The Aspect of Human Acquisition Storing and Recall of Knowledge Is Again Emphasized as Best Done

Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval)

By and Henry L. Roediger III

Washington University in St. Louis

"Retention" is a single term that reflects a number of different abilities: holding information briefly while working with information technology (working retentivity), remembering episodes of one'south life (episodic retentivity), and our general knowledge of facts of the world (semantic memory), amidst other types. Remembering episodes involves three processes: encoding data (learning information technology, by perceiving it and relating it to by cognition), storing it (maintaining it over time), and then retrieving it (accessing the information when needed). Failures can occur at any stage, leading to forgetting or to having false memories. The key to improving one's retention is to improve processes of encoding and to use techniques that guarantee constructive retrieval. Skillful encoding techniques include relating new information to what one already knows, forming mental images, and creating associations among data that needs to be remembered. The key to good retrieval is developing constructive cues that will lead the rememberer back to the encoded information. Classic mnemonic systems, known since the fourth dimension of the ancient Greeks and notwithstanding used past some today, tin greatly improve one'south retention abilities.

Learning Objectives

• Define and note differences between the following forms of retentiveness: working memory, episodic memory, semantic memory, collective retentivity.
• Describe the three stages in the process of learning and remembering.
• Describe strategies that can exist used to enhance the original learning or encoding of data.
• Depict strategies that can improve the procedure of retrieval.
• Describe why the classic mnemonic device, the method of loci, works and then well.

Introduction

In 2013, Simon Reinhard saturday in front of 60 people in a room at Washington Academy, where he memorized an increasingly long serial of digits. On the get-go round, a computer generated 10 random digits—6 ane ix iv 8 5 6 3 7 1—on a screen for 10 seconds. Subsequently the series disappeared, Simon typed them into his computer. His recollection was perfect. In the next stage, 20 digits appeared on the screen for twenty seconds. Again, Simon got them all correct. No one in the audience (mostly professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students) could retrieve the twenty digits perfectly. Then came 30 digits, studied for thirty seconds; one time once again, Simon didn't misplace even a single digit. For a terminal trial, 50 digits appeared on the screen for l seconds, and again, Simon got them all right. In fact, Simon would have been happy to keep going. His tape in this chore—called "forwards digit span"—is 240 digits!

In some ways memory is like file drawers where y'all store mental data. Retentivity is also a series of processes: how does that information get filed to begin with and how does information technology get retrieved when needed? [Paradigm: M Cruz, https://goo.gl/DhOMgp, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://goo.gl/SWjq94]

When most of u.s.a. witness a performance like that of Simon Reinhard, we think one of ii things: First, maybe he's cheating somehow. (No, he is not.) Second, Simon must have abilities more than advanced than the rest of humankind. After all, psychologists established many years agone that the normal memory span for adults is about 7 digits, with some of us able to call back a few more than and others a few less (Miller, 1956). That is why the first phone numbers were limited to vii digits—psychologists adamant that many errors occurred (costing the phone company money) when the number was increased to fifty-fifty viii digits. But in normal testing, no 1 gets 50 digits right in a row, much less 240. So, does Simon Reinhard simply have a photographic retention? He does non. Instead, Simon has taught himself uncomplicated strategies for remembering that take greatly increased his capacity for remembering almost any blazon of material—digits, words, faces and names, poetry, historical dates, and so on. Twelve years before, earlier he started training his retention abilities, he had a digit bridge of 7, just like virtually of us. Simon has been training his abilities for about 10 years equally of this writing, and has risen to be in the top two of "retentiveness athletes." In 2012, he came in second place in the World Retention Championships (composed of 11 tasks), held in London. He currently ranks second in the world, backside another German competitor, Johannes Mallow. In this module, we reveal what psychologists and others have learned about retentiveness, and we too explain the general principles by which you tin can ameliorate your own memory for factual material.

Varieties of Memory

To be a skilful chess role player you lot have to learn to increase working memory then you can plan alee for several offensive moves while simultaneously anticipating - through use of retention - how the other player could counter each of your planned moves. [Image: karpidis, https://goo.gl/EhzMKM, CC By-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]

For most of the states, remembering digits relies on brusk-term retentiveness, or working retentivity—the ability to concur information in our minds for a brief fourth dimension and piece of work with it (e.g., multiplying 24 ten 17 without using paper would rely on working memory). Another blazon of memory is episodic retentivity—the ability to remember the episodes of our lives. If you were given the job of recalling everything you did 2 days ago, that would exist a exam of episodic memory; you would be required to mentally travel through the day in your mind and note the main events. Semantic memory is our storehouse of more-or-less permanent knowledge, such as the meanings of words in a language (e.g., the meaning of "parasol") and the huge collection of facts virtually the earth (east.g., there are 196 countries in the world, and 206 bones in your torso). Commonage retention refers to the kind of retention that people in a group share (whether family unit, community, schoolmates, or citizens of a state or a country). For example, residents of small towns often strongly identify with those towns, remembering the local community and historical events in a unique way. That is, the community's collective memory passes stories and recollections between neighbors and to time to come generations, forming a memory system unto itself.

Psychologists go along to debate the nomenclature of types of memory, as well every bit which types rely on others (Tulving, 2007), simply for this module we volition focus on episodic memory. Episodic retentivity is unremarkably what people think of when they hear the discussion "memory." For case, when people say that an older relative is "losing her memory" due to Alzheimer's disease, the type of memory-loss they are referring to is the inability to recall events, or episodic memory. (Semantic memory is really preserved in early-stage Alzheimer's disease.) Although remembering specific events that have happened over the course of one's entire life (e.g., your experiences in sixth grade) can be referred to every bit autobiographical memory, we volition focus primarily on the episodic memories of more contempo events.

Iii Stages of the Learning/Memory Process

Psychologists distinguish betwixt 3 necessary stages in the learning and memory process: encoding, storage, and retrieval (Melton, 1963). Encoding is defined as the initial learning of data; storage refers to maintaining information over fourth dimension; retrieval is the ability to access information when you lot need it. If y'all meet someone for the first fourth dimension at a party, you need to encode her name (Lyn Goff) while yous associate her name with her face up. So you demand to maintain the information over time. If you see her a week after, you lot demand to recognize her face and have it serve as a cue to recall her proper noun. Whatever successful act of remembering requires that all 3 stages be intact. However, two types of errors can also occur. Forgetting is i type: you see the person you met at the party and you cannot recall her proper name. The other error is misremembering (false recall or simulated recognition): you see someone who looks like Lyn Goff and phone call the person by that proper name (false recognition of the face). Or, yous might see the real Lyn Goff, recognize her face, but then call her by the proper name of another woman you met at the party (misrecall of her proper name).

Whenever forgetting or misremembering occurs, we can inquire, at which phase in the learning/memory process was in that location a failure?—though it is ofttimes difficult to answer this question with precision. One reason for this inaccuracy is that the 3 stages are not equally discrete as our clarification implies. Rather, all three stages depend on one some other. How we encode information determines how it will exist stored and what cues will exist constructive when nosotros endeavor to think information technology. And too, the act of retrieval itself also changes the way data is later on remembered, usually aiding afterwards recall of the retrieved information. The central point for now is that the three stages—encoding, storage, and retrieval—bear upon one another, and are inextricably bound together.

Encoding

Encoding refers to the initial experience of perceiving and learning information. Psychologists oftentimes study recall by having participants report a list of pictures or words. Encoding in these situations is fairly straightforward. However, "real life" encoding is much more challenging. When you walk beyond campus, for instance, yous encounter countless sights and sounds—friends passing past, people playing Frisbee, music in the air. The physical and mental environments are much too rich for you to encode all the happenings around you or the internal thoughts you have in response to them. So, an of import starting time principle of encoding is that information technology is selective: we attend to some events in our environment and we ignore others. A second betoken about encoding is that it is prolific; we are e'er encoding the events of our lives—attending to the world, trying to understand it. Normally this presents no problem, every bit our days are filled with routine occurrences, then nosotros don't demand to pay attending to everything. Just if something does happen that seems foreign—during your daily walk beyond campus, you see a giraffe—then nosotros pay close attention and try to sympathise why we are seeing what nosotros are seeing.

A giraffe in the context of a zoo or its natural habitat may register as nothing more ordinary, but put information technology in another setting - in the middle of a campus or a busy city - and its level of distinctiveness increases dramatically. Distinctiveness is a key attribute to remembering events. [Image: Colin J Babb, https://goo.gl/Cci2yl, CC Past-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]

Correct after your typical walk across campus (one without the advent of a giraffe), you would be able to remember the events reasonably well if you lot were asked. You could say whom you bumped into, what song was playing from a radio, and and then on. However, suppose someone asked yous to think the same walk a month later. You wouldn't stand a gamble. You would likely exist able to recount the basics of a typical walk across campus, simply not the precise details of that item walk. Yet, if you had seen a giraffe during that walk, the upshot would have been fixed in your mind for a long time, probably for the rest of your life. Yous would tell your friends about it, and, on afterwards occasions when y'all saw a giraffe, you might be reminded of the twenty-four hours yous saw i on campus. Psychologists have long pinpointed distinctiveness—having an consequence stand out as quite different from a background of similar events—every bit a fundamental to remembering events (Hunt, 2003).

In addition, when vivid memories are tinged with strong emotional content, they often seem to leave a permanent mark on us. Public tragedies, such as terrorist attacks, oft create vivid memories in those who witnessed them. Only fifty-fifty those of the states not directly involved in such events may have brilliant memories of them, including memories of first hearing about them. For example, many people are able to recall their exact physical location when they first learned most the assassination or accidental death of a national figure. The term flashbulb retentivity was originally coined by Brown and Kulik (1977) to describe this sort of bright retentivity of finding out an important piece of news. The name refers to how some memories seem to be captured in the mind like a wink photograph; because of the distinctiveness and emotionality of the news, they seem to become permanently etched in the mind with exceptional clarity compared to other memories.

Take a moment and think back on your ain life. Is in that location a item retentiveness that seems sharper than others? A retentiveness where you tin can recollect unusual details, like the colors of mundane things around yous, or the verbal positions of surrounding objects? Although people take bang-up confidence in flashbulb memories like these, the truth is, our objective accuracy with them is far from perfect (Talarico & Rubin, 2003). That is, even though people may have slap-up confidence in what they recall, their memories are not as accurate (e.one thousand., what the bodily colors were; where objects were truly placed) as they tend to imagine. Nonetheless, all other things being equal, distinctive and emotional events are well-remembered.

Details exercise not jump perfectly from the globe into a person's heed. Nosotros might say that we went to a party and remember information technology, just what we remember is (at best) what nosotros encoded. As noted to a higher place, the procedure of encoding is selective, and in complex situations, relatively few of many possible details are noticed and encoded. The process of encoding always involves recoding—that is, taking the information from the form it is delivered to us and then converting it in a way that we can make sense of it. For example, you might try to call up the colors of a rainbow by using the acronym ROY G BIV (ruby-red, orangish, yellowish, light-green, blue, indigo, violet). The process of recoding the colors into a name tin can help the states to remember. Nevertheless, recoding tin also innovate errors—when we accidentally add together information during encoding, then remember that new material as if information technology had been part of the actual experience (as discussed beneath).

Although it requires more than endeavour, using images and associations can improve the process of recoding. [Epitome: psd, https://goo.gl/9xjcDe, CC Past 2.0, https://goo.gl/9uSnqN]

Psychologists take studied many recoding strategies that tin be used during study to improve retention. Kickoff, research advises that, equally nosotros study, nosotros should retrieve of the meaning of the events (Craik & Lockhart, 1972), and nosotros should try to relate new events to information we already know. This helps us form associations that we can employ to retrieve information later. 2nd, imagining events too makes them more memorable; creating brilliant images out of information (fifty-fifty verbal information) can greatly improve later recall (Bower & Reitman, 1972). Creating imagery is function of the technique Simon Reinhard uses to remember huge numbers of digits, but we tin can all use images to encode information more finer. The basic concept behind expert encoding strategies is to form distinctive memories (ones that stand out), and to form links or associations among memories to help afterward retrieval (Hunt & McDaniel, 1993). Using study strategies such as the ones described here is challenging, only the effort is well worth the benefits of enhanced learning and retention.

We emphasized before that encoding is selective: people cannot encode all information they are exposed to. However, recoding can add together information that was not fifty-fifty seen or heard during the initial encoding phase. Several of the recoding processes, like forming associations between memories, tin can happen without our sensation. This is i reason people can sometimes recall events that did not actually happen—because during the procedure of recoding, details got added. Ane common way of inducing false memories in the laboratory employs a word-list technique (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Participants hear lists of 15 words, like door, drinking glass, pane, shade, ledge, sill, firm, open, curtain, frame, view, breeze, sash, screen, and shutter. Later, participants are given a test in which they are shown a list of words and asked to option out the ones they'd heard earlier. This second listing contains some words from the get-go listing (e.g., door, pane, frame) and some words not from the list (due east.g., arm, phone, bottle). In this example, i of the words on the test is window, which—importantly—does not appear in the first listing, merely which is related to other words in that listing. When subjects were tested, they were reasonably accurate with the studied words (door, etc.), recognizing them 72% of the time. Nonetheless, when window was on the exam, they falsely recognized it as having been on the list 84% of the fourth dimension (Stadler, Roediger, & McDermott, 1999). The same matter happened with many other lists the authors used. This phenomenon is referred to equally the DRM (for Deese-Roediger-McDermott) upshot. One explanation for such results is that, while students listened to items in the list, the words triggered the students to think virtually window, even though window was never presented. In this style, people seem to encode events that are not actually function of their experience.

Because humans are creative, we are always going beyond the information we are given: we automatically make associations and infer from them what is happening. Merely, equally with the word clan mix-upwardly above, sometimes we make simulated memories from our inferences—remembering the inferences themselves as if they were actual experiences. To illustrate this, Brewer (1977) gave people sentences to remember that were designed to arm-twist pragmatic inferences. Inferences, in general, refer to instances when something is not explicitly stated, but we are still able to judge the undisclosed intention. For instance, if your friend told yous that she didn't want to go out to eat, you may infer that she doesn't have the money to become out, or that she's also tired. With businesslike inferences, at that place is usually i particular inference you're likely to brand. Consider the argument Brewer (1977) gave her participants: "The karate champion hit the cinder block." Later hearing or seeing this sentence, participants who were given a memory test tended to remember the statement every bit having been, "The karate champion broke the cinder block." This remembered statement is not necessarily a logical inference (i.e., it is perfectly reasonable that a karate champion could striking a cinder block without breaking information technology). Even so, the pragmatic conclusion from hearing such a sentence is that the block was likely broken. The participants remembered this inference they made while hearing the judgement in place of the actual words that were in the judgement (run across too McDermott & Chan, 2006).

Encoding—the initial registration of data—is essential in the learning and memory process. Unless an issue is encoded in some way, information technology will not exist successfully remembered later on. All the same, simply because an result is encoded (fifty-fifty if it is encoded well), there's no guarantee that it volition exist remembered later.

Storage

Memory traces, or engrams, are NOT perfectly preserved recordings of past experiences. The traces are combined with current knowledge to reconstruct what we think happened in the past. [Simon Bierdwald, https://goo.gl/JDhdCE, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]

Every experience we take changes our brains. That may seem like a bold, fifty-fifty strange, claim at first, merely information technology'due south true. Nosotros encode each of our experiences within the structures of the nervous organisation, making new impressions in the procedure—and each of those impressions involves changes in the encephalon. Psychologists (and neurobiologists) say that experiences leave memory traces, or engrams (the two terms are synonyms). Memories take to be stored somewhere in the brain, and so in society to exercise so, the encephalon biochemically alters itself and its neural tissue. Only like y'all might write yourself a note to remind yous of something, the brain "writes" a retentivity trace, changing its own physical limerick to do and then. The basic thought is that events (occurrences in our environment) create engrams through a procedure of consolidation: the neural changes that occur after learning to create the retentivity trace of an experience. Although neurobiologists are concerned with exactly what neural processes change when memories are created, for psychologists, the term retentivity trace but refers to the physical change in the nervous organization (whatever that may be, exactly) that represents our experience.

Although the concept of engram or retention trace is extremely useful, we shouldn't take the term besides literally. It is important to understand that memory traces are not perfect little packets of information that lie dormant in the brain, waiting to exist chosen frontward to give an accurate written report of past experience. Memory traces are not like video or audio recordings, capturing feel with great accurateness; as discussed earlier, nosotros oft have errors in our memory, which would not be if memory traces were perfect packets of information. Thus, it is incorrect to remember that remembering involves simply "reading out" a faithful record of past experience. Rather, when nosotros remember by events, we reconstruct them with the help of our memory traces—merely likewise with our current belief of what happened. For example, if you were trying to call back for the police force who started a fight at a bar, yous may not have a memory trace of who pushed whom first. However, allow's say you lot remember that one of the guys held the door open for you. When thinking back to the start of the fight, this cognition (of how one guy was friendly to you) may unconsciously influence your memory of what happened in favor of the nice guy. Thus, memory is a construction of what y'all actually call up and what you believe happened. In a phrase, remembering is reconstructive (we reconstruct our by with the aid of retention traces) not reproductive (a perfect reproduction or recreation of the by).

Psychologists refer to the time betwixt learning and testing equally the retention interval. Memories can consolidate during that fourth dimension, aiding retention. However, experiences can also occur that undermine the memory. For instance, call back of what you had for lunch yesterday—a pretty like shooting fish in a barrel task. However, if you had to recall what you had for lunch 17 days ago, you may well fail (bold you don't eat the same thing every 24-hour interval). The 16 lunches you've had since that one have created retroactive interference. Retroactive interference refers to new activities (i.eastward., the subsequent lunches) during the retention interval (i.e., the time between the luncheon 17 days agone and now) that interfere with retrieving the specific, older memory (i.e., the luncheon details from 17 days agone). But just every bit newer things tin can interfere with remembering older things, so tin can the opposite happen. Proactive interference is when past memories interfere with the encoding of new ones. For example, if you accept e'er studied a second language, often times the grammer and vocabulary of your native linguistic communication volition pop into your head, impairing your fluency in the foreign language.

Retroactive interference is ane of the main causes of forgetting (McGeoch, 1932). In the module Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases http://noba.to/uy49tm37 Elizabeth Loftus describes her fascinating piece of work on bystander memory, in which she shows how memory for an effect can be changed via misinformation supplied during the retentivity interval. For example, if yous witnessed a car crash but subsequently heard people describing information technology from their own perspective, this new information may interfere with or disrupt your ain personal recollection of the crash. In fact, y'all may fifty-fifty come to remember the effect happening exactly as the others described it! This misinformation effect in eyewitness memory represents a type of retroactive interference that can occur during the memory interval (see Loftus [2005] for a review). Of grade, if correct information is given during the retention interval, the witness'southward memory will usually be improved.

Although interference may ascend between the occurrence of an event and the attempt to recall information technology, the event itself is always expressed when nosotros remember memories, the topic to which we turn side by side.

Retrieval

Endel Tulving argued that "the key process in retentivity is retrieval" (1991, p. 91). Why should retrieval be given more prominence than encoding or storage? For i affair, if data were encoded and stored merely could not be retrieved, it would be useless. Every bit discussed previously in this module, we encode and shop thousands of events—conversations, sights and sounds—every day, creating memory traces. Nevertheless, nosotros after access just a tiny portion of what we've taken in. Near of our memories will never be used—in the sense of being brought dorsum to mind, consciously. This fact seems so obvious that nosotros rarely reflect on it. All those events that happened to yous in the quaternary grade that seemed then important then? At present, many years later, you would struggle to remember even a few. You may wonder if the traces of those memories still exist in some latent form. Unfortunately, with currently bachelor methods, it is impossible to know.

Psychologists distinguish data that is available in retentivity from that which is accessible (Tulving & Pearlstone, 1966). Bachelor information is the information that is stored in memory—but precisely how much and what types are stored cannot be known. That is, all we can know is what information we can retrieve—accessible information. The assumption is that attainable information represents only a tiny slice of the information available in our brains. Most of us take had the feel of trying to call back some fact or upshot, giving up, and then—of a sudden!—it comes to us at a later fourth dimension, fifty-fifty subsequently we've stopped trying to recall it. Similarly, nosotros all know the experience of failing to recall a fact, but so, if we are given several choices (every bit in a multiple-choice test), we are hands able to recognize it.

We can't know the entirety of what is in our memory, but only that portion we tin can actually retrieve. Something that cannot be retrieved now and which is seemingly gone from retention may, with different cues practical, reemerge. [Image: Ores2k, https://goo.gl/1du8Qe, CC Past-NC-SA two.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]

What factors determine what information can be retrieved from memory? One critical factor is the blazon of hints, or cues, in the environment. You may hear a song on the radio that suddenly evokes memories of an earlier time in your life, even if you were not trying to think it when the song came on. Nevertheless, the song is closely associated with that time, then it brings the feel to listen.

The full general principle that underlies the effectiveness of retrieval cues is the encoding specificity principle (Tulving & Thomson, 1973): when people encode information, they exercise and then in specific ways. For case, accept the song on the radio: perhaps you heard it while you were at a terrific political party, having a groovy, philosophical chat with a friend. Thus, the song became function of that whole complex experience. Years later, even though you lot haven't thought virtually that party in ages, when y'all hear the song on the radio, the whole experience rushes back to you. In general, the encoding specificity principle states that, to the extent a retrieval cue (the song) matches or overlaps the memory trace of an experience (the party, the conversation), it volition be effective in evoking the retention. A classic experiment on the encoding specificity principle had participants memorize a gear up of words in a unique setting. Afterward, the participants were tested on the word sets, either in the same location they learned the words or a different one. Equally a event of encoding specificity, the students who took the exam in the aforementioned place they learned the words were actually able to recall more words (Godden & Baddeley, 1975) than the students who took the test in a new setting.

One circumspection with this principle, though, is that, for the cue to piece of work, it tin can't match too many other experiences (Nairne, 2002; Watkins, 1975). Consider a lab experiment. Suppose you written report 100 items; 99 are words, and i is a picture—of a penguin, item fifty in the list. Afterwards, the cue "recall the picture" would evoke "penguin" perfectly. No one would miss it. However, if the word "penguin" were placed in the same spot among the other 99 words, its memorability would be exceptionally worse. This outcome shows the power of distinctiveness that nosotros discussed in the section on encoding: ane picture is perfectly recalled from among 99 words considering it stands out. Now consider what would happen if the experiment were repeated, merely there were 25 pictures distributed within the 100-item list. Although the picture of the penguin would yet exist there, the probability that the cue "recall the picture" (at item 50) would be useful for the penguin would drop correspondingly. Watkins (1975) referred to this outcome every bit demonstrating the cue overload principle. That is, to exist effective, a retrieval cue cannot be overloaded with as well many memories. For the cue "call back the moving-picture show" to be effective, information technology should only friction match ane item in the target ready (every bit in the one-motion picture, 99-word example).

To sum upwardly how memory cues role: for a retrieval cue to be effective, a friction match must be between the cue and the desired target retention; furthermore, to produce the best retrieval, the cue-target relationship should be distinctive. Next, nosotros will see how the encoding specificity principle can work in practice.

Psychologists measure retentiveness performance by using product tests (involving call up) or recognition tests (involving the selection of right from incorrect information, e.chiliad., a multiple-pick test). For example, with our list of 100 words, ane group of people might be asked to recall the list in any order (a costless recollect examination), while a unlike group might exist asked to circumvolve the 100 studied words out of a mix with another 100, unstudied words (a recognition test). In this situation, the recognition test would likely produce better performance from participants than the recall examination.

We ordinarily retrieve of recognition tests equally beingness quite easy, considering the cue for retrieval is a copy of the bodily upshot that was presented for study. After all, what could be a amend cue than the exact target (memory) the person is trying to access? In almost cases, this line of reasoning is true; yet, recognition tests do not provide perfect indexes of what is stored in memory. That is, you can neglect to recognize a target staring you right in the face, nonetheless be able to recall information technology later with a different set of cues (Watkins & Tulving, 1975). For example, suppose you lot had the job of recognizing the surnames of famous authors. At first, you might think that being given the actual last name would e'er be the best cue. However, research has shown this non necessarily to be true (Muter, 1984). When given names such every bit Tolstoy, Shaw, Shakespeare, and Lee, subjects might well say that Tolstoy and Shakespeare are famous authors, whereas Shaw and Lee are non. Only, when given a cued retrieve exam using outset names, people often recall items (produce them) that they had failed to recognize before. For example, in this instance, a cue like George Bernard ________ often leads to a recall of "Shaw," even though people initially failed to recognize Shaw as a famous author's proper noun. However, when given the cue "William," people may not come up with Shakespeare, because William is a common name that matches many people (the cue overload principle at work). This strange fact—that recall can sometimes lead to meliorate operation than recognition—tin can be explained by the encoding specificity principle. Equally a cue, George Bernard _________ matches the style the famous author is stored in retention amend than does his surname, Shaw, does (even though it is the target). Farther, the match is quite distinctive with George Bernard ___________, but the cue William _________________ is much more overloaded (Prince William, William Yeats, William Faulkner, will.i.am).

The phenomenon we take been describing is called the recognition failure of recallable words, which highlights the bespeak that a cue will be most constructive depending on how the information has been encoded (Tulving & Thomson, 1973). The bespeak is, the cues that work all-time to evoke retrieval are those that recreate the issue or name to be remembered, whereas sometimes even the target itself, such every bit Shaw in the above example, is non the all-time cue. Which cue will be most effective depends on how the information has been encoded.

Whenever we think about our past, we engage in the act of retrieval. Nosotros usually recall that retrieval is an objective act because we tend to imagine that retrieving a memory is similar pulling a book from a shelf, and afterward nosotros are done with it, we return the book to the shelf just as it was. Withal, research shows this assumption to be false; far from beingness a static repository of data, the memory is constantly changing. In fact, every time we retrieve a memory, it is altered. For example, the act of retrieval itself (of a fact, concept, or event) makes the retrieved memory much more probable to be retrieved again, a phenomenon called the testing outcome or the retrieval exercise effect (Pyc & Rawson, 2009; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). However, retrieving some information can actually cause u.s. to forget other data related to it, a phenomenon chosen retrieval-induced forgetting (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). Thus the act of retrieval can exist a double-edged sword—strengthening the retentiveness only retrieved (normally past a large amount) merely harming related information (though this upshot is often relatively small).

As discussed earlier, retrieval of afar memories is reconstructive. Nosotros weave the physical bits and pieces of events in with assumptions and preferences to form a coherent story (Bartlett, 1932). For instance, if during your 10th birthday, your dog got to your cake before you did, you would likely tell that story for years afterward. Say, then, in later years you misremember where the dog actually found the block, but repeat that error over and over during subsequent retellings of the story. Over time, that inaccuracy would become a basic fact of the event in your mind. Just equally retrieval practise (repetition) enhances accurate memories, and then will it strengthen errors or imitation memories (McDermott, 2006). Sometimes memories can even exist manufactured just from hearing a brilliant story. Consider the following episode, recounted past Jean Piaget, the famous developmental psychologist, from his childhood:

One of my first memories would appointment, if it were true, from my second yr. I tin still see, near clearly, the post-obit scene, in which I believed until I was nigh 15. I was sitting in my pram . . . when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap attached round me while my nurse bravely tried to stand up between me and the thief. She received various scratches, and I tin nevertheless vaguely see those on her confront. . . . When I was about 15, my parents received a alphabetic character from my onetime nurse saying that she had been converted to the Salvation Ground forces. She wanted to confess her past faults, and in particular to render the watch she had been given as a reward on this occasion. She had fabricated up the whole story, faking the scratches. I therefore must take heard, as a child, this story, which my parents believed, and projected it into the past in the form of a visual memory. . . . Many real memories are doubtless of the same order. (Norman & Schacter, 1997, pp. 187–188)

Piaget'southward vivid business relationship represents a case of a pure reconstructive retentiveness. He heard the tale told repeatedly, and doubtless told it (and idea virtually it) himself. The repeated telling cemented the events as though they had really happened, just as we are all open to the possibility of having "many existent memories ... of the same order." The fact that one can think precise details (the location, the scratches) does not necessarily indicate that the retentiveness is true, a point that has been confirmed in laboratory studies, too (e.chiliad., Norman & Schacter, 1997).

Putting It All Together: Improving Your Retentiveness

A central theme of this module has been the importance of the encoding and retrieval processes, and their interaction. To recap: to ameliorate learning and memory, nosotros need to encode information in conjunction with excellent cues that will bring dorsum the remembered events when we need them. But how practise we do this? Keep in listen the 2 disquisitional principles nosotros have discussed: to maximize retrieval, we should construct meaningful cues that remind usa of the original experience, and those cues should be distinctive and not associated with other memories. These 2 conditions are critical in maximizing cue effectiveness (Nairne, 2002).

So, how can these principles be adapted for use in many situations? Let's get dorsum to how we started the module, with Simon Reinhard'southward ability to memorize huge numbers of digits. Although it was not obvious, he applied these same full general memory principles, but in a more deliberate way. In fact, all mnemonic devices, or retention aids/tricks, rely on these fundamental principles. In a typical case, the person learns a fix of cues and then applies these cues to learn and remember information. Consider the set of 20 items below that are like shooting fish in a barrel to learn and call back (Bower & Reitman, 1972).

1. is a gun. 11 is penny-one, hot dog bun.
2. is a shoe. 12 is penny-two, plane mucilage.
3. is a tree. 13 is penny-three, bumble bee.
4. is a door. xiv is penny-iv, grocery store.
5. is knives. 15 is penny-v, big beehive.
6. is sticks. sixteen is penny-vi, magic tricks.
7. is oven. 17 is penny-vii, go to heaven.
8. is plate. 18 is penny-8, gilt gate.
9. is wine. 19 is penny-nine, ball of twine.
10. is hen. 20 is penny-ten, ballpoint pen.

Information technology would probably take you less than ten minutes to acquire this list and practice recalling it several times (recollect to use retrieval do!). If you were to do and then, y'all would have a set up of peg words on which you could "hang" memories. In fact, this mnemonic device is chosen the peg word technique. If you and so needed to call up some discrete items—say a grocery list, or points you wanted to make in a speech—this method would let you do and then in a very precise yet flexible way. Suppose you had to retrieve bread, peanut butter, bananas, lettuce, and so on. The style to use the method is to form a vivid image of what y'all want to remember and imagine information technology interacting with your peg words (as many as you need). For instance, for these items, y'all might imagine a large gun (the first peg discussion) shooting a loaf of breadstuff, and so a jar of peanut butter inside a shoe, then big bunches of bananas hanging from a tree, then a door slamming on a head of lettuce with leaves flight everywhere. The idea is to provide good, distinctive cues (the weirder the better!) for the data you need to retrieve while you are learning it. If you practice this, then retrieving it afterwards is relatively easy. Yous know your cues perfectly (ane is gun, etc.), so you just become through your cue word list and "expect" in your listen's centre at the paradigm stored there (bread, in this case).

Example of a mneumonic system created by a student to study cranial fretfulness. [Image: Kelidimari, https://goo.gl/kiA1kP, CC By-SA 3.0, https://goo.gl/SCkRfm]

This peg give-and-take method may sound strange at get-go, but it works quite well, even with piddling training (Roediger, 1980). One word of warning, though, is that the items to exist remembered need to be presented relatively slowly at first, until you accept exercise associating each with its cue word. People get faster with time. Another interesting attribute of this technique is that it's just every bit easy to recall the items in backwards gild every bit forwards. This is because the peg words provide direct access to the memorized items, regardless of club.

How did Simon Reinhard think those digits? Substantially he has a much more complex organization based on these aforementioned principles. In his case, he uses "retention palaces" (elaborate scenes with discrete places) combined with huge sets of images for digits. For example, imagine mentally walking through the dwelling where y'all grew up and identifying as many distinct areas and objects as possible. Simon has hundreds of such retentivity palaces that he uses. Adjacent, for remembering digits, he has memorized a set of 10,000 images. Every 4-digit number for him immediately brings forth a mental image. So, for case, 6187 might retrieve Michael Jackson. When Simon hears all the numbers coming at him, he places an epitome for every four digits into locations in his retentiveness palace. He can practise this at an incredibly rapid charge per unit, faster than iv digits per iv seconds when they are flashed visually, every bit in the demonstration at the showtime of the module. As noted, his record is 240 digits, recalled in exact order. Simon as well holds the world tape in an consequence called "speed cards," which involves memorizing the precise guild of a shuffled deck of cards. Simon was able to practice this in 21.19 seconds! Once again, he uses his retentivity palaces, and he encodes groups of cards as unmarried images.

Many books be on how to improve retentivity using mnemonic devices, simply all involve forming distinctive encoding operations so having an infallible set of memory cues. Nosotros should add together that to develop and use these retention systems across the basic peg organization outlined above takes a corking amount of time and concentration. The World Memory Championships are held every twelvemonth and the records keep improving. However, for nearly common purposes, just keep in listen that to call up well you lot need to encode information in a distinctive way and to have skilful cues for retrieval. You tin can arrange a system that will run into most any purpose.

Outside Resources

Book: Brown, P.C., Roediger, H. L. & McDaniel, Thou. A. (2014). Make it stick: The scientific discipline of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Academy Press.

https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Scientific discipline-Successful-Learning/dp/0674729013

Student Video 1: Eureka Foong\\\\\\\'s - The Misinformation Issue. This is a educatee-made video illustrating this phenomenon of altered memory. Information technology was one of the winning entries in the 2014 Noba Student Video Honour.

Educatee Video two: Kara McCord\\\\\\\'s - Flashbulb Memories. This is a educatee-made video illustrating this phenomenon of autobiographical retentivity. It was one of the winning entries in the 2014 Noba Student Video Award.

Student Video 3: Ang Rui Xia & Ong Jun Hao\\\\\\\'south - The Misinformation Effect. Another student-made video exploring the misinformation effect. Too an laurels winner from 2014.

Video: Simon Reinhard breaking the world record in speedcards.

Spider web: Retrieval Practice, a website with enquiry, resources, and tips for both educators and learners effectually the memory-strengthening skill of retrieval exercise.

http://www.retrievalpractice.org/

Discussion Questions

1. Mnemonists similar Simon Reinhard develop mental "journeys," which enable them to utilise the method of loci. Develop your own journeying, which contains twenty places, in lodge, that you know well. 1 instance might be: the front walkway to your parents' apartment; their doorbell; the couch in their living room; etc. Be sure to use a gear up of places that yous know well and that have a natural order to them (e.chiliad., the walkway comes before the doorbell). Now you are more than halfway toward being able to memorize a prepare of 20 nouns, in order, rather apace. As an optional second step, take a friend brand a list of 20 such nouns and read them to yous, slowly (east.g., one every 5 seconds). Utilise the method to attempt to remember the 20 items.
2. Call up a recent argument or misunderstanding y'all take had well-nigh memory (e.one thousand., a contend over whether your girlfriend/boyfriend had agreed to something). In light of what y'all have just learned nigh retentiveness, how do you lot think almost it? Is it possible that the disagreement can be understood by one of you lot making a pragmatic inference?
3. Think about what y'all've learned in this module and most how you study for tests. On the basis of what y'all accept learned, is at that place something  you want to try that might help your study habits?

Vocabulary

Autobiographical memory

Memory for the events of one's life.

Consolidation

The procedure occurring later encoding that is believed to stabilize retentivity traces.

Cue overload principle

The principle stating that the more than memories that are associated to a particular retrieval cue, the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any 1 memory.

Distinctiveness

The principle that unusual events (in a context of similar events) will be recalled and recognized better than compatible (nondistinctive) events.

Encoding

The initial feel of perceiving and learning events.

Encoding specificity principle

The hypothesis that a retrieval cue volition be effective to the extent that information encoded from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory trace.

Engrams

A term indicating the modify in the nervous system representing an event; likewise, memory trace.

Episodic memory

Memory for events in a particular fourth dimension and place.

Flashbulb retentivity

Brilliant personal memories of receiving the news of some momentous (and commonly emotional) event.

Retention traces

A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an effect.

Misinformation upshot

When erroneous information occurring after an event is remembered as having been office of the original outcome.

Mnemonic devices

A strategy for remembering large amounts of information, usually involving imaging events occurring on a journey or with some other set up of memorized cues.

Recoding

The ubiquitous procedure during learning of taking data in one grade and converting it to another form, usually one more easily remembered.

Retrieval

The process of accessing stored data.

Retroactive interference

The phenomenon whereby events that occur later some item event of interest will commonly cause forgetting of the original event.

Semantic retentiveness

The more or less permanent shop of knowledge that people have.

Storage

The stage in the learning/memory process that bridges encoding and retrieval; the persistence of memory over time.

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Authors

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Retentiveness (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) past Kathleen B. McDermott and Henry L. Roediger III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be bachelor in our Licensing Agreement.

How to cite this Noba module using APA Style

McDermott, K. B. & Roediger, H. L. (2022). Retention (encoding, storage, retrieval). In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/bdc4uger

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