Lecture 4: Making Memories
What does memory involve?
In the introductory chapter of his comprehensive "Human Memory" cognitive psychologist Alan
Baddeley poses the following thought experiment:
If someone is afflicted with a dense amnesia and we were in the position to give them
a memory transplant what would we include?
- Autobiographical Memory --- a sense of self, personal history,
memory of experiencing past episodes (Episodic)
- Semantic Memory --- knowledge about language & the world
- Procedural Memory --- memory of skills, how to do things
- Implicit Memory --- overlaps with semantic and procedural, and possibly
episodic
- Working Memory --- short term storage, the just past
In addition to these divisions of different types of memory there are some key features
of human memory we would want to incorporate:
- good retrieval capacities (tip of the tongue phenomenon)
- elegant forgetting
- emotional modulation
- metacognitive skills
What makes information memorable?
- imagery
- networks of associations
- learning by heart
- emotional impact
- uniqueness
- novelty
- mnemonotechnics
A case study: Luria's "S"
A young Russian journalist, known in the literature as "S",
was sent to see the psychologist Alexander Luria because his memory seemed to know no bounds.
Luria was unable to measure the extent of S's memory because it was unlimited. He could remember
a series of unrelated words or numbers of any length, as long as he had enough time (3-4 sec)
to form images associated with each of the items. Luria tested S for many years, and found
that he could remember word lists presented as much as 16 years earlier. The secret to
S's prodiguous memory was his synesthesia.
Sources:
- Baddeley, A. (1992) Human Memory: Theory and Practice, Allyn&Bacon:Needham Heights, MA.
- Luria, A. (1968) The Mind of a Mnemonist, Harvard University Press:Cambridge, MA.
- Schacter, Daniel L. (1996) Searching for Memory, HarperCollins: New York.