Cognitive - Memory Flashcards
What 3 things must a normally functioning memory system be capable of?
1) Encoding (registering / acquiring information)
2) Storing (retaining information over time)
3) Retrieving (recovering information when required)
What are the 3 assumed types of memory?
Sensory memory
Short term memory
Long term memory
What is sensory memory?
A storage system that holds information in a relatively unprocessed form
How long does sensory memory last?
For fractions of a second after a physical stimulus is no longer available
What is the function of the sensory type of storage?
To allow information from successive eye-fixations to last for a long enough time to give our visual environment continuity
What is the capacity of Short Term Memory?
7 pieces of information, plus or minus 2
What 4 factors influence the capacity of Short Term Memory?
Influence of Long Term Memory
Reading aloud
Rhythmic grouping
Pronunciation time
What was the conclusion of Braddeley’s capacity of Short Term Memory experiment in 1975?
That immediate memory span represents the number of items of whatever length that can be articulated in approximately 2 seconds
What psychologists looked at the duration of Short Term Memory and how did they test it?
Peterson & Peterson
Participants were shown a trigram and then asked after increasing periods of time to recall the trigram (after counting backwards in threes for the pause).
What were the conclusions of Peterson & Peterson’s experiments?
That Short Term Memory doesn’t last any longer than 20 seconds maximum
What 3 factors effect the duration of Short Term Memory?
Maintenance rehearsal
Deliberate intention to recall
Amount of information to be retained
Who and in what year carried out the experiment to test whether Short Term Memory uses acoustic coding?
Conrad in 1964
What form of encoding does Short Term Memory use?
Visual, audible or semantic, although audible was proven most common in Conrad’s experiment
What was Conrad’s experiment?
He studied acoustic confusion by showing that people who were told to recall a series of letters that don’t sound similar did a better job that people who were asked to recall letters sounding similar, e.g P, C and D
What 2 factors effect encoding in Short Term Memory?
The sounds of words
Other ways of encoding
