People can remember facts or events {memory}|. Memory allows information recall and use [Baddeley, 1990] [Dudai, 1989] [LeDoux, 1996] [Martinez and Kesner, 1998]. Memory stores information. Memory storage can be inaccurate.
comparison: learning
Learning places information in memory. Memory implies learning. People learn some memories better than others. Perhaps, they repeat them often.
comparison: recall
Recall retrieves information from store. Memory recall can be inaccurate.
types
People can perform habits and procedural skills {procedural memory, cognition}. People can remember facts, previous actions, predictions, goals, objects, locations, and times {declarative memory, cognition}. Long-term memory can be declarative/explicit or non-declarative/implicit. Memory can be episodic, procedural, categorical, or semantic. Episodes and procedures are personal. Words and statements are not personal.
processes
Forming memory requires timed inputs, conditional branches, and delays while some processes wait for other processes to finish.
Mind has fast and slow processes. Short-term memory and attention involve intensive, detailed, and fast processes, which have limited information capacity and can create information structures available to consciousness. Long-term memory involves slow processes, which have unlimited information capacity and cannot create information structures available to consciousness. People cannot be aware of mental processes, computations, or abstract representations, so consciousness is viewpoint-specific representations {intermediate-level theory of consciousness, memory}. Consciousness stores computation results {information structure}. Consciousness is a viewer-centered representation, in short-term memory, of a three-dimensional model, and involves position, shape, color, motion, attention, and representation [Crick and Koch, 2000] [Jackendoff, 1987] [Jackendoff, 1996] [Jackendoff, 2002] [Siewert, 1998] [Strawson, 1996]. Perceptual primary sensory cortex stores perceptions. Short-term memory can hold all object features simultaneously and so unify perception. Some perceptions do not become memories.
Complex memories have same laws as basic unit memories {memory theories} [Ebbinghaus, 1913].
processes: analog process
Forming and retrieving memories, and other mental processes, are analog processes, not digital.
processes: indexing
Memories depend on indexing by location, time, and image. Index uses a lookup table sorted by use probability. Index can have inhibition and excitation to expand or prune.
processes: information processing
Mind actively processes data consciously and non-consciously.
processes: interactive memory
Memories are made, stored, and recalled using active cognitive processes, which relate existing memories and interpret memory content {interactive memory, cognition}, so memory has no bound.
processes: knowledge structure
Memory uses space, time, subject, and so on, in an interrelated knowledge hierarchy. Meaning and understanding require knowledge schemas and hierarchies {knowledge structure}. Such structures both provide background information and integrate current stimuli and facts. For example, stories have schema, with setting, characters, goal, plot, and resolution. Meaning relates to what object can do or is for [Schank and Abelson, 1977] [Schank, 1997].
processes: perception
All memories are about past perceptions.
processes: repetition
Repetition strengthens memory.
processes: representation
Memories have multiple mental representations. Mental representations build from familiar parts. Parts have one and only one object.
processes: storage
Mind has mechanisms to store mental representations. Mental processes store memories for use within several seconds in immediate memory or sensory memory, for use up to 45 seconds in short-term memory or working memory, and for use after 45 seconds in long-term memory. These processes differ for different senses. Perhaps, long-term memories are never lost. Only ability to recall them fails. Perhaps, associations are weak, or needed stimuli do not happen. Perhaps, long-term associations are never lost. Perhaps, associations strengthen during conscious processing only. Perhaps, non-conscious processing also happens during and after learning, affecting representations or associations.
processes: units
Memory content involves storing basic units, such as shapes, sizes, motions, and qualities.
requirements
Memory does not require sensation, does not require perception, and does require awareness.
biology: ampakine
Ampakines increase glutamine binding to AMPA receptor and increase glutamate release from AMPA receptor, and so affect memory and cognition.
biology: animals
All mammals have procedural and declarative memory.
biology: brain
Memory involves caudate nucleus, cerebellum, frontal lobe, hippocampus, inferotemporal cortex, lateral prefrontal cortex, mamillary bodies, medial temporal lobe, posterior superior temporal lobe, putamen, septo-hippocampal system, and thalamus. Stimulating brain position repeatedly results in same memory. Most brain damage does not affect short-term memory.
biology: connection strength
Memory coding changes neuron connection strengths and patterns.
biology: CREB
Calcium influx activates protein kinases that phosphorylate other enzymes that activate or deactivate CREB. CREB enhances memory protein genes, such as zif268. Cell stimulus patterns activate gene set. High-frequency, middle-frequency, and low-frequency stimuli affect different enzymes. Signals strengthen synapses sensitized by stimulus that released enzymes that activate CREB. Synapses themselves do not send signal molecules to cell nucleus.
biology: drug
Drugs can make atypical memory states. If drugs reduce brain electrical activity, memories do not consolidate. After memory consolidates, drugs do not affect memory. Anti-cholinesterase, physostigmine, puromycin, and scopolamine affect memory [Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968] [Atkinson et al., 1999] [Atkinson et al., 2000] [Farthing, 1992] [Hobson, 1999] [Metzner, 1971] [Spence and Spence, 1968] [Tart, 1972] [Tart, 1975]. Drugs do not affect short-term memory.
biology: EEG
Brain wave changes do not affect memory.
Short-term memory has gamma oscillations in local field potentials, which can result from reverberating brain activity [Tallon-Baudry and Bertrand, 1999].
biology: electrical shock
If electrical shock reduces brain electrical activity, memories do not consolidate. After memory consolidates, electrical shock does not affect memory.
biology: hippocampus
After temporal-lobe and hippocampus removal, people cannot make long-term declarative memories but can learn motor tasks [Scoville and Milner, 1957].
biology: ion channel
Brain information processing code uses ion channels and molecules. Protein alters cell-membrane ion-channel-use probabilities.
biology: myelination
Myelination extent does not affect memory.
biology: neocortex
Long-term memories go to neocortex. Perhaps, it happens at night.
biology: neuron
Short-term memory and long-term memory use same neurons and networks.
biology: NGF
NGF increases choline acetyltransferase (CAT), which synthesizes acetylcholine in hippocampal neurons. NGF reverses poor spatial memory.
biology: protein synthesis
Long-term memory needs protein synthesis [Agranoff, 1967] [Flexner et al., 1963]. Non-declarative memory uses proteins [Benzer, 1967]. Protein-synthesis inhibitor prevents memory formation.
biology: synapse
Memory involves cholinergic synapses.
properties: defaults
Memories provide assumptions and defaults to compare to current perceptions.
properties: encoding
Encoding context should match cue information.
properties: expertise
Experts in subject have large working memory for that subject, gained by active learning with high motivation.
properties: familiarity
Better perception, concepts, and encoding make better storage, so people have better memory for more familiar things.
properties: feeling of knowing
If people cannot recall, they can judge whether they can retrieve the memory in the future.
properties: loss
Mind does not lose memories, only access to memories.
properties: information
People recall high-level information best.
properties: music
Tunes ending in harmonic cadence are easier to remember than those that do not end in harmonic cadence.
properties: learning
While people are learning something, they can judge whether they can retrieve it in the future.
properties: non-accidental properties
Memory stores non-accidental properties and their relative positions as object templates [Anderson, 1983] [Anderson, 1995] [Aristotle, -350] [Niesser, 1967] [Niesser, 1982] [Rose, 1993].
properties: non-consciousness
Memory survives unconscious periods.
Intense stimuli can cause memory without consciousness.
properties: number
Number of objects that people know is approximately 10,000,000. Number of patterns is 50,000, for useful objects. Similar objects can have different property values. Objects can be in hierarchies.
properties: organization
Memory is better for related events.
properties: reading problems
People with reading problems have small working memory information content.
properties: repeated sequence
People remember repeated sequences better in verbal short-term memory tests, perhaps from beginning long-term memory or maintaining short-term memory traces.
properties: rhythm
Rhythm change aids memory.
properties: search
People can search 50,000 pictures per second in long-term memory.
properties: size
Human memory can hold 10^20 bits.
properties: smell
Smell short-term memory is poor.
properties: strength
Memory strength is number of stored or recalled units. Memories are weak if event does not repeat, emotion is low, or attention is weak. Certain content types also result in weak memories. Strong memories involve close attention or repeated study.
properties: sentence subject
People remember sentence subjects best, not objects, predicates, or relations.
properties: tempo
People perceive presentation speed. Slow tempo allows active tone coding. Fast tempo allows only overall tone patterns.
properties: time
Verbal short-term memory lasts up to 45 seconds. Processing decay causes decrease. Interference among memories decreases long-term memory over time. Memory is outside time. Memory causes the ideas of time and motion. Memory maps time to make a time field. Time measurement is only in the present.
properties: tip of tongue
If people cannot remember something, they can judge whether they will soon recall it.
properties: verb tense
Verbal memory requires verb tense.
effects: automatic response
Memories allow automatic responses. Automatic responses do not necessarily fit current problems, so memories must alter.
factors: age
Newborns can learn but need longer times for memory consolidation. At 3 to 6 years, hippocampus becomes mature and so long-term memories can form. Working memory information content increases up to age 20 to 35 and then declines. Perhaps, old age does not affect short-term memory [Selkoe, 1992]. At all ages, people can access memories by cues, such as habits.
factors: anesthesia
Even light anesthesia causes memory loss and analgesia.
factors: anxiety
Anxiety can cause consciousness loss and long-term memory loss.
factors: arousal
Long-term memory improves with increased arousal but short-term memory does not.
factors: consciousness
Attended items in sensory memory can become experiences. Consciousness uses external stimuli and memories {remembered present, consciousness} to make images. Short-term memory holds image parts and features as whole image develops. Sense-quality representations can be in short-term memory. People without long-term memory can be conscious. Sense-quality representations can be in long-term memory. Long-term declarative-fact memories can become conscious. Reporting recalled items requires consciousness.
factors: dreaming
Dream pattern changes do not affect memory.
factors: emotion
Because emotions include semantic and perceptual codes, more inferences, more intense perceptions, or more integration into life causes stronger coding. Positive and negative emotions attach to memories unconsciously. Sense signals go from thalamus to amygdala basolateral nucleus, then perirhinal and entorhinal cortex, and then amygdala central nucleus, which sends signals to make fear responses, such as freezing motion, high heart rate, and slow digestion. Stress hormones, like adrenaline, cortisol, and ACTH, activate amygdala. Perhaps, amygdala stores memory emotional part or transfers it from perirhinal and entorhinal cortex.
factors: environment
Environment does not much affect memory and ability to concentrate. Environment, especially social environment, affects memory storage and retrieval.
factors: fatigue
Over time, performance slows, people make more errors, concentration is poor, perception fades, and memory decreases.
factors: hypnosis
People can remember what happened while under hypnosis.
factors: inference
Inferences derive from knowledge structures. Inferences seem to affect encoding process and recall process.
factors: intelligence
Developmentally disabled people can have special right-brain talents, such as music, painting, or procedural memory.
factors: motivation
Motivation does not affect ability to retrieve information, only persistence in trying.
factors: perception
Memory affects extracting perceptual features.
factors: reflex inhibition
Inhibiting reflexes does not affect memory.
factors: sleep
Perhaps, paradoxical sleep is for memory consolidation. Brain substance can contain memories, and memory is a material process, because memory survives unconsciousness and sleep [Hering, 1878].
problems
People can have amnesia, anterograde amnesia, dementia, Korsakoff syndrome, and senility.
problems: schizophrenia
Schizophrenia has memory disturbances.
problems: amnesia
After brain damage, people cannot recall recent long-term memories. Amnesia still allows short-term memory, procedural learning, and conditioning. People can improve performance even if they cannot remember previous practice [Farthing, 1992] [Young, 1996]. Amnesiacs can feel that they are not fully conscious [Campbell and Conway, 1995] [Sacks, 1985] [Wilson and Wearing, 1995].
People can only remember events from after they were three or four years old {infantile amnesia}. However, babies actually have good long-term memory. Perhaps, mind represses early memories. Perhaps, early memories are not strong, differ, or depend on self-concept. Perhaps, people need language, with verbal recall and storage, to access memories by intention.
Healthy people typically cannot remember where they learned declarative knowledge {source amnesia}.
Stories have schema {story schema} {story grammar}, with setting, characters, goal, plot, and resolution [Schank and Abelson, 1977] [Schank, 1997].
Minds have no single, central memory system but store memories in sense and motor regions {distributed memory}, probably in different ways.
Cerebral cortex lesions affect rat intelligence and maze learning. Learning and memory impairment seem to depend on lesion extent {mass action law} {law of mass action}, rather than lesion location [Lashley, 1956] [Solomon et al., 1958]. Whole association cortex can acquire and recall habits. However, effect happens because lesion also cuts subcortical regions. Maze running is complex activity using many functions, which can have substitutes. Many locations process and store memories.
Memory recall can have inaccurate information {memory, errors} {recall, errors} that cannot have come from guessing or wrong cueing.
Without extra context, minds can make no distinction between mistake in storing memory, recalling memory, or making original perception.
properties: verbal errors
Typical verbal errors sound similar to accurate item.
properties: meaning
Errors can arise from trying to make events meaningful, because meaning is more important than detail. General concept stored with detail can change the detail. Context or assumptions can change memory logically.
memory change
Memory change happens in weak memories. Memory change can happen at storage, when misunderstandings cause coding misrepresentations. Memory change can happen at recall, when inferences override coded representations.
memory decay
For visual situations with attention but no rehearsal, activation loss decreases memory. Forgetting increases with time elapsed. However, people can later remember memories forgotten at one time, so information is still in memory.
recall
Recalling can change unconscious memories.
perception
Perception does not confound units and produces non-contradictory results, with no chimeras. Mind eliminates contradictions preconsciously, before conscious memory.
Memory formation and retrieval can fail with low attention at storage or recall {absent-mindedness}|.
Memory can alter to make events, objects, or scenes consistent, emotionally right, or pleasant {bias, memory}.
Memory retrieval can fail if something else is on the mind {blocking, memory}.
Coding failure {consolidation failure} can decrease memory.
Inability to discriminate {discrimination failure} between two groups, locations, or times that are close together can decrease memory.
Memory failure can be at encoding {encoding deficiency}.
Memory can mix real and imagined events {false memory}| [Loftus and Ketcham, 1994].
Sensory recall can combine different stimulus features {illusory conjuncture}. Features are in different mental regions, and features recombine at recall. Recombination requires attention.
Memory can associate with wrong place, time, situation, or object {misattribution}. Recall can use guessing or associate to wrong memory {source misattribution}. Source misattribution has low probability, because cue must be precise to keep memory coherent.
Memory can be obsessive {persistence, memory}.
Memory failure can happen at retrieval {retrieval failure}.
Memory failure can happen at storage {storage loss}.
Current information {suggestibility}| can change memory.
Memory can decay or fade away {transience}.
During learning, intervening activities inhibit learning retention {interference, memory}|. Newer items occupy memory. Later learning also affects memory consolidation. Interference effects happen only for verbal items learned transiently, not for facts and procedures. Interference effects happen only for items learned successively, not for longer time intervals. Echoic memory can exhibit interference. Iconic memory does not exhibit interference.
Earlier learning can disrupt later learning {proactive interference} {proactive inhibition}. Proactive interference can be high. Release from proactive inhibition can happen when subject matter changes or time between trials is long enough. Retroactive interference is more than proactive interference. Over time, retroactive interference decreases, but proactive interference increases.
Later learning can disrupt previous learning {retroactive interference} {retroactive inhibition}. For two verbal-item lists, recall is harder if lists share items. With more interfering-list repetition, retroactive interference increases, up to a limiting value. Retroactive interference appears high. Retroactive interference is more than proactive interference. Over time, retroactive interference decreases, but proactive interference increases. There can be output interference.
Recalling some class members inhibits memory of other members {output interference}. Recalling an item inhibits memory of other items.
Semantically related items increase interference in order recall and decrease interference in free recall {similarity-based interference}. Opposites increase interference in order recall and decrease interference in free recall, because they relate semantically. Visually or aurally related items have small interference effects compared to semantic effects.
Perhaps, interference provides alternative response to stimulus {response competition}. Response competition increases with few interfering-list repetitions but then decreases. However, most list-recall errors are not other-list items, so response competition is only one interference factor.
Perhaps, interference removes needed stimulus {stimulus absence}.
Short-term memory becomes long-term memory over time {consolidation}|.
brain
In mammals, consolidation is in cerebral cortex, especially temporal lobes.
Hippocampus is for early memory consolidation. Perhaps, it uses pointers to link representation parts.
synapses
Synaptic vesicle number increases, synapse area widens, neuronal firing rate increases, and synapse number increases. Enzymes modulate synaptic transmission. Glycoprotein receptors go to synaptic membranes. Only activated synapse regions start to grow more synapses. Quiet regions do not respond to new proteins.
time
Short-term memory consolidates in one hour, but further consolidation takes years.
drugs
If drugs reduce brain electrical activity, memories do not consolidate.
electrical shock
If electrical shock reduces brain electrical activity, memories do not consolidate.
Stimulus {cue, memory} starts memory recall. Cue information determines probability of accessing memory. Cue should match cue used at storage.
Forming associations with existing memories, or forming images of existing parts {elaboration, memory}, transfers items to long-term memory and aids recall. Associations can be among items in short-term memory or to items in long-term memory. Images can combine items in short-term memory or associate features to items in long-term memory. Elaboration increases memory compared to rehearsal but takes more time.
Brain regions, mainly in cerebral cortex, that encode event also store and record event {engram}| {memory trace}. Data processing and data storage combine in mind. Coding, recursion, self-reference, and goals affect both. Forming memory changes neuron structure.
Attention and recognition give meaning to stimulus and allow it into short-term memory {identification, memory}. Item identification happens in parallel. Identification requires one quarter second.
Two words {linkword} can associate using image that combines their referents.
A new stimulus, immediately happening at same location as previous stimulus, causes immediate previous-stimulus forgetting {masking, memory}|. Brightness masking uses a higher-intensity second stimulus and affects retina. Pattern masking uses pattern, affects mental processing, and has no brightness effect. Masking does not necessarily replace the first image but only prevents consciousness [Keysers et al., 2001].
People remember verbal items by sound {phonemic code}, even for visual material. People also use weaker visual and semantic codes. People remember items better than order. Phonemic code can be how to represent physical sounds or articulate sounds.
Mind places object in scene in short-term memory {pop-out, memory}|, using motion, depth, texture, and color cues.
Information supplied after memory storage {post-event information} can cause memory change, if information is not suspect and if memory was weak. Memories change to be consistent with new information.
compromise
Conscious recall does not allow unreal or contradictory contents. However, feature mixing can happen {compromise memory, post-event information}, such as using one-object's color for another object.
recall
People take longer to recall items if they have to take into account new information.
repetition
Repeating new information increases confidence in changed memories.
Recent experience, even just one, with words, strings, lines, images, sounds, or objects unconsciously improves recognizing same experience up to one year later {priming, memory} [Bar and Biederman, 1998] [Bar and Biederman, 1999] [VanRullen and Koch, 2003]. Prime can be same as target {repetition priming}. Prime can have similar meaning {semantic priming}. Processing can aid {positive priming} or inhibit {negative priming} other processing.
perception
Perceptual processing causes priming effect, because slightly different words or objects do not prime. Priming can activate processing [Mandler, 1980].
Priming can activate transfer-appropriate processing for different memory types [Roediger and McDermott, 1993].
brain
After priming, cortex activity decreases during recognizing.
consciousness
Priming is equally in conscious and unconscious processing.
To retain retrieved or activated memory, mind must store the memory again {reconsolidation}, using proteins.
People can repeat items in verbal short-term memory in sequence {rehearsal, memory}. More rehearsal improves recall. Consciously repeating verbal items transfers them to long-term memory.
Consciousness uses external stimuli and memories {remembered present, cognition} to make images. Consciousness requires short-term memory. Short-term memory holds image parts and features as whole image develops.
Memory retrieval tries to find and use memories in memory store {accessibility, memory}, but memories can be unavailable.
People typically can apprehend up to six or seven items {span of apprehension, memory} {apprehension span, memory}|.
Memories are in memory store {availability, memory}, but memories can be inaccessible.
People typically have poor time and location {episodic tag} recall. People forget time and location before other content. Weak or missing episodic tags reduce fact or episode memory organization, causing more recall errors.
In memory tests, conscious and unconscious processing can happen. Processing task has automatic/unconscious and controlled/conscious processing components, which affect behavior differently {process dissociation procedure} [Jacoby, 1991] [Reingold and Merikle, 1990]. Perhaps, they are separable {process purity problem} {method of opposition} {opposition method}.
Amnesia is greater for more recent memories {Ribot's law} {Ribot law}.
Memories are representations that are made, stored, and retrieved {stage analysis}.
People can will not to remember {voluntary suppression, memory}. Perhaps, it involves frontal lobes and hippocampus.
Memories that are semantically contradictory can co-exist non-consciously {co-existence hypothesis, memory}. Mind inhibits recall of semantically contradictory non-conscious memories.
New memory can erase semantically contradictory non-conscious memory {erasure hypothesis, memory}, to conserve limited memory capacity.
During list recall, people recall first items better {primacy effect}. For long list, people recall most words poorly. People recall items in middle worst.
behaviorism
By behaviorism, all previous words excite all following words and so associations for middle words are least correct, because they get the most-incorrect associations.
cognition
By cognition, mind rehearses first words when short-term memory is not full and so remembers them better, but middle words have poor rehearsal because they happen when short-term memory is full and so are not in short-term memory ready for recall.
People recall items at end {recency effect} best under free recall but not under order recall. Auditory items have recency effect but not visual items. For long list, people recall most words poorly. People recall items in middle worst.
behaviorism
By behaviorism, all previous words excite all following words and so associations for middle words are least correct, because they get the most-incorrect associations.
cognition
By cognition, last words are still in short-term memory and memory can recall them right away. For middle words, short-term memory is full, rehearsal is poor, and words have left short-term memory by recall time.
memory
Recency effects happen even when mind uses no short-term memory, only long-term memory.
Perhaps, relevant local and global inferences relate to content, causes, situations, and goals {constructionist theory}.
Perhaps, mind makes only familiar inferences and inferences needed for sentence coherence {minimalist theory}.
Perhaps, mind always generates inferences {promiscuous theory}, but this can exceed processing capacity.
Retrieving information {recall}| from memory uses different mechanisms to return memory representations to consciousness or near consciousness. Recalling declarative knowledge creates experiences.
processes: cueing
Externally or internally supplied stimulus recalls memories from storage.
processes: errors
Recall can be inaccurate. People recall some memories better than others. Perhaps, they repeat them often.
processes: inhibition
Memories or cues can inhibit recalling other memories, because memories are contradictory or substitute.
processes: reconstruction
Recall builds from memories. Memories do not mix, but only select from among choices. However, features, such as color, can mix. People do not recall chimeras and contradictions.
Reporting recalled item requires consciousness.
processes: time coordinates
Memory creates time coordinates and uses them for recall and storage.
processes: voluntary retrieval
Information retrieval can be voluntary or automatic. Voluntary retrieval involves search strategy. Information non-retrieval is not voluntary.
properties: contradiction
Conscious recall does not allow unreal or contradictory contents.
properties: free recall
In free recall, people recall more items that are near each other in space or time {contiguity principle, recall}. In free recall, people recall class members better when cued with class but not classes when cued with class members. In free recall, people typically do not recall items in original order but form orders and repeat orders on subsequent recalls.
properties: time of day
Recall is better in morning than evening.
factors: context
People can recall same memory in one context but not another.
factors: hypnosis
Hypnosis does not increase memory retrieval. Memories retrieved under hypnosis are unreliable. Especially, early-infancy memories are probably not true.
factors: meaning
Meaningful events cause better and more accurate recall.
In free recall, people recall more items that have similar meaning {categorical clustering}.
Conscious recall can mix features {compromise memory, recall}, such as using one-object's color for another object.
Recall is easier and better if current conditions, internal and external, are similar to learning conditions {context dependency} {context-dependent retrieval}. The main internal context is mood. Recall is slightly, but significantly, better in same environment as learning environment. Environment can include learning act, material learned, place, time, mood, and physiological state. Context increases recall of items that match context itself.
Setting context before, but not after, performing recall task improves performance. Using context with same feature cues but not correct spatial relations does not improve performance.
meaning
Context can change memory meaning.
Perhaps, recall moves percept from coded content in unconsciousness to consciousness {direct retrieval hypothesis, recall}, based on association cues.
Searching can use a strategy {generate-recognize model} {generate/recognize model}, to test hypotheses.
Given arithmetic problems, subjects can recall problem answers or words. Number correctly recalled {operation span} depends on prose comprehension and short-term-memory information.
People can recall and re-express memory information {retrieval, memory}|. Memory reconstructs perception, starting from cue, by assembling information from mental regions.
process
Recall associates memory with current thought. The first step in recall or pattern detection is to identify expected object type. The second step is to select node or node system.
factors
Context, mood, and mental state affect retrieval.
How information makes categories affects recall. Recall is better if unusual event, image, or story connects with memory.
Practicing recall aids recall. Cramming increases success.
brain
Recall is poor if catecholamine level is low, because catecholamines arouse brain.
time
Retrieving memory using sequential search takes 0.5 seconds.
Perhaps, memory representations have concept, image, time, or context information {tag, memory} about target. Perhaps, memory representations have direct target association information.
If retrieval takes one step, mind retrieves the most-strongly activated target {single-stage model} {single-process model}.
If retrieval takes more than one step, cognitive decision or passive process determines retrieval from activated material {two-stage model} {two-process model} {decision model}.
Memory retrieval requires externally or internally supplied stimulus {cue, recall} related to information to retrieve {cueing, recall}. Cue quality determines retrieval, no matter memory or association strength. Strong and internal cue is mood. Everyday experiences provide retrieval cues for most information. Good retrieval cues come from good encoding.
working memory
One working-memory part stores cues, and other part stores retrieved representations. Conscious thoughts retrieve further conscious representations.
efficiency
Working memory depends on cue efficiency. Efficiency increases with long-term-memory organization and cueing strategies.
Retrieval places activated content into consciousness. If access does not encounter target memory, recall does not happen {cue-dependent forgetting}.
Retrieval places activated content into consciousness. If access encounters target memory, recall happens {cue-dependent recall}.
Most memories {behavioral memory} {procedural memory, behavior} are about actions and behaviors. Primary motor cortex stores behavioral memories.
Memories {categorical memory} can be about classes or words.
People can learn facts and concepts {declarative memory}|. Declarative knowledge includes episodic memory and semantic memory. Declarative knowledge is things that people can remember and know. Declarative knowledge is proposition sets [Campbell, 1994]. People can recall declarative memory without affecting external behavior. Declarative knowledge contrasts with procedural knowledge.
Mental process {echoic memory}| briefly preserves stimulus pattern. Echoic memory is better than iconic memory.
People can have perfect image recall and can re-perceive images {eidetic imagery}|. People can preserve visual scenes and then scan them. Eidetic images are richer than other images. People who can recall everything rely on imagery but cannot understand general ideas or concepts, because details are too numerous [Luria, 1968] [Luria, 1980].
Memory of personal events {episodic memory} has location and time, is in frontal lobe, and involves medial temporal lobe and cortex. It can be unconscious or conscious.
Semantic memory, spatial memory, or episodic memory {explicit memory} {conscious memory} is conscious and reflective and encodes object, event, and relation representations. Memory associates two arbitrary stimuli.
Repetition, meaning, interest, attention, importance, previous-knowledge relations, and rehearsal strengthen declarative-memory encoding, because more conscious processing makes more retrieval cues [Corkin et al., 1997] [Damasio et al., 1985] [Milner, 1972] [Milner et al., 1998] [Sacks, 1985] [Scoville and Milner, 1957] [Standing, 1973] [Sternberg, 2001] [Wilson and Wearing, 1995].
Eyewitnesses {eyewitness testimony}| to crimes see fast, confusing, and unsettling events and so have weak memories, even if their confidence is high. Eyewitness people identification is especially poor.
The feeling that one knows something {familiarity, memory} is an immediate response to an event. The first concept about perception is if it is familiar or strange. It requires no conscious processing. Frequent observations cause it. It is independent of context and associations.
Emotion in amygdala, and arousal in serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, and acetylcholine systems, can cause people to remember one event strongly and in detail {flashbulb memory}.
Short-term visual memory {iconic image} {iconic memory} {fleeting memory} has images that persist after removing objects. Iconic image looks like image but faded. People can see all items but have not yet identified them.
Image is at fixed position on retina. New information there erases it.
Iconic images can appear to move, if moving stimuli are near them.
attention
Making iconic memory requires attention [Billock, 1997] [Coltheart, 1983] [Coltheart, 1999] [Crick, 1984] [Freedman et al., 2001] [Freedman et al., 2002] [Gegenfurtner and Sperling, 1993] [Keysers and Perrett, 2002] [Levick and Zacks, 1970] [Loftus et al., 1992] [Potter, 1993] [Potter and Levy, 1969] [Rolls and Tovee, 1994] [Sperling, 1960].
time
Echoic memory lasts longer than iconic memory.
cue
After looking tasks {Sperling task}, cues can help memory.
People can remember immediately after one presentation {immediate memory}| {latent memory}. Immediate memory lasts seconds. Immediate memory is neural-pathway electrochemical activity, like reverberations in circuits. Immediate memory can change synaptic strengths temporarily by affecting presynaptic biochemical pathways. Changing presentation rate or delaying recall time does not affect recall.
Memory can be for skill or task {implicit memory} {non-representational memory} {non-declarative memory} {procedural memory, implicit}. Implicit memory includes habituation, sensitization, motor skill, priming, habit, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, emotional learning, and perceptual skill.
People can learn how to perform tasks and to think and follow rules. Procedural knowledge can be production systems. Procedural knowledge is motor skills and perceptual and cognitive skills. Procedural knowledge is habits and know-how [Campbell, 1994].
process
Procedural memory uses many circuits and neuron groups but does not use representations.
consciousness
Implicit memory is unconscious and never becomes conscious. It is reflexive.
brain
Sense and motor processes integrate over thalamocortical system, cerebellum, hippocampus, and basal ganglia {global mapping}.
animals
Implicit memory is the same in animals and humans.
comparison
Procedural knowledge contrasts with declarative knowledge.
Animals can learn to fixate on another animal {imprinting, memory}|, so they ignore or avoid other individuals. Imprinting can be on parent {filial imprinting} or mate {sexual imprinting}. Imprinting is most effective between members of same species.
process
Imprinting is gradual but not associative. Imprinting with one object prevents further imprinting with other objects, except by prolonged exposure. Prolonged exposure does not eliminate the memory but only suppresses it. After prolonged exposure, original imprint comes back readily.
Brain processing can change short-term memories into stable memories {long-term memory}| (LTM) {labile memory} {secondary memory} {structural memory}. Short-term memory is process, but long-term memory is structure. Long-term memory involves interactions between two memory types: personal-experience episodic memory and fact semantic memory.
coding
Long-term memory uses mostly semantic code but also uses visual and phonemic codes. All three codes also operate in short-term memory but with different strengths and uses.
time
Long-term memory takes more than 45 seconds to form and can last lifetime.
properties: consciousness
Long-term memory is unconscious.
properties: interference
LTM can have phonological interference.
biology
Long-term memory involves cell changes and protein synthesis. Brain damage can impair long-term declarative and procedural memory but not short-term memory.
biology: drugs
After memory consolidation, drugs do not affect the memory [McCullough et al., 1999].
biology: electrical shock
After memory consolidation, electrical shock does not affect the memory [McCullough et al., 1999].
factors
Greater word concreteness, word frequency, imagery strength, and semantic similarity increase long-term memory. Phonetic similarity decreases long-term memory.
comparison
Perhaps, short-term memory and long-term memory differ only in retrieval method.
Working memory {phonological loop} can store sounds with meaning, such as spoken words. Perhaps, phonological loop has passive phoneme coding and active rehearsal [Baddeley, 1986] [Baddeley, 1990] [Baddeley, 2000].
Recall can be for recognition {recognition memory}. Memory can be about whether stimulus is familiar or not, was in place or at time, or associates with name or image.
process
To recognize if symbol is in short-term memory, people compare features. Matching determines recognition. With no overlap, knowledge of no match is rapid.
properties
Recognition is better for incidental learning than for deliberate learning. Recognition is typically better than recall, unless semantic association is very strong. Memory organization and repetition affect recognition memory and recall memory in same way, but word frequency, associations, presentation rate, concreteness, meaning, and imagery do not affect recognition memory and recall memory in same way, because some items are more and some less noticeable than others, and this affects recognition {mirror effect, recognition}.
Memories {semantic memory} can be about facts, meanings, and concepts. Conscious or unconscious fact memory has no particular location or time. Semantic memory involves medial temporal lobe but does not involve frontal lobe.
In senses, memory {sensory memory} first peripherally codes stimulus physical properties {physical code} {structural code} for sounds in echoic memory, sights in iconic memory, smells, tastes, and touches, taking one-third second. Sensory memory first stage does not need attention or consciousness.
Sensory memory second stage uses semantic coding and is central and automatic, taking two to 20 seconds.
recall
Higher overall stimulus intensity during and after stimulus decreases recall.
forgetting
Forgetting happens by decay and is minimal after one second for vision and four seconds for hearing. Forgetting loses location information but not item meaning or nature.
Memory {short-term memory}| (STM) {active memory} {primary memory} {working memory} {activity-dependent memory} can rehearse immediate memories, hold memories in consciousness, assist long-term memory, and decay in minutes to hours. Short-term memory puts objects and events in sequence to coordinate acquisition and retrieval.
properties: chunks
Short-term memory holds data chunks. Short-term memory holds 30 bits. People can remember chunks of three, if they must remember sequence. People can remember chunks of six or seven if there is no order [Cowan, 2001] [Miller, 1956] [Riddoch and Humphreys, 1995] [Shallice, 1988] [Sternberg, 1966] [Vallar and Shallice, 1990].
properties: interference
STM can have semantic interference.
biology: cells
Short-term memory involves no cell changes or protein synthesis.
biology: drugs
Amphetamine and strychnine affect short-term memory.
biology: brain
Prefrontal cortex neurons hold short-term memories for objects, locations, or both [Baddeley, 1986] [Baddeley, 1990] [Baddeley, 2000].
factors: age
Old age or brain damage does not affect short-term memory.
factors: language
Language production and comprehension require short-term memory.
working memory
Phonological loop stores sounds with meaning, such as spoken words. Visuospatial sketchpad stores images, such as faces and scenes. Working memory encodes attended content from sensory memory for non-conscious storage into long-term memory or other processing, such as sentence comprehension, and integrates content activated from long-term memory. Working memory holds content being actively processed, including conscious and near-conscious experiences and recently attended content, and includes perceptual and semantic representations. Working memory includes a goal-driven controller to determine which process to perform. Attention is part of working memory, or working memory holds attended conscious content {focus, Baddeley} [Baddeley, 1986] [Baddeley, 1990] [Baddeley, 2000].
Frontal lobe stores conscious event location and time memories {source memory}. Animals have less frontal lobe and so less source memory.
Spatial information travels from thalamus to neocortex to hippocampus {spatial memory}. Hippocampus has non-topographic cognitive space map, stored in pyramidal place cells. Place fields are stable and form in minutes [Brown et al., 1998]. Hippocampus place cells increase firing when body is at that location [Ekstrom et al., 2003] [Frank et al., 2000] [Nadel and Eichenbaum, 1999] [O'Keefe and Nadel, 1978] [Rolls, 1999] [Scalaidhe et al., 1997] [Wilson and McNaughton, 1993] [Zhang et al., 1998].
Memory {verbal memory} {verbal short-term memory} can be about words, sentences, and stories. People can learn word sounds and visual appearances [Campbell, 1994].
properties
Words are easier to learn if they have high imagery, are highly concrete, have high frequency, have many associations, or have high meaningfulness.
Verbal short-term memory has small register and rapid decay.
factors
Imagery, frequency, familiarity, concreteness, semantic similarity, and meaningfulness influence verbal short-term memory only little, unlike for long-term memory.
interference
Phonemic similarity interferes.
working memory
Working memory includes module for verbal short-term memory. Working memory executive controls module but does not interfere with other cognitive work.
Perhaps, memory content is only coded percepts {bounded memory}, with no other representation types, such as memory hierarchy or higher-order structures.
Memories represent percepts {perceptual code} and meanings {semantic code}.
meaning
Meaning and understanding are more important than percepts. Mind uses schema memory structures that contain meaning hierarchies, relating lower-level parts and higher-level wholes, and have semantic relations among concepts. General information integrates memory contents.
Memories are made, stored, and recalled using active cognitive processes {constructivist model} {interactive memory, constructivism}, which relate existing memories and interpret memory content, so memory has no bound. Storage and reconstruction are non-conscious. Information acquired after storing original memory can affect memories. Memory content can weaken over time.
strength
Memory assimilation to whole meaning structure determines memory strength.
recall
Reconstruction often supplies purposes, intentions, or missing information. Recall can often be inaccurate, because interpretation always happens. Recall depends on memory strength and related evidence.
individuality
Differences in understanding cause individual memories to vary.
Perhaps, memory storage involves linear functions over metric space {contractive affine transform}. Functions can be fractals. Mapping function can alter image location, orientation, and size. To recall, abstract-space trajectories specify imaged patterns as attractors.
Perhaps, cerebral cortex added declarative memory {declarative memory theory}. Cerebral cortex added processing loop between sense and motor processing regions and loops to anticipate sense information and prepare actions. Improved readiness offsets delay in processing between sense and motor regions. Training or other repeated use bypasses loop.
Perhaps, stored object and episode memories are percept copies or representations, coded in long-term memory {empiricism, memory}. Memory content is only coded percepts.
process
Perception is first. Representation follows.
units
Basic memory units are non-conscious shapes, sizes, motions, and percept qualities. Memory units can associate by being close in space, time, shape, or quality.
strength
Memory strength depends on number of stored units.
time
Stored memory codes do not change over time. Because perception is reliable, memories are typically accurate. Differences in perception cause memories to vary.
recall
Recall moves percept from unconscious coded content to consciousness, based on association cues {direct retrieval hypothesis, empiricism}.
Perhaps, short-term memory involves storing perceptual features, and memories are linked feature sets {featural model}. Features are about stimulus intensity, location, time, frequency, and quality and about higher-level stimulus combinations. Sense-input memories have features about sense mode and stimuli. Memories of thoughts and memory rehearsal have higher-level stimulus combinations and few modal features. The featural model does not use associations among features.
probability
Features have values or probabilities. Excitations and inhibitions during memory formation depend on reinforcement pathways and change feature probabilities.
recall
Recall involves selection among alternatives by feature probability. Mind compares cues, which can generate secondary cues, to features. If match is above threshold, mind recalls object or word {reintegration}. Recall takes one step. If new memory has same feature value as existing memory, new-memory feature value replaces previous-item feature value, and previous-item memory degrades.
Perhaps, consciousness is viewpoint-specific representations in short-term memory {intermediate-level theory of consciousness, cognition} [Crick and Koch, 2000] [Jackendoff, 1987] [Jackendoff, 1996] [Jackendoff, 2002] [Siewert, 1998] [Strawson, 1996]. Consciousness is at level intermediate between sense qualities and thought. Consciousness stores computation results in information structures. Consciousness is a three-dimensional model and involves position, shape, color, motion, attention, and representation. People cannot be aware of mental processes, computations, or abstract representations.
Perhaps, memories use index {library memory}. Perceptual patterns find indices and trigger memories.
Perhaps, memory units {mnemon} are anatomical or logical structures. However, memory and recall have no basic units {memory unit}. Abstract higher-level categories are important for memory and recall. Stimulus recalls multiple memories.
Perhaps, in situations in which habits do not apply, people use knowledge structures {memory organization packet, cognition} involving causes, effects, goals, and rewards to account for actions and facts. For example, movements can have 20 causal chains. Similar knowledge structures apply to places, physical actions, social relations, and personal intentions.
Perhaps, people try to generate spatial context, time context, and other overall representations {mental model} as they read or see something.
Perhaps, memory organization and repetition affect recognition memory and recall memory in same way {mirror effect, memory}. Word frequency, associations, presentation rate, concreteness, meaning, and imagery do not affect recognition memory and recall memory in same way, because some items are more and some less noticeable than others, and this affects recognition.
Perhaps, memory parts exist independently in long-term memory, and higher-order structures {scene, memory} assemble them.
Perhaps, memory organization uses non-conscious linked-data hierarchies {schema, memory}.
recall
People better remember things related to goals, plans, actions, beliefs, attitudes, moods, emotions, and expectations. They remember new, inconsistent, surprising, or changed events better.
Schemas more integrated with other schemas have better recall. Schema integration increases during development [Schank and Abelson, 1977] [Schank, 1997]. Memory strength depends on object and event relation to constructed schema [Schank and Abelson, 1977] [Schank, 1997].
amount
Memory holds maximum content amount, depending on schemas.
individuality
Different people use different schemas.
Perhaps, many life facets involve standardized behavior sequence {script, memory}. People develop habits through repeated same-type experiences. Scripts define events relative to whole, strengthen memories, infer missing information, point to episode memories, and predict future events. People expect events that match script and retain them more. People remove events that do not match from script, note them as exceptions, or modify script. Memories from scripts are indistinguishable subjectively from actual memories.
Perhaps, evolutionary models for self-redesigning or learning systems show how neural models can evolve themselves {selectionist theory} [Young, 1976] [Young, 1978].
Perhaps, people use background information and structure or situation types {situation model}, which have goals or reasons. Comprehension involves different processing levels. First, mind codes relations among items {surface code}. Then mind generates propositions {text base}.
Perhaps, mind represents body activities {somatic marker}. Reason and emotions work together to determine choices and actions.
Perhaps, stimuli are first encoded for sensory memory {stages model} {modal model}. If people attend to stimuli, they encode into short-term memory. From short-term memory, stimuli go into long-term memory. Items in short-term memory transfer to long-term memory by rehearsal, image forming, or association forming. Short-term memory can only hold up to seven items for up to 45 seconds. Short-term memory receives input from sensory memory.
Perhaps, memories {template storage memory} can compare input data to stored patterns to find match.
Perhaps, memories are representations. The simplest representations follow same memory rules as the most-complex representations. Perhaps, long-term memory has association networks or pairs {association} {associative model of memory}.
contiguity
In networks, associations can have different distances. If two images are near in space or time {contiguity principle, association}, they associate. Closeness increases association strength. Items farther apart have weaker associative links. Recall involves one associative link.
strength
Pair associations have different strengths. More repetitions increase association strength. Association recency increases association strength.
recall
Recall involves associative links. Mind recalls by moving from starting point name, list concept, environmental stimulus, or spatial position to first item and then to succeeding items, by following associative links to goals {target, recall}.
Associative links have different known types {labeled link, memory}, such as identity, similarity, and opposition.
In network, memory representations and associations can have language-like structure {propositional model} {statement model}, with subject and predicate. Associative links can be syntactical relations, such as "agent", "action", and "direct object". Associative links can be semantic or cognitive.
Perhaps, recall involves cue sets {compound cue model} for context, time, meaning, images, and concepts. First cue activates other memories from long-term memory, which then contribute to recall process. Memory does not use spreading activation.
Perhaps, cues activate specific features {content-addressable memory} {direct access}, not cluster or class.
Perhaps, conscious concept, feeling, or memory cues can activate identical or similar long-term-memory representations and so provide non-conscious access to memories {access, memory} {cueing model}. Pattern portions can trigger retrieval of rest of pattern. First memory sets pattern. Later patterns reinforce or change memory. Cues can place secondary cues in consciousness.
Perhaps, recall activates stored perceptual and semantic codes that interact with all other memory content. Recall interprets content to make meaningful response {dynamic reconstruction hypothesis}, using background and inferred information.
Perhaps, recalling one alternative erases other alternative from memory {erasure hypothesis, recall} {replacement hypothesis}. However, after leading suggestion, people can recall original memory, supporting the idea that both memories exist at same time and all memories are permanent {co-existence hypothesis, recall} [Loftus and Ketcham, 1994].
Perhaps, misleading semantic suggestions can affect stored memories and recall, by making original memory become contradiction and so causing inhibition {inhibition hypothesis}.
Perhaps, stimulus must match receptor to open memory {lock-and-key theory}. However, this process requires trying each key in each lock.
Perhaps, data has regularities, which activate rule, which is conditional statement {message and rule system theory}. Mind checks data to see if it matches condition.
Important nodes in memory structures can activate memory {Proust's principle} {Proust principle}.
Perhaps, memory stores information samples, and recall is memory reconstruction {reconstruction, memory}. Retrieval cues are the most-strongly encoded memory parts. Retrieved memories use information from stored representation and from related memories and current perceptions.
Perhaps, in spatial network, cue activates memory, and the memory activates another memory {spreading activation model}, until reaching target or losing activation because too far away or too long in time. Recall involves associative links.
Perhaps, phonological store and subvocal-rehearsal system form a feedback loop {articulatory loop} [Baddeley, 1986] [Baddeley, 1990].
Brain regions {phonological store} can represent sounds being remembered [Baddeley, 1986] [Baddeley, 1990].
Brain regions {subvocal rehearsal system} can rehearse information without actually producing sound. Subvocal rehearsal system is possibly where prearticulation happens. Rehearsing is always by sounds, not images [Baddeley, 1986] [Baddeley, 1990].
Perhaps, verbal information first enters sensory memory {two-code theory}. Attended sense qualities passively enter phonological store for up to two seconds. Non-conscious articulation recodes visual information into sound. It also can recycle sounds back into phonological store depending on capacity and other factors. Phonological store and articulation coding are short-term memory.
Perhaps, thinking has capacity {thinking capacity}. Optimum group size is three items.
Perhaps, mental function has only one information channel, which has maximum serial information-flow rate {capacity model of memory}. Channel is for both data processing and storage. If one increases, the other must decrease. Channel is for both semantic and syntactic processing. Poor readers with low information rate can use only one processing type, but good readers can use both simultaneously.
Perhaps, concepts or perceptions can be sets {chunk, capacity}| of previous concepts or perceptions. Chunk can contain several smaller chunks, by grouping in space or time {chunking} [Cowan, 2001] [Miller, 1956]. Number of chunks that people can keep in immediate memory is seven, plus or minus two. Chunking can synchronize information subsets into unit in time [Miller, 1962]. Bigger chunks can cause weaker memory. For example, longer vowel sounds reduce memory, because it takes longer to articulate items.
Perhaps, mind as whole has processing capacity, and modules have processing capacities {consolidation theory}.
People can recall approximately seven independent verbal items {chunk, memory}, such as digits, letters, syllables, or words, after hearing them once. Range is five to nine items {memory span}. Chunks are single meaningful symbols, so consonant series are not chunks. Number of verbal short-term-memory items inversely relates to remembering ease. If verbal short-term memory is full, a new item causes immediate forgetting of a previous item.
Perhaps, mind transforms information flowing through communication channels, so memory has limited capacity {mental capacity}. Content in short-term memory decays but can go to long-term memory if rehearsed.
Perhaps, immediate memory has seven registers {slot theory}. People remember fewer items if items are similar or complex.
Perhaps, working memory is long-term-memory activated part {activation model of memory}.
Perhaps, attention selects one information channel at time, which has maximum serial information-flow rate {structural model of memory}. Working memory has several subsystems and controllers. One is phonological loop and has no semantic component. Another is visuo-spatial sketchpad and has no semantic component. Subsystems do not interfere with each other. Subsystems have subsystems. During learning, controllers are active, but, after learning, controller use is small.
Working memory stores images, such as faces and scenes [Baddeley, 1986] [Baddeley, 1990] [Baddeley, 2000]. Working-memory subsystems {visuospatial sketchpad} {visuo-spatial sketchpad} can be for visual and spatial information and have no semantic components. Perhaps, visuo-spatial sketchpad has passive color and shape processing and active location processing.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225