Cognitive Psychology - STM & Working Memory Flashcards
the types of memory indicated by boxes in models of memory
structural features
dynamic processes associated with the structural features that can be controlled by the person and may differ from one task to another
control processes
rehearsal is an example of _______ ______ that operate in short term memory
control processes
repeating a telephone number in order to hold it in your mind after looking it up on the Internet.
rehearsal
the process of repeating a stimulus over and over, usually for the purpose of remembering it, that keeps the stimulus in short term memory
rehearsal
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
- selective attention
- rehearsal
the continued perception of a visual stimulus even after it is no longer present.
persistence of vision
the Sparklers Trail and the Projectior’s shutter that occurs in movies are examples of what?
persistence of vision
Sperling’s experiment was used to measure the capacity and duration of ______
sensory store
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.
decays
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.
- iconic
- visual
This persistence of sound, called ______ memory, lasts for a few seconds after presentation of the original stimulus
echoic
According to measurements of digit span, the average capacity of STM is about ___
to ___ items
5-9
Luck and Vogel concluded from their result using change detection that participants were able to retain about _____ items in their short-term memory.
4
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.
chunking
a chunk has been described as a collection of elements that are _______ associated with one another but _______ associated with elements in other chunks
- strongly
- weakly
chunking in terms of meaning increases our ability to hold information in STM to ____
20
When referring to visual objects, ________ has been defined as visual features or details of the object that are stored in memory
information
Should short-term memory capacity be measured in terms of “_______ of items” or “amount of detailed _________”
- number
- information
a limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning.
working memory
________ 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).
- short term
- working
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?
- the phonological loop
- the visuospatial sketch pad
- central executive
the part of working memory that holds and processes verbal and auditory information
phonological loop
a component of the phonological loop which has limited capacity and holds information for only a few seconds
phonological store
the phonological loop consists of two components, what are they?
- phonological store
- articulatory rehearsal process,
a process responsible for rehearsal that can keep items in the phonological store from decaying
articulatory rehearsal process
(linked to speech production) acts like an inner voice rehearsing information from the phonological store.
articulatory rehearsal system
in working memory, holds visual and spatial information.
visuospatial sketch pad
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 …?
visuospatial sketch pad.
when you are trying to remember a telephone number or a persons name you are using your ….?
phonological loop
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.
- central executive
- divide
the “traffic cop” of the working memory system
central executive
the confusion of letters or words that sound similar
phonological similarity effect
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?
phonological similarity effect
an effect that occurs when memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long words
word length effect
prevention caused by rehearsing items to be remembered by repeating an irrelevant sound, such as “the, the, the . . .”
articulatory suppression
repetition of an irrelevant sound results in a phenomenon called __________, which reduces memory because speaking interferes with rehearsal.
articulatory suppression
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.
visual imagery
Baddeley describes the central executive as being a what?
attention controller
The central executive is related to what?
executive attention
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
central executive
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.
perseveration
the ________ was proposed as an additional component of working by Baddeley
episodic buffer
the component of working memory that serves as a “backup” store that communicates between both long term memory and the components of working memory
episodic buffer
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
delayed response task
The history of research on working memory and the brain has been dominated by one structure, what is it?
the prefrontal cortex (PFC)
__________ is important for holding information for
brief periods of time
the prefrontal cortex (PFC)
short term changes in neural network connectivity that has been hypothesised as a mechanism for holding information in working memory
activity silent working memory
a set of functions, which allow people to regulate their behavior and attentional resources, and to resist the temptation to give in to impulses
cognitive control
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?
low cognitive control
