Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Diagram and explain the information-processing model of memory.
2. Describe the important features of sensory memory, emphasizing the results of Sperling’s partial report study.
3. Describe the important features of short-term memory, mentioning the duration and capacity of working memory, and explaining how these can be increased by maintenance rehearsal and chunking, and decreased by decay and displacement.
4. Explain the relationship between elaborative rehearsal and encoding in long-term memory.
5. Summarize the important features of Craik and Lockhart’s levels of processing theory and explain how the findings regarding elaborative rehearsal support this theory.
6. Draw a diagram that illustrates the relationships among the various kinds of memory that comprise long-term memory and describe each.
7. List and describe the important features of two theories that attempt to explain how semantic and episodic memories are organized in long-term memory.
8. Explain how two theories attempt to account for retrieval from long-term memory.
9. Explain how forgetting has been measured, including Ebbinghaus’ discovery of the serial position effect, method of savings, and forgetting curve.
10. List and explain four other approaches to explaining why we forget, distinguishing between retroactive versus proactive interference, repression, the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, context-, and state-dependent memory.
11. Summarize the important findings of studies on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in general, and more specifically, the accuracy of children’s testimony, and the effect of biasing or leading questions on memory.
12. Summarize the important features of the SQ3R method of study, and explain how techniques such as overlearning, distributed practice and use of the various mnemonic devices can improve one’s memory.
13. Explain the significance of Lashley’s early studies of animal memory and current research with aplysia and rabbits in the understanding where memories are stored in the brain, mentioning long-term potentiation, the role of the hippocampus, and H.M.
14. Explain the roles of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, the amino acid NMDA, the hormone epinephrine, and glucose in memory consolidation.