Maintain and manipulate information now.
Short-lived active representations support reasoning, comprehension and planning.
Side 84
Memory
A study of how past experience changes present cognition. Memory is not a single store but a family of systems that encode, stabilize, retrieve and reconstruct information over different timescales.
encode→consolidate→store→retrieve→reconstruct
06memory lenses
05memory systems
05forgetting mechanisms
84Side
Memory is a collection of partially distinct systems.
Different forms of memory preserve different kinds of information and support different behaviors.
Remember events situated in time and place.
Episodic memory supports recollection of personally experienced scenes.
Remember facts and concepts.
Knowledge can remain even when the original learning episode is forgotten.
Remember how to perform skills.
Practice changes performance without requiring explicit verbal recollection.
Past experience alters behavior without conscious recall.
Priming and conditioning demonstrate memory effects outside deliberate remembering.
Remember to act later.
Future intentions require maintaining or retrieving a planned action at the right moment.
What gets encoded depends on attention, structure and meaning.
Exposure alone does not guarantee durable memory.
Was the information selected?
Unattended input is weakly encoded.
Attention determines which details receive deeper processing.
How is it connected?
Meaning + prior knowledge.
Linking new information to existing structure creates more retrieval routes.
What pattern does it belong to?
Chunk, hierarchy, schema?
Organization reduces arbitrary detail and makes relationships memorable.
Did the learner produce something?
Recall, explain, solve?
Generation often strengthens encoding more than passive rereading.
What cues accompany learning?
Place, state, task?
Encoding context can later become part of retrieval.
Memories change after encoding.
Stabilization and reorganization continue over minutes, days and longer periods.
Synaptic
Local connections change.
Activity-dependent plasticity can stabilize newly learned relationships.
Systems
Dependence shifts across brain systems.
Some memories become less dependent on the structures required during initial learning.
Sleep
Offline processing matters.
Sleep can support stabilization and integration of newly learned material.
Integration
New memories join old knowledge.
Consolidation can extract regularities across multiple episodes.
Reconsolidation
Retrieved memories can become modifiable.
Remembering may reopen stored information to updating before restabilization.
Retrieval is a search constrained by cues.
Failure to retrieve does not necessarily mean a memory trace has vanished.
| Retrieval process | Question | Implication |
|---|---|---|
| Recall | Can the information be produced? | Requires strong internal retrieval cues |
| Recognition | Can the information be identified? | External options provide cues |
| Recollection | Can contextual details be recovered? | Supports event-like remembering |
| Familiarity | Does it feel known? | Can occur without contextual recall |
| Retrieval practice | Does recalling strengthen later recall? | Testing can improve long-term retention |
Forgetting has several causes.
A memory can become inaccessible because it was weakly encoded, poorly cued, interfered with or transformed.
Availability changes with time.
Some traces weaken without sufficient reinforcement or use.
Memories compete.
Old learning can obstruct new learning and new learning can disrupt old recall.
The memory exists but the route is poor.
Changing context can alter whether stored information is accessible.
Remembering some items can suppress competitors.
Selection during retrieval changes later accessibility.
Memory changes rather than disappears.
Repeated retelling and schema can reshape remembered detail.
Not all loss is failure.
Discarding obsolete or irrelevant detail can reduce interference and improve current performance.
Remembering is reconstruction, not replay.
Current knowledge, expectation and suggestion can influence what is recalled as past experience.
Trace
Some information from the original event remains available.
Schema
General knowledge fills gaps and supplies expected structure.
Source
The mind must infer where a remembered detail came from.
Suggestion
Later information can become incorporated into recollection.
Confidence
Subjective certainty can diverge from objective accuracy.
Human Memorysystems, encoding and retrieval
Working MemoryBaddeley · active maintenance
Memory and Forgettinginterference and retrieval
Reconstructive MemoryBartlett and later memory research