Human Memory – Class 11 Psychology Chapter 6 Notes & NCERT PDF

Introduction

"The advantage of bad memory is that one enjoys several times, the same good things for the first time." — Friedrich Nietzsche

Forgetting a known person's name, blanking out in an examination, or reciting a childhood poem flawlessly — memory plays many tricks on us. Memory preserves our sense of who we are, maintains relationships and helps in problem solving and decision-making. The first systematic study of memory was by Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885), a German psychologist who experimented on himself and found that forgetting is fast at first and then stabilises. This chapter covers the nature of memory, the stage model, levels of processing, types of long-term memory, forgetting and ways to enhance memory.

Key Concepts

1. Nature of Memory

Memory refers to retaining and recalling information over a period of time.

Memory has three interrelated stages:

Memory failure can occur at any of these stages.

2. Information Processing Approach — The Stage Model

With the advent of computers, memory came to be seen like a computer's RAM (temporary) and hard disk (permanent). Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) proposed the Stage Model with three memory systems:

Control processes move information between stores:

Box 6.1 — Working Memory (Baddeley, 1986): STM is not a passive store but a work bench with three components: the phonological loop (holds limited sounds that decay within about 2 seconds unless rehearsed), the visuospatial sketchpad (visual and spatial information, limited capacity), and the central executive (organises information from both and from LTM, allocates attention, and monitors, plans and controls behaviour).

Evidence against separate stores: later studies showed semantic encoding in STM and acoustic encoding in LTM. Shallice and Warrington (1970) described KF, who after damage to the left cerebral hemisphere had an intact LTM but a seriously impaired STM — difficult to explain if everything must pass through STM.

3. Levels of Processing (Craik and Lockhart, 1972)

Retention depends on how deeply information is processed:

Structural and phonetic processing produce fragile memory; semantic encoding resists forgetting. Lesson for students: elaborate meaning instead of rote memorisation.

4. Types of Long-term Memory

- Episodic — biographical, personal experiences; often emotional (how you felt when you stood first).

- Semantic — general knowledge, concepts and rules (meaning of non-violence, 2+6 = 8, STD code of New Delhi is 011); not dated, affect-neutral and not susceptible to forgetting.

Box 6.2 — Other phenomena:

Box 6.3 — Methods of measuring memory: free recall and recognition (facts/episodes), sentence verification task (semantic memory — faster true/false response = better retention), and priming (e.g. completing gar, pla, ho faster for previously seen words — measures information we cannot report).

5. Nature and Causes of Forgetting

Ebbinghaus memorised nonsense syllables (CVC trigrams like NOK, SEP) and measured relearning. His curve of forgetting shows that forgetting is greatest in the first nine hours, especially the first hour, after which it slows and little more is forgotten over days.

- Proactive (forward) — earlier learning interferes with later learning (knowing English makes learning French harder).

- Retroactive (backward) — later learning interferes with recall of earlier learning (you cannot recall English equivalents of the French words you are now learning).

- Design: retroactive — experimental group learns A, learns B, recalls A (control rests instead of learning B); proactive — experimental group learns A, learns B, recalls B (control rests, learns B, recalls B).

Box 6.4 — Repressed memories: Freud proposed that traumatic experiences are repressed into the unconscious; extreme cases lead to psychological amnesia or a fugue state (a new identity). Stress and high anxiety can cause students to blank out in examinations.

6. Enhancing Memory — Mnemonics

Mnemonics using images:

Mnemonics using organisation:

A more comprehensive approach:

No single method works overnight; health, interest, motivation and familiarity also matter.

Examples & Activities from the Text

Key-Facts Sheet

Exam Focus

Key Terms

Common Mistakes