- Memory models
- Forgetting
- The stages of memory
- Levels of analysis
- Levels of Processing 
- Interference
- Chunking
- Recall
- Constructive nature of memory
- Primary vs. Secondary memories
- Types of information supporting memory
- Memory errors and impairment
- Source monitoring
- Eyewitness testimony
- Experience-dependent plasticity
- Desirable difficulties
- Prospective vs. Retrospective Memory

Focuses of Research on Memory

Ranganath, Libby, and Wong (2012) explain that memory research perhaps began with Hermann Ebbinghaus’ research in the late 1800s, into his ability to memorize random syllables. His most important contributions were in the realm of methodology for experimental study of memory. Frederick Bartlett’s work in the 1930s surrounding memory of meaningful material like literary quotes demonstrated that recall of information does not happen verbatim, but rather as an “imaginative construction” comprised of pieces recalled reconstructed with inferences which fill in blanks in the memory.  Brenda Milner’s later work with people suffering from amnesia provided evidence that brain damage in certain areas could make formation of new memories difficult while not harming the development of new skills in other areas. The approaches taken by these researchers set the foundation for subsequent neuroscience studies into the purposes of different areas of the brain in memory.

Initiation of Memory Research

• Prospective Memory (PM)
• Retrospective Memory (RM)

Types of Memory

A student studies for an exam by passively re-reading their notes for several hours. The next day, they recognize the questions on the exam but cannot recall the specific answers. Based on the fundamental processes of memory, which stage was most likely the weakest, leading to this failure?

Based on the fundamental process of how information is encoded, stored, and later retrieved, analyze the student's situation. What are the potential breakdowns in the memory process that could explain why the student was unable to recall the specific details during the exam, despite their effort?

Analyzing a Memory Failure

Which of the following best defines the concept of memory in psychology?

Individuals are vulnerable to the power of suggestion, which can influence them simply based on something they see on the news or a suggestion someone else has made.

Power of Suggestion

Unintended cues and suggestions provided by police officers during investigations can significantly influence a witness's recollection and confidence. For instance, if an officer reinforces a witness's uncertain choice during a photo selection or lineup, it can inadvertently lead the witness to identify the wrong suspect.

Unintended Police Cues and Eyewitness Misidentification

Investigators must proceed with caution when interviewing eyewitnesses to a crime, as law enforcement procedures can inadvertently implant false memories or mislead the witness. Practices such as showing police line-ups or pushing a witness to create a composite sketch can corrupt an eyewitness's memory, which may hinder the investigation and prevent cases from being resolved.

Eyewitness Memory Corruption

The specific wording used in leading questions can alter a person's memory of an event. Loftus and Palmer demonstrated this by showing that participants who heard cars 'smashed' estimated higher speeds than those who heard 'contacted.' Furthermore, the 'smashed' group was more likely to falsely remember seeing broken glass a week later, indicating that implied information can encourage false memories.

Effect of Leading Questions on Memory

Individuals can falsely recall complete events, rather than just isolated words or details, even when those events never actually occurred.

False Recall of Events

The concept that memories of traumatic events can be repressed is a significant theme in psychology that originated with Sigmund Freud.

Repression of Traumatic Memories

Elizabeth Loftus has challenged the idea that individuals can repress memories of traumatic events from childhood, including sexual abuse, and then recover those memories years later through therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis, guided visualization, and age regression.

Loftus's Challenge to Repressed Memories

The process of questioning an individual about past events can inadvertently alter their recall. Because memory is highly susceptible to even the slightest suggestions, therapeutic or investigative questioning can lead to misinformation effects, raising doubts about the accuracy of the accessed memories.

Misinformation Effects in Questioning

Effortful encoding is the process of intentionally paying attention to details and actively working to process information so that it can be stored in memory and remembered later.

Effortful Encoding

A well-known memory researcher and psychologist who proposed the seven sins of memory, which categorizes the ways our memories fail us into forgetting, distortion, and intrusion.

Daniel Schacter

A line graph representing the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve shows the relationship between elapsed time since learning and memory retention percentages. The data demonstrates a rapid initial decline in retention that eventually levels off. The approximate data points are: 100% retention at 0 minutes, 55% at 20 minutes, 40% at 60 minutes, 37% at 9 hours, 30% at 24 hours, 25% at 48 hours, 20% at 6 days, and 10% at 31 days.

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve Retention Rates

Information and knowledge encoded into the brain to be retrieved 

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Google

Boston College

Cognitive psychology is an area of psychology that focuses on studying cognitions, or thoughts, and their relationship to our experiences and actions. Like biological psychology, it is broad in scope and often involves interdisciplinary collaborations to study mental processes such as:  - attention - language - memory - perception - problem-solving - creativity - thought - decision-making - processing - knowledge - learning

It also includes the study of computer-based cognitive models such as connectionism (parallel distributed processing). Fields that draw from cognitive psychology include learning science and developmental psychology.

Cognitive Psychology

- Intelligence
- Cognitive Development
- Motivation
- Self-Regulation
- Self-Concept
- Study Habits
- Student Diversity
- Learning Science
- Learning Disabilities
- Physical Development
- Memory
- Knowledge
- Levels of Education
- Academic Anxiety
- Academic Goals & Achievement 

Focuses of Educational Psychology

A field of psychology that is concerned with the acquisition and retention of information.

Learning and Memory in Psychology

Wikipedia

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/psychmethods4e/

KPU Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition

The flow of ideas and associations that can lead to conclusions or actions

Thought

Choosing a belief, action or object out of a set of alternative options.

Decision-Making

The process of consciously focusing on specific stimuli. Attention is a limited resource, but automatic processing allows us to use our limited attention on other stimuli while performing an automatic task.

Attention

Memory

Perception is the complex psychological process of organizing, interpreting, and consciously experiencing sensory information. It involves making sense of the raw data detected by sensory receptors, actively shaping our conscious experience based on focused attention, past experiences, and cultural background.

Perception

Creativity is the ability to generate, create, or discover new ideas, solutions, and possibilities.

Creativity

- Structuralism
- Behaviorism 
- Cognitive revolution

Early schools of thought/movements in Psychology (leading up to cognitive psychology)

Contributing fields to cognitive psychology

Contains Sources Relevant to Cognitive Psychology:
- Sources From Books
- Sources from Journals
- Sources from Websites
- Journals from Organizations 

References for Cognitive Psychology

Processing (cognitive)

Understanding or awareness of something or the sum total of one's understanding/awareness of all things.

Knowledge

Learning science an interdisciplinary field that works to further our understanding of learning as well as to engage in the design and implementation of learning innovations. Contributing fields include cognitive science, computer science, educational psychology, anthropology, and applied linguistics. 

Learning Science

An approach to computer-based cognitive model in which concepts are represented by distributed activity across a network.

Connectionism (parallel distributed processing (PDP))

Problem solving is a fundamental cognitive process people engage in daily to find solutions for challenges they encounter. These challenges can range from straightforward tasks, such as doubling a recipe, to more complex situations, like handling an unexpected equipment failure under a tight deadline. A more formal definition states that "problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods in an orderly manner to find solutions to problems."

Problem Solving

The psychological and neurobiological operations by which information is processed, to build knowledge and understanding that supports decision making.

Cognition

Cognitive psychology helps designers to overcome psychological barriers and create products that are more intuitive for the products to be more readable, accessible, easy to navigate and allowing for users to use products more intuitively. 

UX Research and Cognitive Psychology

It is something that accompanies a mechanism but is not actually part of that mechanism. Looking at that something will not tell us anything about what is going on in the "mechanism". Examples include:
- Experiences of mental imagery

Epiphenomenon

Which of the following best describes the focus of cognitive psychology?

Which of the following is an example of a mental process studied in cognitive psychology?

Which of the following fields draws from cognitive psychology to understand how people learn?

Which of the following concepts is central to cognitive psychology?

Language is a formal system of communication that is structured by a set of rules, known as grammar, and utilizes a vocabulary of words, referred to as a lexicon.

Language

A cognitive psychologist is a psychologist who studies thinking and explores questions related to mental processes. They investigate topics such as how people determine the best way to solve problems, how individuals develop an understanding of concepts without direct physical experience (for example, understanding snow without ever seeing or touching it), and how young children acquire language without formal instruction.

Cognitive Psychologist

Cognitive psychologists investigate a wide array of subjects to better understand human mental processes. Specific areas of study include determining and measuring different types of intelligence, analyzing why individuals vary in their problem-solving abilities, and evaluating how emotional intelligence influences success in the workplace. Additionally, researchers explore how individuals organize information gathered from their environments into meaningful categories of thought.

Research Topics in Cognitive Psychology

Intelligence is a complex cognitive characteristic involving the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. It enables individuals to reason, solve problems, plan, and adapt to new situations using logic, understanding, and creativity. Numerous theories have been developed to explain its nature, such as Sternberg's triarchic theory and Gardner's proposal that intelligence comprises multiple factors. Other perspectives also emphasize the significance of emotional intelligence.

Intelligence

A person's own perception or evaluation of themselves, includes feelings, attitudes, behaviors, desires, and judgements that one considers to be characteristic of themselves.

Self-Concept

Motivation

How personality affects an individual's behavior in an educational setting, thereby influencing their learning experience.

Personality Psychology in Education

Learning disabilities are cognitive disorders that impact specific areas of cognition, such as language or reading. They are classified as specific neurological impairments, distinguishing them from global intellectual or developmental disabilities. A key characteristic is that they often affect individuals with average to above-average intelligence, meaning the disability is confined to a particular cognitive area and is not an indicator of overall intellectual capability.

Learning Disabilities

The levels of education indicate how rigorous a curriculum is. Students start at the lower levels and move up as they graduate from each level.
- Higher level
- Secondary level 
- Basic education

Levels of education

Being able to control your time, schedule, behaviors and to adapt to situations in order to obtain a personal goal.

Self-Regulation

The demographics of a group of students. The more varried the demographics are, the more diverse the group is.

Student Diversity

Cognitive development refers to the changes in an individual's mental processes. This domain includes the development of learning, attention, memory, language abilities, thinking, reasoning skills, and creativity.

Cognitive Development

A person's overall subjective evaluation on their worth, and how they feel about the evaluation. Those with high self esteem tend to feel hopeful, and those with low self esteem tend to feel hopeless and withdraw. Typically either a positive or negative evaluation of traits, abilities, etc.

Self-Esteem

Physical development is the sense of students’ health needs related to their age or maturity and the foundation of many academic tasks. 

* For Example:
- Successfully manipulate a pencil
- How long they can sit still without discomfort

Physical Development in Students

 “The acquisition of knowledge and skill through active help and support among status equals or matched companions”

Peer Learning

The learner’s dictionary defines study as “ the mental effort to obtain knowledge.” This means that studying is essentially the “art of learning” which can help the individual not just obtain information but also the habit and skill to study. Habit on the other hand is defined as “ a pattern of activity which through repetition, has been learned to the point that it has become automatic and can be carried on with a minimum of conscious effect.”


Study Habits

Academic Anxiety is the feelings of concern, worry, and dread associated with academic settings and tasks. Assignments, tests, exams, subjects, and societal pressures (parents, peers, instructors, etc.) are all factors in academic anxiety. There will usually be noticeably high areas of concern in the following areas: physiological, cognitive, behavioral, and (occasionally) social. 

Academic Anxiety 

Academic goals are aspirations applicable to the advancement of your education. They involve the knowledge you acquire and the projects you complete as a student.

Academic Goals

Learning is defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge that results from experience. This process of acquiring new knowledge and skills allows an organism to adapt to its environment. Unlike innate behaviors such as instincts and reflexes, which are genetically predetermined, learning involves change and is dependent on experience.

Definition of Learning

Memory can be defined as the system or process responsible for storing learned information so that it can be utilized at a later time.

Definition of Memory

Based on the following scenario, analyze the student's situation to determine whether the primary difficulty lies in the initial acquisition of information or in its later retention. Justify your answer with specific evidence from the text.

Learn Before

Related

Learn After