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Session Overview
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How good is your memory? What different types of memory do we have? What kind of factors can affect how we retain certain information in our memory? During this session, we will explore steps by which we create and store memories and the different categories of memories.
Keywords: memory, flashbulb memories, short and long term memory, proactive and retroactive interference, Ebbinghaus's curve of forgetting, mnemonist
Image by Andrew B47 on Flickr.
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Session Activities
Readings
Read the following before watching the lecture video.
- [Sacks] Chapter 2 "The Lost Mariner" (pp. 23-42)
- Begin one of these chapters in your chosen textbook:
- [K&R] Chapter 5, "The Biology of Mind and Behavior: The Brain in Action."
- [Stangor] Chapter 8, "Remembering and Judging"
Lecture Videos
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Video Resources
Further Study
These optional resources are provided for students that wish to explore this topic more fully.
Course optional resources.
| TYPE |
CONTENT |
CONTEXT |
| Podcast |
Audio podcast: "Limits of the Mind." From "Limits," Radiolab season 7, episode 3 (2010). |
19 minute segment on the limits of human memory, including more on the case of mnemonist "S" studied by A. R. Luria (as discussed in this lecture). |
| Article |
Trafton, A. "3 Questions: John Gabrieli on studying traumatic memories." MIT News Office, Sept. 9, 2011. |
Prof. Gabrieli discusses a large-scale study on how people remember the 9/11 attacks, and what that tells us about memories of emotionally significant events. |
| Assignment |
See the Further Study section of the Child Development session for a writing assignment on whether "recovered" memories are real or false. |
Research by Loftus et al, whose work is discussed in this lecture's segment on eyewitness memories, is part of the assignment. |
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