Lecture 2 Flashcards
What does it mean by representation limits in terms of WM?
Limits on input and output, only so much you can take in -in terms of sensory inputs (touch, feel hear)
What is the Phonological Loop?
It represents a brief store of mainly verbal information together with a rehearsal mechanism.
What is the main evidence for the phonological loop?
- Phonological Similarity Effect
- Articulate Suppression
What factors influence capacity of WM?
Information: variety, input modality, familiarity
Sensory-specific memories, long term memory
What is the phonological similarity effect?
- Give a sequence of letters sounding similar or different to eachother - easier to remember dissimilar sounding sequence
- Memory code is phonological (based on the sound of the letters
- Due to ability to rehearse speech inside your head, more confused rehearsing similar sounding letters
What is articulatory suppression?
Asks people to repeat an irrelevant word over again whilst trying to remember a sequence of words
- Generating irrelevant speech leads to poorer results
- Moreover linked with speech output
What did Conrad (1964) Evidence?
Acoustic Coding:
- Made a table looking at combinations and pairs of letters
- Made a confusion matrix, how likely pairing letters will be confusing
- Higher number more likely to make an error
- If they sound similar they don’t remember them as well
What did Baddeley (1966) evidence?
Phonological similarity effects at short delays, semantic similarity effects at long delays
Long delay don’t get sound based evidence, you get semantic effects - words with similar meanings you get confusions at long delays
What is Crowder’s (1972) suffix effect?
Presented a sequence of words then heard a buzzer or word they had to ignore
- Heard a buzzer performance was unaffected
- Speech suffix (irrelevant word) - massively impaired as few items in the list
- NOT just any sound but a speech sound effects performance
Word Length Effect
Short word list is easier than the list of long words even though there is the same number of words
What does speech rate correlate with
memory span
Faster speech means larger memory capacity
How is the phonological loop required for learning vocabulary?
If you learn a new word you had to remember the sound sequence
You need the ability to rehearse verbal sequences to like with the ability to repeat new words
What does the word length effect tell us about how
information is lost from the phonological store and
how it is maintained in the store?
Memory system relies on subvocal rehearsal and can retain about 2 seconds of speech
Faster you rehearse the more you can remember
How does Articulatory suppression affect visual and verbal presentation of sequences differently?
For visual presentation: (repeating an irrelevant word) removes word length and phonological similarity effects
For auditory: removes word length effect but not phonological similarity
How is verbal short-term memory affected by visual presentation compared with auditory presentation of word sequences to remember?
Visual: Subvocal rehearsal is used to translate visual input into a phonological code
Auditory: Auditory input is direct to phonological store, but subvocal
rehearsal is needed for the word length effect
Dumb version: Because you are hearing them there is no need for sound base code as this is already done, but because the word length effect is about rehearsal inside your head you can’t do that under auditory suppression
Explain in simple terms the relationship between sound , the phonological store and inner speech
Sound goes directly into the system as it is a sound based code
Inner speech process able to hold 2 seconds of speech
Who first investigated the effect of irrelevant speech on the phonological loop?
Salamé and Baddeley (1982)
What is the irrelevant speech effect?
- Immediate, verbal serial recall is disrupted by Irrelevant Speech
- Irrelevant Speech effect is greater for phonologically similar speech
E.g. remember visual digit sequence 3-9-6-5-1-8-4
while hearing: sore tee thrive heaven fix wine gate
*Under what condition is the irrelevant speech effect not apparent at all?
20 What could influence it to disappear?
1) Effect does not appear with continuous white noise
- Speech specific effect with direct access to phonological store
2) Effect disappears with articulatory suppression
What concepts does the irrelevant speech effect back?
The phonological store plus speech based
rehearsal system
Discuss briefly the concept of the phonological loop
- Thought to hold about 2 seconds worth of speech
- Thought to be affected by decay over time unless prevented by rehearsal
- Is disrupted by articulatory suppression and by irrelevant speech
What is the role of the phonological loop in learning a language?
Short-term verbal memory impairments -impairments in vocabulary learning. If you can remember things in the correct order you wont be able to remember words.
Articulatory suppression impairs vocabulary learning
Non-word repetition predicts vocabulary in young children
Poor functioning of phonological loop in
children with language difficulties
In healthy adults articulatory suppression and irrelevant speech ……
reduce recall for visually and aurally presented material – do not wipe it out (e.g. Chen & Cowan, 2009)
Where are items stored in the articulatory suppression condition if not in the phonological loop?
- Possible of semantic loop and visual codes
- Activated long term memory with focus of attention
*How would Cowan explain the effects of Articulatory Suppression?
Part of Cowan’s (2001) argument that WM capacity
capacity of focused attention) is 4 items, supplemented by a ‘peripheral store’ (Cowan et al, 2014
How could you test whether people remember the visual appearance of letters and words that are visually presented? (Logie, Della Sala, Wynn and Baddeley (2000))
Visual codes for Verbal Materials
Present 2 lists of words:
- Difference between the 2 lists, one sounds and looks similar one just sounds similar.
OR
People remember the order and which case letters were in
- Upper case and lower case either look the same or very different
- Idea was the case that visual similarity may cause confusion
What results have been found for visual codes for verbal materials?
Upper and lower case contrast is the visual similarity
- Dissimilar items remembered better
- Articulated suppression - overall performance drops but the effect of similarity is much bigger
- Stops the phonological code, has to rely on a visual code so visual similarity effect is much bigger
How did Logie (2000) study and evidence with regard to the visual similarity effect
Upper and lower case contrast is the visual similarity
Or similar looking and sounding words fly dry vs guy sigh
- Dissimilar items remembered better
What was the effect of articulatory suppression on visual similarity effect?
overall performance drops but the effect of similarity is much bigger:
Stops the phonological code, has to rely on a visual code so visual similarity effect is much bigger
Why did studies look at using Japanese language instead of english?
Cannot manipulate both phonological and visual with English materials - can do so in Japanese
Saito and Logie et al (2008) explain the design of their Japanese experiment
Orthogonally vary phonological and visual similarity. Four sets of materials:
- PhonDis/VisDis
- PhonDis/VisSim
- PhonSim/VisDis
- PhonSim/VisSim
What did Saito and Logie find in their Japanese experiment?
Found, visual similarity and phonological similarity effect
But they don’t interact
Contrast with Cohen as not attention but visual code
What did Logie et al (2016) find when investigating serial recall of visually similar and dissimilar Kanji characters in pure and mixed lists?
Mixed lists:
- Higher numbers mean more errors
- You get a zigzag pattern
Similar items get more wrong even if not one after another
What is Milner (1965) Corsi Test?
9 wooden blocks arranged at random - recall a series of movements to blocks
Used as a measure of visual structural memory - disabilities
What were Knox Cubes (1914)?
Knox - assess people coming into America on Mental ability that don’t speak English
- Pointed to blocks in particular order, increasing in sequence length
What did Smyth et al (1988) point out with regard to the corsi block task?
Recall is disrupted by concurrent arm movement
What did De Renzi and Nichelli (1965) find?
Specific impairments in brain damaged patients with poor immediate spatial memory but intact verbal memory
What did Logie and Pearson (1997) find with regard to the Corsi Block task?
Corsi block capacity increases faster during child development than memory for matrix patterns
What did Inoue and Matsuzawa (2007) show?
Chimps Visual spatial memory is better than humans
Why might chimps have scored better on VSM tasks than humans other than being better?
Over 30 years of training - learnt certain arrays and movements using conditioning
After 3 years of chimp training who was better humans or chimp? And what might this mean?
Humans
Visual long term memory seems to be important even though it seems like a short term memory task
What factor did time have on chimp vs human results
Time was important, with 650 as apposed to 210 humans were as good as chimps
Evaluation of Japanese task
Not the case that people do the same task in the same way, could be the same task in different ways
- Phonological vs visual depending on what is better
Japanese study was averaged - could have been distorted results of some using one method some using another as apposed to all using both
How has temporary visual binding been studied?
Design: present a combination of colour shapes you have to remember
Temporary feature binding
Explain Luck and Vogel’s experiment with regard to temporary feature binding
Design: Angle of orientation and colour of 2, 4 or
6 rectangles
half the same, half a new colour
Recognise what is different
Also did this with squares with an outside colour and inside colour
What were the results of Luck and Vogel’s experiment?
More rectangles worse more errors
No difference in error rate between the orientation or colour change
Combination, or just one exactly the same results
- 4 integrated things instead of 8 individual features
Conclusion of Luck and Vogel:
Objects are singular structures that remain coherent or are entirely lost from VWM
You don’t forget one feature, you forget the whole object or nothing!
Explain Wheeler and Treisman’s (2002) experiment with regard to VWM,
who did the same experiment?
4 Inside and outside squares with different colours
Changing either one feature of the square or a combination of both features
Luck and Vogel
What were the findings of Wheeler and Treisman (2002)
Combination was much poorer than individual feature
How might we resolve the inconsistency of Luck and Vogel vs Wheeler and Treisman findings?
By looking at the effect of attention manipulations on object memory
What were Gajewski and Brockmole (2006) investigating?
To hold an integrated object does it require attention / added effort?
Explain Gajewski and Brockmole (2006) experiment on attention.
Present with shapes and distract attention away from what they have to remember before asking them
either change bindings or single feature
What did Gajewski and Brockmole (2006) find?
Distract attention away from what they have to remember this had no impact on performance
No impact on attentional cue on remembering bindings vs single feature
holding and binding integrated objects is automatic and doesn’t require extra attention
What did Allen Baddeley and Hitch (2006) investigate?
Whether filling retention interval with various executive function tasks (backwards counting) would effect memory of the object shape conjunctions than memory for individual objects and shapes
What did Allen Baddeley and Hitch (2006) find?
Counting backwards had no more effect on binding than it did on individual features
- Not attention demanding
Evaluation to Attention free studies (Gajewski and Brockmole, Allen Baddeley and Hitch)
G & B - response bias
Allen et al - susceptibility to interference
What did Logie, Brockmole & Vandenbroucke (2009) claim? And what did they look into
They claimed repetition does not lead to learning of temporary feature bindings
Hence STM separate from LTM
Explain Logie, Brockmole & Vandenbroucke (2009) experiment
Presented with 6 shapes of different colours in trial one
in trial 2 either change a shape or a feature or both change
Every third trial is actually the same 3 shapes and colour but they don’t know this
Over 72 trials
Do they get better at repeated sequence?
What did Logie, Brockmole & Vandenbroucke (2009) findings
If you repeat the shape or colour no change in performance
- Even though you seem the same array 60 times over
No impact of repetitions
No evidence of proactive interference
VSTM can support performance without continued LTM activation
If VSTM as activated LTM what do we expect in the logie et al 2009 experiment?
Improved changed detection performance on repeat trials (learning)
reduced change detection on novel trials (proactive interference)
Shimi and Logie (2018) experiment
Same as logie et al (2009) but with array shown 120 times
What does Hebb-type repeated presentation mean?
Every third trial repeated presentation
Then asked what they saw or just looked
What did Shimi and Logie find?
When reconstructing the array or asked what they saw - massive learning
- Recalling info learning
- Looking - no learning
Why did Baddeley (2000) introduce the episodic buffer and what is it responsible for?
Short term prose recall and sentence memory much better than random words
There must be a multi-model component of WM that links LTM
Need for episodic buffer!
Examples of evidence for the episodic buffer?
Baddeley and Wilson (2002) - Amnesic patients can remember prose for short periods
Chen and Cowan (2009) - capacity is around 3-4 chunks with articulatory suppression
Binding studies (Wheeler + Triesman, Luck + Vogel)
Italian learning
However no evidence that episodic bugger require attention to function
What’s the difference between Cowan’s focus of attention and the episodic buffer
Episodic buffer does not require attention
What was Logie’s opinion of the episodic buffer?
Get rid of episodic buffer and what you have is communication between the systems, they speak to one another to form communication but not a separate system
