2) Structures of memory Flashcards
What does the Multi-store model describe? (3 things)
- There are three memory stores, and each has different encoding, capacity and duration.
- Information moves between these stores through either attention or rehearsal
- It shows that STM and LTM are completely different kinds of memory store
What is Sensory memory?
Holds information from the senses for a short time and has a large capacity
Paying attention to information transfers it to the STM
What is Short Term memory?
It’s a temporary memory store with a limited capacity of between five and nine items or chunks of information, lasting up to 30 seconds
What is rehearsal and what are its effects?
Maintenance rehearsal keeps information in STM
Prolonged maintenance rehearsal transfer information from STM to LTM
Retrieval transfers material from LTM to STM
What is Long Term Memory?
Encoded by meaning, this is a permanent memory store with an unlimited capacity and information can be stored up to a lifetime
What is coding of your sensory memory? Give an example as well.
Sensory memory is a storage place at your eyes/ears /fingertips/nose. These memories are coded (or encoded) in a form appropriate to the sense
E.g. memories at your eyes are encoded visually and memories at your ears are encoded acoustically
What is capacity of your sensory memory? Give an example as well.
All the information from your world passes through your five senses
E.g. the retina in your eyes (which record visual input) contains millions of cells. Therefore, we say that sensory memory has a very high capacity
What is duration of your sensory memory?
Information remains in your sensory memory only very briefly: less than half a second for visual sensory memory (unless you pay attention to it)
What are Primacy and recency effects?
Words at the beginning are remembered more (rehearsed, so in LTM)
Words at the end are remembered more (heard recently, so in STM)
What is the aim of Murdock’s serial position curve study?
To see if memory of words was affected by where words are located in the list
What is the aim of Murdock’s serial position curve study?
Words from the 4,000 most common words in English were chosen randomly
Participants listened to 20 word lists with 10 to 40 words on them
They recalled the words after each list
What are the results of Murdock’s serial position curve study?
Recall was related to the position of the word in the list
Murdock found higher recall for the first few words (primacy effect) and the last words (recency effect) in the list, compared to recall of the words in the middle of the list
What is the conclusion of Murdock’s serial position curve study?
This shows the serial position effect: describing the tendency of people to recall the first and last words in a list of words best. (it is the position of the words that influences the likelihood of their recall)
These results support the multi-store-model as the first few words were rehearsed, so are in LTM, and the last few words are in STM
