Chapter 5 Chapter Summary Flashcards
Memory is the process involved in…
Retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present
Five different types of memory
Sensory, short-term, episodic, semantic, and procedural
Three structural features of modal model of memory
Sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory
Additional feature of the modal model
Control processes, such as rehearsal and attentional strategies
What methods did Sperling use?
Whole report and partial report
What did Sperling aim to measure?
The capacity and time course of visual sensory memory
Visual sensory memory is also known as
Iconic memory
What is the duration of iconic memory?
Less than 1 second
Auditory sensory memory is also known as
Echoic memory
What is the duration of echoic memory?
About 2-4 seconds
STM is our window on the…
Present
Duration of STM
About 15-20 seconds
Digit span
A measure of the capacity of STM
The capacity of STM according to Miller
5-9 items
What have recent experiments determined about STM capacity?
Closer to 4 items
How can we expand the amount of information held in STM?
Chunking
Chunking
Small units are combined into larger, more meaningful units
Rather than describing STM capacity in terms of number of items, it has been suggested to describe STM in terms of…
Amount of information
Experiment by Alvarez and Cavanagh
Includes stimuli ranging from simple to complex, and findings support the idea that STM should be described in terms of amount of information rather than number of items
Why did Baddeley revise the STM component of the modal model?
To deal with dynamic processes that unfold over time and can’t be explained by a single short-term process
What is the main difference in Baddeley’s revision of the modal model?
Working memory replaces STM
Working memory
A limited-capacity system for storage and manipulation of information in complex tasks
What are the three components of working memory?
The phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the central executive
Phonological loop
Holds auditory or verbal information
Visuospatial sketch pad
Holds visual and spatial information
Central executive
Coordinates the action of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad
The following effects can be explained in terms of operation of the phonological loop
- Phonological similarity effect
- Word-length effect
- Articulatory suppression
Mental rotation experiment
Illustrates visual imagery, which is one of the functions of the visuospatial sketch pad
Sala’s visual recall task
Used visual imagery to estimate the capacity for working memory
Brooks’ “F” experiment
Showed that two tasks can be handled simultaneously if one involves the visuospatial sketchpad and the other involves the phonological loop, but performance decreases if one component of working memory is called on to deal with two tasks simultaneously
Central executive
Coordinates how information is used by the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad; it can be thought of as an attention controller
Patients with frontal lobe damage
Have trouble controlling their attention, as illustrated by the phenomenon of preservation
The working memory model has been updated to include an additional component called the…
Episodic buffer
Episodic buffer
Helps connect working memory with LTM and which has a greater capacity and can hold information longer than the phonological loop or the visuospatial sketch pad
Delayed-response task
Demonstrated that behaviors that depend on working memory can be disrupted by damage to the prefrontal cortex
Current research on the physiology of working memory has introduced two big ideas:
- Information can be contained in patterns of neural connectivity
- Working memory involves many areas of the brain
Reading span test
Developed to measure working memory capacity; found that high-capacity working memory is associated with better reading comprehension and higher SAT scores
Vogel’s ERP experiments demonstrate differences in how…
The central executive operates for participants with high and low-capacity working memory and concluded that there are differences in people’s ability to allocate attention
People with _________ are better at “tuning out” distractors than people with ________
High-capacity working memory; low-capacity working memory
There is a relation between ____________ and ____________, which is involved in dealing with ____________
Working memory capacity; cognitive control; temptation
