-By Timothy Lyons
What is Memory? The American Psychological Association defines memory as the following
Memory is the general name applied to a wide variety of biological devices by which living organisms acquire, retain, and make use of skills and knowledge. It is present in all higher animals, taking many shapes and forms. Its most advanced level in evolutionary terms is to be found in human beings. The scientific study of memory is over IOO years old.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10520-078 Encyclopedia of Psychology, Vol. 5, edited by A. E. Kazdin
Copyright © 2000 American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.
Memory Psychology
Memory is the complex process by which we learn and are able to recall huge amounts of information. The process of how the memory works is only a guess by memory psychology psychologists. Some facts that have been born out though are that certain parts of the brain are involved in the making of memory. The understanding of the process of memory psychology has been greatly improved by neuroscience through the use of 7 Tesla ultra-high field MRI. In 2015 Siemens had just completed its first version of a complete human ultra-high field MRI or Ultra High Field magnetic resonance imaging machine. With this type of machine the brains centers such as the hippocampus, thalamus and amygdala can now be looked at more closely to see just how memory works.
As late as the end of 2014, Scientists in Germany using this technology were able to see that there is a complex relationship between the cerebral cortex where memories are primarily stored, and the hippocampus which is a type of system of control that generates the memories and controls their content. This latest advance has given memory psychology some new insight on an old issue.
So the three step process that we normally think of as the memory goes something like this.
Stages
First, in stage one, which is also known as the encoding stage, the human mind is exposed to information. This process involves the setup of information to be placed within the cerebral cortex. Neuroscience tells us that this process begins when nerve cells called neurons do a dance and begin to relay information with each other through the use of chemicals known as neurotransmitters.
There are three way in which this stage begins. The encoding begins by one of these ways.
- Visual (picture)
- Acoustic (sound)
- Semantic (meaning)
A good example of this process is when we first meet someone and we try to remember that person’s name. When we see them we remember their face which is the visual part. As we attempt to remember their name we repeat this over and over which is acoustic. The semantic part happens through meaning. And this is where we can relate information together. The man I just met with the happy face and big nose is named John. I have now given meaning to this and further cemented the memory.
Next is stage two, which is also known as the memory storage stage. This is mostly concerned with whether the information from the first step is placed into short term memory (stm) or long term memory (LTM). The process of short term memory is thought to be accessed by the visual and acoustic method. The long term memory although accessed by these as well, is thought to be affected by semantic meaning. In this case, the neuronal bonds would be connected through a heightened synaptic connection.
How it is Stored
In the STM it has been proposed that there is only a limited amount of memory that can be stored. The idea was first proposed in 1956 by the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Princeton University’s Department of Psychology in Psychological Review. It is one of the most cited papers in all of psychology. One of the ideas behind it which is known as Miller’s law is that the STM can hold 7 ± 2 items. The issue here is that through prior relationships and connections in the LTM the amount of information held within these items can be larger than the seven items themselves. The example is like a compressed file on your computer. It can contain more information than the original file.
The last stage is stage three or the Memory Retrieval stage. This is how we get memory back to use it. Or get it out of storage. The short term memory is sequential. It is like having a list of words or numbers that appear and you can get at them in that sequence. You can remember the items by the way in which they were listed. The LTM
STM is stored and retrieved sequentially. For example, if a group of participants are given a list of words to remember, and then asked to recall the fourth word on the list, participants go through the list in the order they heard it in order to retrieve the information. LTM uses associations such as in the example above when I learned the man’s name John . But here is the real example. Can you tell me anything about his face? And if you were to tell me that it is happy and he has a big nose, it would have been through the act of association.