Memory doesn't work the same in every situation.

Certain factors, such as time of day, location, distractions, events and internal states can affect the ability to remember things.

State-dependent Memory What we learn in one state (drunk or

sober) may be more easily recalled when we are again in that state.

Mood Congruent Memory We recall experiences that are consistent

with one’s current good or bad mood.

Do you need to remember everything?

We need to forget or discard useless information or our consciousness will become cluttered making thinking difficult.

Absent-mindedness Inattention to details leads to encoding

failure Transience

Storage decay over time Blocking

Inaccessibility of stored information

Misattribution Confusing the source of information

Suggestibility The lingering effects of misinformation

Bias Belief-colored recollections

Persistence Unwanted memories

Selective Attention If we don’t notice what we sense then we

will fail to encode and we will NOT remember it.

Age-related Memory Decline Brain areas in older adults are less

responsive; thus, causing slower encoding

Loss of information from memory as a consequence of passage of time and lack of use.

Simply an inability to retrieve a memory

Have you ever known a name of a song, but were unable to retrieve it?

TOT occurs when the retrieval process does not produce a complete response but produces parts that must be constructed into a whole.

Indicates that forgetting may be a result of retrieval failure not encoding or storage failure.

The confusion of one piece of information with another

Or the suppression of one in favor of another that was processed about the same time (as might happen, for example, if a student takes a Spanish lesson one period and a French lesson the next).

PROACTIVE INTERFERENCE RETROACTIVE INTERFERENCE

Occurs if previously learned material interferes with learning of new material.

Occurs if learning of new material interferes with the ability to recall previously learned material.

P : Proactive

O : Old info interferes with new

R : Retroactive

N : New info interferes with old

The inability to remember events from the past

Psychogenic Amnesia is due to of a psychological trauma

Organic Amnesia is due to a physiological

People sometimes forget things because they find them too unpleasant to think about.

Repression The process of keeping disturbing thoughts or

feelings relegated to the unconscious.

Human memory is not as good as people like to think.

Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event.

There are times when you are 100% confident in your memory of something and the reality is, your memory is wrong.

Eyewitness testimony is the courtroom recall of a real-life situation.

Studies have shown that eyewitnesses sometimes recall events incorrectly or identify the wrong people.

In addition, memories may be embellished after the fact, particularly if a person has a stake in the outcome, but

Although the memories seemingly improve with time, they may be less rather than more accurate.

The reliability of such embellished memories is controversial as is the use of hypnosis to improve memory retrieval