Department of Psychology
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Psychology 122
Human Memory
Fall 2003
Time: T/R 2:00-3:15p Instructor: Dr. Ute J. Bayen
Office: 362
Davie Hall
Place: 203
Howell Mailbox: Room 206
Phone: 962-6729
E-mail:
ubayen@unc.edu
Office Hours: will be announced
Course
Objectives: This course is a comprehensive survey of the
field of human memory. We will cover
the topics that appear below in the class schedule. Students will acquire knowledge of theories and empirical
research in the area of human memory.
Students will learn how to read original research articles and extract
essential information. By the end of
the course, students should be able to critically discuss theoretical ideas
expressed in the literature, and evaluate empirical research.
Required
Readings: The required readings are listed below. A Course-Pack with these readings can be
purchased at the Student Store. Please
obtain reading guides and assignments from my website: http://www.unc.edu/~ubayen/assignments.htm
_______________________________________________________________________
CLASS SCHEDULE
AUG. 26 INTRODUCTION
TO COURSE
AUG. 28 HISTORY
OF MEMORY RESEARCH
Reading:
Ebbinghaus, H. (1964).
Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology. New York:
Dover. (Original work published
1885). pp. 22-26, 62-76.
SEP. 2 INFORMATION PROCESSING MODELS OF MEMORY
Reading:
Atkinson, R.C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (August 1971). The control of short-term memory. Scientific American, 82-90.
SEP. 4 SENSORY MEMORY
Reading:
Sperling, G. (1960).
The information available in brief visual representations. Psychological Monographs, 74, 1-29.
SEP. 9 SHORT-TERM MEMORY
Reading:
Solso, R. (2001). Short-term memory. In R. Solso, Cognitive Psychology (pp. 196-213). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
SEP. 11 WORKING MEMORY
Reading:
Baddeley, A. (1994). Working
memory: The interface between memory and cognition. In D.L. Schacter & E. Tulving (Eds.), Memory Systems 1994
(pp. 351-367). Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
SEP. 16 EPISODIC MEMORY: ENCODING
Reading:
Craik, F. I. M., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of
words in episodic memory. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 104,
268-294.
SEP. 18 EPISODIC MEMORY: RETRIEVAL
Reading:
Tulving, E., & Thompson,
D. M. (1973). Encoding specificity and
retrieval processes in episodic memory.
Psychological Review, 80, 352-373.
SEP. 23 MODELS OF RECOGNITION 1
SEP. 25 MODELS OF RECOGNITION 2
Reading:
Bayen,
U. J., Phelps, M. P., & Spaniol, J. (2000). Age-related differences in the use of contextual information in
recognition memory: A global matching approach. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 55B,
P131-P141.
OCT. 2 SOURCE MEMORY
Reading:
Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., & Lindsay, D. S.
(1993). Source monitoring. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3-28.
OCT. 7 REALITY MONITORING
Reading:
Johnson et al. (1993) (same
as above)
OCT. 9 IMPLICIT
MEASURES OF MEMORY
Reading:
Roediger, H. L., III. (1990).
Implicit memory: Retention without remembering. American Psychologist, 45, 1043-1056.
OCT. 14 MEMORY
DEVELOPMENT
Reading:
Rovee-Collier,
C. (1993). The capacity for long-term
memory in infancy. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 2,
130-135.
OCT. 16 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
MEMORY AND FALSE-MEMORY DEBATE
Reading:
Ornstein, P. A., Ceci, S.
J., & Loftus, E. F. (1996). Adult
recollections of childhood abuse:
Cognitive and developmental perspectives. In Working group on investigation of memories of childhood
abuse. Final report (pp.
150-197). American Psychological
Association.
OCT. 28 MEMORY AND AGING
Reading:
Light, L. (2000). Memory
changes in adulthood. In S. H. Qualls, & N. Abeles (Eds.), Psycholoyg
and the aging revolution: How we adapt to longer life (pp. 73-97).
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
OCT. 30 PROSPECTIVE
MEMORY
Reading:
Einstein, G. O., Holland, L. J., McDaniel, M. A., &
Guynn, M. J. (1992).
Age-related deficits in
prospective memory: The influence of task complexity.
Psychology and Aging, 7, 471-478.
NOV. 4 SEMANTIC NETWORK MODELS
Reading:
Collins, A. M., &
Loftus, E. F. (1975). A
spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review,
82, 407-428.
NOV. 6 BIOLOGICAL BASES OF MEMORY
Reading:
Haberlandt, K. (1999). Memory and brain. In K. Haberlandt, Human memory. Exploration and application
(pp. 41-68). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn
and Bacon.
NOV. 11 SCHEMAS
Reading:
Alba, J. W. & Hasher, L. (1983). Is memory schematic? Psychological Bulletin, 93,
203-231.
NOV. 13 CURRENT
RESEARCH IN THE BAYEN LAB
Reading:
Bayen, U. J.,
Nakamura, G. V., Dupuis, S. E., & Yang, C.-L. (2000). The use of schematic knowledge about sources
in source monitoring. Memory &
Cognition, 28, 480-500. SCHEMAS 2
NOV. 18 EXPERTISE:
MNEMONISTS
Reading:
Ericsson, K. A., Chase, W. G., & Faloon, S. (1980). Acquisition of a memory skill. Science, 208, 1181-1182.
NOV. 20 APPLIED
MEMORY RESEARCH: EYEWITNESS MEMORY
Readings:
Loftus, E. (1992). When a lie becomes memory’s truth: Memory
distortion after exposure to misinformation.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1, 121-123.
Lindsay, D. S.
(1993). Eyewitness suggestibility. Current Directions in Psychological
Science, 2, 86-89.
NOV. 25 CONNECTIONIST
MODELS
Reading:
McClelland, J. L.
(2000). Connectionist models of
memory. In E. Tulving, & F. I. M.
Craik. The Oxford Handbook of Memory
(pp. 583-596). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
NOV. 27 THANKSGIVING,
NO CLASS
DEC. 2 MEMORY
DISORDERS: AMNESIA
Readings:
Shimamura,
A. P. (1989). Disorders of memory: The cognitive science perspective. In F.
Boller & J. Grafman, Handbook of Neuropsychology, Vol. 3 (pp.
35-73). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers.
Kapur, N., & Moakes, D. (1995). Living with amnesia. In R. Campbell, & M. A. Conway, Broken Memories. Case Studies in Memory Impairment (pp. 1-7). Oxford UK, Cambridge US: Blackwell.
DEC. 4 MEMORY DISORDERS: DEMENTIA AND CLINICAL ASSESSMENT
Reading:
Butters, N. & Delis, D.
C. (1995). Clinical assessment of
memory disorders in amnesia and dementia.
Annual Review of Psychology, 46, 493-523.
Tue DEC. 16, noon
FINAL EXAM
The dates listed for particular topics are
approximate dates. Depending on
students' interests we might spend more or less time on particular topics.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evaluation. Grades will be based on student performance in three examinations
(20% of final grade each), and 20 homework assignments (40% of final grade).
Exams: Each of the exams will cover the lectures that took place since
the last exam and the corresponding readings.
The final exam is not comprehensive.
The exams will be composed of multiple-choice, short-answer, and
short-essay questions. All in-class
exams are to be taken without the assistance of notes, books, or other
people. Every one of the three exams
will be worth 200 points. For each
exam, grades will be assigned as follows:
A = 200-186
A- =
186-180
B+ =
180-173
B =
173-166
B- = 166-160
C+ = 160-153
C = 153-146
C- =
146-140
D+ =
140-133
D =
133-120
F =
less than 120
According to University
policy, for the final exam, no make-ups are permitted without permission from
the Dean's office or a notice from Student’s Health Services. For the first two exams, no make-ups will be
given unless the student receives permission from the instructor prior to the exam. Acceptable reasons for taking a make-up exam
are illness (with doctor's note), documented family emergencies, or out-of-town
university activities. If you need a
make-up exam please inform the instructor as soon as possible. If at all possible, the make-up exam will be
given before the regular exam date.
Reading Guides and Homework Assignments:
The
Course-Pack includes a Reading Guide for every assigned reading. This guide will help you read the (sometimes
challenging) readings, tell you where to look for the important information in
the article, give you some background information that makes the article easier
to understand etc. The reading guide
will also include some questions that you will answer as your homework
assignment. Some of these questions
will ask about the knowledge you gain from reading the article (e.g.,
"What is the author's definition of short term memory?"), others will
make sure you understand the main message of the article (e.g., "Which
conclusions can be drawn from the experiment?"). Other questions will ask you to connect something that is said in
the article with something else we discussed earlier in class, or will ask your
own opinion on an issue discussed in the readings.
The homework assignments have several purposes:
1. The
questions will help you look for the important information in the
readings. The questions are chosen such
that, if you can answer them, you have understood the essential message of the
article.
2. Reading
the article and answering the questions will prepare you for our class
discussions and will ensure that all student have the same level of knowledge about
the class topic, and that I do not "talk over your heads" in class.
3. Reading
your assignments will give me an idea of what you found interesting or
difficult in the readings, and I can tailor the lectures and class discussions
to your interests and questions.
4. The
homework assignments are an excellent preparation for the exams. Every question about the readings that will
appear in an exam has also been on a homework assignment (although the format
of the question may be different). In
other words, if you keep up with the homework assignments, you have already
done a major part of your exam preparation!
Note though, that although your homework assignments will be a very
important part of your study guide, they are not a sufficient exam preparation. All material from class lectures (whether
it is mentioned in the readings or not) is also fair game for the exams.
The
homework assignments are open books, open notes. The most helpful resource for answering the questions are
obviously the corresponding readings.
You are also free to use class notes, books or articles you might find
in the library etc. I have put a
textbook of Cognitive Psychology on reserve in the Undergraduate Library. This may be useful to gain basic background
knowledge to help understand some of the more challenging class readings. Consult the APA Publication Manual (5th ed.)
on how to cite your sources. You may not discuss the assignment with
your classmates until you have handed it in.
The purpose of this rule is to make sure that every student learns to
work through an article by him-/herself.
After you have handed in the assignment, you are free and even
encouraged to compare your answers with those of your classmates, and you might
want to revise them based on your classmates' input and our discussions in
class, so that in the end you have the best answers to study for the exam.
For
each homework assignment, you can write as much as you like. You should
at least write one page (typed in 12-point fonts, double-spaced, 1 inch
margins; copying the question itself does not count as part of the page). Keep in mind that in the exams, you will be
asked to write short answers or
essays. It is therefore good to find
short, concise answers to the questions.
All
homework assignments must be typed
in APA-style, and firmly stapled together. Please use APA-style with the exception of
writing your name in the upper
right-hand corner (so that I can easily sort the papers
alphabetically). There will be 22
homework assignments. You can earn a
total of 400 points for your assignments by handing in twenty of them (each one
of them worth 20 points). Assignments
21 and 22 are your "wild cards".
If you have to miss any two of the other twenty assignments because of
emergency or illness you can still gain the full 400 points by handing in
assignments 21 and 22.
I will
read each paper, but I will not give differential grades, that is, every
student who hands in the complete assignment on time will receive 20 points. You will hand in your assignment in class on
the date it is due at 2pm. NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED (no
exceptions!). The due date is generally the class period in which we will
discuss the particular topic covered in the readings. I do not accept assignments in electronic format.
Class Participation:
Regular
class attendance is expected. Active
participation in class discussions is strongly encouraged. If you have to miss a class session you are
responsible for making up what you have missed. Please ask one of your classmates for notes and handouts. I cannot provide notes and handouts for
missed lectures. If, however, you must
miss several classes because of prolonged illness or an emergency situation,
please contact me to discuss the material you missed.
If you
miss the next higher class grade for a few points I will take class attendance,
class participation, and the quality of your homework assignments into
account. If you have regularly attended
class, actively participated in class discussion throughout the semester, and
handed in thoughtful homework assignments you will receive the higher grade.
Class grades: Final class grades will be
earned on the basis of accumulated points (total points equal 1000), with grade
ranges defined as follows:
A = 1000-933
A- = 932-900
B+ = 899-866
B = 865-833
B- = 832-800
C+ = 799-766
C = 765-733
C- = 732-700
D+ = 699-666
D = 665-600
F = 599 or less
Comments by
students who took this class in prior years:
"The readings given make this class
challenging, but not impossible."
"The homework assignments were the best
part. They helped me prepare for the
exams."
"The tests can be a challenge if you don't keep
up with the class readings and assignments.
If you do this, then you will have no problems."
Honor Code. The University Honor Code will be strictly reinforced. Any violation will be reported to the
Student Attorney General. Permissible
behavior for exams and homework assignments is explained above. On your first written assignment please
write the following pledge: "On my honor, I have neither given nor
received unauthorized aid on this assignment." On all following assignments and exams, write "Pledge"
and sign your name. If you have any
questions regarding the Honor Code, please do not hesitate to ask me.