Relate your own memory successes and failures to the successes and failures of your favorite technology; in what ways can you blame the technology, and in what ways can you blame the user for failures?

• Compare human memory to the workings of a computer.
• Determine the differences among sensory, short-term, and long-term memory.

Connect sensation to memory; determine the importance of iconic and echoic memory.

• Create an argument for whether or not fleeting traces of sensation linger in the mind even after the removal of a stimulus.
• Compare and contrast iconic and echoic memory.

Examine scientifically supported methods to enlarge the capacity of short-term memory.

• Identify the limits of our short-term memory.
• List the functions that are served by short-term memory.
• Explain the serial-position curve and why it occurs.

Juxtapose the belief that memories are forever with the belief that memories eventually become extinct.

• Describe the transfer of information from short-term memory into long-term memory.
• Explain memory retrieval, forgetting, and retrieval failure.
• Tell the story of H.M., and include why his story is so important.
• Create an argument for why people claim that “memory is reconstructive.”

Consider the research on autobiographical memory and apply it to your own life.

• Determine why our memories for even the most personal events are at risk.
• Describe the variables that makes some experiences particularly vivid and enduring.
• Define childhood amnesia, and tell why it occurs.