A SCIENCE OF MEMORY

1
A SCIENCE OF MEMORY

• Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
• Prussian philosopher
• Steeped in British empiricist approach
• Uber das Gedachtnis (1885)
• First experimental work on memory
• Introduces basic controlled methods
• Describes basic memory phenomena
• Learning and forgetting functions
• List-length effects and STM span
• Serial position and spacing effects
• Remote and backward associations
• Importance of meaningfulness and organization
• Contrasts effortful and automatic retrieval
• Contrasts explicit and implicit memory
• Overall, though, little theoretical work on
  memory processes

2
GO-1 POV DET ZON FIP MEB DOZ KAL VAM TUP
GIS END
3
GO-2 POV DET ZON FIP MEB DOZ KAL VAM TUP
GIS END
4
GO-3 POV DET ZON FIP MEB DOZ KAL VAM TUP
GIS END
5
GO-T GIS TUP VAM KAL DOZ MEB FIP ZON DET
POV END
6
REMOTE ASSOCIATIONS(Ebbinghaus, 1885)

• 16 cvcs studied to criterion
• Two day retention interval
• Second list learned to criterion
• Percent savings
• (Old New) / Old
• Second list structure
• intact 33
• skip 1 (1,3,5..) 11
• skip 2 7
• skip 3 6
• skip 5 3
• random 0.5

7
A SCIENCE OF MEMORY(contd)

• Alfred Binet (1857 1911)
• French physician / scientist
• Focus on school learning and ability
• Study memory for coherent prose
• Coherence effects
• Importance effects
• Acoustic and semantic codes for STM and LTM
• Richard Semon (1859 1918)
• German natural philosopher
• Memory in a bio-evolutionary frame
• The Mneme (1904)
• Stresses retrieval as synthesis of the trace
  (engram) and cues ecphory
• Mnemic Psychology (1909)
• Banished from academics and ignored

8
A SCIENCE OF MEMORY(contd)

• Frederic Bartlett (1886 1969)
• British psychologist
• Memory in a social context
• Uses meaningful stories andcomplex objects as
  stimuli
• Memory as constructive
• Role of background knowledge and schemas of
  organized concepts
• Potential for distortion and errors
• Theodule Ribot (1839 1916)
• French (neuro)psychologist
• Organic (skill) versus psychological memories
  (procedural / declarative)
• Noted diversity of amnesias and argued for
  dissociable systems
• Diseases of Memory (1887)
• Most recently acquired memories most vulnerable
  to loss (Ribots Law)

9

• Sigmund Freud (1856 1939)
• Constructivist view of remembering
• Field versus observer perspectives
• Stresses automatic, preconscious processes
• Repression as a mechanism of forgetting
• Inhibits painful memories
• leaks of repressed memory surface in other
  thoughts (implicit memory) and behaviors
  (hysteria)
• Therapy through bringing these memories to
  consciousness (catharsis)
• Controversy over motivated forgetting and its
  mechanisms continues

10
The War of the Ghosts(Original Script)
One night two young men from Egulac went down to
the river to hunt seals and while they were there
it became foggy and calm. Then they heard
war-cries, and they thought "Maybe this is a
war-party". They escaped to the shore, and hid
behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard
the noise of paddles, and saw one canoe coming up
to them. There were five men in the canoe, and
they said "What do you think? We wish to take
you along. We are going up the river to make war
on the people." One of the young men said,"I
have no arrows." "Arrows are in the canoe," they
said. "I will not go along. I might be killed.
My relatives do not know where I have gone. But
you," he said, turning to the other, "may go with
them." (continued)
11
So one of the young men went, but the other
returned home. And the warriors went on up the
river to a town on the other side of Kalama. The
people came down to the water and they began to
fight, and many were killed. But presently the
young man heard one of the warriors say, "Quick,
let us go home that Indian has been hit." Now he
thought "Oh, they are ghosts." He did not feel
sick, but they said he had been shot. So the
canoes went back to Egulac and the young man went
ashore to his house and made a fire. And he told
everybody and said "Behold I accompanied the
ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellows
were killed, and many of those who attacked us
were killed. They said I was hit, and I did not
feel sick." He told it all, and then he became
quiet. When the sun rose he fell down. Something
black came out of his mouth. His face became
contorted. The people jumped up and cried. He
was dead.
12
Recalling The War of the Ghosts

• 'Something black came from his mouth' tended to
  become 'he frothed at the mouth', 'he vomited' or
  'breath escaped from his mouth'.
• 'Hunting seals' tended to become 'fishing'.
• 'Canoe' tended to become 'boat' and 'paddles' to
  become 'oars'.
• The wounded Indian tended to become the hero,
  whose wounds were sometimes even 'bathed' at the
  end.
• The reference by the Indian who stayed to the
  possibility of getting killed tended to be
  downplayed or dropped, whilst the reference to
  the probable anxiety of his relatives was usually
  given greater emphasis (the reference to having
  no arrows was often omitted).
• The role of 'the ghosts' shifted (for some, they
  become a clan called the Ghosts for others they
  were simply imagined by the Indian when wounded).