connected with the processing of the information than the computer's memory. The nature of human memory It is clear that human memory is not a simple mechanism. Indeed it is most likely not even a single mechanism! Psychologists have traditionally identified two sorts of memory - long term and short term. However, the more recent view is that memory isn't really 65 66 The structure of memory organised into these two neat categories and is in fact a collection of a diverse set of memory functions. It is also clear that memory itself is not entirely separate from the processes of reasoning and thinking.
eBook - PDF- John P. Houston, Helen Bee, David C. Rimm(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
This new approach con-ceives of the human being as an information*processing system. Accord-ing to this way of thinking, memory involves the flow of information through the organism, beginning with encoding and storage and ending with the retrieval of stored information. The number of specific models of memory that have developed within this new tradition is quite astounding (see Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1971; Broadbent, 1971; Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Hilgard & Bower, 1975; Lind-say & Norman, 1977; Ratcliff, 1978; Wickelgren, 1979). We will con-sider a model of memory that represents a distillation of several different models, because many of the available models agree with one another in important ways. These areas of agreement are summarized by the flow diagram in Figure 5. Notice that the model in Figure 5 contains three distinct types of memory—sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Most recent information-processing models define three types of memory, while the older interference theory specifies only one memory process. In Figure 5 information is presumed to move through these three memory systems from left to right. Perceived information first FIGURE 5 The three human memory systems. Stimulus Sensory memory Rehearsal Short-term memory Long-term memory Retrieval o / 7 V 174 Chapter 5 Memory enters sensory memory; it may then be transferred to short-term memory, and finally to long-term memory. In essence, the argument for having three memories, or stores, is that the ways in which we remember items for very short periods of time differ from the ways in which we remember the same items for long periods of time, For example, if you wanted to remember 193-2040 for a very short time (say, 30 seconds), you might do it by remembering the sounds of the numbers and by arranging these sounds into some easily remembered pattern or rhythm such as one-nine-three-twenty-forty.
eBook - PDF- Elizabeth Ligon Bjork, Robert A. Bjork(Authors)
- 1996(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
Overview of Human Memory This Page Intentionally Left Blank Structures, Processes, and the Flow of Information Harold Pashler Mark Carrier This chapter presents an overview of the structures and processes of human memory from an information processing perspective. The first section de- scribes the memory systems that play an important role in our explicit memory for experiences (as manifested, e.g., in tasks like recall and recog- nition). It describes the characteristics of these systems and provides an overview of the various kinds of evidence that establish their separate identi- ties. Section II reviews some major findings about how the flow of informa- tion between memory systems is regulated, including encoding and stor- age, rehearsal, and retrieval. It focuses on the demands these various processes place on limited capacity mechanism(s) and on how the flow of information between different memory systems is controlled. These phe- nomena are often subsumed under the heading Attention and Memory. The use of the term attention as a theoretical construct will be avoided, however, because the concept is so sprawling and diffuse. Section III pre- sents a tentative analysis of processes involved in copying information among different memory structures, postulating several distinct forms of attention with specifiably different properties. The aim of this chapter is to provide the reader with a general framework for viewing different memory structures and the information processing operations that modify their contents. Some readers may be surprised to Memory Copyright 9 1996 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 4 Harold Pashler and Mark Carrier find advocated in this chapter various concepts that some have claimed to be obsolete (e.g., iconic and echoic memory, short-term and long-term mem- ory, central processing bottlenecks).
eBook - PDF- Donald A. Norman(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
The general picture of human information processing is this. First, newly presented information would appear to be transformed by the sensory system into its physiological representation (which may already involve a substantial amount of processing on the initial sensory image), and this representation is stored briefly in a sensory information storage system. Following this sensory storage, the presented material is identified and encoded into a new format and retained temporarily in a different storage system, usually called short-term memory. Then, if extra attention is paid to the material, or if it is rehearsed frequently enough, or if it gets properly organized, the information is transferred to a more permanent memory system (or, in some models, the rate at which it decays decreases substantially). In general, the capacity of this more permanent storage is so large that information that is stored there must be organized in an efficient manner if it is ever to be re-trieved. Then, finally, when it is necessary to retrieve information from memory, decision rules must be used, both to decide exactly how to get access to the desired information and then to decide exactly what response should be made to the information that has been retrieved. Most of the authors of the chapters in this volume agree with this general picture, although each chapter emphasizes different aspects of the system and different chapters usually make different assumptions about the details of the processes. Most authors assume that there are three different types of memory storage systems: a sensory information storage, a short-term memory, and a long-term memory. Everyone ac-cepts the need for a sensory information storage. Some, however, do not believe that there is any need to distinguish between short- and long-term memory (Bernbach, Chapter 4; Murdock, Chapter 9).
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