Invitation to Psychology

ChaPteR 8 Memory 291

Recite & Review

Recite: Be an active learner by saying out loud everything you can remember about mnemonics,

effortful encoding, maintenance versus elaborative rehearsal, deep versus shallow processing, and

retrieval practice.

Review: Next, go back and read this section again.

Now perhaps Mnemosyne will help you answer this Quick Quiz:

Camille is furious with her history professor. “I read the chapter three times but I still failed the

exam,” she fumes. “The test must have been unfair.” What’s wrong with Camille’s reasoning, and

what are some other possible explanations for her poor performance, based on principles of

critical thinking and what you have learned so far about memory?

Answer:

Camille is reasoning emotionally and is not examining the assumptions underlying her explanation. Perhaps she relied on

automatic rather than effortful encoding, used maintenance instead of elaborative rehearsal, and used shallow instead of deep

processing when she studied. Perhaps she didn’t try to actively retrieve and recall the material while studying. She may also

have tried to encode everything instead of being selective.

and interfering with his ability to concentrate. At

times he even had trouble holding a conversation

because the other person’s words would set off a

jumble of associations. Eventually, S. took to sup-

porting himself by traveling from place to place,

demonstrating his abilities for audiences.

Now consider two modern cases: Brad

Williams and Jill Price both have extraordinary

memories and have offered scientists the oppor-

tunity to study their abilities. When given any

date going back for decades, they are able to

say instantly what they were doing, what day

You are about to learn...

• why remembering everything might not be an
advantage.

• the major reasons we forget even when we’d
rather not.

• why most researchers are skeptical about
claims of repressed and “recovered” memories.

Why We Forget LO 8.17

Have you ever, in the heat of some deliriously
happy moment, said to yourself, “I’ll never forget
this, never, never, NEVER”? Do you find that
you can more clearly remember saying those
words than the deliriously happy moment itself?
Sometimes you encode an event, you rehearse
it, you analyze its meaning, you tuck it away in
long-term storage, and still you forget it. Is it any
wonder that most of us have wished, at one time
or another, for a “photographic memory”?
Yet having a perfect memory is not the bless-
ing that you might suppose. The Russian psy-
chologist Alexander Luria (1968) once told of a
journalist, S., who could reproduce giant grids of
numbers both forward and backward, even after
the passage of 15 years. To accomplish his aston-
ishing feats, he used mnemonics, especially the
formation of visual images. But you should not
envy him, for he had a serious problem: He could
not forget even when he wanted to. Along with the
diamonds of experience, he kept dredging up the
pebbles. Images he had formed to aid his memory
kept creeping into consciousness, distracting him © The New Yorker Collection 1987 Warren Miller from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

Study and Review at MyPsychLab