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Memory and Cognition - Coggle Diagram
Memory and Cognition
The Science of
Studying
- encoding: getting stuff into memory
- retrieval: getting stuff out of memory
bad studying strategies:
- highlighting: shallow encoding > not engaging with the meaning of the material beyond what's on the page.
- cramming: massed practice > all of your study at once. not as effective as distributed study.
- in front of the tv: divided attention > even if you're good at ignoring the tv, you're still using some of your attentional resources to suppress the information that's coming to your senses. not all of your attentional resources are being used for studying.
- all night: sleep loss hurts cognition.
good studying strategies:
- desirable difficulties: challenges that may seem to slow down learning and performance, but which lead to longer and better memory.
- elaboration: deep encoding > thinking about the meaning. linking parts of the material to each other and your own interests, generating new examples.
- teaching yourself: retrieval practice > makes retrieval easier.
- varying study content: swap between subjects every now and then to avoid getting bored.
- get sleep: don't skip sleep if you can help it.
where metacognition (knowing how our minds work) fails:
- restudying tends to result in higher confidence rather than recognition.
- recognition: identifying that something is similar from previous experience.
- tip of the tongue phenomenon: difficulty in retrieval > you can almost, but not quite, recall the word you're searching for.
Memory
- the generation effect: we remember material that we gathered ourselves better than material we simply memorised.
- interleaved vs blocked practice: 'interleaved' means to mix up what you're studying, as opposed to doing all of A, then all of B, then all of C.
- encourages comparison, contrasts, and discrimination between concepts.
- prevents you from going on autopilot.
- self-reference effect: better memory for material when you think about how it connects to yourself
- making images in your memory palace personally significant to you.
- sleep: important for memory consolidation
- the stabilisation of memories that have been encoded > continues to happen over time.
- like letting a coat of paint dry before adding another.
- remembering what we have experienced throughout the day, or something from our own personal story: autobiographical memory.
- elaboration: concrete information is easier to visualise and remember (visual encoding)
- think of concrete or visual examples when it comes to studying abstract concepts.
- the memory palace method "the method of loci": the same part of the brain that's involved in emotion and spacial navigation (hippocampus) also controls short and long-term memory processing.
- assign images to the content you want to memorise and place them on a path in a real-life location. when you retrace the path in your mind and see the images, you are able to recall the information.
- choose a location you know really well to serve as your memory palace.
- choose what you want to memorize
- create a compelling visual image for each thing > distinctive and interesting as possible > the weirder and more emotional they are, the easier it will be.
- place images along the path of your memory palace.
- practice
- emotions influence memory and its consolidation:
- flashbulb memory: a vivid recollection of where you were and what you were doing when something emotional occurred.
- amygdala (often implicated in emotional arousal) and hippocampus (often implicated in memory formation) sit side-by-side.
- amygdala activity correlates with better memory for emotional images.
- research suggests that adrenaline, used in fight or flight, helps in creating strong memories > helping us remember where a predator was and what happened in a situation to avoid it in the future.
- lack of adrenaline = a poor memory response (retention prevention) even if there was a highly emotional reaction to an event.
- events have emotional power when they're important to us.
- hormones released with strong emotions seem to solidify memory > ongoing research into testing whether beta-blockers (block adrenaline) can help in ptsd treatment.
- exercise assists in memory retention
- brain training programs have questionable effectiveness
- "transfer": brain training makes you better at the games, but doesn't appear to transfer generally improved memory.
- memory paradox: has immense capabilities but it is also very flawed:
- hippocampus is heavily involved in forming new memories. it is neuroplastic > physically changes with experience > critical for spatial memory and navigation.
- there's a difference between brain structure being different (hippocampus change) and what areas of the brain are active (encoding strategies being used).
- memory is not a simple readout of stored information, it's constructive > putting the pieces back together again.
- schema: knowledge or experiences about a domain or event. suggested to form the foundation of our memories.
- chunking: taking pieces of information and making them into more meaningful wholes.
- memory can be distorted by our biases and assumptions by misleading information > schemas
- frederic bartlett (1932) suggested that recollections become increasingly shaped by our schemas as detailed memories fade.
- false memories: things that we remember, but never happened > memory is very open to suggestion
- misinformation, leading questions.
- autobiographical memory is suggestible > ability to plant false memories > lost in the mall study.
- source monitoring: we take in information from many different sources > bad at keeping track of where information comes from
- external: distinguishing between external sources (what you saw vs what someone told you)
- internal: distinguishing between internal sources (what you thought vs what you said.)
- reality monitoring: distinguishing between external and internal sources
Attention
- occipital lobe: information from the eyes moves here.
- every moment contains more information than we can take in. attention selects 'slices' and 'chunks' of our external world to take in and process at a time.
- this creates the illusion that we have a simultaneous perception of what's in front of us.
- our minds construct reality through how we direct our attention.
- perception, in the case of vision, isn't just where you're looking, but also what your brain does with that information.
- inattentional blindness: what you're missing because your attention is already taken up with a primary task. no attentional resources left over to notice anything.
- look-but-fail-to-see accidents on the road.
- eye-tracking studies often used in studies of attention.
- primitive features: the idea that some basic features don't need attention to be seen (visual pop-out) and that we'll always see them.
- tested with visual search tasks.
- combining these primitive features into a more complex object is what's difficult.
- attention is required to bind primitive features into complex objects.
- the time it takes to find a primitive target increases with more other objects around.
- feature integration theory: certain basic features are processed quickly in parallel. attention serves to bind simple features together. the binding process is slow and serial.
- spatial attention: "spotlight metaphor" moving attention around a scene.
- feature-based attention: ability to 'tune' attention when looking for specific features. the more similar an unexpected object is to what you have your attention on, the more likely you are to notice it.
- change blindness: failure to notice salient changes in the world around us > failure in large changes > failure to update representations between views.
- bad at noticing changes. gradual changes are harder to notice that abrupt changes, but still are both difficult when your attention is not on the changes.
Cognition
- there's a theory that flashbulb memories are a matter of confidence, not a more accurate memory.
- you remember central details really well due to enhanced attention and consolidation, but contextual details can be lost or jumbled together the same as regular, non-emotionally charged memories.
- the confidence can be driven by the memories that remain.
- patient h.m.: removal of part of his hippocampus resulted in the inability for him to form new memories.
- anterograde amnesia: issue in forming new memories. more common. damage to hippocampus and medial temporal lobe.
- retrograde amnesia: inability to access old memories. typically more profound for most recent memories > old memories have had time to consolidate.
- the hippocampus is heavily involved in forming new memories.
- working memory (short-term memory): unrehearsed memory is quickly lost. anterograde amnesia is a difficulty moving information from working memory to long-term memory > what you can hold and manipulate in your mind.
- procedural memory: learning new skills and rules.
- patient h.m. got better at tasks with practice even though he couldn't remember learning new skills.