1. Failure in encoding information;
2. Decay of the storage of information;
3. Failure of retrieving information.

1. Experience is first recorded, for just a moment, as a sensory memory;

2. Information is processed into short-term memory, encoded through rehearsal

3. Information moves to long-term memory for later retrieval.

1. Unconscious processing
2. Working memory

1. automatically
2. effortfully (with effort)

1. Information about space like where something is;
2. Information about time like the order things happened;
3. Information about frequency like how often something happened.

1. Pay close attention;
2. Put in effort;
3. Rehearsing information--choosing to repeat it in our heads so we remember.

Effortful Processing

What is the Spacing Effect?

Effortful Processing

What is the Testing Effect?

Effortful Processing

What is the Serial Position Effect?

1. When the information is meaningful to use--then we may remember the main point but not the exact words;
2. When the information is connected to something visual like an image or picture;

Long-term memory--it's capacity (how much it can hold) is unlimited and can last your whole life.

Short-term memory is limited.

The Brain

What are Synapses?

The Brain

Do Synapses change

during a person's life?

1. Recall--like you need to do on a fill-in-the-blank test;
2. Recognized--like you need to do on a multiple-choice test.

A person is more likely to remember something when they return to the same place or situation as when they first learned it.  

Example:  when scuba divers learned words underwater, they remembered these best when they were underwater.

1. Absent-mindedness--when we don't pay attention to details as we are learning, we don't remember;
2. Transience--we forget when we haven't used the information we are trying to remember;
   
3. Blocking--we can't access stored memories when something blocks the memory, such as a very painful experience.
   

Ways Our Memories Gets Distorted

(remembered wrong)

What is Misattribution?

Ways Our Memories Gets Distorted

(remembered wrong)

What is Suggestibility?

Suggestibility is being influenced by the way a question is asked.

 Example:  Isn't that a pretty dress? vs. Do you like the dress? can make you think the dress is pretty.

Ways Our Memories Gets Distorted

(remembered wrong)

What is Bias?

Bias is how what you remember is based upon how you feel at the moment about what happened.

Example:  If you are happy with someone, you may remember the bad things they did as not so bad.

Persistence which is unwanted memories that keep coming back.

Example:  Soldiers tormented by bad war experiences.

Interference is the blocking of recall as old or new learning disrupts the recall of othewr memories.

Example:  learning new passwords might interfere with remembering old passwords.

To Repress a memory means to block it because of something painful that happened.

Misinformation is the way a memory can be corrupted (messed up) by misleading information.

Example:  “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”

vs.

  “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”

Just the word "smashed" made people remember the cars as going faster and even remember seeing broken glass that wasn't there.

1. A false memory can be put in someone's mind when they hear a powerful retelling of an event.  That makes them remember it differently from the way they would have remembered it.
2. A false memory can be created when a person imagines something that never happened.  Later they may believe it actually happened.

1. When people don't believe people who were abused;
2. When innocent people are falsely accused because a person remembers abuse that never happened or happened with a different person.