And then we'll say, okay, we'll give it a try.
And it turns out they will be pretty good.
so they, they're gaining proficiency without any memory of the experience.
That really shows these different kinds of memory.
In fact, this kind of memory is what I originally called Procedural Memory.
Let's get to that. So, Procedural Memory, if we think of
this thing, so now they've even separated declarative and episodic.
So different, different, ways of thinking about this separate these memory systems
in different ways. But, in declarative, in this diagram,
they say declarative, I know that, that's kind of semantic memory, right?
The facts that you know, episodic, I remember when, so that's much more that
event memory. Again, some people would call this
declarative as well, I wouldn't. But this is procedural.
I know how, for example, to pronounce and comprehend new vocabulary.
I know how to tie my shoes. I know how to play piano.
Think of Clive Wearing, let me bring that back.
Clive lost all of this, and he lost all of this, but he still had this.
This procedural memory is very strong. It's the kind of memory that underlies
our ability to do things. And we learn it through repetition.
And it seems like the mechanism that we use to do that is different, than the
mechanism we use to do these kinds of memory.
Because even when this is broken this still is working fine in fact in one
study. They even taught amnesics how to program
computers they could learn quicker and quicker.
So they would be asked to create a program each day the same program.
They would never remember having done this before, but every day we brough them
in they caught on faster and faster. So they were learning something.
There's a procedural element to programming and they were learning that.
Okay, so what I think the amnesics provide is a very powerful example of
that notion that memory is not a singular noun.
It's an active processes, and it's, and there's a number of them and they do
different things. And they're responsible for different
abilities. and that's why there's really so much to
talk about in a memory course or a section of a course on memory.
That's why I had such a challenge trying to figure out which things to tell you
about. And there's so much I haven't told you
about. But, that's just how it is.
all right, so, rounding out our, our week on memory then, got a few videos for you.
this one's Larry Squire. He does a lot of work with amnesiac
patients, and he's going to talk about memory, procedural memory a little bit,
too. So you can hear a little bit from someone
who has direct experience with them. This is an interesting thing, I think at
the end my, my notion for the last week of this course is that we're going to do
a bunch of interesting topics. I'm just going to pick a bunch of things
from psychology that we haven't talked about yet and give you just bang, bang,
bang, interesting after interesting thing.
One of them will be sleep, we'll talk about sleep.
So, this is kind of prelude to that. this is a video talking about the
relationship between sleep and procedural memory.
And it turns out that dreaming may be very important for helping us learn these
procedural memory, tasks. So, check that out, now, there's a couple
of self promotion things here. This one is me giving a talk on memory,
and it's, it's a talk I gave at here at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.
And I've thrown in a link to it, because it's, it's me talking about memory in a
very different way than I have in this lecture series.
But it'll, I think it'll connect up quite well.
So, it, it's a nice way for you to see , hear about the same kinds of things but
from a, from a different angle. So, check that out if you're interested.
And you get to see me actually walk around, instead of sitting down in this
one. and finally the readings over here.
There's a, there's a paper open access paper about Edward Claparede.
it, it's not so much about the amnesia stuff that I started off here.
It's more about his views of education. But it'll give you a sense of who
Claparede was and what his passions were. And lot of, when I read this I thought,
how does this fit with the MOOC world. What would Claparede think of a MOOC?
So, you know, that's a fun thing for you. And finally, this is an utter, true,
shameless plug, I admit it. I did a course with a, with a company
called the Great Courses, in the States. It's, 24 lectures on just memory alone.
I include this partly to show you that, y'know, I could have, this, this whole
course is 16 hours on intro psych, that whole course was 12 hours on just memory.
So that's how much there is to talk about in memory.
If, if you've got, you know, really deep pockets and, and you're interested in
memory, go ahead, and bridges my course. But that's not really why I have it
there. I, I have it there just to kind of show
you, and give you a sense of how much there is to talk about, in the memory
world. It's a, it's a fascinating world, and,
and one that I'm deeply, involved in. Alrighty, so, from here, we're going to
go on next week, and talk about Social Psychology, and I guarantee you,
fascinating study after fascinating study.
I'm looking forward to it and I hope you are too.
Have a good one.