1.2 - Memory (Set A - Multi-store Model And Working Memory Model)

Question 1

Outline the capacity of short term memory?

Answer 1

• can be assessed using digit span - Jacob’s found average span for digits was 9.3 items and 7.3 letters (suggested easier to recall digits because there was only 9 compared to 26 letters)
• miller proposed ‘the magic number’ - 7 plus or minus 2 (found span of immediate memory is about 7 items - and that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters)
• miller suggested we chunk things together so we can remember more

Question 2

Outline the evaluation of the capacity of the short term memory - give 2 points?

Answer 2

• millers original finding has not been replicated - research found that 4 items was about the limit - suggests that lower end of millers range is more appropriate (7-2 so 5)
• capacity of STM not same for everyone - research suggests that recall increased steadily with age (from 6 digits to 8) - could be attributed to changes in brain capacity

Question 3

Outline the capacity of long term memory?

Answer 3

Potential to have infinite capacity

Question 4

Outline the duration of short term memory?

Answer 4

Research studied duration of STM using 24 students attending university - each tested over 8 trials where they were given a consonant syllable and three digit number - had to recall the constant syllable after a retention interval (eg 3,9,18 seconds) whilst counting backwards from three digit number

• 90% correct after 3 seconds, 20% after 9 seconds and 2% after 18 seconds

suggests STM has a very short duration - less than 18 seconds - as long as verbal rehearsal is prevented

Question 5

Outline the duration of long term memory?

Answer 5

Research tested 400 people of various ages on their memory of classmates with a photo-recognition test (some from participants high school yearbook) - participants who were tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate, after 48 years this declined to about 70%

Question 6

Outline the evaluation of the duration of the short term memory - give 2 points?

Answer 6

• research is artificial - memorising consonant syllables does not truly reflect most everyday memory activities - sometimes we do try to remember fairly meaningless things (eg phone numbers)
• research involved university students - may not be generalisable to whole population (lacks population validity)

Question 7

Explain what coding is, in regard to memory?

Answer 7

The way information is changed so that it can be stored in memory - information enters the brain via senses - stored in various forms, such as visual codes (pictures), acoustic codes (sounds) or semantic codes (meaning of the experience)

Question 8

Outline semantic and acoustic coding in STM and LTM?

Answer 8

• research found that participants had difficultly remembering acoustically similar words (eg cat, cab, can, cap) in STM but not in LTM
• semantically similar words (eg great, large, wide, broad) posed little problem for STM but led to muddled LTM

Suggests STM is largely encoded acoustically - LTM largely encoded semantically

Question 9

Outline the evaluation of coding involved in STM and LTM- give 2 points?

Answer 9

• LTM may not be exclusively semantic - evidence for acoustic coding, suggests it can vary according to circumstances
• research may not have tested LTM - in the study, participants were asked to recall a word immediately after hearing it - LTM was tested by waiting 20 minutes before recalling again - impacts validity of the research

Question 10

What is short term memory?

Answer 10

Your memory for immediate events - STM measured using seconds and minutes (Short duration) - information disappears if not rehearsed

STM has limited capacity of about 4 items or chunks - tends to be coded acoustically

referred to as working memory

Question 11

What is long term memory?

Answer 11

Your memory for events that have happened in the past - lasts anywhere from 2 minutes to 100 years

• LTM has potentially unlimited duration - coded semantically

Question 12

What is the multi-store model?

Answer 12

Explanation of memory based on three separate memory stores, and how information is transferred between these stores

• theoretical linear model of how memory works - linear as everything goes through each store in order

Question 13

Explain the sensory register part of the multi-store model?

Answer 13

• Place where information is held at each of the senses (eyes,nose,ears ext)
• capacity of these registers is very large - but they constantly receive information which remains for a brief duration if it receives no attention

Focusing attention on the sensory stores - transfers data to STM

Question 14

Explain the STM part of the multi-store model?

Answer 14

• information held in STM, so it can be used for immediate tasks
• limited duration - its in a ‘fragile’ state and will disappear relatively quickly if it isn’t rehearsed (by maintenance rehearsal)

Question 15

Explain the maintenance rehearsal part of the multi-store model?

Answer 15

Repetition keeps information in STM - eventually will create a LTM

• research suggests a direct relationship between rehearsal in STM and strength of LTM

Question 16

Explain the LTM part of the multi-store model?

Answer 16

LTM is potentially unlimited in duration and capacity

• process of getting information from LTM involves the information passing back through STM (retrieval) can be through writing things down or sub focal repetition (repeating what you hear in your head)

Question 17

Explain what the multi-store model is composed of?

Answer 17

• 3 unitary stores (Sensory memory, STM, LTM)
• stores linked by processes that enable transfer of information from one store to the next (eg maintenance rehearsal and retrieval)

Question 18

Outline research and support for the multi-store model - give 2 points?

Answer 18

• controlled lab studies on capacity, duration and coding - supports existence of separate ST and LT stores - involved brain scans (showed prefrontal cortex active during STM but not LTM tasks) supports basis of MSM
• case studies - different areas of the brain involved in STM and LTM, looking at people with brain damage (eg HM)

Question 19

Outline the case study conducted by miller looking at brain damage and ST and LT memory - involving HM?

Answer 19

Involved man reffered to as HM - brian damage caused by operation to remove the hippocampus from both sides of his brain to reduce suffering from severe epilepsy - HMs personality and intellect remained intact but he could not form new LTMs, could remember things before the surgery

• provides support for idea of separate stores - HM was unable to transfer information from STM to LTM

Question 20

Outline criticisms for the multi-store model - give 2 points?

Answer 20

• MSM is too simple - research does not support the idea STM and LTM are single ‘unitary’ store - research shows that STM is divided into a number of qualitatively different stores which vary in terms of capacity, duration and kind of memory stored there
• LTM involves more than maintained rehearsal - ‘deep’ and elaborate processing is involved - things that are processed more deeply are more memorable (enduring memories are crated by the processing you do rather than through maintenance rehearsal)

Question 21

Give 2 models that attempt to explain how memory works?

Answer 21

• Multi-store model - developed by Atkinson and shiffrin
• working memory model of memory - developed by baddeley and hitch builds on and more detailed description of STM

Question 22

Explain and describe the Working memory model (WMM)?

Answer 22

Baddeley and hitch felt MSM was too simple and that STM was not just one unitary store, but an active system comprising of a number of different components - believed that there is one store for visual processing and a a separate store for processing sounds - organised by a central executive (CE)

Question 23

What are the key points of the working memory model?

Answer 23

• model consists of 4 components (episodic buffer, central executive, Visio-spatial sketch pad and phonological loop)
• concerned with memory used when working on a complex task, which requires you to store information as you go along
• addresses short term memory

Question 24

Outline and explain the role of the central executive component of the WMM?

Answer 24

• most important part of model - has overall control of what is going to get processed - processes information from sensory system (coding of all senses)
• function is to direct attention to particular tasks, determining how the brains ‘resources’ (3 slave systems) are allocated to tasks

has very little capacity - can not store data

Question 25

Outline and explain the role of the phonological loop component of the WMM?

Answer 25

• deals with auditory information - subdivided into phonological store (which holds words you hear, like an inner ear) and an articulatory process (used for words that are heard or seen, words are silently repeated, like an inner voice)

Limited capacity - with auditory coding

Question 26

Outline and explain the role of the Visuo-spatial sketchpad component of the WMM?

Answer 26

• used when you have to plan a spatial task (eg counting number of windows in your home)
• Visual information - what things look like, spatial information is the physical relationship between things

Can be divided into visual cache (stores information about visual items, eg colour) - and inner scribe (stores the arrangement of objects in the visual field)

Limited capacity - coding is both sight/visual

Question 27

Outline and explain the role of the episodic buffer component of the WMM?

Answer 27

• added later, as model needed a general store which has limited capacity and is temporary
• acts as a storage component for the central executive and links working model to LTM and other cognitive processes such as perception
• Coding - integrating
  **sends information to LTM **

Question 28

outline weaknesses of the WMM - give 3 points?

Answer 28

• doesn’t explain how LTM works - focus is only on STM
• little is known about the central executives function - likely to be more complex with several components
• lacks research support that has ecological validity - uses case studies of individuals with brain damage however trauma of injury may change behaviour so individuals perform worse on certain tasks, case studies are unique to an individual

Question 29

Explain why the research for WMM lacks ecological validity?

Answer 29

Most research support has artificial and highly controlled stimuli, lab conditions and tasks.
-E.g. in a dual-task study, the order of letters had to be identified correctly.
-These tasks don’t occur commonly in life so the WMM may not explain how memory works in day to day life and tasks

Question 30

Outline the strengths of the WMM - give 2 points?

Answer 30

• has lots of clinical evidence and research support
• has developed over time to be more robust against scientific criticism - episodic buffer added in 2000 shows model continually being improved

Question 31

Outline case study support for WMM?

Answer 31

Shallice and Warrington (1970) studied KF who had a brain injury.
- He had poor STM for auditory info but could process visual info e.g. his immediate recall of letters was better when he read them than when they were read to him.
- Suggests his phonological loop was damaged but not visuo-spatial sketchpad.
Supports existence of separate visual and acoustic memory stores

Question 32

Outline the concept of dual task theory?

Answer 32

• baddeley and hitch state that people can perform 2 tasks at same time as long as they use different components of working memory system

Participants asked to recall list of words while saying a phrase out loud - due phonological loop being focused on saying the phase, the participants struggled to recount more than 2 words from list