Lecture 3

Question 1

What did Daneman and Carptenter (1980) look into?

Answer 1

Measured individual differences in WM capacity by measuring “reading and listening span”

Question 2

Explain Daneman and Carpenter (1980) experiment

Answer 2

A task when they read a sentence and remember the final word/s

Question 3

Findings of Daneman and Carpenter (1980)

Answer 3

recall varies from one person to another and the ability to recall seems to correlate with other abilities of comprehension

Question 4

What did Daneman and Hannon (2007) Show? and how

Answer 4

Same test but this time with remember number at the end.

Remembering digits without context or random words correlates more poorly with language comprehension

Question 5

What can be concluded when looking at daneman (1980) vs (2007)

Answer 5

Something about listening and reading span that correlates more with comprehension than just memory alone

one could argue that sentence span is a measure of general WM capacity

Question 6

What is working memory span and how is it measured?

Answer 6

The limited span of a person’s working memory

Measured by seeing how many words they can remember at the end of a list of sentences

Question 7

What did Baddeley et al. (1985) think was a problem about the Daneman and Carpenter (1980) results? (2)

Answer 7

Small sample from Univesity population (about 20)

Something about listening span not covering all of WM - too simple a measure for complex WM
- doesn’t include the selection of strategies

Question 8

Explain Baddeley et al (1985) experiment

Answer 8

Sentences and if they are true or not

Then count dots

Then recall final word of sentence

Question 9

What the results of Baddeley et al (1985)

Answer 9

Listening sentence span correlated with language comprehension

Counting span correlated more poorly with language comprehension

Question 10

What did baddeley et al (1985) conclude from their results

Answer 10

They argued that a listening comprehensions and memory test correlates with comprehension tests - not a measure of general WM capacity

Maybe not a general working memory capacity but something relating to language learning - a different version of comprehension

Question 11

Explain the Turner and Engle (1989) experiment

Answer 11

Operation span

Tried to avoid a language based task - Separated memory task from processing task

Maths equation then a word, how many can they remember

Question 12

Results of Turner and Engle (1989)

Answer 12

They found it Operation span correlates with language comprehension and sentence span

Argue that WMS is not just for language comprehension

Question 13

What did Kane and Engle (2002) find?

Answer 13

WM span correlates with general intelligence and other executive functions

Standard digit span correlates poorly with these other mental abilities

Reinforcing the idea that it is part of working memory not just language ability

People who perform well on these tasks they do better on a wide range of tasks

Question 14

Where in the brain is WM (controlled attention) linked?

Answer 14

Linked with the pre-frontal cortex

Question 15

Explain Barrouillet et al (2004) time based sharing model

Answer 15

The capacity of working memory is based on how quickly we can switch between working memory processing and storing

The more we spend on processing the more likely it will decay away due to less time refreshing

Question 16

Explain how Barrouillet (2004) tested the TBRS theory

Answer 16

Presented letters for recall, with numbers to read aloud between letters. Numbers presented at fast or slow rates. Recall letters after presentation of all material

Question 17

What were the findings of Barrouillet (2004)

Answer 17

With a high cognitive load, less time between each number to rehearse memory number - Resulted in poorer performance

Question 18

Conclusions of Barrouillet (2004)

Answer 18

Supports TPRS - ability to remember is based on ability to switch between process and rehearsal - all based on time

• Assumes loss of these items from memory is due to decay, switching back will limit decay

Question 19

Explanation of Barroillet results

Answer 19

He argues that slow pace allows more time for “swapping” attention between reading numbers and rehearsing letters. Fast pace prevents swapping of attention, and so the memory for letters decay

Question 20

Problem with TBRS results (Oberauer and Lewandowsky 2008)

Answer 20

Note confound with effects of interference between letters and numbers

Confound - more items in the second section, could be that there are more items and they are interfering, disrupting content of memory

Question 21

What was Conway looking into?

Answer 21

Whether WM capacity is a by product of attention

Question 22

Explain Conway et al (2001) experiment

Answer 22

Gave them a dichotic listening task, one set of info from one ear and one from the other ear (headphones)

• Told to focus on one channel and ignore the other, in ignored channel name is said
• Then asked question on what you heard

Question 23

Findings of Conway (2001)

Answer 23

High WM more likely to ignore their name is presented

Question 24

Explain the Colflesh and Conway (2007) experiment

Answer 24

Listen to message in one ear, ignore info from other ear but occasionally you will hear your name, listen to that
- No shadowing - not told to listen to just one ear

• Shadowing - listen to just one source

The idea is that you are trying to ignore the attention but switching ever so often

Question 25

Findings of Colflesh and Conway (2007)

Answer 25

- No shadowing - Difference is small | Shadowing - High working memory do better when instructed

Question 26

What does Colflesh and Conways (2007) results indicate?

Answer 26

Indicates flexibility in high capacity individuals

Question 27

Explain Conway et al (2010) experiment and why they underwent it

Answer 27

Looking at different groups of WM capacity (different ages 7 and 11 Testing their selective attention ability In line with Conway (2007) if high WM are better than low WM should be worse

Question 28

Findings of Conway (2010)

Answer 28

- Having a low WMC doesn’t seem to be related to being bad at focusing attention - Can control attention even with low WMC

Question 29

• What are the various hypotheses about working | memory capacity?

Answer 29

1) Working memory “capacity” is a by-product of attentional control 2) Working memory storage capacity itself varies between individuals 3) Working memory capacity reflects different styles of cognitive control 4) Efficiency of retrieval from secondary memory

Question 30

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 30

the phenomenon of the brain's ability to focus one's auditory attention (an effect of selective attention in the brain) on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, as when a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.

Question 31

Why are high WM less likely to hear their names

Answer 31

The critical factor seems to be the ability to block information from the irrelevant message. High-span subjects are more capable of this and were therefore less likely to hear their names, and they also were less susceptible to a consequential disruption of relevant task performance.

Question 32

What is the anti-saccade task?

Answer 32

Saccaded eye movement controlled by the frontal cortex Assesses brain ability to inhibit reflexive saccade Asked to fix on a motionless target, a stimulus is then presented to one side of the target. Participant is asked to look at the other side of the target that the stimulus isn't on. Failure to do this implies cognitive dysfunction

Question 33

What did Morey et al (2012) investigate and how?

Answer 33

WMC and cognitive function ability Cross modal stroop - see colour on screen, hear colour word - Goal: Name colour on screen and ignore sound

Question 34

What did Morey et al (2012) find?

Answer 34

Correlation between Cross-modal stroop and WMC was very limited

Question 35

What did Beilock and Decaro (2007) find

Answer 35

Pressure and anxiety had no effect on low WM, but affected high

Question 36

What is an explanation for why pressure only effects high WM performance

Answer 36

People with high WM work harder and control more, learning more Low WM can't be bothered, so pressure doesn’t affect it

Question 37

How did Duff and Logie (2001) measure WMS?

Answer 37

They measured word span and processing span Remember last word of sentence and how many correctly answered

Question 38

What was the difference in Duff and Logie's study compared with previous experiments on WMS

Answer 38

Previous studies measured memory and didn’t measure how well they did on the processing task If they are drawing on the same mental ability, they should correlate highly

Question 39

How did Duff and Logie (2001) measure WMS?

Answer 39

They measured word span and processing span and together Remember last word of sentence and how many correctly answered

Question 40

What did Duff and Logie (2001) find? and how might one interpret the results?

Answer 40

Little effect when combining tasks so implies processing and storing are separate systems

Question 41

What did Waters and Caplan (2003) investigate and how?

Answer 41

What is the most reliable measure of WM groups between 20-80, measured twice across 6 weeks using 7 different measures of WM.

Question 42

What did Waters and Caplan (2003) find?

Answer 42

Processing time and memory score combine to give a better measure of WMC than memory score alone Related?

Question 43

What did Daneman and Hannon (2007) evidence?

Answer 43

Verification time of whether or not the statement is true and memory score show very poor correlations Processing and storage unerelated?

Question 44

What did Logie and Duff (2007) investigate?

Answer 44

working memory for the correlations between memory and processing in working memory span tasks

Question 45

Explain Logie and Duff (2007) experiment

Answer 45

- Series of short sentences. - Respond true/false to each one, while maintaining accuracy - Time and accuracy recorded At end of series – retrieve final words of sentences in correct order – select words from a word array Span procedure – two trials at each level, from 2 to 6 sentences. Stopped if two in a row incorrect.

Question 46

3 predictions with Logie and Duff (2007)

Answer 46

1) Barrouillet and Camos: If Memory and Processing draw on a common resource with swapping between processing and storage, then we would expect higher memory span is correlated with longer response time (high +ve correlation) 2) If general mental ability then high memory span is associated with faster speed (-ve correlation) 3) If memory span and processing speed are unrelated, then expect a low correlation

Question 47

What were the results from the Logie and Duff (2007) study, and how might those results be interpreted by different working memory theories?

Answer 47

WMS and processing speed had little correlation! Implies unrelated! Not strong evidence that they are relying on the same part of the cognitive system Points to multiple resources fro processing and memory maintenance capacities

Question 48

What measures of working memory were included | in the BBC internet study?

Answer 48

Range of memory tests with several experiments included across a life span Focus here on working memory span

Question 49

What were the results of the BBC internet study?

Answer 49

Between 8-20 abilities are improving Digit span improving more slowly than visual tasks Beyond 20, digit span is strong for ages, visual pattern spans get real bad pretty fast Visual STM is most sensitive and Verbal STM is least sensitive. WM is intermediate

Question 50

Issue with the BBC study

Answer 50

cross sectional

Question 51

How might different theories interpret BBC results?

Answer 51

Multi: If it is all general attention why do they change at different rates across age General: all to do with control of attention, focus of attention - Storing a sequence of numbers requires less attention so ability decreases less with age Eval: WM sentence span less effected by age which is supposed to push you to the limits so should drop the most…