Chapter 5 Short-Term and Working Memory Quiz 1

Question 1

Activity-silent working memory

Answer 1

Short-term changes in neural network connectivity that has been hypothesized as a mechanism for holding information in working memory.

Question 2

Articulatory rehearsal process

Answer 2

Rehearsal process involved in working memory that keeps items in the phonological store from decaying.

Question 3

Articulatory suppression

Answer 3

Interference with operation of the phonological loop that occurs when a person repeats an irrelevant word such as “the” while carrying out a task that requires the phonological loop.

Question 4

Central executive

Answer 4

The part of working memory that coordinates the activity of the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketch pad. The “traffic cop” of the working memory system.

Question 5

Change detection

Answer 5

Detecting differences between pictures or displays that are presented one after another.

Question 6

Chunk

Answer 6

Used in connection with the idea of chunking in memory. A chunk is a collection of elements that are strongly associated with each other but weakly associated with elements in other chunks.

Question 7

Chunking

Answer 7

Combining small units into larger ones, such as when individual words are combined into a meaningful sentence. Chunking can be used to increase the capacity of memory.

Question 8

Control processes

Answer 8

In Atkinson and Shiffrin’s modal model of memory, active processes that can be controlled by the person and that may differ from one task to another. Rehearsal is an example of a control process.

Question 9

Decay

Answer 9

Process by which information is lost from memory due to the passage of time.

Question 10

Delayed partial report method

Answer 10

Procedure used in Sperling’s experiment on the properties of the visual icon, in which participants were instructed to report only some of the stimuli in a briefly presented display. A cue tone that was delayed for a fraction of a second after the display was extinguished indicated which part of the display to report.

Question 11

Delayed-response task

Answer 11

A task in which information is provided, a delay is imposed, and then memory is tested. This task has been used to study short-term memory by testing monkeys’ ability to hold information about the location of a food reward during a delay.

Question 12

Digit span

Answer 12

The number of digits a person can remember. Digit span is used as a measure of the capacity of short-term memory.

Question 13

Echoic memory

Answer 13

Brief sensory memory for auditory stimuli that lasts for a few seconds after a stimulus is extinguished.

Question 14

Episodic buffer

Answer 14

A component added to Baddeley’s original working memory model that serves as a “backup” store that communicates with both long-term memory and the components of working memory. It holds information longer and has greater capacity than the phonological loop or visuospatial sketch pad.

Question 15

Event-related potential (ERP)

Answer 15

An electrical potential, recorded with disc electrodes on a person’s scalp, that reflects the response of many thousands of neurons near the electrode that fire together. The ERP consists of a number of waves that occur at different delays after a stimulus is presented and that can be linked to different functions. For example, the N400 wave occurs in response to a sentence that contains a word that doesn’t fit the meaning of the sentence.

Question 16

Iconic memory / Visual Icon

Answer 16

Brief sensory memory for visual stimuli that lasts for a fraction of a second after a stimulus is extinguished. This corresponds to the sensory memory stage of the modal model of memory.

Question 17

Memory

Answer 17

The processes involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present.

Question 18

Mental rotation

Answer 18

Rotating an image of an object in the mind.

Question 19

Modal model of memory

Answer 19

The model proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin that describes memory as a mechanism that involves processing information through a series of stages, including short-term memory and long-term memory. It is called the modal model because it contained features of many models that were being proposed in the 1960s.

Question 20

Partial report method

Answer 20

Procedure used in Sperling’s experiment on the properties of the visual icon, in which participants were instructed to report only some of the stimuli in a briefly presented display. A cue tone immediately after the display was extinguished indicated which part of the display to report.

Question 21

Perseveration

Answer 21

Difficulty in switching from one behavior to another, which can hinder a person’s ability to solve problems that require flexible thinking. Perseveration is observed in cases in which the prefrontal cortex has been damaged.

Question 22

Persistence of vision

Answer 22

The continued perception of light for a fraction of a second after the original light stimulus has been extinguished. Perceiving a trail of light from a moving sparkler is caused by the persistence of vision.

Question 23

Phonological loop

Answer 23

The part of working memory that holds and processes verbal and auditory information.

Question 24

Phonological similarity effect

Answer 24

An effect that occurs when letters or words that sound similar are confused. For example, T and P are two similar-sounding letters that could be confused.

Question 25

Phonological store

Answer 25

Component of the phonological loop of working memory that holds a limited amount of verbal and auditory information for a few seconds.

Question 26

Reading span

Answer 26

Measure used by Daneman and Carpenter to determine individual differences in working memory. It is the number of 13- to 16-word sentences that a person can read and then correctly remember the last words of all of the sentences.

Question 27

Reading span test

Answer 27

The test used by Daneman and Carpenter to measure reading span.

Question 28

Recall

Answer 28

Subjects are asked to report stimuli they have previously seen or heard.

Question 29

Rehearsal

Answer 29

The process of repeating a stimulus over and over, usually for the purpose of remembering it, that keeps the stimulus active in short-term memory.

Question 30

Sensory memory

Answer 30

A brief stage of memory that holds information for seconds or fractions of a second. It is the first stage in the modal model of memory.

Question 31

Short-term memory (STM)

Answer 31

A memory mechanism that can hold a limited amount of information for a brief period of time, usually around 30 seconds, unless there is rehearsal (such as repeating a telephone number) to maintain the information in short-term memory. Short-term memory is one of the stages in the modal model of memory.

Question 32

Structural features

Answer 32

The underlying principle that governs the solution to a problem—for example, in the radiation problem, needing high intensity to fix something surrounded by material that could be damaged by high intensity.

Question 33

Visual imagery

Answer 33

A type of mental imagery involving vision, in which an image is experienced in the absence of a visual stimulus.

Question 34

Visuospatial sketch pad

Answer 34

The part of working memory that holds and processes visual and spatial information.

Question 35

Whole report method

Answer 35

Procedure used in Sperling’s experiment on the properties of the visual icon, in which participants were instructed to report all of the stimuli they saw in a brief presentation.

Question 36

Word length effect

Answer 36

The notion that it is more difficult to remember a list of long words than a list of short words.

Question 37

Working memory

Answer 37

A limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning.

Question 38

Summary 1

Answer 38

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 are sensory, short-term, episodic, semantic, and procedural

Question 39

Summary 2

Answer 39

Atkinson and Shiffrin’s modal model of memory consists of three structural features: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Another feature of the model is control processes such as rehearsal and attentional strategies

Question 40

Summary 3

Answer 40

Sperling used two methods, whole report and partial report, to determine the capacity and time course of visual sensory memory. The duration of visual sensory memory (iconic memory) is less than 1 second, and the duration of auditory sensory memory (echoic memory) is about 2–4 seconds.

Question 41

Summary 4

Answer 41

Short-term memory is our window on the present. Brown and Peterson and Peterson determined that the duration of STM is about 15–20 seconds.

Question 42

Summary 5

Answer 42

Digit span is one measure of the capacity of short-term memory. According to George Miller’s classic “Seven, Plus or Minus Two” paper, the capacity of STM is five to nine items. According to more recent experiments, the capacity is about four items. The amount of information held in STM can be expanded by chunking, in which small units are combined into larger, more meaningful units. The memory performance of the runner S.F. provides an example of chunking.

Question 43

Summary 6

Answer 43

It has been suggested that rather than describing short-term memory capacity in terms of number of items, it should be described in terms of amount of information. An experiment by Alvarez and Cavanagh, using stimuli ranging from simple to complex, supports this idea.

Question 44

Summary 7

Answer 44

Baddeley revised the short-term memory component of the modal model in order to deal with dynamic processes that unfold over time and can’t be explained by a single short-term process. In this new model, working memory replaces STM

Question 45

Summary 8

Answer 45

Working memory is a limited-capacity system for storage and manipulation of information in complex tasks. It consists of three components: the phonological loop, which holds auditory or verbal information; the visuospatial sketch pad, which holds visual and spatial information; and the central executive, which coordinates the action of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad

Question 46

Summary 9

Answer 46

The following effects can be explained in terms of operation of the phonological loop: (a) phonological similarity effect, (b) word-length effect, and (c) articulatory suppression.

Question 47

Summary 10

Answer 47

Shepard and Metzler’s mental rotation experiment illustrates visual imagery, which is one of the functions of the visuospatial sketch pad. Della Sala’s visual recall task used visual imagery to estimate the capacity of working memory. Brooks’s “F” experiment showed that two tasks can be handled simultaneously if one involves the visuospatial sketch pad and the other involves the phonological loop. Performance decreases if one component of working memory is called on to deal with two tasks simultaneously

Question 48

Summary 11

Answer 48

The 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 perseveration.

Question 49

Summary 12

Answer 49

The working memory model has been updated to include an additional component called the episodic buffer, which 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.

Question 50

Summary 13

Answer 50

Phineas Gage’s accident brought some possible functions of the prefrontal cortex to people’s attention.

Question 51

Summary 14

Answer 51

Behaviors that depend on working memory can be disrupted by damage to the prefrontal cortex. This has been demonstrated by testing monkeys on the delayed-response task.

Question 52

Summary 15

Answer 52

There are neurons in the prefrontal cortex that fire to presentation of a stimulus and continue firing as this stimulus is held in memory.

Question 53

Summary 16

Answer 53

Current research on the physiology of working memory has introduced the idea that (a) information can be contained in patterns of neural connectivity and (b) working memory involves many areas of the brain.

Question 54

Summary 17

Answer 54

Daneman and Carpenter developed a test to measure working memory capacity called the reading span test. Using this test to determine individual differences in working memory capacity, they found that high-capacity working memory is associated with better reading comprehension and higher SAT scores. Other research has confirmed and extended these findings

Question 55

Summary 18

Answer 55

Vogel and coworkers used the ERP to 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. Other experiments have shown that people with high-capacity working memory are better at “tuning out” distractors than people with low-capacity working memory.

Question 56

Summary 19

Answer 56

There is a relation between working memory capacity and cognitive control, which is involved in dealing with temptation.