2. Memory Flashcards
Who made the multi-store model?
Atkinson and Shiffrin
What did Atkinson and Shiffrin make?
multi-store model of memory
What did the multi-store model suggest?
Memory is made up of three components:
- Sensory register (SR)
- short‐term memory (STM)
- long‐term memory (LTM).
Memories are formed sequentially and information passes from one component to the next, in a linear fashion.
What sections is the multi-store model separated into?
sensory register (SR),
short‐term memory (STM)
long‐term memory (LTM).
What does coding mean in the context of memory?
Refers to the way in which information is changed and stored in memory.
What does duration mean in the context of memory?
Refers to the length of time that information is held in the memory store
What does capacity mean in the context of memory?
Refers to the amount of information that can be stored.
Explain the multi-store model
- Information enters the sensory register via our senses.
- You must pay attention to this information to go into short term.
- Information that is attended to is passed to STM.
- Here you must rehearse the information so you can remember it.
- Thereafter, rehearsed information is transferred to LTM.
- This can be retrieved from the LTM to use in the STM.
- If any of the steps above are not done then the information will be forgotten by decay or displaced.
What is the capacity of the sensory register?
Unknown, but very large
What is the capacity of the STM?
Limited 7+- 2 chunks of information
Who did the study into STM capacity?
Jacobs (1997)
and
Miller (1956)
What is the capacity of the LTM?
Unlimited In theory as long as you are living.
What is the duration of Sensory Registers?
Very limited 250ms to 0.5s
What is the duration of STM?
Limited 18 - 30 seconds
Who investigated the duration capacity of STM?
Peterson and Peterson 1959
What is the duration of LTM?
Lifelime / years
Who investigated the duration capacity of LTM?
Bahrick 1975
What type of coding does the sensory register follow?
Raw / unprocessed information from all 5 senses
What type of coding does the STM follow?
Acoustic (sound)
What type of coding does the LTM follow?
Semantic (meaning)
What did Miller research support?
Supporting the idea that our STM has a capacity of 7 +- 2 chunks of information
What does Baddeley’s research support?
Supports the notion of different types of encoding in STM and LTM.
What does Peterson and Peterson research support?
Support the idea of a limited duration in STM.
What does Bahrick research support?
Supports the idea of an unlimited duration in LTM
What was the aim of Millers study?
capacity of STM
What was Millers method?
Literature review of published investigations into perception and STM from the 1930s and 1950s
7+-2 chunks
What were Millers results?
Organising stimulus input into series of chunks enabled STM to cope with about 7 chunks.
When remembering 11 digits we chunk into groups so only remember 4 chunks instead of 11 individual digits
What did Miller conclude?
Organisation (or encoding) can extend the capacity of STM and enable more information to be stored there, albeit briefly. 2+- 7
What was the aim of Peterson and Peterson’s study?
To investigate how different short intervals containing an interference task affect the recall of items presented verbally, and to infer the duration of STM.
What was the method of Peterson and Peterson’s study?
- 24 male and female university students.
- 48 three‐consonant nonsense syllables spelled out letter by letter. - ‘trigrams’. + 3 digit numbers
- Researcher spelled the syllable out and then immediately said a three‐digit number.
- The participant had to count down backwards in either 3s or 4s (as instructed) from that number.
- This prevented repetition of the trigram by participant.
- At the end of a preset interval of between 3 and 18 seconds a red light went on and the participant had to recall the trigram.
What were Peterson and Peterson’s results?
The longer the interval the less accurate the recall.
At 3 seconds, around 80% of the trigrams were correctly recalled
Whereas at 18 seconds only 10% were correctly recalled.
What conclusion did Peterson and Peterson draw?
STM has a limited duration of approximately 18 seconds. Furthermore, if we are unable to rehearse information it will not be passed to LTM, providing further support for the MSM and the idea of discrete components.
What was the aim of Bahrick’s study?
To investigate the duration of LTM
What was Bahrick’s method?
392 American university graduates were shown photographs from their high school yearbook and for each photograph participants were given a group of names and asked to select the name that matched the photographs.
What were Bahrick’s results?
90% 14 years after graduating
60% names and faces 47 years after graduation.
What were Bahrick’s conclusions?
People could remember certain types of information, such as names and faces, for almost a lifetime. These results support the MSM and the idea that our LTM has a lifetime duration (at least 47 years), and is semantically encoded.
Why was Atkindon and Shiffrin’s model often criticised for being too simplistic?
Although they made a distinction between a sensory register (SR), short‐term memory (STM) and long‐term memory (LTM), they provided no detail of the memory processing within each store.
Who proposed the Working Memory Model?
Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
How did the WMM improve upon the MSM?
Divided STM into two separate subcomponents: the phonological loop and the visuo‐spatial sketchpad
State the types of LTM
Episodic Sematic Procedural
What are the two categories of long-term memory?
explicit (declarative) implicit (non‐declarative).
What are explicit memories?
Knowledge for events and facts (knowing that)
What are implicit memories?
Skilled behaviours (knowing how), which are largely unconscious.
What category of memory is episodic?
Explicit
What is episodic memory?
Memories of personal experiences (episodes). Such as your first day at school or when you last visited the doctor. These memories are more complex than you might consider and have three specific elements including: details of the event; the context; emotions, which are all interwoven to provide a single memory.
What determines the strength of episodic memories?
Determined by the strength of the emotions experienced when the memory is coded, and a conscious effort is required to retrieve them.
What part of the brain is associated by episodic memories?
Hippocampus
What category of memory is semantic memory part of?
Explicit
What is semantic memory?
Includes memory for knowledge, facts, concepts and meaning about the world around us. For example, knowing that London is the capital of England
Why do semantic memories start as episodic memories?
As we acquire knowledge based on our personal experiences, but they are not ‘time‐stamped’ in the same way nor do they remain closely associated with a particular event (episode).
What determines the strength of semantic memories?
Determined by the strength of the emotions experienced when the memory is coded, although semantic knowledge is often less personal in its nature and can relate to abstract concepts such as language and maths.
Is episodic or semantic memories stronger?
Semantic are stronger
What part of the brain is associated with semantic memories?
Temporal lobe
What category of memories is procedural memories part of?
Implicit
What are procedural memories?
Memory of how to perform certain tasks, actions or skills, such as swimming, reading and writing which have become ‘automatic’.
How are procedural memories acquired?
Through repetition and practice
What parts of the brain are associated with procedural memory?
Cerebellum and motor cortex
What did the Working Memory Model explain?
It is a way of explaining some of the research findings that could not be accounted for by the multi‐store model (MSM), for example dual‐task studies.
What three components make up the slave system of the working memory model?
Episodic buffer Phonological loop Visuo‐spatial sketchpad.
What is the boss of the WMM?
Central Executive
What does the central executive do?
It controls attention and directs information to the slave systems. The central executive can process information from any sensory modality.
What is the phonological loop?
A temporary storage system for verbal information (held in a speech‐based form) which has two components, the articulatory control process (the ‘inner voice’) and the phonological store (the ‘inner ear’).
What are the two components of the phonological loop?
Articulatory control process (the ‘inner voice’) Phonological store (the ‘inner ear’).
What does the articulatory control process do?
Inner voice Allows for subvocal repetition of acoustic information
What is the phonological state?
A temporary storage space for coding acoustic information, which has a limited capacity.