Tag Archives: working memory

Long Term Memories

Leave a reply

It might be easy to assume that you are perfectly capable of remembering every detail of an experience that was extraordinarily meaningful to you. For example, according to my parents, since I was four years old all I wanted was a dog. I would talk about it non-stop, and eventually my parents gave in, and we decided to adopt a dog from PAWS. Anyway, I recently recalled the day we adopted our first dog Jenna, when we got a new puppy a few weeks ago. Initially, I thought that I could vividly remember the day we got Jenna, because at age seven it was a monumental event that was just as important to me as a wedding or graduating from college. I ran through the entire memory in my mind; it was in the springtime around April, sunny, and about seventy degrees. I was wearing a new pair of blue and black gym shorts, a pair of purple and pink Sketchers sneakers, and a white T-shirt from my visit to the beach last summer. When we actually got to PAWS there were multiple dogs in the grass waiting for their prospective owners. The only two dogs of interest to my family were Jenna, a border collie/beagle/spaniel mix, and a young beagle named Joey. We talked to Joey’s foster family briefly and they mentioned that he was not housebroken and was very vocal. My Dad said he didn’t want a dog that barked a lot so Joey was out; then we were introduced to Jenna. Jenna was about eight months old, was already housebroken and more playful then the other dog, so we decided she was the dog for us. I can recall how nervous I was as my parents signed the adoption papers. When I was told that we could take Jenna home later that day, I was ecstatic.

After running through this episodic memory in my mind, I told my family about my recollection of the day we brought Jenna home. Oddly enough, the only thing our memories of the day had in common was the weather.  My parents remembered the other dog being named Jack, and it was actually early June. Additionally, I was eight years old when we got our first dog, not seven. They did not remember at all what I was wearing so we decided to look at a picture from the day. In the picture I was wearing an old pair of white New Balance sneakers, and I had pink shorts and a blue shirt on. After finding this picture we continued to look through a pile of pictures from that month and the outfit I remember wearing the day we got Jenna I was actually wearing a few weeks later on the last day of school.

My initial reaction to my inaccuracies was to question the importance of the memory to me. How was I able to forget so much about a day that was still extremely meaningful to me? Is the fact that I forgot a great deal about this memory a reflection of how important it really was to me? Even though I forgot a lot about the details and timing of this memory, it is no reflection of its impact on my life. In fact, it is normal for memories to be updated and revised constantly.  As we learned in class, a memory associated with our personal history and remembrance of a feeling is classified as an episodic memory. Episodic memories are part of our long-term declarative memories where semantic memory is also stored. Semantic memories are classified as facts and other general information. Events that are stored into episodic memory often activate episodic learning, or help us make connections between similar events and circumstances that we have experienced in the past.

Studying and Maintenance Rehearsal

Leave a reply

Prior to taking an exam, I, along with maybe 30 other classmates, can almost always be found sitting outside the classroom studying for the hour up until the exam begins. All of the students sit around and repeat to themselves small bits of information over and over and over again until they cannot bear it anymore, a process called maintenance rehearsal. Some might call this detrimental habit a form of last-minute “studying,” although in reality it is more like a contest of who can squeeze the most information into their brains right before the exam, and who can remember the most of the crammed information once they are actually given the exam to take. While this rapid memorization may be a method that works well for some people, it is extremely risky and less reliable for most than actually studying in advance and learning the material well. We all do it sometimes, but admittedly, my grades are always better if I take my time in studying.

When cramming for an exam just before taking it, such as in this example, the information we are racing to memorize is only being placed into our short-term (working) memory. Short-term memory is exactly what it sounds like: a temporary holding ground for information we will surely forget later (somewhere between 12-30 seconds later, in fact). Our short-term memory has, on average, a maximum capacity of seven items it can hold at once, so in the hour spent cramming right before an exam, most of the information “learned” in this time frame will most likely disappear when taking the exam (except maybe seven things, if that). We can sit there and rehearse the information as much as we want, but as soon as something interrupts our rehearsal, such as a talking professor, other students, or especially the other questions on the exam itself, all of that information we thought we learned an hour ago will be completely gone from our memory. Granted, something on the exam or in the environment may also help you to remember what you crammed, but it is likely that this information will be completely gone (Wede Lecture 10).

The time delay between our maintenance rehearsal and when we are asked to recall this information can also significantly affect what and how much we remember. The longer you wait to take the exam, the less likely you are to remember what you so carelessly memorized and stored in your short-term memory. Sometimes, I experience what is known as the Tip of the Tongue Phenomena, where I can recall various things about the word I am trying to remember (ie. number of letters, starting letter of the word, etc.) but I cannot for the life of me recall the word itself (Wede Lecture 10). This type of memory loss is likely to occur when I cram just before taking an exam. Why? Because I used maintenance rehearsals to “learn” the information instead of spreading out my studying over days before the exam to actually learn the material. Our behavior as students using maintenance rehearsals to study is not very surprising, as many college students don’t always have enough time to study as much as they’d like for each exam they are required to take. Even then, avoiding this type of studying is definitely in our best interest, as it is widely known that maintenance rehearsals are not effective ways to retain information because the information rehearsed is stored in working memory, where not much can be remembered at one time.