Text 15

MEMORY

V. Choose 5 any words from vocabulary and make your own sentences with them

III. Odd one out.

1. acquisition, decay, retention, retrieval;

2. sensory, long-term, short-term, displacement;

3. displacement, decay, rehearsal;

4. goal, aim, purpose, brief.

IV. Find synonyms for the following words:

Recollection, fail, fade, ultimate, purpose, brief, rehearsal, duration

final, recital, aim, fall, disappear, abrupt, continuation, memory

VI. Read the text and say “What is the memory?”

Often you are aware of your memory when it fails you, when for one reason or another you cannot remember something. At these times it becomes clear how much you depend on memory, the cognitive process of preserving information for use now or in the future. Without memory you would live only in the present.

The process of memory can be thought of as having three stages: acquisition, retention and retrieval. Acquisition involves attending to a stimulus and encoding it into memory. Retention is the stage of memory in which information is stored. But retention is not necessary an automatic process; often we must consciously work at getting information stored. The third stage of memory is retrieval, the process by which information is taken out of storage for use. Sometimes retrieval seems effortless. Other times, retrieval is a slow, deliberate process in which you actively search for a fact.

Memory models.

After you look up a phone number and make your call, the number you dialed usually fades from memory very quickly. In contrast, your recollection of the house in which you grew up is something you feel you will never forget. In order to account for such differences in the duration of memory, some psychologists offer a three-store model of memory: sensory, short-term and long-term.

Sensory memory is the momentary lingering of sensory data after stimulation has ceased. Sensory memory can involve any of the five senses – a sight, a sound, a touch, a taste or a smell. Apparently, sensory memory is based on a brief persistence of neutral activity after a stimulus is removed.

Short-term memory is also referred to as working memory. It is the holding bin for information that a person has actively in mind. That information is not just a set of unprocessed sensory data.

It is information that has been analyzed and given meaning. But short-term memory can hold only a limited amount of data at any time, and those data fade quite quickly if not attended to. The short-term memory serves a number of purposes. First, short-term memory functions as our conscious awareness. It allows us to know that we are perceiving and mentally “working” on things. Second, short-term memory enables us to combine the many bits of data we get from our senses into an integral picture of the world. Third, short-term memory serves as a temporary scratch pad to hold information while we are thinking and solving problems. Fourth, short-term memory enables us to carry out complex sequences of behaviors all leading toward some ultimate goal.

Selective attention acts as a filter for entering information into short-term storage. We can’t possibly attend to all the stimuli that bombard us at any given time, so we ignore many of them and focus only on those that seem important. What guides selective attention? What kinds of things do we focus on? Large, loud, strikingly colorful, the things that are unexpected or that depart from the ordinary. A man walking a dog would probably just blend into the scenery, but a man walking a lion would attract many stares.

Once information is attended to, it must be encoded in order to be placed in short-term storage. Encoding involves translating data into forms that the memory system can use. These forms represent the objects we perceive and the thoughts we have.

As sensory representations fade, they must be renewed or replaced if people are to remember things long enough to use them. Verbal representation is extremely important for keeping information “active” in a short-term storage. For instance, if you want to keep a string of five letters actively in your mind, you will silently repeat their names. This silent repetition is called rehearsal. Rehearsal “refreshes” a stimulus, reactivating it before it can fade. Rehearsal helps us retain what we want to retain. Nothing stays in short-term storage indefinitely.

We forget things from short-term memory for two reasons: displacement and decay. Displacement is the drawing away of our attention from things we are currently focusing on in order to attend to and rehearse new information. At some point the new information will probably replace the old, because short-term memory has limited storage capacity. Displacement works together with decay, the degeneration of short-term memory traces due to the passage of time. As we turn our attention to new information and ignore the old, the old memory traces immediately begin to decay. Unless we switch our attention back to them, they will soon completely fade away.

Long-term memory can hold unlimited information for an indefinite period of time. It is a vast library of facts, images, and knowledge that we have stored for possible future use.

VII. Agree or disagree with the following statements.

1. Without memory people would live only in the past and future.

2. The process of memory can be thought as having 2 stages: acquisition and retrieval.

3. Retention is the stage of memory and it is only an automatic process.

4. Retrieval is a deliberate process in which you actually search for a fact.

5. Psychologists offer a three-store model of memory: sensory, short-term and long-term.

6. Sensory memory can involve only the sense of sight and the sense of touch.

7. Short-term memory can hold unlimited amount of data.

8. Short-term memory is the holding bin for information that a person has actively in mind.

9. Once information is attended to it must be decoded in order to be placed in short-term storage.

10. The silent repetition is called decay.

11. Displacement works together with retrieval and rehearsal.

12. Long-term memory can hold limited amount of information for a definite period of time.

VIII. Answer the following questions:

1. What is memory?

2. Can the process of memory be thought of as having three or four stages?

3. What is an acquisition?

4. What is a retention and retrieval?

5. What model of memory do psychologists offer?

6. What is a sensory memory?

7. What is a short-term memory?

8. What are the processes of short-term memory?

9. What guides selective attention?

10. What kinds of things do we focus on?

11. Why must information be encoded?

12. What is the purpose of rehearsal?

13. What is the difference between displacement and decay?

14. Long-term memory is a library of facts, images and knowledge that we have stored for possible future use, isn’t it?

IX. Prove that:

1. Without memory we would live only in the present.

2. We have sensory memory, short-term and long-term memory.

X. Translate the text from Russian into English.

Важнейшая особенность психики состоит в том, что отражение важнейших воздействий постоянно используется индивидом в его дальнейшем поведении. Постепенное усложнение поведения осуществляется за счет накопления индивидуального опыта. Формирование опыта было бы невозможно, если бы образы внешнего мира исчезали бесследно. Вступая в различные связи между собой, эти образы закрепляются, сохраняются и воспроизводятся в соответствии с требованиями жизни и деятельности.

Запоминание, сохранение и последующее воспроизведение индивидом его опыта называется памятью.

В памяти различаются такие основные процессы: запоминание, сохранение, воспроизведение и забывание. Указанные процессы не являются автономными психическими способностями. Они формируются в деятельности и определяются ею.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-27