Cognitive Flashcards
What does the Sensory memory store with?
- visual and auditory information that passes through our senses quickly
- doesn’t last long, spontaneous decay
What are the 3 processes of memory?
- Encoding 2. Storage 3. Retrieval
Who proposed the Multi-store model of memory?
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
What are the parts of the multi-store model?
stimulus from environment - sensory register - short term store - long term store
Explain the sensory register.
- iconic store = visual
- echoic store = sound/acoustic
- duration less than half a second
- high capacity- unable to measure
- encoded- attention, means info goes into further memory system
Explain the short term memory store.
- capacity Miller’s 1956 magic number 7(+-)2
- Baddeley: encoded acoustically
- Peterson&Peterson: between 18 & 30 secs
- maintenance rehearsal = into long term memory
Explain peterson and peterson’s research on duration of stm
sample of 24 psychology students read meaningless trigrams (e.g. THG, XWV) then counted backwards in threes or fours from a specific number to prevent rehearsal, then recall the trigrams
found that the longer the interval the less accurate the recall, 3 seconds 80% of the trigrams correctly recalled whereas 18 seconds only 10% correctly recalled, at 30 seconds 2% were recalled
Explain the long term memory store.
potentially permanent
- unlimited capacity
- Baddeley: encoding is semantic
- lifetime duration (Bahrick et al)
Explain Bahrick 1975 research on the duration of ltm
392 american university graduates were shown pictures of faces from people in their yearbooks. 15 years on from graduation 90% could recall who the person was, and 50 years on 60% could, showing long term memory has the ability to store information over decades
What is an issue with the Multi-Store Memory model?
too simplistic, more parts within stores for example, stm, KF case study: visual ok but verbal not showing more than one type of stm
Who proposed the working memory model and when?
Baddeley and Hitch in 1974
What is the overview of the working memory model?
-central control system (central executive) assisted by 3 ‘slave’ subsystems (phonological loop, episodic buffer and visuospatial sketchpad)
What is the central executive and give the duration, capacity and encoding of it?
main control centre
- attentional process that focuses, divides and switches our limited attention
- monitors incoming data, allocates to sub-systems
- very limited capacity
- no storage
What is the phonological loop?
- deals with auditory information
- acoustic encoding
- preserves order of info
-made up of the phonological store (holds info in speech form for 2 secs) and articulatory process (rehearse info)
Who studied word length effect?
Baddeley, Thompson & Buchanan 1975
short word lists were recalled better than long word lists, and explain that this is due to long words requiring more time to rehearse, meaning the 2 second retention period was over before the majority of words could be subvocally rehearsed
What is the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
slave subsystem
- temporarily store visual and spatial info
- Logie 1995: visual cache (stores visual images), inner scribe (rehearses layout info)
What is the episodic buffer?
maintains time sequencing
combines info from other subsystems (PL and VSS) with long term memory -links to wider cognitive processes
What are strengths of the Working Memory model?
-support from lab experiments
-dual task performance studies (Baddeley et al 1975)
visual & verbal task done at same time = performance good, same as how they performed doing them separate
-2 visual tasks or 2 verbal tasks at the same time = performance declined -shows the tasks competing are for same slave subsystems
What are opposing arguments of the Working Memory model?
lack of clarity over the central executive -most important but least understood
-contains its own separate subsystems but can’t understand what they are
therefore working memory model not fully explained
What is a differing theory for the working memory model?
the multi-store model
What is an application of the Working Memory model?
understanding amnesia
-Patient KF: amnesia after brain injury, poor STM auditory, good visual memory but phonological loop damaged
-shows amnesia is not a global disorder that affects everyone in the same way
Who studied long term memory?
Tulving 1972
What are the 3 parts of the long term memory?
Episodic -Procedural -semantic
What is the procedural memory?
remembering how to do things without consciously thinking -instant recall
What is the episodic memory?
information about events we have personally experienced -times, places, associated emotions -unique to the individual
What is semantic memory?
information about non-personal events, social and cultural norms, language and general knowledge of the world
Strength of Tulving’s long term memory explanation
STRENGTH: HM case study supports it, episodic severely affected, semantic relatively intact (could remember previous ideas and opinions but couldnt form new ones) procedural memory still able to develop (repetition of tracing a star while looking in a mirror improved in accuracy each time), supports the idea of different memory stores
Counter argument of using the case study of HM to support Tulving’s ltm explanation
unable to test his memory before damage, lack of control affects validity
Weakness of Tulving’s long term memory explanation
There is now evidence that the episodic and semantic memory are interconnected, the semantic can exist without the episodic but not vice versa, showing that long-term memory is more complicated than tulvings explanation
Who proposed the reconstructive memory model?
Bartlett 1932
What is reconstructive memory?
unconsciously filling in the gaps in your memory with schemas (set of beliefs and opinions about the world)
What is reconstruction?
active process that automatically fills gaps in memory using mental schemas
a memory that is retrieved is unlikely to be the exact same as the original