Introduction to Psychology - Perception and Attention & Memory

Sat, Feb 5, 2022 3-minute read

From the world to the mind

  • Proximity
  • Similarity
  • Closure
  • Good continuation
  • Common movement
  • Good form

Perception of brightness, object, depth

Attention

sensory input -> | sensory memory: unattended information is quickly lost | -> attention -> | short term memory: unrehearsed information is quickly lost | -> encoding -> | long term memory: some information is lost over time |

Sometimes attention is effortless.

Stroop effect: colorful words of color name with different colors on the word

-> the effect doesn’t have an impact on the language you don’t speak

Memory

Perception of the world -> attention -> memory

  • Implicit memory: stuff you may be knowing unconsciously

  • Explicit memory: what you consciously know

  • Semantic memory: facts

  • Episodic memory: episodes of your life

Memory storage

How do you get things into LTM?

  1. Depth of processing
  2. Mnemonics - tricks, vivid images
  3. Understanding

Everyone from the memory contest would tell that they just have an average memory. However, they’ve all trained themselves to perform these utterly miraculous feats of memory, using a set of ancient techniques (invented in Greece).

Once upon a time, people invested in their memories, in laboriously furnishing their minds. Over the last millennia, we’ve invented a series of technologies, from the alphabet to the codex, the printing press, photography, the computer, the smartphone, that have made it progressively easier and easier for us to externalize our memories, for us to essentially outsource this fundamental human capacity. These technologies have made our modern world possible but also changed us.

Elaborative encoding: to take information that is lacking in context, in significance, in meaning, and transform it in a more meaningful way, in the light of all the other things.

Memory Palace: visual, spatial memory. To create this imagined edifice in the mind’s eye, and populate it with images of things that you want to remember. The crazier, weirder, more bizarre the image is, the more unforgettable it’s likely to be.

Great memories are learned. Our lives are the sum of our memories. how much are we willing to lose from our already short lives, by losing ourselves in our iPhones, by not paying attention to the human being across from us, by being so lazy that we’re not willing to process deeply. There are incredible latent in all of us. But if you want to live a memorable life, you have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember.

Remembering

How do you get things out of memory?

  1. Retrieval cues
  2. The compatibility principle
  3. Searching strategies

Failures of Memory

Why do we forget things?

  1. Decay
  2. Interference
  3. Changes of retrieval cues

Forgetting through brain damage.

  • Retrograde amnesia: loss of memories prior to stroke or accident
  • Anterograde amnesia: loss of capacity to form new memories

False memories

How do our memories become distorted?

  1. Expectations
  2. Leading questions
  3. Hypnosis
  4. Repressed memories
  5. Flashblub memories

(credit to Coursera)