Memory (social sciences)

memory allowsspirit to preserve and point out last experiments.

Synopsis

Memory in psychology

Many research on the memory in cognitive psychology consist in locating and describing its various components. With this intention the psychologists base themselves on experimental results and the symptoms expressed by cérébrolésés patients.

Most influential of these structural models of the memory is the modal model, which divides the memory into three subsystems: sensory register, short-term memory and long-term memory. The concept of short-term memory then was deeply renewed by the concept of working memory.

With regard to the long-term memory, several distinctions were established:

  • between the episodical memory and the semantic memory
  • between the implicit memory (procedural) and the explicit memory (declaratory)

Moreover, of very many research in cognitive psychology relate to the forms of mental representations used in long-term memory.

Modal model of the memory

The modal model divides the memory into three principal subsystems. This model is a synthesis many experimental results and represents the dominant design of the human memory in the cognitive psychology of the end of 1960. A traditional formulation of this model was proposed by Atkinson and Schiffrin (1968).

The three components of the memory in the modal model are:

  • sensory register can retain a great quantity of information in visual form during a time extrémement short (a few milliseconds).This process is different from the phénoméne of rémanance visual.
  • short-term memory (MCT) a limited number of elements, stored in verbal form during a few seconds contains.
  • long-term memory (MLT) correpond with our design intuitive memory. Information in MLT is of nature semantic. The MLT did not connait in practice of limits of capacities or duration of memorizing.

For Atkinson and Schiffrin, probability of memorizing in long-term memory (i.e. of one training durable) depends only on the duration of presence in short-term memory.

Working memory

In the modal model, the short-term memory plays a particular part in cognition and particularly in the training of new information. The experimental evidence of this operation is however limited. In front of the difficulties of this model, Baddeley and his/her colleagues proposed a new model of working memory composed of several subsystems.

The three components of the model of Baddeley and Hitch are:

Another author, Cowan (1988), developed his own theory and his own model of the working memory. According to Cowan, the working memory represents only the activated part of the long-term Memory (MLT). Cowan, contrary to Baddeley, is thus located in a unit vision of the MDT. In other words, there would be no specifically structural differences, but only of the functional differences which would make it possible to account for the various "modules" or operation of the MDT. According to this author, the most activated part working memory corresponds so that it names the "x-ray attentionnel". Indeed, the attention related to some of activated information would be dependent on the degree of activation of these last, either by perception, in the form of stimuli, or in the form of information recovered by the phenomena of starting. In other words, less one information would be activated, less it will be likely to form part of an explicit, verbal or coloured representation. The various types of memories described by Baddeley would find their explanation in the quantity of resources or cognitive energy which it would be possible to solicit by the whole of the cognitive system. Thus, this quantity of more or less limited energy would be directed towards "centres of attraction" corresponding to the "central" zones more compared to a context occurrent: lived situation, set of themes, particular reasoning, field of knowledge. It is known in addition that the centrality of information, or item, is measured proportionally with its familiarity (frequency of occurrence) in a field, and by its "connexity", or numbers it and forces it relations which item maintains considered with other information the same field.

The memory of Cowan is to be strictly accurate a model of the connexionnist type and automatist: there is only one structure made up of strongly interrelated units between them coupled to an energy function, representation the activation, which is located in certain zones of the network of unit according to the needs. This model is a automatist since it does not call either upon certain structures of control or supervision: the physical properties and mathematical of the network, the units and the energy function are enough to account for the whole of the elements described by Baddeley.

Although this model of MDT is largely less popular than that of Baddeley, there does not remain about it less very relevant to return account of phenomena such as the conscience or the selective treatment of information. There in addition remains the model which is certainly most capable to interpret the phenomena related to the working memory within the framework of the models connexionnists such as the autoassociatives memories of Hopfield (1984).

Implicit memory and explicit memory

The distinction between implicit memory and explicit memory roughly includes that of procedural memory and declaratory memory.

procedural memory allows the acquisition and the use of driving competences like making bicycle, practising a sport...

declaratory memory is responsible for the memorizing of all information in verbal form, i.e. those which one can express with our language.

Concept of the implicit and explicit memory generalizes this distinction with the whole of natures of treatments and information related to human cognition. In other words, there are automatisms for verbal information, picturesque, sensitive and gestural as much as there are mental representations easy to handle by the consciences and the attention, on which can carry decisions.

A decision, refers to the conscience: to make a decision corresponds to authorize or on the contrary to inhibit a preexistent automatic process. On the contrary the presupposed current ones, the decision-making "to be strictly accurate does not create" not new information, it does not make it possible either to recover some: it simply makes it possible to carry a last process of checking on already started processes and already activated and pre-structured information.

As for the whole of the fields related to human cognition, two theories clash to account for the distinction between implicit and explicit: one structural and the other functional calculus. The structural theory explains the difference implicite/explicite by a difference in nature physical: explicit and implicit correspond to the request of modules and different cerebral structures. The functional theory supposes on the contrary which there is only one "whole" corresponding to the storage medium but that this whole is suited to various functions and the treatment of various natures of information. it would be thus in this case the specific request of various contexts, functions and information which would make it possible to account for the difference implicite/explicite.

Episodical memory and semantic memory

The idea of the need for one semantic memory containing general knowledge for the perception and the comprehension of the language was suggested by research in .

In psychology, Endel Tulving the distinction between semantic memory proposed and episodical memory (memory of the events of the personal life), in particular to account for the symptoms of certain cérébrolésés patients presenting of the disorders specific to the one of these two types of memory.

Memory and cognition located and distributed

Whereas the majority of the models evoked until now fall under the prospect for in cognitive psychology, certain authors propose a vision radically different from cognition like collective process registered in the social and physical environment. These various prospects are generally gathered under the label cognition located and distributed.

In the field of the memory, one can in particular quote the work ofEdwin Hutchins on the piloting of airliners and sea transport. It describes for example how the treatment (memorizing, recall, use) of a parameter as the speed of the plane is distributed between the two members of the crew and the tools at their disposal in the cockpit. It suggests as well as the cognitive processes are not purely individual phenomena but the result of the coordinated activity of the participants and their instruments.

Memory in philosophy

The memory, it, poses three problems for Paul Ric?ur. Initially, puts the question of its formulation, that of a representation of what was and thus obligatorily subjective. The memory gives the trace present from what absent since passed. That then poses the problem of the border between reality and the imaginary one because the relationship with anteriority brings the question of its representations. In opposition to that, the history aims at a certain objectivity, it is not subjected to a particular glance. Then, in this same statement, also the glance related today to the told event appears. Bergson fix these problems on the recognition and the survival of the images. Thus, there is "an adequacy of the image present at the thing goes away whose memory kept the trace. "Thus, the memory can be known only while selecting what must be forgotten. The memory includes a mode of reading of the told fact. Lastly, this same reading will be perceived by others according to the personality of the enonciator. The memory belongs to an individual. So it has also a designation suitable for the subject. The individual memory is it by what the individual constitutes his own identity. We will add to that that the memory does not worry obligatorily about the temporal sequence of the images. The time scale is on the other hand relevant for the history; it holds account of the durations and the standards. For Pierre Nora, "because it is emotional and magic, the memory is put up only with the details which consolidate it; it nourishes memories fuzzy, telescoping, total or floating, particular or symbolic systems, sensitive to all transport, screens, censures or projections ". In its work Social executives of the memory, Maurice Halbwachs the individual memory starting from its social dimensions defines: "If we examine how we remember, us recognized that the greatest number of our memories return to us when our parents, friends, or other men point out them to us. "It appears that it is in this situation that we put the people solicited to make their account of life. An emergent number of memories only parce the situation requests them. The framework social of the memory are the instruments whose individual is used for himself to recompose an image of last in harmony with the requests of the moment.

Halbwachs explains why the "process of localization of a memory in the past (...) does not consist in at all plunging in the mass of our memories as in a bag, to withdraw from them increasingly brought closer memories between which will take seat the memory to be located. "the use of bench marks makes it possible to facilitate the expression of such or such memory, without for all this this one is in direct bond with the referent. "the bench marks are state of consciousnesses which, by their intensity, fight better than the others against the lapse of memory, or by their complexity, are likely to cause much reports/ratios, to increase the chances of reviviscence. "the principal points of support, which they take part in the personal or national history, prove to be necessary to psychic the correct operation of the individuals. Théodule Ribot known as that: "If, to reach a remote memory, we had to follow the whole series of terms qu separate some us, the memory would be impossible because the length of the operation. "the collective memory is the whole of the facts of last which can cause to structure the identity of a group. P. Nora known as: "(...) there is as much memory than of groups: it is, by nature, multiple and geared down, collective, plural and individualized. "cohesion within a group can then be ensured by the division of the memory, it can inspire the actions present. The events define each time the individual actions in various groups. This localization of the memory by using the bench marks of our memory is done because we are social beings. The memories relating to the social groups with which we are in closer and durable links preserve the promptness of the memories present. The phenomenon of the memory seems to exist only through social relations which gather and organize the memories. The localization occurs by the presence of a common zone of interest to which the memory is referred. Halbwachs, offering a second reading of the social morphology of Durkheim, advances that the social life rests on a material substrate, the report/ratio with this material substrate existing only in socialized form. It is social existence which rises the social logic which accounts for the need for a form of social life. The memory thus updates the social referents which are the language, the space and the time which can locate and delimit the social practices. The families reproduce "rules and habits which not depending on us, and whom existed before us, who fix our place. ». The structure family common memory by the roles of the ones and others. Only the family "community" can generate this transmission of the origins which constitutes today a part of its identity. The reproduction of the rules and habits which do not depend on each one on a purely individual basis but on the family group fixes the place of each one. For Halbwachs: "One retains the events collectively made up which carry it in the flow of one life at the same time in the feeling of relationship and the common occupations. "

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