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Week 7 · Lecture outline

Week 7 — Lecture Outline · Memory

Introduction to Psychology · PSYC 1 Fall 2026 · Prof. Bennett Fictional sample

Course: Introduction to Psychology (PSYC 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Bennett
Objectives covered: Objective 5 — Compare the major models of learning and memory and apply them to everyday behavior (the memory half — last week was learning).
SLOs touched: A (apply concepts to real-world behavior) · B (reason scientifically about claims regarding mind and behavior)
Meeting pattern: 2 sessions × 75 min = 150 min. Segment minutes below total ~150; scale to your own pattern.

Week at a Glance
The week's big question "If memory feels like replaying a video of what happened, why do confident, vivid memories so often turn out to be wrong?"
By the end of the week, students can… (1) name memory's three processes — encoding, storage, retrieval; (2) walk the Atkinson-Shiffrin stages — sensory → short-term (≈7±2 items, ~20–30 sec) → long-term — and say how working memory differs from passive short-term holding; (3) tell shallow from deep/semantic processing and list what actually improves encoding (elaborative rehearsal, chunking, the spacing effect); (4) sort long-term memory into explicit/declarative (episodic, semantic) vs implicit/nondeclarative (procedural); (5) explain retrieval (recall vs recognition, cues, the serial position effect) and forgetting (encoding failure, decay/the Ebbinghaus curve, retrieval failure, proactive vs retroactive interference); (6) explain why memory is reconstructive and how the misinformation effect makes even eyewitnesses and flashbulb memories unreliable.
Key vocabulary encoding, storage, retrieval, sensory memory, iconic memory, echoic memory, short-term memory, magic number 7±2, working memory, central executive, automatic vs effortful processing, shallow processing, deep/semantic processing, maintenance rehearsal, elaborative rehearsal, chunking, mnemonics, spacing effect, explicit/declarative memory, episodic memory, semantic memory, implicit/nondeclarative memory, procedural memory, recall, recognition, retrieval cue, priming, context-dependent memory, state-dependent memory, serial position effect, primacy effect, recency effect, encoding failure, storage decay, Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, tip-of-the-tongue, proactive interference, retroactive interference, motivated forgetting, reconstructive memory, misinformation effect, source amnesia, flashbulb memory
Materials slides (Deck 7), the week's readings + video links, one approved chatbot (Gemini / Claude / ChatGPT) for the AI-critique moment and the tutorial; if you can project, a quick word-list demo (read 15 words aloud, then have the room write down all they recall — the serial position effect appears live)
Timing note 8 segments, ~150 min total. Session 1 = Segments 1–4 (~75). Session 2 = Segments 5–8 (~75). Heads-up: this is the last content week before the Week-8 midterm — the load is kept humane, and the wrap points students at the cumulative review.

Segment 1 — Hook & the Promise (8 min) · Session 1 opens

Hook. Run a 30-second live demo before you define a single term. Tell the room: "I'm going to read 15 words once. Don't write anything down — just listen. When I finish, write down every word you can remember, in any order." Read a list slowly and evenly — e.g., table, ocean, pencil, doctor, river, candle, ticket, garden, mirror, planet, button, forest, silver, window, marble. Then have them write. Ask by show of hands: "Who got the first two or three words? Who got the last two or three? Who got something from the middle?" The ends win; the middle gets lost. "You just produced a famous pattern — the serial position effect — without trying. Your memory isn't a tape recorder running evenly; it has a shape."

Then the second hook (the week's real provocation): "Now a harder one. Most of us feel sure our strongest memories — a first day, where we were during big news — are accurate because they feel so vivid. This week we'll see that vividness and confidence are not the same as accuracy, and that memory doesn't replay the past — it rebuilds it, every time, and can be edited by a single word."

The promise (write it on the board): "By Friday you'll be able to follow a memory from your senses into long-term storage and back out, explain the main reasons we forget, and — the headline — explain why a confident, detailed memory can still be flat wrong."

Why it matters line (memory hook): "Memory isn't a recording you play back — it's a story you rebuild. Useful, and editable."

Segment 2 — Three Processes + The Three-Stage Model (22 min)

Plain language first — the three things memory must do. Memory is not one act; it's three, and any of them can fail:
- Encoding — getting information in. Turning what you see, hear, or think into a form memory can hold.
- Storage — keeping it over time. Retaining the encoded information, from a split second to a lifetime.
- Retrieval — getting it back out. Pulling stored information into awareness when you need it.

Memory hook (slide it): "Encode = get it in. Store = keep it. Retrieve = get it back. Forgetting is any one of the three breaking down."

Plain language — the Atkinson-Shiffrin three-stage model. Think of information flowing through three stores:
- Sensory memory — a split-second, high-capacity echo of raw sensation. Iconic memory holds a visual snapshot for a few tenths of a second; echoic memory holds sound for a couple of seconds (it's why you can "replay" the last few words someone said even when you weren't listening). Almost all of it fades unless attention grabs it.
- Short-term memory (STM) — what you're holding right now, for about 20–30 seconds without rehearsal, and only about 7±2 items at once — Miller's famous "magic number." (Think of a phone number you repeat until you can dial it, then lose.)
- Long-term memory (LTM) — the vast, relatively permanent store. Effectively unlimited capacity; can last a lifetime. Information that's well encoded and rehearsed moves from STM into LTM.

Working memory (Baddeley) — the upgrade to "short-term." Modern researchers don't picture STM as a passive holding bin. Working memory is the active system that manipulates information — holding it and doing something with it (a "central executive" directing attention). Mentally adding a tip to a bill, or keeping a question in mind while you hunt for the answer, is working memory, not just storage.

Memory hook: "Short-term memory holds; working memory works."

Segment 3 — Encoding: How Information Gets In (the first worked idea) (18 min)

Plain language first. Not all encoding is equal — how you process something largely decides whether you'll remember it.
- Automatic vs effortful — some things encode with no work (where you sat today, what you ate); most course material takes effortful processing.
- Shallow vs deep (levels of processing). Shallow processing encodes surface features — what a word looks or sounds like. Deep / semantic processing encodes meaning — and meaning is remembered far better. Reading a definition and asking "what does this actually mean, and where have I seen it?" beats rereading it ten times.
- Maintenance vs elaborative rehearsal. Maintenance rehearsal is simple repetition (saying a number over and over) — it keeps things in STM but is a weak path to LTM. Elaborative rehearsal connects new material to what you already know (an example, an image, a story) — that's what builds durable memories.
- Chunking — grouping items into meaningful units. The string F-B-I-C-I-A-N-A-S-A is ten items; as FBI · CIA · NASA it's three. Chunking lets us slip past the 7±2 limit.
- Mnemonics — memory tricks (acronyms, the method of loci) that impose organization and meaning.
- The spacing effect — information studied in spaced sessions over time is remembered far better than the same time spent massed (crammed) in one block. (Hold that thought — it's the heart of this week's study-strategy assignment, and your best friend going into the midterm.)

One fully worked example (do it out loud) — depth of processing in 60 seconds.

Tell the class: "I'll give you three words and three different questions." Put on a slide:
- BRAIN — "Is it printed in CAPITAL letters?" (shallow — visual)
- CHAIR — "Does it rhyme with 'hair'?" (shallow — sound)
- APPLE — "Would it fit in this sentence: 'She picked a ripe ____ from the tree'?" (deep — meaning)
"Studies that do exactly this find people later recall the meaning words best by a wide margin — even though all three got the same glance. Same exposure, very different memory, because the kind of processing differed. The lesson for your own studying: don't reread — ask what it means and tie it to something you know."

Segment 4 — Long-Term Memory Types + Quick Interaction (22 min) · Session 1 closes (~75)

Plain language first — long-term memory isn't one thing. It splits into two big families:
- Explicit (declarative) memory — things you can consciously declare / put into words. Two kinds:
- Episodic — personally experienced events ("my first day on campus," "last night's dinner"). Your mental diary.
- Semantic — general facts and knowledge, detached from when you learned them ("a triangle has three sides," "Sacramento is California's capital").
- Implicit (nondeclarative) memory — things you know how to do or that show up in behavior without conscious recall:
- Procedural — skills: riding a bike, typing, tying your shoes. You can do them smoothly but can't fully say how.
- Conditioned responses — learned associations from Week 6 (a flinch at a sound) live here too.

Memory hook: "Explicit = knowing that (you can say it). Implicit = knowing how (you just do it)."

Interaction — Classify-It (think-pair-share, ~10 min):
Put six everyday memories on a slide; students decide which type each is — solo (30 sec), compare with a neighbor (1 min), then vote by fingers (1 = episodic · 2 = semantic · 3 = procedural). Suggested items: "The lyrics to your favorite song" · "How to ride a bicycle" · "What you did last Friday night" · "That water boils at 100°C" · "Typing without looking at the keys" · "Your best friend's birthday."
(Answers, roughly: semantic · procedural · episodic · semantic · procedural · semantic-or-episodic — that last one is a great debate: the fact of the date is semantic; remembering their party is episodic.) Debrief that the same topic can live in different stores depending on what you're recalling.

Segment 5 — Retrieval: Getting It Back Out (22 min) · Session 2 opens

Hook back in: "Last session we got information in and stored it. Today: getting it back out — and why 'I know it, I just can't think of it' is its own kind of event."

Plain language first — retrieval is cued, and easier to recognize than to recall.
- Recall vs recognition. Recall = producing information with few cues (a fill-in-the-blank or essay; "What's the capacity of short-term memory?"). Recognition = identifying the right answer among options (a multiple-choice question). Recognition is far easier — the cues are right there. (This is exactly why a multiple-choice quiz feels easier than writing an answer cold.)
- Retrieval cues — reminders that unlock a memory. The more, and the better-matched, the easier retrieval is. A smell, a place, a first letter can all spring a memory loose.
- Priming — an earlier exposure activates related memories without your awareness, making them easier to retrieve (see "bread," and "butter" comes faster).
- Context-dependent memory — you retrieve better in the same external setting where you learned (information studied in one room is recalled a bit better in that room). Reinstating the context — even mentally — helps.
- State-dependent memory — you retrieve better in the same internal state (mood, alertness) you were in when you encoded.
- The serial position effect (the hook from Segment 1, now named): in a list, we best remember the beginning (primacy — those items got the most rehearsal and reached LTM) and the end (recency — those are still in STM). The middle sags. (That's the live demo from this morning.)

Memory hook: "Recall = pull it from nothing; recognition = pick it from a lineup. Cues are the difference."

Segment 6 — Forgetting: Why Memory Fails (18 min)

Set it up: "Forgetting isn't one thing either — and most of it is not memories quietly fading away. Let's name the real culprits."

Plain language first — four routes to forgetting:
- Encoding failure — it never got in. You've seen a penny ten thousand times; you still can't draw it. If attention didn't encode it, there's nothing to retrieve. (A huge share of "forgetting" is really this.)
- Storage decay — memories can fade over time, especially early on. Hermann Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve showed memory for new material drops sharply at first, then levels off. (This is the scientific case for spacing and reviewing — and for not leaving the midterm to one all-nighter.)
- Retrieval failure — it's stored, but you can't reach it right now. The tip-of-the-tongue state — feeling a name is right there, even knowing its first letter — is retrieval failure in action. The memory's fine; the cue is missing.
- Interference — other memories get in the way. This is the pair students mix up, so slow down:
- Proactive interference — old learning disrupts new. Pro = forward in time: your old password keeps coming to mind when you try to recall the new one.
- Retroactive interference — new learning disrupts old. Retro = backward: after learning this year's locker combination, you can't recall last year's.
- Motivated forgetting — sometimes we have a motive to forget; we remember our past in self-flattering, edited ways.

Memory hook (slide it): "PRoactive = PRior learning blocks the new. Retroactive = Recent learning blocks the old."

Misconception + cure (preview of the big one):
- ❌ "We forget mainly because memories slowly fade away."
✅ Cure: decay is real but overrated as an explanation — a great deal of forgetting is encoding failure (it never got in) or retrieval failure (the cue's missing). "I forgot" usually means "I never encoded it" or "I can't find it," not "it dissolved."

Segment 7 — Memory Is Reconstructive: The Misinformation Effect (the signature worked example) (22 min)

Plain language first. Here's the week's headline, and it overturns most people's everyday model of memory: memory is reconstructive, not reproductive. You don't replay a recording; you rebuild the memory each time from fragments — and in the rebuilding, new information, suggestions, and assumptions can get woven in as if they were there all along. That makes memory flexible and useful, but also editable — sometimes without you noticing.

One fully worked example (the signature study — do it all the way through):

The misinformation effect — Loftus & Palmer's car-crash study. Researchers showed people the same film of a traffic accident, then asked about the speed of the cars — but changed one verb. Some were asked, "About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" Others got "hit," and others milder verbs like "contacted."
- The result: the single word shifted the estimates. People who heard "smashed" reported higher speeds than those who heard "hit" — for the exact same film.
- It got stranger. A week later, people who'd heard "smashed" were more likely to falsely "remember" seeing broken glass — there was no broken glass in the film. The suggestion didn't just bias a number; it planted a detail in the memory.
Land it: the memory was edited by the question. That's the misinformation effect — exposure to misleading information after an event changes how we remember it. It's not that those people were lying or careless. Their memory genuinely changed. "A leading question isn't just unfair — it can rewrite what someone remembers."

Why this matters in the real world — and the two misconceptions it kills:
- Eyewitness testimony can be unreliable. Confident eyewitnesses have sent innocent people to prison; later DNA evidence cleared many of them. A witness can be completely sincere and completely wrong, especially after leading questions, lineup hints, or media coverage. (This is why how police question witnesses matters so much.)
- Source amnesia — we remember the information but forget where it came from, so we can attribute something we imagined, dreamed, or were told to a real experience. A big engine of false memories.
- Flashbulb memories — vivid, emotional "snapshots" of shocking events feel like high-definition recordings. But studies that catch people's accounts right after such events and again years later find the accounts drift and contradict the originals — while confidence stays high. The headline: confidence ≠ accuracy.

Segment 8 — Technology Workflow + AI-Critique, Callback & Hand-off (8 min) · Session 2 closes (~75)

Technology workflow — study by the science, not by feel (a pre-midterm gift):
1. Pick this week's material (or any week's, for the midterm).
2. Self-test instead of reread — close the page and recall; recognition feels good but recall builds memory (the testing effect).
3. Space it — three 20-minute reviews across three days beat one 60-minute cram (the spacing effect; Ebbinghaus's curve is why).
4. Process deeply — for each concept, write one sentence on what it means and one real example. Meaning is what survives.

AI-critique moment (students verify, not consume):

Paste this to an approved chatbot: "What's the difference between proactive and retroactive interference? Give an example of each." Also try: "What is the capacity and duration of short-term memory?"
Then check its work against today's lecture. The interference pair is a known trap — models sometimes reverse the two (calling old-disrupts-new "retroactive"). The right read: proactive = prior/old disrupts new; retroactive = recent/new disrupts old. And STM is about 7±2 items for ~20–30 seconds — flag any answer that inflates that or confuses STM capacity with long-term memory. The tool drafts; you judge.

Callback + tease:
- Callback: "Last week was learning — how experience changes behavior. This week was memory — how the brain holds onto that learning. Together they're Objective 5, and they're the last new material before the midterm."
- Tease next week (the midterm): "Week 8 is the midterm — cumulative over Weeks 1–7 (the science of psychology, research methods, the brain, sensation & perception, consciousness, learning, and memory). It comes with a study guide, an exam-prep tutorial, and a practice exam. Use this week's study workflow on all of it: self-test, space it, go for meaning. We'll do a focused review before exam day."

Hand-off (the week's graded work):
- Lecture Tutorial 7 (AI tutor, share-link submission) — the three processes, the three-stage model + working memory, encoding depth, LTM types, retrieval, forgetting, and reconstructive memory.
- Quiz 7 (end of week) and Discussion 7 ("Can You Trust Your Memory?" — eyewitness reliability and a personal memory that turned out wrong).
- Assignment 7 — classify memory types, identify the encoding/retrieval/forgetting concept in scenarios, apply evidence-based study strategies (a midterm tune-up), and explain in plain language why eyewitness testimony can be unreliable.

Instructor FAQ — Common Stumbles

Student says / does Quick cure
Swaps proactive and retroactive interference. Pro = prior/old blocks the new; retro = recent/new blocks the old. "Old password intrudes on the new" = proactive; "new combination wipes out last year's" = retroactive. Say it twice.
Thinks short-term memory = working memory. STM is passive holding (~7±2 items, ~20–30 sec). Working memory actively manipulates — holding and using info (mental math, the central executive). "Short-term holds; working memory works."
Treats memory as a video recording. Memory is reconstructive — rebuilt each time from fragments, and editable (the misinformation effect). A vivid memory can be a confidently wrong one.
"If a memory feels vivid and I'm confident, it must be accurate." Confidence ≠ accuracy. Flashbulb memories feel HD but drift over years while confidence holds. Sincere eyewitnesses have been flat wrong.
Says we forget because memories just fade. Decay is only one route. Much "forgetting" is encoding failure (never got in — the penny demo) or retrieval failure (tip-of-the-tongue: it's there, the cue's missing).
Confuses recall and recognition. Recall = produce it with few cues (fill-in-the-blank). Recognition = pick it from options (multiple choice). Recognition is easier because the cues are supplied.
Mixes up episodic and semantic memory. Episodic = personally lived events (your diary). Semantic = general facts (an encyclopedia). Both are explicit/declarative.
Thinks maintenance rehearsal builds long-term memory well. Repetition keeps things in STM but is a weak path to LTM. Elaborative rehearsal — connecting to meaning and what you know — is what makes it stick.

Scope flag

This outline stays within Objective 5's memory half — the three processes, the three-stage/working-memory models, encoding depth, LTM types, retrieval, forgetting, and reconstructive memory. It deliberately keeps the biology of memory light (the hippocampus, long-term potentiation, amnesia cases) at the survey level — the brain machinery was Week 3, and deeper memory neuroscience is beyond an intro survey's scope. Learning (classical/operant conditioning, observational learning) was last week; cognition, thinking, and problem-solving are Week 9. Classic researchers named here (Atkinson & Shiffrin, George Miller, Alan Baddeley, Hermann Ebbinghaus, Elizabeth Loftus) are referenced factually as part of the discipline's real science; the instructor and institution remain fictional. This is the final content week before the Week-8 cumulative midterm (Weeks 1–7).

~ Prof. Bennett's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com