Page 2 - 2023-ml-myers-pel6e-chapter7-sample

P. 2

180
PSYCHOLOGY IN EVERYDAY LIFE
At the other extreme are people who win To help clients imagine future build-
memory competitions. When two- time World ings, architects create virtual models.
Memory champion Feng Wang was a 21-year- Similarly, psychologists create mem-
old college student, he didn’t need help from ory models. Such models aren’t perfect,
his phone to remember his friends’ numbers. but they help us think about how our
The average person could parrot back a string brain forms and retrieves memories.
of about 7 — maybe even 9 — numbers. For An information- processing model com-
Feng, if numbers were read about 1 per second, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health pares human memory to a computer’s
he could reliably repeat up to 200 (Ericsson operation. It assumes that, to remember
et al., 2017). At one competition, he memorized something, we must
300 numbers! • encode — get information into our
Severe Alzheimer’s
Healthy brain disease brain.
FIGURE 7.1 Extreme forgetting • store — retain that information.
Want to test your memory? Try to memorize Alzheimer’s disease severely damages the brain,
the first 10 digits of pi (π): 3.141592653. and in the process strips away memory. • retrieve — later get the information
In 2015, Rajveer Meena of India broke the back out.
world record by reciting 70,000 digits of pi Let’s take a closer look.
(Guinness World Records, 2019). IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE
Imagine having an injury that significantly
impairs your ability to form new memories. IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE
Amazing? Yes, but consider your own Now, imagine having a record- setting ability to What has your memory system encoded,
impressive memory. You remember countless remember, like Feng Wang. How would each stored, and retrieved today?
condition affect your daily routine?
faces, places, and happenings; tastes, smells,
and textures; voices, sounds, and songs. In one AN INFORMATION-
study, students listened to snippets — a mere Studying Memory PROCESSING MODEL
four- tenths of a second — from popular
songs. How often did they recognize the artist Learning Objective Question LOQ 7-1 LOQ 7-2 What is the three- stage
and song? More than 25 percent of the time information- processing model, and how
(Krumhansl, 2010). We often recognize songs What is memory, and how do information- has later research updated this model?
as quickly as we recognize familiar voices, processing models help us study memory?
faces, and places. In another experiment, Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin
people viewed 2800 images for only 3 seconds e thankful for your memory — your (1968; 2016) proposed that we form memo-
each. Later, seeing these and other images in Barchive of accumulated learning. Your ries in three stages.
a second round, they spotted the repeats with memory enables you to recognize family 1. We first record to- be- remembered
82 percent accuracy (Konkle et al., 2010). The members, speak your language, and find information as a fleeting sensory
average person permanently stores and rec- your way home. Your memory allows memory.
ognizes about 5000 faces (Jenkins et al., 2018). you to enjoy an experience and then 2. From there, we process information
Moreover, the details we recall from our recent mentally replay it to enjoy again. With- into short- term memory, where we
experiences are highly accurate (Diamond out memory, you could not savor past encode it through rehearsal.
et al., 2020). achievements, nor feel guilt or anger 3. Finally, information moves into long-
Some super- recognizers display an extra- over painful past events. You would term memory for later retrieval.
ordinary face- recognition ability. By watching instead live in an endless present, each
street footage, super- recognizers have helped moment fresh. Each person would be This model has been updated with
British, Asian, and German police to solve dif- a stranger, every language foreign, every important newer concepts, including
ficult cases (Keefe, 2016; NPR, 2018). Eighteen task — dressing, cooking, biking — a new working memory and automatic processing
months after viewing a video of an armed rob- challenge. You would even be a stranger (FIGURE 7.2).
bery, one super- recognizer police officer spotted to yourself, lacking that ongoing sense of Working Memory
and arrested the robber walking on a busy self that extends from your distant past
street (Davis et al., 2013). to your momentary present. Atkinson and Shiffrin saw short- term
How do we accomplish such memory feats? In Chapter 5, Sensation and Percep- memory merely as a space for briefly
How can we remember things we have not tion, we considered one of psychology’s storing recent thoughts and experi-
ences. We now know that this working-
thought about for years, yet forget the name big questions: How does the world enter
of someone we just met? How are our memo- your brain? This chapter’s related ques- memory stage is where short- term
ries stored in our brain? Why, when we ask you tion is: How does your brain pluck infor- and long- term memories combine.
later in this chapter, will you likely have trouble mation from the world around you and Working memory has been likened to a
recalling this sentence: “The angry rioter threw store it for a lifetime of use? Said sim- “scratchpad” where your brain actively
the rock at the window”? ply, how does your brain construct your processes important information by
memories? linking new experiences with long- term

08_pel6e_41872_ch07_179_201.indd 180 11/03/22 4:33 PM

1 2 3 4 5 6 7