Some Short-Term Memories Die Suddenly, No Fading Summary

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429091806.htm

          This experiment was conducted by researchers at the University of California. Before people believed that when memories are stored, some goes to the long term section and other go to the short term section. It is said that the ones that goes to the short term section goes unprocessed and groes more innacurate and imprecise by the second. But the researchers proved them wrong.
          They discovered that their subjects could hold temporary memories (like color and shape) for atleast 4 seconds before the memories suddenly disappear, though until then they remained quite accurate.

          To test the accuracy of short-term visual memory, Weiwei Zhang and Steve Luck designed experiments to measure two things. The probability the memory could be held and the precision of that memory. Both of the tests were tested on 12 adults. The first test was to show them 3 squares with colors, flashing for one tenth of a second. Then after 1, 4 or 10 seconds, they are shown a spectrum of colors with the 3 colors that appeared before, only that now they are colorless and one of them is highlighted. They ask you to select a color in the spectrum that best resembles the highlighted square's original color. The closer they click to the color, the more accurate. The second one is basically the same, except it tests shapes. 
          They concluded that the subject either had the memory, or doesn't, depending on how close they choose to the color/shape. Also that the probability of having the memory lies between 4 and 10 seconds, and the memories did not slowly "fade away".
          This can be important in real life because  it would provide away to help us avoid the confusion that might occur if we tried to make decisions on the basis of weak, inaccurate memories. Also that they are incorporating these findings into research for short-term memory dysfunction in people with schizophrenia.

The Memories You Want To Forget Are The Hardest Ones To Lose Summary

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070815105026.htm

          This discovery was conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It mainly says that very emotional, painful, shocking memories are are the hardest to forget, especially if they are visual ones. An example it presented was that when you see a footage of soldiers coming back from war, it is more emotional than simply reading it in a headline in the newspaper.
           Keith Payne, an assistant professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences said that it is easy to forget neutral (as in simple, basic) memories such as a phone number or directions, but to intentionally try to forget an emotional one is really hard. Even a "mild" memory is hard to forget because when people are trying to forget it, they need to mentally separate it first and then block it of the ones you don't want to retrieve. Emotions obstruct this process because you make a connections of these with other parts of your life making it harder to isolate.
          The experiments they conducted is to show a word to subjects, such as "murder". By simply showing the word, the subject may or may not have any reaction to it in contrast to the emotions they have while looking at a very violant picture or footage. They found out that not only it is hard to intentionally forget unpleasant memories, that the pleasant ones are also hard to forget.

          These studies contributes to understanding how emotions limits mental control and whether by trying to intentionally forget an event can actually cause more pain. But also, if the motivation is enough, individuals with help of some coping strategies can overcome the effects of these memories.

New Understanding Of How We Remember Traumatic Events Summary

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081028103111.htm

          Neuroscientists at The University of Queensland were the ones who conducted this experiment and discovered why very poignant events can cause some traumatic effect on your long term memory.
          It states that for a long time, the ability of the brain to remember fear or trauma had been crucial to our long term survival, but some of those memories causes a negative reaction rather than one that will help us. It is said that in the amygdala (located at the back part of the brain) that when it encounters situations like the traumatic ones we had before, it releases a stress hormone.
          The Journal of Neuroscience published a paper by QBI's Dr Louise Faber and her collegues have shown how the brain's "adrenaline" called the noradrenaline affects the amygdala  by influencing chemical and electrical pathways in the brain responsible for the formation of memory.
          This discovery can help in real life because it teaches us more about the effects a traumatic event can have on you and maybe understand more on how to treat patients with post-traumatic stress or anxiety disorders. It gives us a clearly understanding of how these emotions and memories are formed.

What Is Memory - How Does It Work?

1. Explain the concept of sensory memory.   

    Sensory memory is the first level of memory. It is the ability to retain an image after the original stimulus is gone, although only momentarily and relatively unprocessed. There are two types of sensory memory, one is the iconic memory and the other is the echoic memory.

2. Give an example of sensory memory.

   You lost focus in a lecture, suddenly a significant word appears that causes you to return your focus. You should remember what was said just before the key word because it is temporarily stored in your sensory register.

3. What is the capacity of our sensory memory?

   Our sensory memory have a capacity to hold a large amount of unprocessed information (like 

visual data) but can only hold them accurately for a short time, like it fades away after a second.

4. Describe the concept of short-term memory.

   Short-term is the capacity to hold small amount of memory in your mind consciously while it is being processed in one's mind. Or simply what you can repeat immediately after perceiving it.

5.What is the "magic number" as it relates to short-term memory and who conducted the experiment which established this measurement?

   The magic number is an experiment called "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information". It was conducted by reknown psychologist, George Miller. This relates to short-term memory because it describes that the human mind can only remember in detail 7 (give or take 2) stimuli presented at the same time. It rejects the other stimuli presented after.

6. What is chunking?

   Chunking is the process with which we can expand our memory by remembering things in "chunks". The mind separate information in meaningful sections in order for it to remember it more clearly. It increases a person's recall capacity.

7. What has been determined to be the ideal size of "chunks" for both letters and numbers?

   According to G. Miller, the ideal size of chunks to remember is if you divide them into 5-9 items. But Herbert Simon showed that the ideal size for chunking letters and numbers, meaningful or not, was three.

8. Which mode of encoding does short-term memory mostly rely on, acoustic or visual?
   Acoustic memory is better than visual memory

9. Explain the duration and capacity of long-term memory.

    The capacity (information that can be stored in the brain) of the long-term memory is unkown. It is impossible to measure and can be limitless. Our brains ability to store memories is greater than any powerful computer.
    The duration of information is thought to be stored permanently, which means for your entire lifetime. Now there is a thought that some memories can possibly be genetically inherited and therfore las longer than a lifetime. 
 
10. Explain in detail the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of memory.
 

   In 1968, Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed a model of human memory that memory is stored in two parts, long-term memory and short-memory. Later another third part is added, called the sensory memory. So in general it propose that human memory involves a sequence of three stages.


Sensory Memory:  The senses have a limited capacity to store information percieved with senses and it usually goes unprocessed. Ex: the visual system have a iconic memory for visual stimuli such as shape, color, siza and location, but not the meaning. The main ones are the Iconic Memory and the Echoic Memory.


Short-Term Memory:  Information selected by sensory memory then pass to short-term memory. This allows us to retain information long enough for us to use it. STM last around 15-30 seconds unless people rehearse the information, like separate into chunks.


Long-Term Memory:  LTM perseves memory and skills from a minute to a lifetime. LTM is hard to measure because it is just way too big and is more powerful than any computer storage. 

11. Identify three criticisms or limitations of the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of memory.

 1: The model which consists of the "stream of memory" is said to lack internal consistency

 2: The Atkinson-Shiffrin model distinguishes different forms of memory, but it does not take into account what information is presented

 3: It doesn't take into accoudn the differences between the subject's performance including a cognitive ability or the previous experience with learning techniques

 
12.Explain the Levels of Processing Model of memory.

   Levels of Processing Model of memory is a theory presented by Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart in 1972. It rejects the idea of the dual store model of memory. Instead, this theory propose that information can be processed in a number of different ways and that the durability/strength  of the memory trace is a direct function of the depth of processing involved. Ex: Shallow processing and Deep processing.

13. What is maintenance rehearsal - give an example.


   Maintanance rehearsal is a process of repeating and verbalizing a piece of information over and over again. Usually the short-term memory can hold the information for 20 seconds, but the maintanance rehearsal can keep it for a longer amount of time.
ex: when you ask for a phone number and don't have paper around, you repeat the number over and over again just in time to dail the numbers in the phone. This is the use of maintanane rehearsal.





14. What is elaborative rehearsal - give an example.

   This involves deep processing of a item to-be remembered resulting in producing a durable memory. Ex: when you memorize a word that have no meaning to you, you try to associate it with other things in order to make it meaningful. Like the word "braniac". It is similar to the word "brain" so you associate it with that word and brain makes you think of someone who is very smart.
 
15. Who developed the Levels of Processing Model and the concepts of maintenance 
and elaborative rehearsal?

   It is a theory presented by Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart in 1972.

Memory

              

               What makes each and every person unique? The answer would be the experiences and achievements that we have acquired. But even if we have done these things, it doesn’t matter at all if you can’t remember them. So it is safe to say that memory is what shapes our identity and what it is based on.

              After watching the video, it got me thinking about how we take things we receive at birth granted. Nobody really cares for their senses (like sight and hearing) until we have lost them. It is the same way with our memory. It just seems so natural when you are looking back and laughing at some joke your friends told you the other day, or start crying at a movie you saw last week. But when I saw the man who can’t withhold new memories and the other man who suffers from Alzheimer’s, made it so clear to me that the fact of not being to picture the future, or simply make a cup of tea is a huge impact to someone’s life.

              It got me thinking of what experiences got me here who I am today. We learn and grow by building up our memories. It also inspires me to learn more about these sorts of memory loss and to care for the ones I have right now.