Memory is a Habit State:

All the processes we have been discussing so far in language operate against the background of this, the biggest process of allümemory.

It is the most precious commodity in our lives. Without it, our life span would be reduced to a fleeting moment-by-moment existence, not much richer than that of an ant.
So what is this process?

We might start by defining memory as the replication of a criterion response. We demonstrate memory by repeating something.

This has been referred to as a Habit State. Right off the bat, we can see that other variables may creep into this definition. The ability to repeat something can be effected by factors other than memory.
Hence, performance on a memory task must be accounted for by at least two variables: The Habit State and Non-Habit States.
Non Habit States:
Fatigue: One example of a Non-Habit state effecting memory performance is fatigue. This, of course, is complex. It can be caused by the depletion of the nutrients necessary for neural processing; and/or by sleep deprivation.

Motivation is another Non-Habit state.
- Undergraduate psychology majors often have to ask busy peers, as part of a class assignment, to memorize lists of associated nonsense words.
- They often find the memory capacities among their college comrades to be at an alarmingly low ebb.
- Had they been able to offer their subjects $1000 for the same task, they would have had different results I suspect (hope).
- Distractions would be a third example of a Non-Habit state. I'm sure you can think of many more that must be considered.
Dedicated researchers have, and are spending their lives studying memory, and still the answers to exactly what it is, are not yet known.

I think it is safe to say, however, that memory like language, is not a single process but a composite of many processes in the brain, and ultimately some outside of the brain. Hence, the word "memory" is a simple term for a very complex phenomenon.

What does it mean to memorize something? A series of very different memory functions are involved.

Let's say the task is to remember a word--a basic need for developing our vocabulary.
This would include at least three processes: Short-term memory; Long-term memory; and the Conversion of information from Short-term to Long-term memory.

Short-term memory is of particular importance in the auditory modality, where the stimulus doesn't hang around very long. Speech, for example, as we discussed earlier, is a discursive stimulus--strung out in time.

It is impossible to have a Gestalt experience of a single spoken sentence. Unlike a picture, the stimulus for the beginning of a sentence is gone before half of the first phrase is expressed.

Yet we need the whole sentence to understand the significance of the individual words.

NOTES: Some more information on Short-term Memory

NOTES: Take a short-term memory test (I dare you!)

NOTES: Yet more information on Sensory-Short-term Memory.

Perceptual Short-term Memory: Particularly amazing and crucial to recognizing words and sentences is what I would refer to as Perceptual Short-Term Memory, which lasts up to around 2 seconds.

Professors often speak 20 to 30 words in a sentence and then keep on rambling mindless of the fact that the listener must retain the whole litany of words in their order before the meaning of the sentence can be determined. What is more, Professors give little time for completion of this process, and keep the words coming for the next, and the next and the next sentence.

It seems almost inhumane, and yet students rarely yell, "Slow down!"

In fact in one class, where the speaking style of the instructor was such that he spoke at a rate of around one word a second, the students were literally falling asleep.
For the normal human listener, holding on to the sentence in perceptual short-term memory is no problem. We are wired for this (neurologically speaking) and improve upon the network as we mature.

We can easily hold the sentences long enough to abstract their meaning and then, dismiss them and go on to the next one.

The magic number for memory length in perceptual short-term memory is 7 chunks of information. For the five year old child, it would be closer to 5 chunks.

We can typically pack more into a message, however, by using strategies to increase the size of each chunk.
Here are some interesting notes on digit span on the Web in the notes below.

Reduced chunk capacity may impede our ability to understand a sentence.

Children who's brain structure may be slow to mature, or who have neurological deficits; and adults with brain pathologies and/or advanced age related cell loss may have as a result, less chunk capacity.

This can ultimately impede their understanding of sentences. Of course you don't have to be immature or brain damaged to experience this problem. You need only be a Latin student. When I was in the sixth grade, for example, we had to select a language. In the private school I was attending at the time, Latin was the politically correct choice. I suffered through the declensions and conjugations and survived to go on to Latin II in High School.

Here Caesar described in short sentences his exploits as he divided Gaul into three parts, and with his disciplined legions subdued all of the "barbarians."
By barbarians, I think Caesar was referring to the French, the Germans and the English.

At any rate, buoyed by his descriptions and my success in being able to decode them, in college I ventured boldly where no Hall had ever gone beforeüLatin III.

Talk about the three-strikes-rule and your out! I should have stayed with Latin II and the barbarians.

Latin III was a disaster. Here we studied Cicero, one of Rome's outstanding orators.

The signature of a good orator, in those days was one who spoke (wrote) in long sentences. And Cicero was not just good, he was great!

I don't recall, for the two weeks I lasted in the class, coming across a sentence that was less than two pages long.

Perceptual Short-term memory span is related to academic achievement.
By the time I got to the end of one of Cicero's sentences, with all it's conjoined, embedded and subordinate clauses and phrases, I had totally forgotten what the beginning was all about.

My comprehension of his sentences was nothing more than a series of wrong guesses based on scattered words from here and there that I could remember.

I'm sure the experience for children, who have limited perceptual memory skills, may be similar, only they are listening to the teacher's oral instructions.

Here, in the Notes, are some examples of Short-term memory tests and/or training experiences.

Also, there is a Web Site in the Notes that discusses the relationship of digit span memory to academic achievement:

Working Short-term Memory

There is another short-term memory circuit that we have. We use it to hold on to information long enough to commit it to long-term memory; or to use it to meet an immediate goal (within 12 hours), like solving a problem or for test taking purposes.

I view this as Working Short-term memory. This usually requires repetition of a stimulus many times to retain the information.

Repetition is the workhorse of Working Short-term Memory.

College students use Working Short Term memory and repetition by design to learn lists of facts. They may make a deck of study cards and run through them many times.

Small children use it by serendipity to learn vocabulary and grammatical rules. They will ask their parents to read a book to them over and over and over again.

Here, in the Notes below, is a further discussion of both sensory and working memory.

NOTES: More information on Sensory and Working Short-term Memory

The Conversion Process

Just beneath each temporal lobe is a little patchwork of cells quite different in their appearance from the typical neurons.

These two networks are responsible for converting information in the Short-term circuits to the Long-term memory bank. They cover only a small area of the brain, but for all intents and purposes, they are our life!

Should both these areas be damaged by something like anoxia or brain trauma, our life, as we remember it would end at that instant.

We could remember the past up to that point, and we could remember the present as far as long a Short-term memory permits, but everything beyond that point would be totally forgotten in a matter of hours.

If such a thing occurred to me, for example, before President Kennedy's death, my conversation to this day would still be about that president and his times.

How sweet it is to be able to learn!
Without the conversion process, I would be totally amazed each time I was brought up to date by friends, but would quickly lose all memory of these conversations and be left to eternally contemplate how the Cold War is going.

Because of the structural differences of these conversion cells from regular neurons, their operation cannot be surrogated by the typical surrounding nerve cells when they are damaged. Hence, there is a poor prognosis for my ever learning anything new.

In other words, my life stopped at the point the conversion process was impaired. There is one tiny window left open, however, and we will discuss that next under Long-term memory, if it doesn't slip my mind.

As you have come to expect, no doubt, Long-term memory is no simple process

Long-term memory is a bundle of sub processes.

Included among the Long-term memory processes are:
- Episodic memory, the memory of our past;
- Language memory with its vocabulary and grammar;
- Semantic memory, our understanding of the world (concepts);
- Motor-memory for motor patterns (the mixer);
- and Implicit memory, in which some researchers also include motor memory.
- Although they obviously communicate with each other, in many ways these processes seem to lead separate lives.

Episodic Memory holds the past, and Language Memory holds the key to tell about it.

Episodic Memory: This is the memory of our past. Like in a movie we can envision the communities of our youth; see the faces of our family and friends and hear their voices. It is one of the joys of life that we take for granted.

NOTES: Here is a further discussion of Long-term Memory.

We all have heard accounts of amnesia victims who have lost all memory of their past. They don't know where they were born and raised, or even where they live now.

Strikingly, what they have not lost is their knowledge of the world around them (semantic memory), nor their language to express all their confusion.

Language Memory is a bundle of processes.

Language Memory: A person with amnesia can't recall the past but can discuss it with no problem. A person with a language problem, on the other hand, can remember the past but can't recall his/language to talk about it.
- This, as we have discussed earlier, is called aphasia. Of course, Language memory itself isn't a single separate entity either.
- There are, for example, separate language processes in the brain for naming things; for applying grammatical rules; and for handling the symbols of mathematics.
- I may have grammar but not be able to recall the names of things or vice-versa. Or, I may not be able to recognize numbers.
- There are typically language processes in the visual and auditory modalities, so that if a person can not speak, he may be able to communicate through writing.
- There are receptive, inner and expressive language processes. I may not be able to say a word, but I may understand most everything that is said to and around me.
- How frightening it would be to lose both episodic and language processes ! And yet, there are people who have or are experiencing this living nightmare.
Motor Memory (procedural memory):
- We do not often realize how much we rely on motor memory in our daily lives. But almost every act from brushing our teeth to speaking depends upon this memory bank.
- When things go wrong and we can(tm)t find these motor patterns or we continually retrieve the wrong ones, we have what is called apraxia.
- This can be severe enough to preclude ever learning to speak, or to use sign language or to just plain walk or crawl.
- On the other hand, learning new motor patterns involves some unique features. One is that the learning process seems to somehow bypass the conversion process from Short-term to Long-term memory.
- Hence, if the conversion process is disrupted and we can no longer learn anything new, we can still learn new motor patterns! Happily, the opportunity to learn new crafts, sports and music skills is not beyond reach.
Semantic Memory
- Our recognition of things around us is yet another isolated memory process. I have seen an aphasic, who couldn(tm)t say a word, demonstrate his knowledge of the world by repairing a television set.
- When it is severe and we lose recognition of things, which would hamper such an activity, we are said to have agnosia. It can be almost global so that we appear to be deaf or blind, or it can be very mild and transient.
- To a lesser extent we may lose learned knowledge. This is an understanding of worldly processes and abstract concepts such as we may learn in school.
- This may include things like our understanding of molecular structure, democracy, anatomy or how to repair a television set etc.
Implicit Memory is one last not so well understood memory process.
Implicit Memory:Aside from procedural memory, Implicit Memory is the "new kid" on the block, in that not too much is known about it.
- It appears we are capable having experiences where we learned something, and then lose all recollection of the experience.
- The only traces that would be evident would be our responses on a test, which would be more correct than could be accounted for by random choice. This is compatible with a process of forgetting, we will talk about shortly, called trace inhibition.
- Below in the notes is a web site which discusses implicit memory as it relates it to motor learning.
- In the meantime, we will now turn our attention to my favorite activity--forgetting.

Forgetting: Trace Decay, Trace Transformation and Trace Inhibition

All these memory functions we have been discussing are semi separate processes. We can fail to remember (actually fail to learn) if these processes are disrupted, no doubt.

And of course, as we mentioned earlier, memory performance can falter because of the effects of the Non Habit States.

But what seems unexpected, is that forgetting can also be the result of a process.

In fact, like memory, there are a number of processes associated with forgetting.

We will talk about three here (although there are probably more):

Trace Decay,
Trace Transformation and
Trace Inhibition.

Trace Decay: Although I have seen references to Long-term memory, Trace Decay seems to be more relevant to the Short-term memory process.

Anyone who has scurried around searching to find a pencil while trying to retain a phone number in their head knows the fragility of the perceptual short term memory.

Experiments by Hermann Ebbinghaus showed that the greatest amount of memory loss (over 50%) occurs within one hour after learning (providing there are no variables like organization, meaning or association involved). By the end of the day we may loose a whopping 75%.

One antidote against the forgetting curve is what is called Rehearsal‡repeating the information to ourselves.

This works because the memory trace, if the stimulus is not repeated, will quickly dissipate. By rehearsing, we keep the memory loop active until we either use the information (and then let it fade) or commit it to working-short term memory.

Rehearsal counteracts the forgetting curve.
Most children will spontaneously adapt a rehearsal strategy. Some, however, need coaching in this regard.

Reminiscence, Primacy and Recency Effects are processes that retard Trace Decay.
There are other important processes that mitigate against the forgetting curve. One is called the Reminiscence Effect, which occurs anywhere from seconds to minutes and longer after learning.

It is a brief spike in the curve in which the recall of learned material actually increases. This is believed to be a result of a consolidation process, which involves reinforcement and integration of the new material with data already stored. Others include the Primacy and Recency Effects where you retain the first and last bits of data learned in a series.

Considered together (i.e., 1. Reminiscence, and 2. The Primacy and Recency Effects) the wisdom of many short breaks in learning becomes clearly evident!

They provide time for the first process to occur, and proliferate the opportunities for the second to take place.
In studying information by rote (repetition), rehearsal well beyond the point where the information is committed to memory actually has been found to retard the forgetting curve significantly.

Here in the Notes are further discussions of Trace Decaky.

Another set of antidotes, as you can imagine, are Organization, Meaning and Association.

Through these strategies, particularly organization which we will discuss later, the forgetting curve can be significantly diminished.

Here are some interesting web sites providing some further discussion of the role of organization as a way of counteracting memory loss.

NOTES: More than you really want to know about Trace Decay and rehearsal.

Warm-ups, and the Von Restorff Effect are also processes that retard forgetting.

The Warm-up Effect is yet another antidote to the forgetting curve. The effect is not unlike warming up for an athletic activity.

It is an excellent reason to have a review at the beginning of each new lesson!

Von Restorff Effectrefers to the impact of novelty on forgetting. Please quickly read and try to remember the following list of words:

talk, tree, fish, cake, monumental, pea, cup, dog, ran, jaw, cool, dumb, make, ship, fight, ring, and zip.

You will probably remember talk and zip because of the Primacy and Recency effects; but you would also typically remember monumental because it stands out from the rest.

That is the Von Restorff Effect and can be used to good advantage for important things we want someone to remember. For example we can exaggerate it, make it bizarre, make it unique, bold and underline it, and whatever you can think of!

Trace Transformation--another way to forget.

Did anyone ever tell you about the good old days? You usually find it wasn(tm)t so good if you investigate it little further.

I once gave my eight-year old a birthday buddy-slumber party. The kids (guests) came early and argued and complained all night about the accommodations. The next day we all went to Griffith Park to ride the merry-go-round. The kids argued in the car over things like window seats and leg space, etc.

Because it was raining the Merry-go-round wasn(tm)t working. Ultimately we fed everybody soggy-cold-hot-dogs, which the kids all said they hated.

Because everyone was bored, we went home, but not before several got lost and needed to be found.

They fought in the car again, and when we got home, they argued over the TV programs, which they wanted to watch until their parents came. Hence, I was very surprised...

The Good Old Days are a product of Trace Transformation.
...when the next year, my eight-year old asked if we could have another -fun... slumber party for his coming birthday.

He sited all the great experiences they had had in the previous party--sleeping with friends over-night, having an exiting ride to the park, experiencing fun games and great food at the park, and then having a real cool TV marathon when they got home.

That's not how I remembered it! What happened?

Trace Transformation happened. The memory wasn't lost, but was changed, according to the Laws of Pragnanz, just as it is in perception. Hence, forgetting is not always losing information but in some cases modifying it.

As we discussed earlier, the Laws of Pragnanz change percepts, and now memories, for the better.

Trace Inhibition-Like old Generals, - - Old memories are never die, they just fade away, in this case buried by more recent memory traces.

In the game of pick-up-sticks, if I place a single stick in a cardboard box, I can retrieve it from the box with no difficulty.

If I subsequently place a hundred more in the box on top of the first stick, I may not only find it impossible to retrieve the first, but I may loose all sight of it.

This is analogous to what happens to old memories in Long-term memory. When we have a single experience, it is easy to recall. But once there have been many similar experiences, the first may be out of consciousness.

A child will have learned an entire language system (let's say Russian) by five years of age. But let that five year old come to the United States for the rest of his life and not hear his native language, he will learn the new one totally, and lose any recollection of the first.

Recent memories may be destroyed first by a brain pathology.
After many years of drinking American diet colas, and fast foods, our English speaking Russian child (now an adult) could actually have a serious stroke.

It's not uncommon for strokes to wipe away the most recently acquired knowledge.

So after his recovery in the hospital, much to the amazement of everyone including himself he may lose the ability to speak English, but find himself speaking in Russian??! How can this be? Trace inhibition suggests that nothing is lost from Long-term memory, but is obliterated by new experiences.

It works more noticeably in daily living. Taking classes back-to-back, for example, not only creates fatigue but triggers an inhibition process in Long-term memory.

The result is a decreased ability to recall the learned material in both classes!

Trace Inhibition is both retroactive and proactive

Here is one small experience I had with proactive- retroactive Inhibition.

I am very familiar with the English pronoun You. Why not, since I am an native English speaker. But when I studied Russian, the pronoun Ya which means I, always gave me pause for thought, because I confused it with You.

Later in a vain attempt to learn Spanish, I was hopelessly lost and still am with the pronoun Yo!

You inhibited Ya (proactive) where as Yo also dealt a death blow to Ya (retroactive) which likewise weakened my recall of Yo (proactive inhibition). It's a wonder I can still speak English considering all the languages I have failed at.

Of course children who speak a minor dialect of English (or a totally different language) can come up against similar problems when they are suddenly thrown into the general American language mainstream.

In fact, I suspect Yo ( I mean You) have all experienced this kind of forgetting without realizing., if not in learning language, then in developing concepts while using language. Intense and some what similar activities that follow back to back set the stage for inhibition and forgetting.

As Shakespear may have said (I do not seem to remember) . . . To sleep is to forget not . . . which is why, I suppose, students never forget a thing they learned before coming to one of my lectures.
If you have ever studied at night before you go to bed, you have without realizing it tested the inhibition hypothesis.

Because there were few, if any, experiences for you before you awoke, your recall in the morning will be almost total.

On the other hand, if you study in the morning and then are exposed to the experiences of the day your memory loss over the next six hours will be significantly greater.

The factors of emotion and stress,of course, play important roles in learning and forgetting. Also, the interactions between Long-term memory and working memory is as complex as it is important.

Some of these issues are touched upon in the links we have provided along the way. For now, lets switch our focus to what can be done to improve memory.

There are Two Schools of Thought on how to Improve Memory

I see two approaches to the problem of improving memory.

The first, I call the Arnie Schwarzenegger approach because it advocates exercises and drill to make physical changes in body structure.

If I need to change the tire on my car, for example, I could choose, like Arnie, to build my body so I could lift the car up with my left hand while I change the tire with my right.

(Please be advised that the image below is NOT Dr. Hall but in reality is Arnie Schwarzenegger.)

Of course, our discussion here, is not about the muscular system but rather the neural infra-structure for memory. This is what we are talking of developing through mental exercises.

The second approach involves using the body structure I have now, and employing some kind of strategy.

If you can't be like Arnie, hit the road Jack.

For example, a car jack would provide leverage for me to lift the car while my wife changes the tire. The job gets done although there has been no change in my neurological infra-structure.

Which Approach Works Best

The question is, which approach works best? The answer to this question, if it appears on the Topic Quiz, is Yes and No.

Well, it wasn't a brain surgeon who wrote the quiz, so what can I say.

Actually, it all depends on the age of the individual and the goals we establish for training.

For the old folk (22 years and aging), if memory loss is a real problem (particularly if it results from some kind of brain trauma), research suggests that Strategies are the best way to go.

These will provide gains in memory performance that are more meaningful for them to deal with the routines of daily living.

The Arnie Schwarzenegger approach seems to bring results that are too minimal to be useful to significantly improve performance on daily tasks.

Strategies are the best way to go for the geriatric set, but don't sell Arnie short.

This does not mean, however, that the Arnie Schwarzenegger approach is of no value to the geriatric set.

Although the gains through memory practice may be minimal, it is better to make progress in inches than to recede in miles.

I would do it (I do do it) just for the neural health of it. Especially since it has been recently demonstrated that the adult has the capacity to regenerate new nerve cells!

This takes place in the hippocampus, which is also a neural center for learning.

To insure the best growth environment for this trickle of new cells, stimulation of this area may be very important.

Learning new things would seem highly appropriate for this purpose. Here, in the Notes, is an interesting and relevant discussion on memory rehabilitation and Lymes disease in adults.

The Arnie Schwarzenegger Approach is the best way to go for the baby set

For the very young set (birth to puberty), I would strongly favor the exercise and drill approach--not physical but mental, of course.

We have discussed how an integral part of the neural growth process is stimulation.

We have seen evidence of retarded brain growth in Rumanian orphans who have been relatively deprived of stimulation.

We know that stimulating the young brain brings very large gains. In other words we know what to do and when to do it! Now comes the how.

Any activity that exercises memory in the infant is worth its weight in gold.

Experiences are the name of the Game
- Experiences: Having many objects pass by the infant(tm)s eyes, ears and hands, gives them the opportunity to recognize (learn) objects. This is exercising the memory tracts and making neurons expand like popcorn.
- We are talking toys here. Not just an amorphous array of plastic objects, but objects of many textures, (cloths, wood, plastic, paper etc.) and many shapes (balls, squares, rectangles, polygons, dolls, imitation fruits and vegetables, etc.) and sizes!
- This requires considerable monitoring on the part of the caretakers. Objects have to be selectively placed within the infant's (toddler's) reach, and the infant (toddler) must be monitored at all times for safety's sake.
Games are the name of the experiences.
- Games: Playing little games with the infant, like patty-cake and many others (available in many baby type books) is an excellent way to start. Later on most games that have parts and procedures will stimulate the memory tracts.
- The game of concentration is a classic. This is where you have a matrix of cards face down. You turn them face up two at a time and try to select pairs. Those that are not pairs are placed face down again.
- I once met a four year old boy (a student's son) who was an aficionado of the game and could beat the pants off an adult (unfortunately me).
- Of course, most children(tm)s activities will provide some memory stimulation. Simon Says, for example, is a good drill for executive memory. The child has to hold the criteria for a response in working memory while he processes the commands in perceptual short-term memory.
- To me the ultimate memory game, for older children over 4 years, is chess. Here is a classic memory game with retention and recall tasks abounding on many levels.
We can't read too much into this, nor can we read too much to the child of any age.
- Reading: Of course, the "BIG GUN" is reading to the infant (toddler or child). Nursery Rhymes serve well, at first, and as the infant grows into a toddler, short simple stories and then longer and more complex stories become appropriate.
- The activity of reading to an infant (a toddler, or a child) has it all! It provides opportunities to remember many things from the prosody of language, to phonemes, morphemes syntax and vocabulary; and later details about the book itself, from the pictures in the book, to the characters, their names and the story line.
- Each time we read to a child, no matter how young or old, it is a mega-shot of growth vitamins in the arm (or more appropriately in the brain) like we wish ginko-baloba would be for us adults.
"To Be or Not to Be," that is the recitation that stretches men's minds. "Et Tu Brute?"
- Recitation: For children who have acquired expressive language, memorizing poems, documents (eg., The Declaration of Independence) and stories are excellent memory exercise activities.
- Also valuable for developing memory is the process of memorizing parts in short skits and plays (drama classes). Even the undertaking of learning another language is a excellent source for engaging in memory drills.
- Latin, which was a dead-end for me academically, was probably a significant factor in giving me what little memory power I do possess.
- The process of memorizing the vocabulary, the many declensions of the nouns and the conjugations of verbs, required a vigorous regime of mental exertion.
- I still get a headache thinking about it.
There is more to Sports and Music than meets the ear.
- Sports and Music: These activities are interesting because they exercise both implicit and explicit memory.
- The implicit memory involves the learning of motor patterns for the musical instrument and/or the sport; and the explicit memory involves such things as learning the notes of music and the rules of the game.
- In terms of music, I have always been partial to starting children with piano. I would begin exposure around 2 years of age and move toward lessons/fun experiences as soon as the child can handle them. There are those who would warn of burnout, but I believe the opportunity to develop neural infra-structure during this window of neural hyper-growth is well worth the risk !
- In the area of motor activities, I have always been impressed with ballet (for both boys and girls. It is the ultimate sport).
The other "BIG GUN" for developing memory is a Magnum 44 aimed at the TV Set.
- Destroying the TV Set
  :
  The anti-Christ of memory growth (and language and cognitive development as well) for children under five, in my studied opinion is TV.
- Time watching TV is worse than being mentally "dead-in-the-water," because it gobbles up time that should have been devoted to brain growth. Instead, we get at best, mental stagnation. I particularly find useless, the mindless cartoons that spout litle but violence. The emphasis is on brief bursts of sensationalism using sounds and sights, which provide immediate gratification and little need for attention development and memory (Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" perhaps is a shinning example of an exception to this rule).
- Show me a family whose TV is kept in the closet and I will show you some kids with excellent memory (and language skills).
- I would limit the child over five to 1/2 hour a day of carefully selected educational shows devoid, if possible, of any commercials.

Increasing memory performance through strategies

There are things we can do to obtain an immediate increase in our memory performance. Sometimes they involve using a tool, and sometimes they involve creating a mind-set. For an interesting analysis of mind-sets, check-out the site in the Notes below.

Strategy Tools for Memory: The tool perhaps most known to students is the time-honored custom of taking notes.
- In view of the sharp decline of short-term memory curve, it seems we are all at great risk for remembering little of class lectures, if not the whole semester of classes.
- But because we write notes that provide details and trigger other memories by association, we are able to retain a lot more information from these experiences than would normally be the case.
- Modern technology has provided tape recorders, video cameras and computers to enrich the note taking process.
- Appointment books serve a similar purpose. Other strategies involve asking someone else to remind us to do something; or employing some bizarre activity, like tying a string around a finger to serve as a reminder of something.
- While many of these strategies are inappropriate for young children, video cameras and tape recorders may help them to remember and more fully enjoy recent events, like birthday parties or excursions, for example, to the zoo or to the country etc.
  
  Organization is the bases for most memory strategies.
Strategy Mind-sets for Memory: For the most part, a single word forms the basis for most strategies--organization.
- Organizing information, whether realistically or artificially is very helpful to recall. One form of organization is called chunking.
  
  Miller's magical number was 7 chunks.
- Chunking: It is estimated that the human Short-term memory process can take in information at about 2 bits per second. That is interesting, but not too helpful from a practical stand-point.
- Mnemonic Devices are another form of chunking. Suppose one had to remember a useless array of 9 letters, for example:
- Visual Memory Pegs: For individuals, who want to remember lists of items, visual memory pegs are often found to be useful. The organization here exists in a set of mental pictures which are often committed to Long-term memory through rote learning.
  
  Visual Memory Pegs are something to hang memories on.
  - The organization is then disrupted in bizarre manner to create a resistant memory trace. For example, here is a short excerpt from a web advertisement of a book called "Remember This Book," by Mark Shouldice:
  - To go to the original site for Mark Shouldice click on the Notes below.

Memory is a Habit State:

All the processes we have been discussing so far in language operate against the background of this, the biggest process of allümemory.

It is the most precious commodity in our lives. Without it, our life span would be reduced to a fleeting moment-by-moment existence, not much richer than that of an ant.

So what is this process?

We might start by defining memory as the replication of a criterion response. We demonstrate memory by repeating something.

This has been referred to as a Habit State. Right off the bat, we can see that other variables may creep into this definition. The ability to repeat something can be effected by factors other than memory.

Hence, performance on a memory task must be accounted for by at least two variables: The Habit State and Non-Habit States.

Non Habit States:

Fatigue: One example of a Non-Habit state effecting memory performance is fatigue. This, of course, is complex. It can be caused by the depletion of the nutrients necessary for neural processing; and/or by sleep deprivation.

Motivation is another Non-Habit state.

Undergraduate psychology majors often have to ask busy peers, as part of a class assignment, to memorize lists of associated nonsense words.

They often find the memory capacities among their college comrades to be at an alarmingly low ebb.

Had they been able to offer their subjects $1000 for the same task, they would have had different results I suspect (hope).

Distractions would be a third example of a Non-Habit state. I'm sure you can think of many more that must be considered.

Dedicated researchers have, and are spending their lives studying memory, and still the answers to exactly what it is, are not yet known.

I think it is safe to say, however, that memory like language, is not a single process but a composite of many processes in the brain, and ultimately some outside of the brain. Hence, the word "memory" is a simple term for a very complex phenomenon.

What does it mean to memorize something? A series of very different memory functions are involved.

Let's say the task is to remember a word--a basic need for developing our vocabulary.

This would include at least three processes: Short-term memory; Long-term memory; and the Conversion of information from Short-term to Long-term memory.

Short-term memory is of particular importance in the auditory modality, where the stimulus doesn't hang around very long. Speech, for example, as we discussed earlier, is a discursive stimulus--strung out in time.

It is impossible to have a Gestalt experience of a single spoken sentence. Unlike a picture, the stimulus for the beginning of a sentence is gone before half of the first phrase is expressed.

Yet we need the whole sentence to understand the significance of the individual words.

Perceptual Short-term Memory: Particularly amazing and crucial to recognizing words and sentences is what I would refer to as Perceptual Short-Term Memory, which lasts up to around 2 seconds.

It seems almost inhumane, and yet students rarely yell, "Slow down!"

In fact in one class, where the speaking style of the instructor was such that he spoke at a rate of around one word a second, the students were literally falling asleep.

For the normal human listener, holding on to the sentence in perceptual short-term memory is no problem. We are wired for this (neurologically speaking) and improve upon the network as we mature.

We can easily hold the sentences long enough to abstract their meaning and then, dismiss them and go on to the next one.

The magic number for memory length in perceptual short-term memory is 7 chunks of information. For the five year old child, it would be closer to 5 chunks.

We can typically pack more into a message, however, by using strategies to increase the size of each chunk.

Here are some interesting notes on digit span on the Web in the notes below.

Reduced chunk capacity may impede our ability to understand a sentence.

Children who's brain structure may be slow to mature, or who have neurological deficits; and adults with brain pathologies and/or advanced age related cell loss may have as a result, less chunk capacity.

Here Caesar described in short sentences his exploits as he divided Gaul into three parts, and with his disciplined legions subdued all of the "barbarians."

By barbarians, I think Caesar was referring to the French, the Germans and the English.

At any rate, buoyed by his descriptions and my success in being able to decode them, in college I ventured boldly where no Hall had ever gone beforeüLatin III.

Talk about the three-strikes-rule and your out! I should have stayed with Latin II and the barbarians.

Latin III was a disaster. Here we studied Cicero, one of Rome's outstanding orators.

The signature of a good orator, in those days was one who spoke (wrote) in long sentences. And Cicero was not just good, he was great!

I don't recall, for the two weeks I lasted in the class, coming across a sentence that was less than two pages long.

Perceptual Short-term memory span is related to academic achievement.

By the time I got to the end of one of Cicero's sentences, with all it's conjoined, embedded and subordinate clauses and phrases, I had totally forgotten what the beginning was all about.

My comprehension of his sentences was nothing more than a series of wrong guesses based on scattered words from here and there that I could remember.

I'm sure the experience for children, who have limited perceptual memory skills, may be similar, only they are listening to the teacher's oral instructions.

Here, in the Notes, are some examples of Short-term memory tests and/or training experiences.

Also, there is a Web Site in the Notes that discusses the relationship of digit span memory to academic achievement:

Working Short-term Memory

There is another short-term memory circuit that we have. We use it to hold on to information long enough to commit it to long-term memory; or to use it to meet an immediate goal (within 12 hours), like solving a problem or for test taking purposes.

I view this as Working Short-term memory. This usually requires repetition of a stimulus many times to retain the information.

Repetition is the workhorse of Working Short-term Memory.

College students use Working Short Term memory and repetition by design to learn lists of facts. They may make a deck of study cards and run through them many times.

Small children use it by serendipity to learn vocabulary and grammatical rules. They will ask their parents to read a book to them over and over and over again.

Here, in the Notes below, is a further discussion of both sensory and working memory.

The Conversion Process

Just beneath each temporal lobe is a little patchwork of cells quite different in their appearance from the typical neurons.

These two networks are responsible for converting information in the Short-term circuits to the Long-term memory bank. They cover only a small area of the brain, but for all intents and purposes, they are our life!

Should both these areas be damaged by something like anoxia or brain trauma, our life, as we remember it would end at that instant.

We could remember the past up to that point, and we could remember the present as far as long a Short-term memory permits, but everything beyond that point would be totally forgotten in a matter of hours.

If such a thing occurred to me, for example, before President Kennedy's death, my conversation to this day would still be about that president and his times.

How sweet it is to be able to learn!

Without the conversion process, I would be totally amazed each time I was brought up to date by friends, but would quickly lose all memory of these conversations and be left to eternally contemplate how the Cold War is going.

Because of the structural differences of these conversion cells from regular neurons, their operation cannot be surrogated by the typical surrounding nerve cells when they are damaged. Hence, there is a poor prognosis for my ever learning anything new.

In other words, my life stopped at the point the conversion process was impaired. There is one tiny window left open, however, and we will discuss that next under Long-term memory, if it doesn't slip my mind.

As you have come to expect, no doubt, Long-term memory is no simple process

Long-term memory is a bundle of sub processes.

Included among the Long-term memory processes are:

Episodic memory, the memory of our past;

Language memory with its vocabulary and grammar;

Semantic memory, our understanding of the world (concepts);

Motor-memory for motor patterns (the mixer);

and Implicit memory, in which some researchers also include motor memory.

Although they obviously communicate with each other, in many ways these processes seem to lead separate lives.

Episodic Memory holds the past, and Language Memory holds the key to tell about it.

Episodic Memory: This is the memory of our past. Like in a movie we can envision the communities of our youth; see the faces of our family and friends and hear their voices. It is one of the joys of life that we take for granted.

We all have heard accounts of amnesia victims who have lost all memory of their past. They don't know where they were born and raised, or even where they live now.

Strikingly, what they have not lost is their knowledge of the world around them (semantic memory), nor their language to express all their confusion.

Language Memory is a bundle of processes.

Language Memory: A person with amnesia can't recall the past but can discuss it with no problem. A person with a language problem, on the other hand, can remember the past but can't recall his/language to talk about it.

This, as we have discussed earlier, is called aphasia. Of course, Language memory itself isn't a single separate entity either.

There are, for example, separate language processes in the brain for naming things; for applying grammatical rules; and for handling the symbols of mathematics.

I may have grammar but not be able to recall the names of things or vice-versa. Or, I may not be able to recognize numbers.

Trace Decay,
Trace Transformation and
Trace Inhibition.

Von Restorff Effectrefers to the impact of novelty on forgetting. Please quickly read and try to remember the following list of words:

talk, tree, fish, cake, monumental, pea, cup, dog, ran, jaw, cool, dumb, make, ship, fight, ring, and zip.