CHAPTER 7 Introduction Uncover fundamental components of memory by creating experimental methods that differ in many ways from the

e situations people typically experience. We use our knowledge to help us deal with the complexity of the world Schemas: Understanding and Remembering Complex Situations Introduction and Motivation o Crucial note is that encoding is not focused on remembering the situation, but understanding it, so that you can get your food and eat o In real-world, goal of the encoding is not to remember exactly what happened, but to understand what is happening so that one can act appropriately o Memory you have of an experience is a by-product of your understanding o Encoding of more complex situations is often focused on understanding the situation o This may seem very different from topics in chapter previous but it is not o Our ability to understand sentences, text, events relies on our knowledge o What we learn and understand depends on what we already know o Knowledge allows us to verify whether specific facts are known and also allows us to make new inferences that are crucial to understanding o To understand what we are reading , the reader generates a number of inferences that might be wrong at least some of the time o 3 important points of comprehension Not simply words but also the knowledge you bring to bear to understand these sentences Meaning is a function of both the input and activated knowledge The meaning of the sentences is partly by the reader, thus comprehension is an active not passive process, with reader contracting input with his or her knowledge Understanding consists of constructing an integrated representation, we understand passage when are able to figure out how all this info fits together to make sense o Additional knowledge would allow the readers to integrate the new sentence with their understanding of the other sentences o Meaning consists of not just of the presented info but also of the activated knowledge, including any inferences needed to connect this structure o We posses so much knowledge that a crucial consideration is how the relevance of info is determined o Not total knowledge that is crucial but rather knowledge the reader brings to bear in understanding o By using knowledge to generate inferences introduces the problem of computational complexity o A title serves to activate knowledge of the paragraph and makes the passage sensible and easier to remember o Particular knowledge that is activated can influence our understanding o Activated knowledge we bring to bear in understanding has a large effect on our understanding Understanding o Requires actively supplementing the given input with knowledge o The relevant knowledge that is brought to mind is more a body of knowledge rather than a fact or two o To understand something requires fitting it into some integrated representation

CHAPTER 7 Need for large amounts of relevant knowledge greatly complicates the computational complexity problem o Understanding requires the careful integration of new input with a vast amount of prior knowledge o Certain units of knowledge and inferences are used together which require little effort in vast amount of knowledge o Large unit of information is called a schema=Simplicity o People are interpreting message they hear with knowledge they have Schemas o Schema=General knowledge structure used for understanding = A schema is knowledge o It is rather ones knowledge of the world , not necessarily true o It encodes info about a "particular type" of situation o Schemas are structured which includes how the included facts are related o Schema is used to comprehend , but does not include info about exact situation o A schema is viewed as including slots for certain info - Understanding consists of filling in these slots o Understand event by finding appropriate schema and filling in values pertaining to this event o Contains default assumptions concerning slot values , slots contain restrictions about what info can be filled in them o Determination of appropriate schema is not always simple o Schemas can occur at various levels of abstraction and can be embedded o Advantages of schema : They help us understand and remember, allow us to treat knowledge of events as connected rather than independent o Schemas generate expectations about what is likely to be true o Peoples general knowledge of different types of locations affects how they remember a particular location of one of those types o One can think about info as being relevant to the schema or irrelevant to the schema o Consistent with the idea that people focus on inconsistent info rather than irrelevant info o Schema have become a common part of theorizing in almost every area of psychology Scripts o A script is a knowledge structure containing the sequence of events that usually occurs in particular stereotyped situation o Scripts are a type of schema for mundane or routine events o The scripts are structured meaning the events are causally linked to one another o Linking allows us to make inferences to understand events and to make predictions about future events o When used for understanding, it is presumed that there are some entry conditions that were true and that success conclusion of the script results in a different state of affairs o Actions are broken down into scenes- number of actions in scene that are presumed to occur in that particular order o Ordering scene is not just a set of actions but a set of ordered actions o It seems that knowledge and use are straightforward but process is actually quite complicated o All causal connections must be present to allow us to understand not only the normal script actions but also any of a large number of possible problems or unusual events that occur o Programming computers to do this may prove very difficult and painstaking
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CHAPTER 7 SLOTS are correlated such as knowing the value of one slot lets you predict values of other slots o Scripts were also used for remembering particular events o People mistakenly recalled one script that didn't occur in passage o People use their knowledge of the order of script actions for remembering particular event sequences o Some scripts seem to be more stereotyped then others o Peoples understanding and memory for these events are influenced by some type of general knowledge structures Schema Activation o Crucial first step is to activate the appropriate schema o First , certain key words may help trigger the appropriate schema o Other words not related to schema may help by being somewhat appropriate o Events occur in context that can also provide support for the relevance of particular schemas Problems with Schemas o It is not clear how to implement the desired properties of schemas o Connectionist models have advantage that they tend to be sensitive to properties that cooccur o A variety of perplexing puzzles associated with the use of schemas still remains o Some situations may involve a mixture of schemas Summary o Many situations must be augmented with knowledge o Schemas provide way in which relevant knowledge can be brought to bear to help with problem of too little info and too many possibilities Reconstructive Memory Our memories are imperfect(due to interference and decay) so we cannot always retrieve a complete encoding of what we are trying to remember We may have parts or fragments that we actively put together to remember what happened You might remember something then probe memory further with those cues and then receive additional info. Reconstructive Memory - refers to integrating different sources of info in remembering If the encoded info is still highly available and then you will remember it pretty well If the encoded info is less available , then you may not retrieve all of it If it is a complex event then you may retrieve parts then enter it as a whole Schemas and Stereotypes o You can use schema such as restaurant schema to probe further to maybe decide what meal it was o Schemas you bring to bear for understanding an event can also be used in helping you to retrieve the memory of that event o New facts during certain situations had just popped into their heads o The point here is that remembering is not simply a trace. Sometimes we remember different sets of partial info, or fragments, and then put them together. o Such schema based recall may affect what we remember later as well o Knowledge used as to what the results meant led them us to remember the control condition as having been there because it should have been o The effects of stereotypes may be heightened by these reconstructive properties
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CHAPTER 7 We are active processors who interpret the world when understanding and interpret our knowledge when remembering o First you may remember fragments and then put them into remembering Memory in the World Eyewitness Testimony- When you are asked to remember an event, "find" the queried info and tell exactly what you saw o Eyewitnesses are an integral part of our justice system o The arousal and emotion of the moment may have made the encoding and memory of the event more difficult to retrieve Misleading Information o A lawyers misleading question has probably affected your response o Misleading information can be suggested after an event, called post event, that can affect what answers a person gives to later questions o The misleading info in a study had a large effect on peoples responses o Misinformation effect - Misled group chooses misleading suggestion more than control group o Many theory assume that you cant alter long-term memory but retrieval of the memory for any event can be interfered with by other memories o Presenting misleading post event info can affect people's responses and increase the probability that they will respond with the misleading suggestion o Effect is ell enough established that it can be used to examine other issues such as deceptive advertising and whether believing that you drank alcohol o Overwriting assumes that misleading info alters original trace with wrong info o Misleading info may provide some competing information because the source of the memory is not clear o How do people distinguish source memories o This is referred to as source confusion o People may just use misleading info because they do not know better and they assume the misleading info is true o This is collectively called misinformation acceptance o If subjects in control condition of study do not remember initial event very well, they have to guess between the two options and they will choose misleading info if they remember better o If misleading event has not affected memory of event then they should choose either option equally as much o Much of misleading information effete may be due to such aware uses of misleading information o Thus is does appear that source confusions do occur as well o They argue that this type of data interference can be understood by knowing interference Flashbulb Memories o These memories feel very different such as prom or wedding compared to recent dinner o These memories are special and they involve a distinct bio mechanism that we have developed through evolution so that highly consequential surprising events are known well o This may be because these are crucial for our survival o These memories include focal event and surrounding memories and circumstances o Found were the 3 most important parts of memory : The location , activity, and the informant o Secondly important were the time of day and other people who may have been present
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CHAPTER 7 There is good evidence that flashbulb memories are not necessarily accurate and that confidence is obviously a poor measure of clarity o Events encoded in these memories tend to be very unusual o Further work has started to address whether specific brain areas can be identified o Strongly emotional memories may be remembered well for some time but they still show some forgetting o All in all , it appears that these memories are the same as others in aspects of structure and mechanisms Recovered Memories o Forgotten memories often involve abuse or major event of some kind that delivers pain that wants to be forgotten o Repression- when people push painful memories out into their unconscious but they still may influence some active behaviors o Recovery of memory usually occurs when person is able to deal with such memory o These undergoes little forgetting just like Flashbulb memories o When they are recovered they appear to be preserved and that is why people are so confident about them o Sometimes to argue the issue, when people are misled they can actually reply that it happened when it didnt o There appear to be limits on amount or types of memories that people will be misled about o We sometimes remember some of what happened and piece together or reconstruct the rest and such reconstructed memories can be inaccurate o In some cases, recovered memories may be true o With active encoding and reconstructive remembering, there are many chances for memories to differ from the actual events o It is clear that there is much to learn about recovered memories Knowing Your Memory Strategies and Knowledge o Concerned with processes that are believed to be common to all normal individuals, at tleast beyond the very earliest stages of dev o The most basic mechanisms of memory appear to be the same across individuals o Arguments on memory : Some people are more motivated to learn , some people are just better at remembering things, some people are just more interested o A great part of individual differences we see in memory performance is a consequence of the strategies used and of differences in prior knowledge o Encoding the info, you want to make sure to actively process it for mearning , integrate it with what you know, and store it in such a way that it ca nbe accessed by the retrieval cues you are likely to have o Effective remembering will be brought by always attending to the material at the time of original presentation o Effective rehearsal is not a matter of note repetition but rather of noticing potential retrieval cues and integrating them with the items to be remembered o Still more effective is the procedure of forming a procedural plan- thinking in advance of the situation in which recall may be needed o When trying to retrieve info, retrieval plan you set up should help you remember, if this isn't successful you can try to generate additional cues based on general knowledge of thing o All of these steps will help memory but do involve effort
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CHAPTER 7 Clear evidence that the ability to acquire new facts about some domain depends a great deal on what one already knows o Having prior knowledge, allows one to understand the information better o Knowledge has a large influence on what you remember though there are simple strategies to increase Extraordinary Memories o There may be upper limits on the memory system but there is no reason to think that these are approached o Consider the simple memory span test that appears in nearly all intelligence scales and is comonly used by neuro to check memory functioning o The average memory span is about seven digits o Better way might be to break sequence into chunks o The subjects in study quickly chunked numbers to access long-term memory and could provide a hierarchieal structure for organizing these chunks o Menemonists people are able to remember great amounts of information o Mnemonics have been promoted to useful learning techniques especially when the material to be learned invovles much memorization such as foreign vocabulary o Method of Loci- Mmemonic technique for the remembering such ordered sets , you deposit to-be-remembered items at each landmark hypothetically you cross o Then you recall the items later by going along the path Meta-memory o Knowledge of other peoples behaviors greatly influence your behavior and decisions o Knowledge about what you will be able to remember has a major influence on your behaviors o Meta-memory - That is the peoples ability to know how likely they are to be able to remember something or how effective some strategy may be o As one might expect with our memories, helps us learn how they work o Inference based upon how quickly we retrieve answers is correlated to how we know the answer o Part of this memory may be due to the primacy effect o Memory is an active record of the world but an active process in which one interprets the world as a basis of what one knows
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