• Putting Vygotsky’s views on memory into the context of current research on human memory
• 汪曼穎
• TWO MAIN THEMES
• ……….memory activity has diverse forms …..it is independent of any single general law such as the law of association……
• ……..in studying the development of the child’s memory, we must focus not so much on the changes that occur within memory itself, but on the place of memory alongside other mental functions…..
Vygotsky,
Lecture 2: Memory and its development in Childhood.
• ROLE OF MEMORY IN A
FUNCTIONING MIND
• Human capacity in reproducing an image of the past provided foundation for claiming independence of a man’s spiritual functions from his body (Bergson)
• Memory is the foundation of any form of consciousness (Semon)
• Intention is memory
• …….When I decide to do something….I must remember what I intend to do
• In early childhood, memory is among the most basic and central function.
• Memory serves as the foundation of consciousness
• Working memory
• Central executive
• Attention, control
• Subsidiary slave systems
• Phonological loop
• Visuo-spatial sketch pad
• Phonological loop
• Phonological store
• Temporarily retain speech-like information – decay in 2 s. unless rehearsed
• Articulatory control process
• Controls for subvocal rehearsal—將視覺訊息轉為語音碼（speech code）並加以儲存，refresh the trace to prevent decay
• The amount of retained information is the function of decay rate and rehearsal rate
• Intention is memory
• Prospective memory
• Remember to carry out intended actions without being instructed to do so
• ASRS reports showed that prospective memory was involved in 74 out of 75 cases.
(Dismukes & Nowinski, 2010)
• The aircraft was cleared to land on runway
• No diff. in prospective memory between younger and older adults
• Einstein & McDaniel (1990)
• 60-78 Yrs vs. 17-24 Yrs
• Respond whenever a particular word was shown
• The older Ss were impaired on the recall task, not the prospective memory task
• Distinctions of memory
• Bergson
• Motor habit – as a function of the brain
• Recreation of the image of some experience
• Spiritual, idealistic
• Does not immediately depend on brain
• thoughts vs. representation (Buhler)
• meaningful vs. non-meaningful materials (Thordike)
• Terminology –
We are overloading “memory”
• How many memory’s’?
• How many memory systems are there? (Tulving, 1985)
"at least three and probably many more."
• Two forms of memory
• Direct vs. mediated remembering
Natural memory vs. indirect memory
1. Natural memory
• is close to perception because it arises from direct influence of external stimuli
• the retention of actual experiences as the basis of mnemonic (memory) traces, eg., eidetic imagery
Ready
• 愛麗絲的蝴蝶結左邊長還是右邊長？
• 貓的尾巴有幾道白色條紋？
• Eidetic imagery
• The memory that preserves all the details in a photograph (photographic memory)
• Longer duration than afterimage or iconic memory
• Low prevalence
– Preadolescent 8%
• The soul never thinks without a mental image
• 亞里斯多德（Aristotle）
• The case of ‘S’ – Luria
(記憶大師的心靈。盧力亞著。小知堂文化）
• After studying a meaningless mathematical formula for a few minutes, S was able to reproduce it exactly, even 15 years later.
• ‘Neiaman (N) came out and jabbed at the ground with his cane (.). He looked up at a tall tree which resemble the square root sign (), and thought to himself: “No wonder the tree has withered and begun to expose its roots. After all, it was here when I built these two houses” (d)…’
• He told us that he continued to see the table which had been written on a blackboard or a sheet of paper, that he merely had to ‘read it off’ successively enumerating the numbers……Hence it generally made no difference whether he ‘read’ the table from the beginning or the end………
----eidetic imagery, i.e., individual seems able to form vivid and detailed images which are experienced as if they were actual percepts.
• S also use synaesthesia to remember sounds, nonsense syllables and words.
• Synaesthesis – Stimulation in one modality produces a sensation in another.
• To this day I can’t escape from seeing colours when I hear sounds. What first strikes me is the colour of someone’s voice. Then it fades off…for it does interfere. If a person says something I see the word; but should another person’s voice break in, blurs appear. These creep into the syllables of the words and I can’t make out what’s being said.
• S’s memory capacity affected his life adversely.
• Prevent him from grasping abstract concept.
• Inability to forget – He confused information from current and previous act when he performed as a mnemonist.
• He tried several ways of forgetting. He would imagined writing down the items he wished to forget on paper and then imagine setting the paper on fire. The problem was that he could see, in the remains, the writing on the paper. He finally found out a way to solve this..….”The chart of numbers isn’t turning up now and it’s clear why – it’s because I don’t want it to …….”
•
2. Indirect memory
• Memory mediated by artificial, self-generated stimuli (i.e., signs)
•Examples of signs include knots,
language etc.
•…..The very essence of human memory consists in the fact that human beings actively remember with the help of signs…
Chap 3 Mastery of memory and thinking
• Mnemonic schemes
• Milner (1971) – H.M. was able to retain the number 584 for at least 15 minutes, by continuously working out elaborate mnemonic schemes.
• “It’s easy. You just remember 8. You see 5, 8 and 4 add to 17. You remember 8, subtract it from 17 and it leaves 9. Divide
A minute later, H.M. did not remember the number or his mnemonics and did not know that he had been asked to remember a number.
• Verbal coding
• The example of task switching
Ready
3+2=
5+3=
6+1=
4+1=
4+4=
3+2=
1+5=
2+4=
?
Ready
3+2=
5-2=
6+3=
5-1=
4+4=
6-2=
1+5=
7-6=
?
Ready
3+4=
9-5=
2+3=
8-6=
1+2=
6-2=
4+3=
7-5=
?
• self-instruction in controlling beh.
• The two forms of memory
- encoding & retrieval?
• Encoding時的處理歷程愈深，回憶的字數愈多(Hyde & Jenkins, 1973)
• 自由回憶（Free recall）一般的字詞
• 1st task (shallowest) – find if E or G is present
2nd – identify verb or noun
3rd – frequency rating
4th - pleasantness rating
control – remember the words for the memory test
• Retrieval process relies on the availability of retrieval cues, eg.,
• Retrieval process relies on the availability of retrieval cue
• Context and memory
• Learn and test in different rooms
• Learn 80 words in a basement room and come back 24 hrs. later for a surprise recall test
– Same context: 18 words
– Different context: 12 words
– Different context + image: 17.2 words
(reinstate the contextual details of the original room before recall)
• Context dependent memory
• Godden and Baddeley (1975)
– Better recall when there was a match between study and test (Ss wore diving apparatus all the time)
– Is the actual movement (i.e., swimming, diving) related to changing environment responsible?
• Light and Carter-Sobell (1970)
– Study : The STRAWBERRY JAM tasted great.
– Test : TRAFFIC JAM, respond if “jam” was presented.
– Same context : 65%
new context : 25%
• Schab (1990)
– Odors (chocolate) as context
• State-dependent memory
• eg., one does not remember his dreams when awake because the state is different (Prince, 1910).
• Mood, alcohol, marijuana, nicotine.
– Goodwin, Powell, Bremer, Hoine, & Stern (1969)
• Table 5.3
• Eich and Metcalfe (1989)
– Generation
eg. Milkshake flavors: chocolate:VANILLA Read
Milkshake flavors: chocolate V______ Generation
– Larger mood dependency effect for the generation condition than the read condition
• Mood congruency effect
– A given mood tends to cue memories that are consistent with that mood.
» Teasdale and Russell (1983)’s subjects recalled more happy or sad words at tests when they were induced into such moods.
• Frontal lobe appears especially important in active retrieval process, while the hippocampus is more specialized in automatic registration of features in the environment.
• Although the hippocampus was linked to memory by the data from amnesia patients, it was not implicated in studies of memory by PET/fMRI.
• Forgetting could be mediated as well
• Forget about it!
-- directed forgetting
• What matters could be the intent?
• Cell 1 – implicit memory studies
• Cell 2 – level of processing studies
• Cell 3
• Cell 4 – STS, LTS, working memory studies
• Implicit learning
• Learning of artificial grammar
• Ss can not verbalize the rule, but demonstrate learning.
• Implicit learning is affected more by changing the organization of the information than task load.
– Pauses condition
– Memory load condition disrupt performance less than the other 2 conditions.
– Tone counting condition
• Experimental dissociation
• Indirect vs. direct test
• Fragment completion, repetition priming etc. vs. recall
• A dissociation occurs as a variable affects the direct and indirect test in an opposite manner.
• eg., Tulving, Schacter & Stark (1982)
• Recognition performance declined with RI, while fragment completion priming remained the same across RI.
-- RI affect direct and indirect test differently.
• Dual process in recognition memory
• Familiarity-based
• measured by ‘remember’ resp.
• Recollection-based
• measured by ‘know’ resp.
• subject groups
• Aging
• reduced R while K is unaffected in the elderly (Parkin & Walter, 1992)
• Alzheimer’s disease
• R is reduced while K is relatively unaffected (Della Barba, 1997)
• ERP (Duzel et al., 1997)
• Noetic consciousness –
• Temporoparietal positivity in the N400 range(325-600 ms) (early frontal old-new effect)
• Autonoetic consiciousness
• Frontal positivity (600-1000 ms) (parietal old-new effect))
• 可以用不同的理論解釋
• 記憶系統
• R & K 代表兩種意識狀態，而分別源於不同的記憶系統 (Nyberg & Tulving, 1996)
• Serial encoding
– Semantic →episodic
• R-to-K shift (Conway et al., 1997)
– Episodic to conceptual knowledge
• The R-episodic memory part is better supported, while the K-semantic memory part is more controversial
• Declarative vs. non-declarative memory systems
• Essentials of memory development
• Direction of memory development
• Simple forward or backward movement?
• The case of language learning
• Direct vs. mediated remembering
• Each has its dynamic and developmental curve
• What changes in memory development?
• The character of the function that aids remembering
• Memory in infancy
• Methodology
• Habituation
• Novelty preference
• Infants as young as 3 mo. encode contextual information (Butler & Rovee-Collier, 1989)
• Mobile kicking paradigm
• Context- the crib liner
• Unless the crib liner is the same, the same mobile could not elicit the kicking response (no retention)
• Reinstatement for 3 Mo after a delay of 28 days
• The issue
• Are the same basic memory processes at work on both infants and adults?
• Yes (Rovee-Collier, 1999).
• Young infants retain memory for a long time if they are periodically reminded.
• Young infants also show dissociation between implicit and explicit memory.
• Infantile amnesia
• Can not recall events occurred earlier than the age of 3 or 4 yrs.
• Studies often suffer from the problem of ascertaining the memories as real (vs. reconstructed) and not from other external sources
• Pillemer et al (1994)
• 3 Ys, 8 Mo vs. 4 Yrs, 7Mo
• Recall an emergency evacuation after a fire alarm
• Both groups demonstrated memories 2 weeks later, but only the older age group recalled the event after 7 years
• However, children at 3 or 4 remembered events occurred at 2.
• Why?
• 語言，意識與自我的發展使得過去在不同「狀態」下登錄的訊息無法觸接（inaccessible）
• 出生後大腦的發展所造成
• 多重提取造成每次提取時的內外在線索被儲存，因而混淆了記憶是何時產生的（而非記憶本身）
• Memory & aging
• Immediate free recall (15 words) dropped by 20% over 40 Yrs
• A cross-sectional design
• Problems
– 老年組平均健康狀況較差
– 老年組平均教育水準不同於目前大學生
– 老年組對於計時記憶測驗的熟練程度不同於目前大學生
– 世代差異造成營養等狀況的不同
• The longitudinal design
• Problems
– Dropouts – often those who performed worse
– Practice effects
– Small sample size
– The researcher may leave or the methodology may be obsolete
• Immediate memory
• Small decrement with age (than delayed tasks)
• Memory span declined slightly (6.4 vs. 5.8 (Parkinson, 1982))
• Salthouse et al. (1988) used a matrix memory task
• Verbal – recall letters appeared in a 5 x 5 matrix
• Spatial – recall letters and its location
• the encoding deficit hypothesis
• 老年人與年輕人的差別在登錄（encoding）
• 老年人無法使用脈絡線索
• Simon (1979)
study: The farmer drove his truck
test : free recall vs. give the sentence as the cue
• Micco & Masson (1992)
– Phase 1 – generate cues that’ll help other people to generate the target word
– Phase 2 – other Ss used the cues to generate the target words
– Cues generated by older Ss (70.2 Yrs) were not as effective as those generated by younger Ss (21.1 Yrs)
– Older Ss performed worse in phase 2 even using cues generated by the younger Ss
• Performance in older Ss is impaired more whenever the task offers reduced retrieval cues (recall vs. recognition)
– Craik & McDowd (1987)
• The elderly suffers reality monitoring problems
• Items spoken vs. items Ss imagined speaking
• Events seen vs. imagined (3 wk before)
• The elderly had more false memory in the DRM paradigm
• The use of internal vs. external cues
• Craik et al. (1987)
cued learning : a type of bird – lark
cued recall : “what was the type of bird”
• Old1 在各種狀況的表現都最差（即使提供外在線索，old1表現也比old2差）
• Old3 只有在欠缺外在線索時表現時比年輕組差
• Prospective memory
• No diff. in general prospective memory
• Einstein & McDaniel (1990)
• 60-78 Yrs vs. 17-24 Yrs
• Respond whenever a particular word was shown
• The older Ss were impaired on the recall task, not the prospective memory task
• Time-based vs. event-based
• A diff in time-based PM (Einstein et al., 1995)
• Internally generated or self-initiated
• Neuropsychological changes
• Prefrontal is less active in older Ss
• Encoding ¯
• Younger- left prefrontal
• Older – left prefrontal
• Retrieval
• Younger – right prefrontal
• Older – left and right prefrontal
• Anderson et al. (2000)
• Older Ss also showed left prefrontal , but only when performing a secondary task concurrently
• Older adults suffer from reduced attentional resources
• The
• Testing 487 Ss, ranged from 55 to 86 Yrs, over 6 years
• Age related declines that accelerated at 75
• Episodic memory task declines first, no reliable changes in implicit memory task performance
• Text recall did not decline, but fact recall did
• Does it all go together when it goes?
• Indirect tests
• What are the elderly suffered less
• Reduced or absent age-related differences on indirect tests
• Light & Singh (1987)
• 23 vs. 68 Yrs
• Study task-pleasantness rating
• Test task
– Word completion (complete the word using the stem)
– Cued recall (stem as cue)
• Dissociation in recollection and automatic (implicit) processing
• Remember vs. know (Parkin & Walter, 1992)
• Old (81.6 Yrs) vs. middle-old (67.7 Yrs) vs. young (21.5 Yrs)
• Study 36 words
• Equivalent between groups in overall accuracy
• False fame study
• Attributing nonfamous (but old) names as famous
Older Ss younger Ss
.20 .14
• Theoretical explanations
• 用進廢退（the Disuse view)
• 許多記憶作業觸及的層面是老年人所不常用到的
• Young (38.4 Yrs) vs. middle-aged (52.2 Yrs) vs. senior (64.7 Yrs) professors
• Older professors were impaired in RT and paired-associate learning, but were equivalent with young professors in prose recall and PI
• Problems
• The elderly were impaired in many tasks that are still at use by them, eg., memory for bridge hands (bridge player), conversations, faces, songs
• Seemingly circular
•
• Multiple memory systems
• Tulving 認為episodic memory system是最晚發展出來，而且最早產生缺損
• 來自同一記憶系統的各類作業表現有的有年齡差異，有的沒有—process 受影響（Craik, 1994）
• Processing
• General slowing down of processing speed
• eg., younger Ss show priming w/ SOA 150 ms, older Ss need 500 ms to show priming
• Not specific
• Impaired inhibition of irrelevant information
• Older Ss show better memory for irrelevant items from working memory?
– Not found, could be that younger Ss are better at assigning sources of the irrelevant information
• TAP
• Performance depends on whether the task affords good cues
• Reduced resources or self-initiated processing
• Reduction of the attentional resources for performing the memory task
• These alternatives are not mutually exclusive
• If to think is to remember for the young child, for the adolescent to remember is to think.
• In studying memory development, we must focus not so much on the changes the occur within memory itself, but on the place of memory alongside other mental functions.
• Conclusion
• Vygotsky distinguished between natural and indirect memory.
Current memory literature has been heavily devoted to the search of different memory systems.
• Vygotsky pointed out that memory is mediated (indirect) for the adult (vs. a child) or a civilized (vs. primitive) man.
Current memory research looks for the various manners and mechanisms in which human memory is mediated.
• Conclusion
• “………Sadly, Vygotsky and Luria have so far had little direct influence on recent developments in cognitive psychology. One can only hope that further investigation of the role of speech in the control of action will remedy this….”
Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M.W., & Anderson, M.C. (2009). Memory (p 48).
