Why is it you can recall a favorite childhood memory, but
might not be able to remember what you did the day before? Reflect on
the reasons why you are able to remember some things and not others by
answering the following questions. Be sure to use Chapter 7 of our text
to provide evidence and support for your response.
Compare and contrast sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory using school-based examples.
What works best for you when required to commit facts to memory for both the short-term and long-term?
Knowing how memory works, how will this impact
your instruction? How will you help students to retain and retrieve the
information they need to know? Provide a specific strategy that you
would utilize in your classroom to ensure that the content makes a
lasting impression and is secured in long-term memory.
chapter_7.docx
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Chapter 7
7.1: Three-Component Model of Memory
These nearly-forgotten childhood memories form part of long-term memory, one of the three
components of the most widely used model of human memory. This model, based largely on the
work of Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968), makes important distinctions between sensory memory
(sometimes called short-term sensory storage), short-term memory, and long-term memory
(Figure 7.1). These distinctions are concerned mainly with the accessibility of information and
the length of time during which it is available for recall as well as with the nature and extent of
the processing that information undergoes.
Figure 7.1
The modal model of memory: a storage model. It’s important to note that these three components
of memory do not refer to three different locations in the brain or other parts of the nervous
system but, rather, refer to how we classify memory storage. The goal of teaching is to bring
about changes in long-term memory.
The Multistore Model of Memory
Rich Shiffrin was a graduate student when he and Stanford faculty member Dick Atkinson began
working on a series of experiments related to memory. Their research became the basis for a
theoretical framework they called the Multistore Model of Memory, a three-stage process. What
significance does this three-stage process have on learning and retention?
LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education, Inc.
Chapter 7
Sensory Memory
Our sensory systems (vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell) are sensitive to an overwhelmingly
wide range of stimulation. Clearly, however, they respond only to a fraction of all available
stimulation at any given time; the bulk of the information available in this stimulation is never
actually processed—that is, it never actually becomes part of our awareness. “Sensory memory”
is the label used to describe the immediate, unconscious effects of stimulation.
Research indicates that much of the stimulation to which we aren’t actually paying attention is
nevertheless available for processing for perhaps a fraction of a second. If you are engaged in a
conversation with someone in a crowded room, you might seem to be totally unaware of what is
being said in other conversations. But if the topic in one of these other conversations turns to
something that passionately interests you (for example, you hear your own name), you suddenly
become aware of what you would not otherwise have heard. This is labeled the cocktail party
phenomenon (Cherry, 1953).
Short-Term Memory
Sensory memory precedes attention; it’s simply the effect of a stimulus before you pay attention
to it. When you attend to a stimulus (in other words, become conscious of it), it passes into what
is called short-term memory. Short-term memory consists of what is in our immediate
consciousness at any given time.
One of the important characteristics of short-term memory is that it is highly limited in capacity.
Following various memory experiments, Miller (1956) concluded that its average capacity is
about seven separate items (plus or minus two); that is, our immediate conscious awareness is
limited to this capacity, and as additional items of information come in, they push out some that
are already there.
Short-term memory lasts a matter of seconds (not minutes, hours, or days) and appears to be
highly dependent on rehearsal. For items to be maintained in short-term storage, they must be
repeated (consciously thought about). In the absence of repetition, they quickly fade—usually
before 20 seconds have elapsed.
The apparent limitations of short-term memory are not nearly as serious as they might seem at
first. Although we cannot easily attend to more than seven discrete items at one time, a process
called chunking dramatically increases short-term memory capacity. In effect, a chunk is simply
a group of related items of information. Thus, a single letter can be one of the seven items held in
short-term memory, or it might be chunked with other letters to form a single word—which can,
in turn, be one of seven items in short-term memory. To illustrate this phenomenon, Miller
(1956) uses the analogy of a change purse that can hold only seven coins. If the purse holds
seven pennies, its capacity is only seven cents. But if it holds seven quarters, seven 50-cent
pieces, or even seven gold coins, its capacity increases dramatically.
Baddeley’s Model of Working Memory
LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education, Inc.
Chapter 7
Short-term memory describes immediate awareness. Its usefulness is that it allows us to keep
information in mind long enough to make sense of words and sentences, to make decisions, and
to do simple things like dial telephone numbers.
Just how does short-term memory work? Well, suggest Baddeley and Hitch (1974), there must
be some sort of system that oversees and controls what happens in working memory. They call
this system the central executive system. Its two main functions are (1) to bring information
into conscious attention either from the sensory memory or from long-term storage, and (2) to
process information for long-term storage. In addition, two separate systems serve to maintain
information so that it remains available to working memory. For lack of a better term, Baddeley
refers to these as slave systems (because they do the bidding of the central executive system)
(Baddeley, 2007). The phonological loop maintains verbal material, such as words or
numbers—something like a recording that loops (repeats over and over again). And the visual
visual-spatial sketch pad presents working memory with a temporary image of material that is
mainly visual or spatial. (See Figure 7.2.)
Figure 7.2
A representation of Baddeley and Hitch’s model of working memory. Information that we
remember must first be sensed and then must somehow be held on to and processed if it is to be
transferred to long-term memory. Baddeley’s model describes how memory functions. The
central executive system controls the flow of information from sensory storage and from long-
LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education, Inc.
Chapter 7
term memory, and processes it for long-term storage. The so-called slave systems maintain
information so that it is available for processing.
Long-Term Memory
Long-term memory includes all our relatively stable information about the world—what we
know but is not in our immediate consciousness. In fact, one important distinction between shortterm and long-term memory is that short-term memory is an active, ongoing, conscious (hence
working) process; whereas, long-term memory is a more passive, unconscious process.
Accordingly, short-term memory is easily disrupted by external events—as we demonstrate
every time we lose our train of thought because of a distraction. In contrast, long-term memory
cannot easily be disrupted. If you know the capital of Finland today, you are likely to know it
tomorrow, next month, and even next year.
We transfer information from sensory storage to short-term storage through the process of
attending, and we maintain information in short-term memory largely through rehearsal and
repetition (the phonological loop and the visual-spatial sketch pad). But the transference of
material from short-term to long-term memory involves more than simple rehearsal: It involves
encoding, a process whereby meaning is extracted from experience. To encode information is to
transform or abstract it—to represent it in another form.
Encoding clearly involves information processing, an event that can occur at different levels
(Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Cermak & Craik, 1979). Information that is not processed leaves only
a momentary sensory impression (sensory memory), information that is merely attended to and
rehearsed is available for seconds (short-term memory), and information that is processed to a
greater degree is stored in long-term memory.
Encoding: Getting Information In
Most of what we encode into memory is information that is a byproduct of everyday life and will
soon be forgotten. It is only information or events that we give attention and attach meaning to
that are likely to be remembered later. How is encoding significant to classroom learning?
Not all material in long-term memory is processed to the same level. If, for example, you are
asked to learn and remember a word, you can process it at a highly superficial level, paying
attention only to its physical appearance. At a somewhat deeper level, you might pay attention to
the word’s pronunciation. And at the deepest level, you would take into account the word’s
meaning—a process called semantic encoding. (Table 7.1 summarizes the characteristics of all
three levels of memory.)
Table 7.1: Three Levels of Memory
LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education, Inc.
Chapter 7
Short-Term Memory
(STM)
Alternate Labels Echoic or iconic Primary or working
Duration
Less than 1 second Less than 20 seconds
Stability
Fleeting
Easily disrupted
Capacity
Limited
Limited (7±2 items)
Momentary,
Immediate consciousness;
General
unconscious
active, maintained by
Characteristics
impression
rehearsal
Sensory Memory
Long-Term Memory
(LTM)
Secondary
Indefinite
Not easily disrupted
Unlimited
Knowledge base;
associationistic; passive; the
result of encoding
The Constructive Nature of Long-Term Memory
Our long-term memories are seldom exact reproductions of our experiences. In fact, memories
change considerably over time, often in predictable ways: They tend to be generative rather than
purely reproductive. As an illustration, Loftus (1979) asked subjects to view a film in which a
sports car was involved in an accident. Later, she asked questions about the accident. Some
subjects were asked, “How fast was the sports car going when it passed the barn while traveling
along the country road?” Other subjects were asked instead, “How fast was the sports car going
while traveling along the country road?” When subjects were later asked whether they had seen a
barn, 17 percent of those who had been asked the first question claimed to remember seeing one;
fewer than 3 percent of the others remembered a barn. In fact, there was no barn in the film.
Long-term memory is constructive memory. Essentially, this means that much of what we
remember is modified by intervening events and dulled by the passage of time. Even if we were
right there when the bank was robbed, in the end, perhaps fewer than half of us will be able to
identify the thief; even fewer will remember the color of his hair or eyes. And some of us will
remember things that we have never even experienced.
Long-Term Memory and the Brain
One characteristic of long-term memory that might explain its constructive nature is that our
memories appear to be scattered in many parts of our brains. Studies using positron emission
tomography or magnetic resonance imaging (imaging techniques that can reveal location and
patterns of neural activity in the brain) indicate that there isn’t just one single memory trace for
each item that we remember (Sousa, 2006). As a result, long-term remembering is a process of
retrieving from different brain locations, isolating features of the experience we are recalling,
and putting them together in a sort of pattern-completion process. Several problems can, and
often do, result. Often, only a fragment of the experience can be retrieved. As a result, people are
unable to remember various details about an experience. Or they retrieve details of different
experiences but now assume that these all belong to the same event. Or perhaps they remember
an experience as though it were theirs (an episode in their own lives) when it actually isn’t. Thus,
we sometimes make poor witnesses without ever intending to lie.
Influences on Long-Term Memory
LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education, Inc.
Chapter 7
Not all of our long-term memories are subject to distortions and inventions. Highly significant
emotional experiences sometimes give rise to long-lasting and remarkably detailed recollections
termed flashbulb memories—although the accuracy even of flashbulb memories is often open
to question. Similarly, our memories for odors appear to be astonishingly stable and long lasting
(Zucco, 2007).
Many of our recollections of real-life, day-to-day events are also remarkably accurate. For
example, when Wynn and Logie (1998) questioned 63 adults about incidental but actual events
in their lives, they found very little change in people’s recollections of these events over time.
Most of these adults continued to remember with a high degree of accuracy, which seemed
independent of the passage of time.
Several factors appear to be directly related to how clearly and how long we are likely to
remember things. For example, highly arousing (emotionally important) events are far more
likely to be remembered (Buchanan, 2007).
Long-term memory is also influenced by what we understand and by our intentions. Reading a
novel for enjoyment is quite different from reading the same novel for an English class. In the
second case, we modify our strategies. We analyze, we review, we think about—in short, we
process what we read at a very different level. But, says Linderholm (2006), if we have learned
to read in order to memorize the content rather than to understand it, we might struggle mightily
when asked to generalize what we have learned.
Another characteristic of our long-term memories is that with our highly constructive memories,
we tend to remember the gist of what happened (or of what we heard or read) rather than all its
details. When you hear a story and then repeat it, you first recollect its general “drift”—perhaps
its punch line and its setting. And when you tell the story, you don’t so much repeat it as
regenerate it on the basis of your understanding of the story.
Declarative and Nondeclarative Long-Term Memory
LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education, Inc.
Chapter 7
These professional cyclists could no more explain how one rides a bicycle than the centipede can
tell you how it walks. But even when they are very old and have not climbed on a bicycle for
many, many years, they are unlikely to have forgotten how to ride. This is one of their
nondeclarative long-term memories.
When a meddling philosopher asked a centipede how it managed to walk with its many legs, the
poor thing was totally bewildered. You see, it had never really thought about the problem; it just
darn well knew how to walk. Sadly, after it had been asked the question, it began to try to
understand the process, tried to figure out which leg went where, when, which next, and on and
on, until, finally, completely perplexed and befuddled, it had wrapped its hundred legs into the
world’s biggest headache of a knot.
Much of our knowledge is like the centipede’s knowing how to walk. It isn’t information that we
know consciously and can put into clear, understandable words and instructions. Instead, it’s
knowledge that we have in our muscles or maybe in some unconscious part of our nervous
systems. It includes information relating to things like riding a bicycle, hitting long drives in
golf, or even our thoughtless responses to things that frighten or excite us. These kinds of
memories are labeled nondeclarative memory (or implicit memory) simply because they can’t
be put into words.
But we also have many stable memories that we can put into words—memories having to do
with our names, our addresses, the meanings of words, the colors of our cars, and on and on.
These memories make up what is termed declarative memory (also called explicit memory).
LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education, Inc.
Chapter 7
The principal difference between declarative and nondeclarative memory is that declarative
memory is conscious memory for facts and events; nondeclarative memory is unconscious
memory.
Semantic versus Episodic Memory
Declarative memory consists of at least two distinct types of memories, explains Tulving (1991).
Abstract, general knowledge about the world, such as what children learn in school, makes up
what is called semantic memory. In addition, each of us also has a large store of very personal
recollections about the things we have done and thought, the experiences we have had, and so
on. This autobiographical knowledge consists of all of the remembered episodes of our lives and
defines what is meant by episodic memory. (See Figure 7.3.)
Figure 7.3
As shown in this model of memory studies, memory failure as well as imaging studies of the
brain, suggest that different parts of the brain are involved in each type of memory.
Processes in Long-Term Memory
The functioning of the information processing system (memory system) that we have been
describing has a simple goal: to make sense of significant sensation and to organize and store for
recall that which is potentially important, interesting, or useful while ignoring or discarding more
LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education, Inc.
Chapter 7
trivial matters. To achieve this goal, the system uses a variety of processes. As we saw, much
sensory data that is not attended to (not processed) does not go beyond immediate sensory
memory. Paying attention is one of the important activities of our information processing system.
By this means, information is transferred from sensory to short-term storage.
In addition to paying attention, at least three other basic processes are involved in remembering:
rehearsal, elaboration, and organization.
Rehearsal
Rehearsal involves repeating. The simplest rehearsal strategy is to state the material (“apples
and soap and bread,” “apples and soap and bread,” “apples and soap and bread,”) over and over
again until it seems unlikely that it will escape from memory. Rehearsal serves not only to
maintain information in short-term memory but also to transfer material from short- to long-term
storage. Most children younger than age five do not rehearse spontaneously and cannot easily be
taught to do so (Wellman, 1990).
A large number of studies indicate that spaced repetition is far better for long-term remembering
than is massed repetition—a finding that has important educational implications (for example,
Verkoeijen & Delaney, 2008). Thus, you are more likely to do well on your educational
psychology exam if you spread your study over several weeks than if you try to cram everything
into a single night before.
Elaboration
Elaboration is a cognitive process whereby material is extended or added to (elaborated) to
make it more memorable. One way of elaborating material is to associate mental images with
items to be remembered. Because our memories are highly visual (photographs are more easily
remembered than paragraphs), the use of mental images is an important aspect of most
mnemonic systems (systems for remembering).
Sometimes, elaboration involves forming associations between new material and material that is
already well known. Research suggests that elaborations that relate to meaning are highly
memorable. For example, when Bradshaw and Anderson (1982) asked subjects to recall
sentences such as “the fat man read the sign,” those who had elaborated the sentence to
something like “the fat man read the sign warning of thin ice” performed significantly better than
those who had not elaborated. Children younger than age 12 do not deliberately elaborate to
improve recall (Ornstein, Grammer, & Coffman, 2010).
Elaborating while studying might involve making up questions, reading with a view to answering
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