So we got three processes,
we've also got three types of memory reserve. And I've got some names up there
Atkinson and Shiffrin. Well, there are quite a few models of anything in
psychology
until we nail it down with science beyond a reasonable question
and that's frequently not the case. We have a couple different models here
This one just helps you distinguish one from the other. So you if know Atkinson and
Shiffrin model, it doesn't mean you necessarily know who they are,
I've never met them. But if you know that the model of Atkinson and Shiffrin,
then you'll know the qualities that go with it.
And you'll be able to differentiate it from Baddeley's working
memory model which we'll get to in a minute. I got sensory memory.
A set of five registers, one
for any sense and we're not talking about seeing dead people so we're going to
knock the six sense off of there. Right? Five senses.
Taste, smell, hearing, sight and
touch. Some people would argue that pain is a different sense, but
it's part touch so we'll keep it there. Internal pain, so well that ain't touched you could
argue,
but we got sensory register for each of our
five senses. As we're perceiving information that memory holds it for a
tiny duration,
very small duration, until we attend to it,
interpret it, and then it can proceed to short term memory.
So if I am looking across
the whole room, quickly....I didn't see most of you.
What I saw was a red shirt over there and a green shirt over there.
And that's what I got. Why did I tend to red and green?
I don't know, but that's what caught my attention. I can now look at it more
carefully
and process it deeply but that memory would normally just fade.
How many cars did you pass on the way over today? How many people did you pass
on the way today?
You didn't run into any I hope. Right? You didn't,
it wasn't that you didn't perceive them, You saw them, moved out of their way,
saw them and noticed them and then that memory went away quickly.
It faded because you didn't need it. Because you didn't attend to it further.
As such didn't proceed to short term memory. There are two different kinds, I'll
say will be on your test. One is echoic, that's auditory information and it decays
in several seconds and the other is iconic, visual information and it decays
in a fraction of a second. Like I said, I had to actually think,
find a color, or something to be able to focus on that I can demonstrate that.
Now I've done that every semester and I couldn't tell you what I saw any other semester.
And very shortly I won't even remember red shirt, green shirt. It will be gone
because it was a very quick decay
if I don't need it, I don't keep it. That's usually adaptive.
Echoic auditory. What was the exact last sentence I just said,
if you didn't write it down? You probably wouldn't know.
You know what? I don't know either because that's how fast it goes.
As conversation goes, you're tracking it, you're making sense of it, because you have
to use memory say to make sense of any language
and then it's gone. Unless you've done something like record it or write it down.
Unless it's something that hits you in a way that you direct to deeper storage.
Iconic is visual information, so I look at those
and now we're talking about mnemonics a little bit earlier. I've talked about
those throughout the semester already
little tricks to help you remember something. Well
the trick is just that you work with the information more, but one way to do it
is to think about ways that you can remember the information differently
than would be obvious.
So if I look at echo, as basic part of echoic,
I can say echo is auditory. Echo, echo,
echo, that's auditory one. So echoic would be
auditory sensory memory. Iconic, I could think about what I see
on my phone or on my desktop , what do I see? Little icons for apps, right?
Icon being the basic word within iconic, you can now use those
little bits of information to help you remember
a larger piece of information, and the more you work with
creating ways to remember information, the more you are likely to remember
information.
We can aim towards deeper storage but that's not what usually happens,
but if we pay attention we will be able to aim it to short term memory
which is longer than sensory, but not that long.
Your attention can be focused or divided.
Focused attention produces the best memory.
You can do things while you do things, but your brain is processing all the things
that you do,
and some people think that they're great multitaskers but research shows that
about five percent of people are great multi-taskers,
and most people aren't good at it at all. They think they are because we have amazing
ability to trick ourselves into believing what we want to believe.
but the more you're doing the more tasks your brain has to attend to,
the less you're going to be able to remember any specific thing.
That varies with individuals of course, but on whole
focused attention helps you remember things better.
And learning to focus your attention is something you can do.
Even if you have ADHD there are lots of techniques you can do to improve your
own attention span dramatically,
in addition to whatever else you might be doing in the way a medication treatment.
Everybody can improve their attention through
psycho behavioral methods. Short term memory,
STM, is also known as working memory, we'll see that in Baddeley's
memory model it's even more emphasized. We're in Atkinson-Shiffrin right now.
So very limited capacity, which lasts up to 20 seconds, give or take,
and it can hold seven plus or minus two bits of information.
What are bits? Well it depends on how you would define them, but you can look at them as
syllables, or numbers perhaps,
maybe even words if they're short words. Bits of information,
20 seconds. So let's do a test of this.
Let me see if I get this thing up here. Well let's just do it with,
let's just do it with auditory memory. Don't write this down.
I won't even use the iconic to give you double chances.
Well I'll just say a number, you listen to it,
don't write it down, I'll time twenty seconds,
and then you write it down to see if you've got it.
All right, let me get on my timer here. Clock.
Timer.
0 minutes 20 seconds.
You ready? Don't write it down. Don't discuss it with each other because that's
using other people's short term memories for your own advantage. Not a bad idea in
some cases but not now.
Ready? 3, 6,
4, 2, 4, 2, 1.
Don't write it down, don't talk about it.
Now write it down, or as much of it as you can remember. Don't talk about it,
because that would give it away. Just write it down to see what you got.
Give you a second to think about it.
Seven plus or minus two bits of information I just gave you seven bits of
information
in the form of numerals. The
correct sequence of numbers,
and we'll just get a show of hands of how many people got it, when I get done with it.
It's 3, 6, 4, 2, 4, 2, 1.
How many people got it?
That ain't bad! That ain't bad at all! Bout half the people, half the people got it. How many people got
most of it?
All of them other ones, ok, I see. Ya'll weren't without any memory of it.
But I said auditory information decays quickly.
But how were you all supposed to be able to remember that if it it was going to decay in 20 seconds?
Were ya'll people going "3, 6, 4, 4, 2, 4, 2, 1, 3, 6, 4, 2, 1, 3, 6, 1, 3, 1, over and over in your head until I said go?
I bet you were. Because what you were doing was a common trick.
to extend your short term memory capacity.
maintenance rehearsal will be repeating the information in your head
over and over. Remember we talked about Vygotsky? We had little kids talking out loud and
eventually we talk in our own heads,
and there we are using that ability to extend our short term memory capacity
and that is a phone number. So you could have actually taken it down
a number of bits, 364 364
24-21. I could have made it into a, or I could have said
364-24-21, made it into three bits.
It's interesting how we as human beings use this knowledge to our advantage
without even realizing that we are doing it, because that's telephone number.
That's a telephone number from when I was a kid.
704 was the area code. What do we do with area codes?
Stick them in parenthesis, right?
And then we have three digits which we then hyphenate,
now do you add in parentheses or hyphenations when you actually dial a
number?
Don't need em. Why do we use them? To help people remember.
How bout your social security number? Three digits,
hyphen, two digits, hyphen, four digits.
Right? That's a trick of memory
that is just done in normal society
and people don't even realize its happening to help you
extend your memory capacity. Nowadays you don't need to do that, you can bump
phones with people
right? Now I got all your private contact information.
You can just say 'text me real quick,' and I don't have to remember it.
So, what we're doing when we're grouping things is to chunk them.
So if I say, "oh, 704,"
and parenthetically put that aside, I can say well 704, 704, is
is one bit. I'm chunking large numbers of bits
into smaller numbers a bits, and in fact you can use this to do some remarkable
remembering,
if you want to. Now because I know that memory is not all that great and we
trick ourselves into believing it is,
I know that the story I'm gonna tell you lacks some sufficiently
accurate detail but the just is true. When I was living in Charlotte, North
Carolina
back in the day, they had a a library card number and it was thirty-something
digits long. I know it was more than thirty and less than forty,
I'm confident about that, but I can't prove it. And I just decided
to undertake to memorize the whole thing for my own amusement,
because I'm weird. So I memorized the 30-something
digit number by doing what? Chunking it into smaller bits
and sequence. And then I would go to the library with my books to check out they'd say,
"do you have your library card?" I'd go
"no, but I know my number," and they would laugh because that's ludicrous. Who
knows a thirty something digit number?
I say, "you ready?" and they're like "sure, okay." And they punch it and they say "that's it!"
I'd say "I know! I chunk. I'm a chunker."
I don't know what it is now but I don't need to know what it is now.
Long term memory is what I'd be talking about if I did remember it now.
Because short term memory is pretty small in terms of the length of time
in which you are able to remember any given piece of information.
Because you're thinking all the time, as William James said, stream of consciousness,
because you're being bombarded with stimuli all the time whether or not
you're paying attention to it.
You are always being called to attend to new things, and as such that short term memory's
always
working but any given piece of information
will slide on out unless you do something to direct it to
long-term memory. Long-term memory,
unlimited capacity, theoretically with indefinite
lengthy endurance, becomes less detailed overtime,
but it could become permanent as we'll see with flash bulb memories.
Some being vivid recollections of very
powerfully emotional moments in their life that they never forget.
You'll see that in cases of dementia sometimes people at very advanced states of
dementia
don't remember what happened today but they can tell you something that
happened fifty years ago,
and others can verify that was an accurate memory. So long-term memory is a
bit of a mystery,
it's pretty amazing, and it accounts for me knowing 7043 644 21.
Why on earth would I know that all these years later?
What do we do with little kids and telephone numbers?
Especially home numbers.
Yep, we can do all kinds of things, sing, did you say sing?
You could sing them couldn't you? Because that would be a mnemonic device actually.
Make a little jingle out of it. We would then have them sing it back to us, or
repeat it back to us right?
Until we were confident that day knew it,
and then we would get them to do it over and over, and I lived at that number for many
years.
So, as a kid I had to know my phone number for many years.
All these years later I still remember something that's totally worthless for
me
for anything except creating a demonstration of long-term memory.
for that has been pretty good. I don't need that information. In fact
I've move many many times since then and I don't remember
any of the phone numbers as an adult that I've had, except the one I have now which
I've had for nine years.
Had one in Memphis, don't remember it. Had one in Boone, don't remember it. Had one in
Christiansburg,
don't remember it, but my kid can remember the one from Christiansburg,
and the one from Memphis because I made him learn it.
But as an adult, I don't call myself that often
right? So it's not very useful information to me except when I have to put it on an
application or something of that nature.
When you are forced to remember something,
the more times you input and use that information the more likely you are to
remember it.
But, it becomes adaptive if you can let go of information you don't need anymore.
I don't need a Memphis phone number anymore, I don't live in Memphis anymore.
I don't know how long that'll stay with me. That might be one of the things when I'm old
and in an advanced state of dementia,
I'll be sitting there babbling 704364241,
and people will say, "what on earth is he talking about?"
and that's just a little graphic for you to kind of put your head around
the things that go into your head. Sensory information we're taking in all the time.
I can't not take in sensory information. I don't just
take it, I actually respond to it. I don't walk off the stage, because even
though I don't usually think about the edge of the stage,
there's a part of my mind that's perceiving it at all times.
But I can put things into my sensory store and retain them for very, very,
very, small durations. My echoic memory and my auditory,
my echoic being auditory sensory memory, and my iconic being visual memory,
it goes away really quickly unless I do something
to move it by late selection into my short term memory, where I then contemplate
maybe the end of the stage, and go, "oh,
they got a little lip they built onto here." It's some nice looking wood.
And as I move on that would be in my short term memory, but I start talking about
something else, and
very quickly that moment would be gone and I probably wouldn't even remember I did
it
in a day, or even an hour perhaps, but
if I did remember it in a day or an hour then what I've done is moved it to long-term
memory.
This loop here, going back to short term memory,
is an important one because you're working memory is your short term memory
and you're using it all the time.
As such everything you interpret in your life
comes from long-term memory. For you to understand the words I'm saying in English
you have to have a long-term memory of what those words mean in English, right?
For me to look down and see 'can', I have to have a long-term memory concept of 'can,'
and if I want to pull it up and read it, I have to have a long-term memory concept of reading,
and beef pot roast country vegetables, my most tender beef, mmmm!
That looks good, savory, if my mouth starts watering, what is that?
Classical conditioning, there you go! Previously neutral stimulus,
savory pot roast, making my mouth water, would be
classical conditioning right? So to
make sense of anything when you get
into the roadway and you're about to get hit by a car, and you jump out of the way,
because you get that flash of fighter flight, you know exactly what car it was
because guess what?
It now matters what car it was. I almost got hit by four-door red vehicle.
And if your're a car person, you'll probably remember a lot more details about it because what
you
are interested in guides what you attend to
and the interaction between short term memory and long-term memory is
ever-present, its always functioning,
so that everything we do we make sense of as a function
of interacting between long-term memory and short term memory
once we get past the sensory store house.