Memory Flashcards
What is coding in terms of memory?
The format in which information is stored.
What is the coding of STM?
Acoustic
What is the coding of LTM?
Semantic
What study is used to research coding?
Baddeley (1966)- cat/mat study
Different lists of words were given to four groups of participants.
1. acoustically similar
2. acoustically dissimilar
3. semantically similar
4. semantically dissimilar
Participants had to recall the words in the correct order.
STM- acoustically similar words performed worst.
LTM- after 20 minutes, semantically similatr words performed worst.
What is a strength of Baddeley’s cat/mat study?
Identified a clear difference bwteen two memory stores.
Later research showed that there are some exceptions to Baddeley’s findings but the idea that STM is acoustically coded and LTM is mostly semantic has been applied for many years and still is.
This was important in helping us understand the memory system and this help lead to the MSM.
What is a limitation of Baddeley’s cat/mat study?
It used artificial stimuli instead of meaningful material.
For example, the word lists had no personal meaning to participants, so Baddeley’s findings may not tell us much about coding in different memory tasks.
When processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that the findings from this study may have limited application.
What is the capacity of STM?
7 +/- 2
What is the capacity of LTM?
Unlimited
What study was used to find the capacity of STM?
Miller (1956)- digit span experiment
This was where participants had to recall a list of numbers read out by the researcher, gradually increasing in length.
What is a limitation of Miller (1956)?
He may have overestimated STM capacity.
Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM is 4 +/- 1.
What research is there for the capacity of LTM?
Solomon S could remember his childhood memories, huge sequences of numbers and he never had to take notes.
He could remember the information for many years.
What research is there for the duration of STM?
Peterson and Peterson (1959)
24 participants recalled trigrams
Trigrams presented one at a time and recalled after intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
No successive trigram contains the same letters.
Participants were prevented from rehearsal.
After 3 seconds- 80%, after 6 seconds- 50% and after 18 seconds- 10%.
What is the duration is STM?
Up to 30 seconds.
What is the duration of LTM?
Potentially a life time.
What is research evidence of the duration of LTM?
Bahrick et al (1975) 400 participants aged 17-74 3 tests- - name recognition of ex school friends - photo recognition of 50 pictures - free recall of names of people in graduate class.
After 15 years- 90% accurate names and faces
After 48 years- 80% verbal and 70% visual
Free recall- 15 years= 60% and 48 years= 30%.
What is a limitation of Peterson and Peterson (1959) trigram research?
The study lacked external validity as the stimulus material was meaningless.
The study was not completely meaningless however as we do sometimes remember fairly irrelevant material.
However, recalling consonants does not reflect everyday memory activities.
What is a strength of Bahrick et al.’s (1975) study?
It has high external validity.
This is because the researchers investigated meaningful memories.
When studies on LTM were conducted with meaningless pictures to be remembered, recall rates were lower (Shepard 1967).
Who proposed the multi-store model of memory?
Atkinson and Schiffrin (1968)
What are the three components of the MSM?
Sensory register
STM
LTM.
What is the sensory register?
Duration- 1/4 to 1/2 second
Capacity- vast
Coding- sense specific
Information arrives from the five senses
Large capacity but short duration
Most of the information is lost through decay.
How is information transferred from the sensory register to STM?
If a person’s attention is focused on one of the sensory stores, data is transferred.
What is the STM (MSM)?
Duration- 0-18 seconds
Capacity- 7 +/- 2
Coding- acoustic
Information is lost through displacement or decay
Maintenance rehearsal is the process of verbally or mentally repeating information
This can allow the duration of STM to extend beyond 30 seconds.
What are the two types of rehearsal?
Maintenance rehearsal
Elaborative rehearsal
How is information passed from the STM to LTM?
Maintenance rehearsal ‘renews’ the information in the memory trace, making it a stronger memory when transferred.
What is the LTM (MSM)?
Duration- potentially a lifetime
Capacity- potentially unlimited
Coding- semantic
If information is given meaning it is passed onto the LTM.
This is called elaborative rehearsal, which is much more effective than maintenance rehearsal.
What does the MSM assume the sensory register, STM and LTM are?
Unitary stores.
What case study is evidence for the MSM?
HM case study- unable to learn new things in LTM but could remember short strings of digits in STM.
Evidence for being separate unitary stores.
What is research support of the MSM?
Glanzer and Cunitz (1966)- serial position effect
Primacy is recall of words heard first and demonstarted they are held in LTM.
Recency is recall of words heard last and demonstrate they are held in LTM.
What are 4 conclusions from Glanzer and Cunitz (1966)?
- Words at the start of the list are rehearsed sufficiently to enter LTM.
- Words at the end of the list are being rehearsed in STM.
- Words in the middle are forced out by words at the end due to the limited capacity and so are forgotten.
- When you distract a person (to stop them rehearsing words at the end into LTM) the recency effect disappears , because of the STM’s limited duration.
What is a limitation of the MSM?
The model is too simple.
Different types of STM are found in the WMM.
MSM sees both STM and LTM as simple unitary stores.
What study surrounding maintenance rehearsal does not support the MSM?
Maintenance rehearsal does not always transfer to LTM
Bekerian and Baddeley (1980) found that despite hearing info about changes to BBC radio over 100 times, people still did not know about it.
What study surrounding elaborative rehearsal does not support the MSM?
Craik and Watkins suggested elaborative rehearsal (assigning meanings).
MSM possibly does not account for this semantic rehearsal.
What two case studies do not support the MSM?
KF
Clive Wearing
What is the KF case study?
Suffered from amnesia
His short term memory for digits was very poor when they read them out loud to him but his recall was much better when he read them to himself.
This is a limitation of the MSM and strength of the WMM as it shows that there must be a short-term store to process visual information (VSS working) and another to process auditory information (PL damaged).
What is the Clive Wearing case study?
Clive contracted a brain infection which left him unable to remember faces or things said just moments ago.
However he is still able to read music and play the piano and once even conducted his former choir again.
Who proposed the working memory model?
Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
What are the four parts of the WMM?
Central executive
Phonological loop
Visuo-spatial sketchpad
Episodic buffer
What is the central executive?
Drives the whole system (esentially the boss) and allocates data to the subsystems.
It has a limited capacity and retrives information from LTM via the episodic buffer.
It deals with cognitive tasks such as mental arithmetic and problem solving.
What is the episodic buffer?
Added later in 2000
Acts as a temporary store which integrates visual, spatial and verbal information to record episodes
It communicates with both LTM and the components of working memory
It has a limited capacity- 4 chunks of information.
What is the phonological loop?
Deals with spoken and writterns material and has a limited capacity.
It has two parts which are the phonological store and the articulatory process.
What is the phonological store?
Acts as an inner ear and linked to speech perception.
Holds information in a speech-based form (i.e spoken words) for 1-2 seconds.
Spoken words enter the store directly whereas written words must be converted into an articulatory (spoken) code before they can enter the phonological store.
What is the articulatory process?
Acts as an inner voice and linked to speech production.
It can store verbal information from the phonological store, and can hold about 2 seconds worth of information.
Rehearses information from the phonological store and it circulates information round and round. This is how we remember information we have just heard- as long as we keep repeating it, we can retain the informatiopn in working memory.
The articulatory control process also converts written material into an articulatory code and transfers it to the phonological store.
What is the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
Stores visual and spatial information as is known as the inner eye.
Plays an important role in helping us keep track of where we are in relation to other objects as we move through out environment.
The sketchpad also displays and manipulates visual and spatial information held in LTM.
What did Logie (1995) do in terms of the WMM?
Subdivided the visuo-spatial sketchpad into two systems.
The visual cache stores visual information.
The inner cache records the arrangements of objects in our visual field.
What is the ‘word length effect’?
An articulatory process.
Limited capacity determined by the length of time it takes to rehearse words.
- Single syllable- easier
- Multi syllable- harder.