Memory 11/10/98

Learning: At the eye of a theoretical storm

Nature vs. Nurture

Radical Behaviorism vs. the mind?

Association Models of Memory: Memory as a jar

Ebbinghaus and the search for "pure" memory

Assoc. models and the problem of meaning

Information Processing approaches

Stage Models

Sensory Memory

Born or Shaped?-- Biological constraints on learning

 

Radical Behaviorism Psychology cannot discuss anything going on inside the head of the organism.

Behaviors are "stamped in or out" of organism by experience.

 

Opening the "black box"-- A Quick Demo. on Social Learning

 

 

Memory and Cognition

 

Some General Questions to Keep in Mind

How do we remember things?

How much can we remember?

Can we improve our memory?

Are there different kinds of memory?

Why are some memories vivid and others fuzzy?

What is the relationship between vividness and accuracy?

Why do we forget?

 

Early Approaches and the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus

Ebbinghaus became intrigued with process of forgetting--why do we forget things over time?

 

"By what possible means are we to measure numerically the mental processes which flit by so quickly and which on introspection are so hard to analyze?" Memory, 1885

 

Settled on the notion of "savings"

 

Ebbinghaus' procedure used by many, what did they find?

It worked, you could quantify memory--radical for 1885.

Savings (i.e., memory) were proportional to amount of rehearsal

Association was the single process

 

Most forgetting occurs rapidly--Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve

 

 

 

 

 

Find "serial position" effects (i.e., more likely to remember early and late stimuli).

 

 

 

 

 

Association models of memory and the problem of meaning

 

Work in the 1970s on paragraph comprehension

 

Information Processing Approaches to Memory

 

 

The Stages of Memory

 

Sensory memory

 

Short-term Memory

 

Long-term Memory

 

 

Sensory Memory: Large Capacity with Short Duration-- A demonstration

 

So what does this demo. show?

Sens. Mem. has large capacity

Info. is held in sensory memory for a very short time

Attention plays a major role in determining what makes it from sens. memory to short-term memory