Memory Flashcards
Who created the working memory model?
Atkinson and shiffrin (1968)
What are the 3 stores in the working memory model?
Sensory resistor
Short term memory
Long term memory
What are the characteristics of the sensory registor?
Coding = modality specific
Capacity = very large, all sense impressions in each moment
Duration = very short, 250ms
How does the short term memory receive information?
Received information from the sensory registor by paying attention or from the LTM by retrieval. Keeps information in STM by repeating (maintenance rehearsal) or passing information onto the LTM by linking it to the info in LTM (elaborating rehearsal).
What are the characteristics of the short term memory?
Coding: acoustic
Duration: 18 seconds
Capacity: 7+/-2 items (Miller)
How is info in the STM lost?
Displacement (new info enters the STM) or decay (lost over time)
What are the Characteristics of the LTM
Duration: very long/permanent
Capacity: unlimited (forgotten information is send to just be inaccessible)
Coding: Semantic (in the form of meaning)
To use the information it must be passed back to the STM (retrieval)
What study found the STM and LTM to be separate?
Glanzer and Cunitz: found words at the start and end of word lists were more easily recalled (primary and recency effect). Suggests first words in LTM and last in STM; however, the middle words were displaced
What is a study for capacity and duration of the Sensory Registor?
Spearing: found recall of random row of a 12 letter grid flashed for 1/20th of a second was 75%
Suggests all rows were stored in SR (large capacity)
All 12 could not be written as items forgotten too quickly = short duration
What is a study for coding in the STM and LTM?
Baddeley: four 10 word lists were given to 4 participant groups. Word groups were acoustically similar or dissimilar and semantically similar or dissimilar. Found immediate recall was worst for acoustically similar words, and recall after 20mins were worst with semantically similar. Suggests STM is coded acoustically and LTM is coded semantically with similar sounds/meanings causing confusion when recalled.
What is a study for capacity in the STM
Jacobs: found the recall lists of letters averaged 7 times for letters and 9 for numbers. Suggests the STM store has a limited capacity of 7+/-2. However, this can be improved by chunking (making small sets/groups of items)
What is a study for duration of the STM?
Peterson and Peterson: found the recall of three letter trigrams (e.g. HFR, TKD) was less than 10% after 18 seconds if performing an interference task (counting backwards). Suggests STM duration is very short.
What is the study for capacity in the LTM?
Wagenaar: created a diary (2400 events over six years). He tested himself on events using cues and found 75% recall for critical details after 1 year and 45% after 5 years. Suggests LTM has a very large capacity, potentially limitless.
What is the study for duration in LTM?
Bahrick: found recall of schoolfriends names from photographs was 90% after 15 years, and still 80% for names after 48 years in participants ranging from 17-74. Suggests the duration of LTM is very long, potentially limitless.
What are the negatives of the Multi store model of memory
Cognitive tests of models of memory are often highly artificial (low mundane realism) and are conducted in lab environments (low ecological validity). It may be the findings do not generalise to how memory is used in day to day life.
There are different types of LTM and WMM explains STM as a much more active system with multiple stores
The capacity of the STM can be altered significantly (e.g. age and practice). Suggests the view of a fixed STM capacity is incorrect
What is LTM?
storage of memories over a lengthy period of time
What is declarative/explicit memory?
You can access them consciously and express the memory in words
What is non-declarative/implicit memory?
Not consciously recalled and are difficult to explain in words
What are the three types of LTM?
Episodic
Semantic
Procedural
What is episodic memory?
Experiences and events. Time stamped (a reference to time and place). Declarative, recalled consciously. Auto-biographical. The strength of memory is influenced by emotion. Associated with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.
What is semantic memory?
Facts, meanings and knowledge. Declarative and recalled consciously. Strength from processing depth. Lasts longer than episodic. Not time stamped. Episodic becomes semantic over time. Associated with the perirhinal cortex.
What is procedural memory?
Unconscious memories of skills (riding a bike). Often learnt in childhood. Non declarative/ not recalled consciously. More resistant to forgetting than episodic or semantic. Associated with motor cortex and cerebellum.
What was Vargha- Khadems study?
Found three children with damage to the hippocampus, not parahippocampal cortices, had episodic amnesia. But attended school, spoke and learnt facts (semantic info). This suggests semantic and episodic memory use different brain regions.
What was the Clive Wearing case study?
Clive wearing has retrograde amnesia, so he can’t remember his musical education or wedding (episodic) however he remembers facts about his life (semantic) i.e he knows he’s a musician and married. He can play the piano (procedural). Due to anterograde amnesia, he can’t encode new episodic or semantic memories but he can gain new procedural memories in experiments via repetition. This suggests semantic, episodic and procedural memory are separate, using different brain areas.
What are the negatives of a case study on memory?
Generalising the findings of ideographic clinical case studies to explain how memory works in the wider population is problematic. Other unknown issues could be unique to that individual that can explain behaviour.
What was tulvings study?
tulvings fMRI studies identified which types of LTM memory are associated with particular brain areas in healthy brain. This has allowed ideas gained by ideographic case studies to be studied via nomothetic methods
What is negative about types of long term memory?
Types of long term memory may not be truly distinct. Episodic and semantic memories are both declarative; episodic become semantic over time, and we can produce automatic language (combining semantic and procedural)
Who created the working memory model?
Baddely and hitch (1974)
Summary of WMM’s purpose
Created to replace the STM store in the multi store model of memory. The WMM is an active processor made of multiple stores whereas the STM is a passive and unitary store
What are the 4 parts of the WMM
Central executive
Phonological loop
Visuo-spatial sketchpad
Episodic buffer
What is the central executive?
Head of the model, receives sense information, controls attention and filters info before passing on to the sub systems. Limited in capacity (four items) and capable of dealing with only strand of information at a time.
What is the phonological loop?
Processes sound information (acoustic coding). Contains: primary acoustic store (inner ear, storing words recently heard) and articulary process (inner voice, storing via sub-vocal repetition). Capacity of 2 seconds