Chapter 7

Memory and Learning

Modified: 2025-07-03 10:43 AM CDST

NOTE: This outline does not follow the 10th ed. exactly. Pay attention to page numbers.

I. Chapter Introduction

• A. Retrograde amnesia—loss of memory for information and events occurring prior to the incident that caused amnesia
• B. Memory—our ability to store and later retrieve information about past events
• C. Learning—the acquisition of knowledge and skills from experience

II. Conceptualizing Memory and Learning (p. 208)

• A. Memory from an Information-Processing Approach
  • Sensory Register, Short Term Memory, Long Term Memory, Working Memory
  • Encoding, Storage, Retrieval
  • Tasks: Recall, Recognition, Relearning
  • Types: Implicit, Explicit (see Figure 7.2 on p. 211)
• B. Memory—our ability to store and later retrieve information about past events.
• C. Cognitive psychologists were influenced by the rise of computer technology and began to think of the brain as a computer that processes inputs and converts them to outputs.
• D. Based on inadequacies of behaviorist approach and emerging computer technology
• E. Information processing approach to human cognition—emphasis on basic mental processes involved in attention, perception, memory, and decision making
• F. More highly developed computers have greater capacity as so more highly developed humans (i.e., adults have better memory abilities than children).
• G. Memory systems
  • 1.Computer analogy includes hardware (brain and nervous system) and software (rules and strategies).
• H. Atkinson and Shriffrin (1968) model of memory
  • 1.Sensory register—holds incoming information for a fraction of a second
  • 2.Short-term memory—holds about seven items for several seconds
  • 3.Working memory—active form of short-term memory “mental scratch pad”
  • 4.Long-term memory—relatively permanent store of information
• I. Four steps to learning and memory
  • 1. Encoding—getting information into system
  • 2. Consolidation—information organized into a form suitable for long-term storage
  • 3. Event becomes long-lasting memory trace.
  • 4. Process facilitated by sleep
  • 5. Storage—holding information (in long-term)
  • 6. Memories fade if not appropriately stored
  • 7. Constructive (not static) process
  • 8. Retrieval—getting information out of long-term memory
  • 9. Types of retrieval
  • 10.Recognition memory—recognize among options (multiple choice test)
  • 11.Recall memory—active retrieval without cue (essay question)
  • 12.Cued-recall—active retrieval with cue (hint)
• J. Implicit and Explicit Memory (p. 211)
  • 1. Implicit (nondeclarative) memory—unintentional, automatic
  • 2. Explicit (declarative) memory—deliberate, effortful
  • 3. Two types of explicit memories: semantic (general facts; knowing that Twin Towers collapsed on 9-11-2001) and episodic (specific experiences; remembering where you were when the Twin Towers collapsed)
  • 4. Implicit memory
  • 5. Often tested without learner knowing
  • 6. Amnesia more likely to impact explicit memory
  • 7. Implicit may develop earlier.
  • 8. Explicit memory is fallible, subject to forgetting.
  • 9. Implicit memory is infallible and remains intact.
  • 10.Semantic memory is memory for general facts.
  • 11.Episodic memory is memory for specific experiences.

When I was five years old my parents and I were crossing the Delaward Memorial Bridge. Our car did not have air conditioning (a rare option then) so the windows were open. A honeybee flew in through the window I was nearest. It landed on my right thigh (I was wearing shorts). I looked at it for a second and then it stung me. This incident is an example of MY episodic memory.

• 12.Anterograde amnesia is the inability to form new memories.
• 13.Two types of memory involve different parts of the brain.
• 14.Procedural memory (type of implicit) mediated by the striatum
• 15.Explicit largely localized in medial temporal lobe, area crucial in consolidating information into memory trace for long-term store
• 16.Damage to hippocampus area of medial temporal lobe leads to impairments in creating new episodic memories.
• 17.Storage and retrieval tied to original cortex area that first registered the memory
• 18.Two types of memory may follow different developmental paths.
• 19.Implicit develops earlier in infancy than explicit.
• 20.Explicit capacity increases from infancy to adulthood then declines.
• 21. Implicit memory capacity does not change much across the life span.
• K. Neural Bases of Memory (p. 211)
  • 1. Damage to the hippocampus leads to significant impairments in creating episodic memories.
  • 2. Vocabulary is stored in the limbic-temporal cortex.
  • 3. Implicit memory develops earlier in infancy than explicit memory.
• L. Learning (p. 213)
  • 1. Classical conditioning—simplest form of learning; a stimulus that initially had no effect on an individual comes to elicit a response through its association with a stimulus that already elicits a response.
  • 2. Operant conditioning—a learner’s behavior becomes either more or less probable depending on the consequences it produces.
    • a. Reinforcement occurs when a consequence strengthens a response.
    • b. Positive reinforcement—something pleasant or desirable has been added
    • c. Negative reinforcement—not the same as punishment; something unpleasant or undesirable is removed
    • d. Punishment—decreases the strength of the behavior or weakens it
    • e. Positive punishment—an unpleasant stimulus is applied or added to the situation following a behavior
    • f. Negative punishment—a desirable stimulus is removed following the behavior

In classical conditioning, an animal or a human need not make a response first. Instead, the linkage of a new stimulus with a naturally occurring one makes the animal or human anticipate the usual response made to the naturally occuring one.

Thus, in Pavlov's case, the bell linked to the food (bell->food, bell->food, bell->food, bell->food, ...) causes the dog to salivate to the bell.

In operant conditioning, the animal or a human must first make a response. If that response if followed by a reinforcement, then that response may be repeated. (response->reinforcement, response->reinforcement, response->reinforcement, response->reinforcement, ...)

In Skinner's case, a rat may press a lever on the wall of its Skinner Box and if food is dispensed, may continue to press the lever.

• 3. Social cognitive theory—humans are cognitive beings whose active processing of information plays a critical role in their learning, behavior, and development
• a. Observational learning—learning by observing the behavior of other people (called models)

III. The Infant (p. 215)

• A. Uncovering Evidence of Memory and Learning (p. 215)
  • 1. Assessment of infant memory—often with imitation, habituation, or operant conditioning techniques
  • 2. Imitation—measure memory by having infant repeat activity it has seen
  • 3. Infants imitate tongue thrust.
  • 4. Some argued that this was a reflex action and not imitation but has been replicated consistently.
  • 5. Deferred imitation—ability to imitate a novel act after a delay
  • 6. Appears at six months of age
  • 7. May be a form of explicit memory
• B. Habituation—learn not to respond to a repeatedly presented stimulus (get bored, ignore dripping faucet)
  • 1.Measure of recognition memory that newborns are capable of performing
  • 2.As they age, infants need less “study time” to retain information (leading to longer retention times).
• C. Operant conditioning
  • 1. Rovee-Collier and colleagues demonstrated recall memory in infants.
  • 2. Shown mobile
  • 3. Ribbon tied to infant’s leg; when leg kicks, mobile moves
  • 4. Ribbon removed
  • 5. Days later infant kicks at site of mobile
  • 6. Three-month-olds recall for one week, six-month-olds remember for two weeks, and 18-month-olds remember for three months.
  • 7. Memory strongest when cued (cue dependent); by 15 months, cues can be verbal
  • 8. Infants shown mobile two to four weeks after original experience kicked up a storm.
  • 9. Memory appears cue-dependent and context-specific (i.e., have difficulties recalling when cues are insufficient or too different).
  • 10.Recall— “pure recall” involves retrieval without cue
  • 11.Six-month-old infants can imitate novel behavior.
  • 12.13-month-olds recall sequence of events for as long as three months.
  • 13.Two-year-olds use words to reconstruct earlier events.
  • 14.Infants remember best when (1) they have repeated exposures to what they are to remember, (2) they are given plenty of cues to help them remember, and (3) events they must remember occur in a meaningful or logical order.
• D. Autobiographical memories—recall of episodic events of earlier life (p. 233)
  • 1. Childhood (infantile) amnesia—we retain very few autobiographical memories of events that occurred during the first few years of life.
  • 2. Reasons for early memory loss include:
    • (1) immature hippocampus and related memory structures,
    • (2) lack of language,
    • (3) level of sociocultural support,
    • (4) sense of self, and
    • (5) verbatim versus gist storage.

IV. The Child (p. 219)

• A. Memory Development (p. 219)
  • 1. Four major hypotheses
  • 2. Changes in basic capacities
  • 3. More memory space
  • 4. Increasing speed of processing
• B. Changes in basic capacities (p. 219)
  • 1. Little change in long-term memory capacity
  • 2. Sensory memory in place very early so sensory register itself an unlikely source of developmental variation
  • 3. Basic features of working memory in place by age four
  • 4. Significant improvements in short-term memory capacity during childhood
  • 5. Speed of processing increases
  • 6. Piagetian “centration” may be due to working memory limitations.
  • 7. Short-term memory increases may be domain-specific.
  • 8. The more you know about a subject, the faster you can process information related to the subject.
  • 9. Improvement due to biological maturation of brain (frontal lobes) and experience
• C. Changes in memory strategies (p. 220)
  • 1. Younger children have a tendency to make perseveration errors.
  • 2. Continue to use the same strategy that was successful in the past despite the strategy’s current lack of success
  • 3. Three- and four-year-olds rarely use rehearsal—repeating of items they are trying to learn and remember
• D. Increased knowledge of memory (p. 221)
  • 1. Organization—memory strategy that involves classifying items into meaningful categories (e.g., animals) emerges as effective tool around age nine.
  • 2. Chunking—organizational strategy in which a long number is broken into manageable subunits
  • 3. Organization mastered later in childhood than rehearsal
  • 4. Elaboration—actively creating meaning
  • 5. Add meaningful link between items
  • 6. Helpful in learning foreign languages
  • 7. Increased knowledge of memory
  • 8. Metamemory—knowledge about process of remembering

Metacognition is knowing what you know and what you do not know. For example, I don't know how many chukkers there are in a polo match. I do know that baseball games last nine innings, unless there is a tie. I do know that the capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougo.

• 9. Metacognition—knowledge about cognitive processes
• 10.Two- to three-year-olds demonstrate some metacognitive skills and understand that in order to remember something, you have to work at it.
• 11.Simpler and more familiar tasks lead to highest levels of memory in childhood.
• 12.Language skills and general knowledge impact memory.
• E. Increased knowledge of the world (p. 222)
  • 1. Knowledge base—knowledge of a content area to be learned.
  • 2. Affects learning and memory performance
  • 3. The more you know, the more you can know.
• F. More memory scripts
  • 1. Scripts—general event representations (GERs) or typical sequence of actions related to an event (e.g., fast-food restaurant script: wait in line, tell person at counter you want food, pay for food, carry food to table, open package, eat food, gather trash, throw trash away before leaving)
  • 2. Children as young as three years report general sequences vs. specific experience
  • 3. Experiences lead to better (richer and more detailed) scripts.
  • 4. Eyewitness memory
  • 5. Reconstructed nature of memory interferes with accuracy of eyewitness testimony—reporting of experienced events
  • 6. Young children are more suggestible and influenced by information presented after the event.
  • 7. Young children are fairly accurate but report less information than older children.
  • 8. General prompts can elicit recall of more information (e.g., “tell me more about…”).
  • 9. Specific questions elicit more information, but accuracy may slip (especially true of more directed or leading questions).
  • 10.Preschoolers tend to be asked a larger number of directed questions and are subjected to repeated questioning (both of which increase reporting errors).
  • 11.A study in which 5- and 6-year-old were “cross-examined” after a delay of 8 months, when asked many irrelevant, leading, or ambiguous questions, “cracked” and changed responses in reaction to the questions (one in three changed all of their answers)
• G. Revisiting explanations (p. 223)
  • 1. Older children are faster information processors and can juggle more information in working memory.
  • 2. Older children use more effective memory strategies in encoding and retrieving information.
  • 3. Older children know more about memory, and good metamemory may help children choose more appropriate strategies and control and monitor their learning more effectively.
  • 4. Older children generally know more, and their larger knowledge base may provide some boost to their ability to learn and remember.
  • 5. Older children have formed more elaborate scripts for what typically happens in many situations and use these scripts to aid their recall.
• H. Using Memory to Solve Problems (p. 224)
  • 1. Adaptive strategy choice model—children have multiple strategies in their “toolbox.”
  • 2. Select a strategy based on the task and their own motivation and comfort level

V. The Adolescent (p. 225)

• A. Strategies(p. 225)
  • 1. New learning and memory strategies emerge in adolescence (e.g., elaboration).
  • 2. Use of strategies is more deliberate, selective, and spontaneous.
  • 3. Will deliberately organize a list of words rather than relying on a list they are given
  • 4. Better able to push irrelevant information out of working memory so that it does not interfere with task performance
• B. Basic Capacities (p. 226)
  • 1. Adolescents perform any number of cognitive operations faster than children do.
  • 2. Have greater functional use of working memory (due to brain maturation)
  • 3. Better than children on highly complex cognitive tasks that require them to use recalled information to strategically direct search behavior
• C. Metamemory and Knowledge Base (p. 226)
  • 1. Knowledge base continues to expand during adolescence.
  • 2. Metamemory and metacognition improve
  • 3. Better able to tailor strategies and to monitor strategy choice
  • 4. Typically choose elaboration over rote repetition when they realize former is more effective
  • 5. Teens typically allocate more study time to information judged to be difficult.
  • 6. When pressed for time, devote more time to easy items
  • 7. Extent to which metacognition is employed varies by gender and socioeconomic background
  • 8. Adolescent girls consider using metacognitive strategies more than adolescent boys (may explain higher school grades in girls).
    9. Students from higher socioeconomic status (SES) background report using more metacognitive strategies than those from low SES backgrounds.

VI. The Adult (p. 228)

• A. Memory and Aging (p. 228)
  • 1. Common trouble recalling names and items that will later be needed
  • 2. Become more upset at memory loss, seen as indicator of aging
• B. Areas of strength and weakness (p. 228)
  • 1. Memory pattern in adulthood
  • 2. Use of cross-sectional research may mean that declines could be the result of factors other than age.
  • 3. Declines most noticeable in older adulthood (70s)
  • 4. Difficulties in memory most severe in oldest elderly people
  • 5. Not all older people experience memory difficulties.
  • 6. Not all memory tasks cause older adults difficulties.
  • 7. Timed tasks—older, slower, hurt by time limits.
  • 8.Unfamiliar or artificial (laboratory task) content
  • 9. Older slower when unfamiliar tasks or meaningless (ones that cannot be tied to existing knowledge)

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