Lecture 10: Working Memory

Question 1

Working Memory

Answer 1

The part of short-term memory that is concerned with immediate conscious perceptual and linguistic processing

Question 2

Working Memory in Mental Arithmetic

Answer 2

Remembering what is in the 1’s place and 10’s place when adding 3-digit numbers

Question 2

Measure of Working Memory Span

Answer 2

The number of last words in a sentence you can remember from a list of sentences

Question 2

Raven’s Progressive Matrices

Answer 2

A study where participants had to try and figure out what should go on the bottom right of a series of shapes while remembering what is in each row to fit the pattern

Question 3

Raven’s Matrices Score Trends

Answer 3

The scores for Raven’s matrices gets worse as we get older, and people with better WM do better

Question 3

Aging and Working Memory

Answer 3

WM is worse the older one is

Question 4

Interference

Answer 4

Asking one to do a WM task, such as RNG, along with a syllogistic task will result in difficulty in the syllogistic task

Question 5

Syllogistic Reasoning

Answer 5

“All A’s are B’s and all B’s are C’s then all A’s are C’s,” depends on working memory

Question 6

Reading Comprehension and Working Memory

Answer 6

We remember words that came earlier in the sentence in order to comprehend the passage

Question 7

Double Dissociations

Answer 7

Having people do two different tasks one relying on WM and one on LTM. One person who has damaged WM does well at LTM tasks, and vice versa, allowing us to conclude that these two things depend at least in part on different underlying systems

Question 8

Primacy Effect

Answer 8

People tend to remember the first few things in a list, a LTM process

Question 8

Serial Position Curve

Answer 8

Performance at beginning and end of the list is higher up than the middle

Question 9

Baddeley’s 3-Part WM Model

Answer 9

Visuospatial Buffer, central executive, and phonological buffer/loop

Question 9

Recency Effect

Answer 9

People tend to remember the last few things in a list, a WM process

Question 10

Visuospatial Buffer

Answer 10

• Visuospatial Sketchpad/Buffer: The component of WM devoted to visual imagery and spatial processing
  ○ Information can enter either through visual perception or from long-term memory
• Information can be treated like a percept: scanned rotated, etc.

Question 11

Central Executive

Answer 11

Supervise attention, planning/coordination, monitoring

Question 12

Phonological Loop Evidence

Answer 12

Acoustic confusion, acoustic similarity effect, and articulatory suppression

Question 13

Phonological Buffer/Loop

Answer 13

Language sounds are stored in short term memory, and are refreshed by saying them to yourself to remember them

Question 14

Acoustic Confusion

Answer 14

Giving people lists of things that are acoustically confusable will remember them worse than ones that are not confusable

Question 15

Acoustic Similarity Effect

Answer 15

Giving peoples list of words that have the same meaning does not cause confusion, only sound does

Question 16

Articulatory Suppression

Answer 16

Frequently saying the word “the” when reading a list makes people remember the list worse because you cannot rehearse the words in the list

Question 17

Chunks

Answer 17

Chunking letters helps to remember things when they stand for something/are familiar. Ex. remembering the number 122436 as “12, 24, 36”

Question 17

Phonological Loop PET Evidence

Answer 17

Broca’s and Parietal light up in the left brain

Question 18

Behavioral Double Dissociation: Brooks gave a visuospatial and phonological task

Answer 18

○ Had to remember a sentence and say how many nouns there were
○ Also a shape with the words yes and no around it
○ Gave a vocal or visuospatial response
- Mixing up vocal and visuospatial results in a much shorter completion time

Question 18

Time Effects

Answer 18

○ Word Length: People are much better at remembering short words than long words, they can rehearse them more
○ Speed of Speech: People who talk faster have a better working memory
- WM Span is large for… Words that are pronounced quickly, people who speak quickly, and languages where words can be pronounced quickly

Question 19

Visuospatial Sketchpad PET Evidence

Answer 19

Prefrontal and occipital light up in the right brain