Cognitive neuroscience of memory Flashcards
What are the stages in memory processing?
- Encoding of information into memory
- Storage of information into memory systems
- Retrieval of information from memory
What is the multi-store model for memory?
- Sensory memory: Brief store of sensory information that does not need to be attended to.
- Short-term store: Holds information for longer period of time that requires attention (limited capacity).
- Long-term store: Information from short-terms store passes into this and can be held for indefinite amount of time (virtually unlimited capacity).

Who proposed the multi-store model?
Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968)
What type of information is stored in sensory stores?
- All information detected by sensory systems.
- Stores are independent of attention.
What are the types of sensory stores?
- Iconic memory: Visual information
- Echoic memory: Auditory information
What was the experiment on iconic memory performed by Sperling?
- Subjects were presented with 3x4 grid of random letters for 50 ms.
- An auditory cue was then played (high, medium, low) after set time intervals, prompting subject to recall all letters in line indicated.
- This was called a “partial report” condition.
What is the duration of iconic memory?
~1 second
What was the experiment on echoic memory performed by Treisman?
2 different audio messages were played in the ears of subjects while the subject was asked to repeat out loud (i.e. attend) to the message in one ear while ignoring the message in the other.
What is the duration of echoic memory?
~2 seconds
What is short-term memory?
STM is used to hold information ‘in mind’ for short periods of time while performing complex tasks.
What is the capacity of short-term memory?
7 ± 2 chunks
What is the duration of short-term memory?
A few seconds
What is loss of information from short-term memory mediated by?
Displacement by interference, with no contribution from temporal decay
What was the experiment on short term memory performed by Waugh & Norman?
- Subjects were presented with a string of 16 numbers under 2 conditions:
- Slowly with long intervals between numbers
- Quickly with short intervals between numbers - Subjects were then asked to count backwards and then recall the numbers in digit string.
What was the purpose of the Waugh & Norman experiment?
Showed that loss of information from short term memory was due to displacement, not decay.
What are the criticisms of the multi-store model for short-term memory?
- According to the model, memory processing is linear, in the sense that information needs to pass through each store before entering the next. Evidence against this comes from the fact that in patient KF, who suffered brain damage leading to a short-term memory deficit, but no long-term memory deficit.
- Another assumption made by the model is that each type of memory uses a uniform store for all information. Evidence for this again came from KF who had worse STM deficits for auditory and numerical information than visual information, suggesting different stores for these types of information.
What is the working memory?
- Central executive: Modality-free and is responsible for selecting information from the 2 associated stores.
- Phonological loop: Stores auditory information (and auditory representation of other forms of information).
- Visuo-spatial sketchpad: Stores visual and spatial information.

What is the phonological similarity effect?
Subjects were much better at remembering phonologically distinct words than phonologically similar words, implying that this information was stored in an auditory-dependent manner.
What is the explanation for the phonological similarity effect?
There is confusion between the similar sounding words in the phonological store, making recall much more difficult.
What is the word length effect?
- Subjects were much better at remembering shorter words compared to longer words.
- In addition, individuals who spoke languages where digits could be spoken much more quickly had longer digit spans compared to English.
- This effect was eliminated when articulatory suppression was used (subjects were asked to silently mouth digits).
What is the explanation for the work length effect?
- All information regarding language needs to be converted to auditory information in order to be stored into working memory, a process carried out by the “articulatory control process” .
- The longer the words are, the longer it takes for them to be spoken, the fewer times they can be rehearsed in a given time interval, the less likely they are to be remembered.
- When articulatory suppression was used, the articulatory control process was occupied so that it cannot be used for rehearsal, decreasing performance of both long and short word recall equally as short words no longer benefit over long words via this process.
What are the components of the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
- Visual cache: All visual information regarding form and colour pass into this first. Information here can be displaced by new visual information.
- Inner scribe: Visual information passes into this component where it can be rehearsed. This component also used for spatial processing.

What are the similarities between the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
Phonological loop = Visual cache
Articulatory control process = Inner scribe
What is the recency effect?
Items at the end of a list are often remebered much better than items in the middle of the list


