Memory Flashcards
What is the Multi-store memory model?
Model of memory- flow diagram of sensory register, short term memory and long term memory. Featuring each store coding capacity and duration.
What is the Sensory memory ?
Initial contact for stimuli and only capable of retaining information for a very short time.
What is the short term memory.?
The information we are currently aware of or thinking. The information found in STM comes from paying attention to sensory memories.
What is the long term memory?
Continual storage of information which is largely outside of our awareness, but can be called into working memory to be used when needed.
What are neural pathways?
When you take in new information you develop numeral pathways. Rehearsal strengthens the pathways and you can store LTM.
Capacity of STM- Joseph Jacobs (1887)
We can hold up to 5-9 items. We can chunk words sounding similar but not numbers. Jacobs developed the digit span technique. The researcher gives eg 4 digits to the participant and they must recall them in the correct order out loud. Avg score was 7.3.
Duration of STM- Perterson and Perterson (1959)
Scientific evidence that our STM can hold info up to 30 sec without rehearsing. In lab experiment, 24 participants saw a trigram and were asked to count back in 3 from different numbers. After a given time they had to write out the triagram.
Coding STM- Baddley
Gave lists of words to 2 different groups
Group 1- acoustically similar
Groups 2- acoustically dissimilar
Participants recalled in order worse if they had acoustically similar words suggesting STM is largely coded acoustically.
Coding LTM- Baddley
Gave list of word for 4 groups to recall in order Group 1- acoustically similar Group 2- acoustically dissimilar Group 3- semantically similar Group 4- semantically dissimilar
Case study- Clive Wearing
Virus effecting Hippocampus (almost destroyed)
Cannot create LTM
Cannot remember Children or Wedding
Can play piano
How can MRI suggest the functions of parts of the brain.
During MRI, the part of your brain will show on the monitor when active. For example, if asked to remember something, your hippocampus will light up and if you are asked to make a decision, your frontal lobe will light up.
Types of LTM- Tulving (1985)
Tulving was the first cognitive psychologist to realise the MultiSM view of LTM was too simplistic and inflexible so he split up the LTM into 3.
Episodic- recalling events specific to the individual. Eg what you ate last week. You make a conscious effort to recall them and can remember few details and when it happened.
Semantic-knowledge of the world around you eg, places,people, history, facts. They are not time stamped as we don’t know when we learnt it and we need to make a conscious effort to recall.
Procedural- memory of skills and how to perform basic actions previously learned. Eg swimming. We can recall these without conscious awareness.
Working Memory Model- Baddley & Hitch (1874)
The STM holds limited info for short periods of time with relatively little processing. They have 4 components:
Central executive- decides what is irrelevant and what to pay attention to. Processes from all 5 senses.
Phonological loop- inner ear (voice) dealing with auditory information. Held info is limited.
Visio-spacial sketchpad- inner eye has limited capacity
Episodic buffer- links STM to LTM and can use any form of STM eg Visual, phonological
KF- Case Study
Motorcycle accident
Phonological loop only works partially
Cannot recall heard information but can recall what he read
Explanations for forgetting
Proactive interference- previously learnt info interferes with new info trying to be stored eg old phone number inferences with new one.
Retroactive interference- New info interferes with old info stored. Eg new maths class means you forget last years class students.
Retrieval failure- info stored in LTM cannot be accessed however cues can help us recall. Eg first letter of word.
