Memory 1&2 Flashcards
Free recall
Reproducing material from memory in an unconstrained way
Cued recall
Reproducing a specific item from memory when produced with a specific cue
Recognition
Deciding whether you have seen something previously when it’s presented to you again
Explicit tests of memory
Free recall, cued recall, recognition
You can also use ____ memory tests where the participant doesn’t know their memory is being tested
Implicit
Relearning
Example of an implicit memory test
Atkinson & Shiffrin describe a clear split between 3 memory systems
Sensory registers, short term store, long term store
Sensory registers
Brief sensory stores
Short term store
Primary memory held for seconds, maintained by rehearsal. Limited capacity, limited duration
Long term store
Secondary memory, unlimited capacity and duration
Jevon’s the power of numerical discrimination
Throw beans onto black tray containing a white box, and how many beans are in the white box? Accurate up to about 8- for 9 and above he was right only half the time
Averbach study sensory memories
Uses a Tachistoscope to display patterns of dots for brief intervals masked by a subsequent erasing pattern (Backwards Masking). Estimated of dots as a function of total number and variable interval (ms)
William James developed the idea of different types of memory, which were
Primary memory and secondary memory
Averbach study findings
Averbach found that with extra viewing time the number of dots he could count increased, but at 8 dots extra viewing makes little difference
Sperling Partial Report Procedure
Participants were able to recall only 4/5 items out of 12, but if they have an immediate cue for the first row, performance is close to 100% accurate for that row. But if the recall cue is delayed by 1 second after the stimulus performance is back down to about 30%, about 4 items. As if almost the full grid of 12 items was once available in visual memory, but decays rapidly.
Sperling interpretation and issues
Sperling’s results have been taken to support the idea of a brief sensory store that holds a pre categorical visual image
Primacy
Is traditionally interpreted as down to rehearsal
Recency
Traditionally interpreted as the capacity of the short term store
Atkinson & Shiffrin model
Sensory input goes into short term store, goes back into short term store through rehearsal, and transfers into long term store
Problems for a unitary short term storage
Clinical evidence shows patients only short term memory and only long term memory but short term memory deficits aren’t as devastating to long term memory as we might expect
What is the short term storage for
Baddeley & Hitch simulate STM deficits by using tasks that should fill up the STS
Baddeley & Hitch proposed that the STS must have three components
Central executive, Visuo spatial scratchpad, articulatory loop
Short term memory performance is
Often better for visuospatial materials
Two tasks that require visuospatial resources interfere with each other much more than if one task is ____ and the other ____
Verbal; visuospatial
Dual task interference
Simultaneously doing a spatial and verbal task proved to be very difficult
Phonological similarity effect
Consists of poor serial recall performance for lists composed of similar sounding words compared to lists of dissimilar sounding items
Irrelevant speech effect
The irrelevant speech effect or irrelevant sound effect is the degradation of serial recall of a list when sounds, especially speech sounds, are presented
Word length effect
The findings that lists of short words are better recalled than lists of long words
Central executive/supervisory attentional system
Sensory perceptual structures -> trigger data base -> psychological processing structures -> effector system
Role of the central executive
General purpose attentional mechanism with flexible resources and limited capacity,
Purpose of the central executive
General purpose attentional mechanism with flexible resources and limited capacity
Role of the central executive
Control of behavior based on action schemas, low level contention scheduling chooses schema. The supervisory attentional system can override the general process of contention scheduling by directly activating or inhibiting schemas.
Everyday example of supervisory attentional system failure
Driving to your normal destination by mistake
An experimental task that seems to load the central executive is
Random number generation, could be a cure for insomnia
Additions to the working memory model
The central executive can interact with long term memory via episodic buffer
Hedonic detector
Deals with emotional information, allows the central executive and episodic buffer to interact
Alternatives to working memory
Embedded processes mode, SIMPLE model, individual differences approach
Embedded processes model
It’s not necessary to distinguish between short term and long term storage, and that short term storage is just the currently activated component of the long term storage
The SIMPLE model
Scale invariant memory, perception, and learning, creates mathematical models based on temporal discriminability that apply to both short term storage and long term storage
Individual differences approach
A different approach is to focus on individual differences in working memory capacity, recently researchers have separated this out into influences on primary and secondary memory
