Cognitive Psychology - STM & Working Memory

Question 1

the types of memory indicated by boxes in models of memory

Answer 1

structural features

Question 2

dynamic processes associated with the structural features that can be controlled by the person and may differ from one task to another

Answer 2

control processes

Question 3

rehearsal is an example of _______ ______ that operate in short term memory

Answer 3

control processes

Question 4

repeating a telephone number in order to hold it in your mind after looking it up on the Internet.

Answer 4

rehearsal

Question 5

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

Answer 5

rehearsal

Question 6

Rachel looks up a number for Mienos Pizza on the internet, Rachel uses the control process of _________ _______ to focus on the number, so that the number enters her short term memory and she uses the control process of _______ to keep it there

Answer 6

• selective attention
• rehearsal

Question 7

the continued perception of a visual stimulus even after it is no longer present.

Answer 7

persistence of vision

Question 8

the Sparklers Trail and the Projectior’s shutter that occurs in movies are examples of what?

Answer 8

persistence of vision

Question 9

Sperling’s experiment was used to measure the capacity and duration of ______

Answer 9

sensory store

Question 10

Sperling concluded from his results that a short-lived sensory memory registers all or most of the information that hits our visual receptors, but that this information ________ within less than a second.

Answer 10

decays

Question 11

The brief sensory memory for visual stimuli, called _______ memory or the _______ icon (icon means “image”), corresponds to the sensory memory stage of Atkinson and Shiffrin’s modal model.

Answer 11

• iconic
• visual

Question 12

This persistence of sound, called ______ memory, lasts for a few seconds after presentation of the original stimulus

Answer 12

echoic

Question 13

According to measurements of digit span, the average capacity of STM is about ___
to ___ items

Answer 13

5-9

Question 14

Luck and Vogel concluded from their result using change detection that participants were able to retain about _____ items in their short-term memory.

Answer 14

4

Question 15

Miller (1956) introduced the concept of ______ to describe the fact that small units (like words) can be combined into larger meaningful units, like phrases, or even larger units, like sentences, paragraphs, or stories.

Answer 15

chunking

Question 16

a chunk has been described as a collection of elements that are _______ associated with one another but _______ associated with elements in other chunks

Answer 16

• strongly
• weakly

Question 17

chunking in terms of meaning increases our ability to hold information in STM to ____

Answer 17

20

Question 18

When referring to visual objects, ________ has been defined as visual features or details of the object that are stored in memory

Answer 18

information

Question 19

Should short-term memory capacity be measured in terms of “_______ of items” or “amount of detailed _________”

Answer 19

• number
• information

Question 20

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

Answer 20

working memory

Question 21

________ memory is concerned mainly with storing information for a brief period of
time (for example, remembering a phone number), whereas _______ memory is concerned with the manipulation ofinformation that occurs during complex cognition (for example, remembering numbers while reading a paragraph).

Answer 21

• short term
• working

Question 22

Baddeley concluded that working memory must be dynamic and must also consist of a number of components that can function separately. He proposed three components, what are they?

Answer 22

• the phonological loop
• the visuospatial sketch pad
• central executive

Question 23

the part of working memory that holds and processes verbal and auditory information

Answer 23

phonological loop

Question 24

a component of the phonological loop which has limited capacity and holds information for only a few seconds

Answer 24

phonological store

Question 25

the phonological loop consists of two components, what are they?

Answer 25

• phonological store
• articulatory rehearsal process,

Question 26

a process responsible for rehearsal that can keep items in the phonological store from decaying

Answer 26

articulatory rehearsal process

Question 27

(linked to speech production) acts like an inner voice rehearsing information from the phonological store.

Answer 27

articulatory rehearsal system

Question 28

in working memory, holds visual and spatial information.

Answer 28

visuospatial sketch pad

Question 29

When you form a picture in your mind or do tasks like solving a puzzle or finding your way around campus, you are using your …?

Answer 29

visuospatial sketch pad.

Question 30

when you are trying to remember a telephone number or a persons name you are using your ….?

Answer 30

phonological loop

Question 31

The _________ pulls information from long-term memory and coordinates the activity of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad by focusing on specific parts of a task and deciding how to ________ attention between different tasks.

Answer 31

• central executive
• divide

Question 32

the “traffic cop” of the working memory system

Answer 32

central executive

Question 33

the confusion of letters or words that sound similar

Answer 33

phonological similarity effect

Question 34

Conrad (1964) found that that when participants made errors, they were most likely to misidentify the target letter as another letter that sounded like the target. For example, “F” was most often misidentified as “S” or “X,” two letters that sound similar to “F,” but was not as likely to be confused with letters like “E,” that looked like the target. Thus, even though the participants saw the letters, the mistakes they made were based on the letters’ sounds. this result demonstrates what?

Answer 34

phonological similarity effect

Question 35

an effect that occurs when memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long words

Answer 35

word length effect

Question 36

prevention caused by rehearsing items to be remembered by repeating an irrelevant sound, such as “the, the, the . . .”

Answer 36

articulatory suppression

Question 37

repetition of an irrelevant sound results in a phenomenon called __________, which reduces memory because speaking interferes with rehearsal.

Answer 37

articulatory suppression

Question 37

The visuospatial sketch pad handles visual and spatial information and is therefore involved in the process of _____ —the creation of visual images in the mind in the absence of a physical visual stimulus.

Answer 37

visual imagery

Question 38

Baddeley describes the central executive as being a what?

Answer 38

attention controller

Question 39

The central executive is related to what?

Answer 39

executive attention

Question 40

function that determines how attention is focused on a specific task, how it is divided between two tasks, and how it is switched between tasks

Answer 40

central executive

Question 41

A typical behavior of patients with frontal lobe damage is _________—repeatedly performing the same action or thought even if it is not achieving the desired goal.

Answer 41

perseveration

Question 42

the ________ was proposed as an additional component of working by Baddeley

Answer 42

episodic buffer

Question 43

the component of working memory that serves as a “backup” store that communicates between both long term memory and the components of working memory

Answer 43

episodic buffer

Question 44

An example of animal research that explored the effect of frontal lobe damage on memory tested monkeys using the ___________ task, which required a monkey to hold information in working memory during a delay period

Answer 44

delayed response task

Question 45

The history of research on working memory and the brain has been dominated by one structure, what is it?

Answer 45

the prefrontal cortex (PFC)

Question 46

__________ is important for holding information for
brief periods of time

Answer 46

the prefrontal cortex (PFC)

Question 47

short term changes in neural network connectivity that has been hypothesised as a mechanism for holding information in working memory

Answer 47

activity silent working memory

Question 48

a set of functions, which allow people to regulate their behavior and attentional resources, and to resist the temptation to give in to impulses

Answer 48

cognitive control

Question 49

people who are easily distracted and are more likely to let distractions interfere with ongoing behaviour, and have difficulty dealing with temptation are behaviours reflecting what?

Answer 49

low cognitive control