Chapter 5 Short-Term and Working Memory Quiz 1 Flashcards
Activity-silent working memory
Short-term changes in neural network connectivity that has been hypothesized as a mechanism for holding information in working memory.
Articulatory rehearsal process
Rehearsal process involved in working memory that keeps items in the phonological store from decaying.
Articulatory suppression
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.
Central executive
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.
Change detection
Detecting differences between pictures or displays that are presented one after another.
Chunk
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.
Chunking
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.
Control processes
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.
Decay
Process by which information is lost from memory due to the passage of time.
Delayed partial report method
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.
Delayed-response task
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.
Digit span
The number of digits a person can remember. Digit span is used as a measure of the capacity of short-term memory.
Echoic memory
Brief sensory memory for auditory stimuli that lasts for a few seconds after a stimulus is extinguished.
Episodic buffer
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.
Event-related potential (ERP)
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.
Iconic memory / Visual Icon
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.
Memory
The processes involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present.
Mental rotation
Rotating an image of an object in the mind.
Modal model of memory
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.
Partial report method
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.
Perseveration
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.
Persistence of vision
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.
Phonological loop
The part of working memory that holds and processes verbal and auditory information.
Phonological similarity effect
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.
Phonological store
Component of the phonological loop of working memory that holds a limited amount of verbal and auditory information for a few seconds.
Reading span
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.
Reading span test
The test used by Daneman and Carpenter to measure reading span.
Recall
Subjects are asked to report stimuli they have previously seen or heard.
Rehearsal
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.
Sensory memory
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.
Short-term memory (STM)
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.
Structural features
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.
Visual imagery
A type of mental imagery involving vision, in which an image is experienced in the absence of a visual stimulus.
Visuospatial sketch pad
The part of working memory that holds and processes visual and spatial information.
Whole report method
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.
Word length effect
The notion that it is more difficult to remember a list of long words than a list of short words.
Working memory
A limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning.
Summary 1
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
Summary 2
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
Summary 3
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.
Summary 4
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.
Summary 5
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.
Summary 6
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.
Summary 7
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
Summary 8
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
Summary 9
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.
Summary 10
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
Summary 11
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.
Summary 12
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.
Summary 13
Phineas Gage’s accident brought some possible functions of the prefrontal cortex to people’s attention.
Summary 14
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.
Summary 15
There are neurons in the prefrontal cortex that fire to presentation of a stimulus and continue firing as this stimulus is held in memory.
Summary 16
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.
Summary 17
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
Summary 18
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.
Summary 19
There is a relation between working memory capacity and cognitive control, which is involved in dealing with temptation.
