Memory Flashcards
Definition of memory?
The mechanism that allows us to retain, retrieve, and use information (about stimuli, images, events, ideas, skills) over time.
There are both passiv and active processes.
Stages of Memory?
- Encoding
Initial perception of the event (includes attention & pattern recognition) - Consolidation
Laying down and strengthening over time
-> Short Term
-> Long Term - Retrieval
Calling it back later, remember! - Reconsolidation
Adaptive update mechanism allowing new information to be integrated into the intital memoery representation (editing)
Modal model of memory (Atkinson and Shiffrin)?
Input -> Sensory Memory -> Short-term Memory (Rehearsal: a control process) & Output
<-> Long-term Memory
Sensory Memory?
- Retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation
- Capacity large but info decays very quicklyy
- Persistence of vision - retention of the perception of light (e.g. Sparkler’s trail of light)
Sensory memory capacity study (Sperling)
- Display of letters flashed for 50 milliseconds
Whole report method: report as many as you can, average recall of letters 4.5/12
Partial report method: A bried tone AFTER the flash indicates which row to report (high/medium/low). Average recall of letters 3.3/4 in a given row, a higher %
Conclusion: people store more information in short-term memory than they’re able to recall
Delayed partial report method in Sensory memory capacity study (Sperling)?
Showed the letter, had a delay (of varying length), and then a brief tone indicating which row to report.
The longer the delay, the fewer letters participants were able to recall. Even after 1/10th of a second a significant amount of decay has occurred -> Very fast decay
Short term memory systerm?
Short-term memory (STM):
The memory system holding moment-to-moment thoughts and perceptions in mind
Working memory (WM):
Allows manipulation of information in STM and is key for encoding of long-term memory (LTM)
What are Control Processes? + (3)
Active processes that can be controlled by the person
- Rehearsal
- Strategies used to make a stimulus more memorable
- Strategies of attention that help you focus on specific stimuli
Prior knowledge - Chunking?
- Items can fit together eadily as a distinct pattern
- For words or pictures to ve a chunk you need to be familiar and available in long-term meomory
- Suggests that STM overlaps with, and relies upon, LTM to function efficiently
Memory span is influenced by preexisting knowledge -> IMPORTANT!
Serial Position Effect?
Remembering a list of items, items at the beginning and the end are more likely to be remembered
Primacy effect:
More rehearsal
Less competition
Recency effect:
Newly in STM
Usually recalled first
What happens to the serial position effect when increasing the delay between the encoding phase and the retiving (recall) phase?
The primacy effect is stronger (more time to rehearse) than the recency effect no longer the advantage of newly in STM
Maintenance rehearsal?
Rote rehearsal that maintains items in STM
Eggs, cheese, butter, eggs, cheese butter etc.
Elaborative rehearsal?
Thinking about meaningful relationships among the items you’re encoding, draw parallels to LTM
Example, mind-mapping organising things visually
Retroactive interference?
Something in the present makes it difficult to recall something that you learned previously
Example, getting a new phone number makes it difficult to remember the old one, it is making over the other memory
Proactive interference?
Something from the past makes it difficult to recall something that you learned recently
Example, learing spanish but grammar is different from grammar in english
Limitation of Model Model?
STM is described as too passive, it is really much more active in manipulating information
Broad definition of Working Memory? (Baddely & Hitch) WILL BE ON EXAM
Limited capacity system that allows us to store and manipulate information temporarily so that we can prefrom everyday tasks
Working memory?
Temporary memory system that you USE to do more complicated cognitive tasks:
- Learning, reasoning, comprehension
- ACTIVE rather than passive
- Key for laying down long term memories
Baddely and Hitch Model?
Input -> Sensory memory & Decay ->
Visuospatial Scratchpad <->Central Executive <-> Phonological loop
<-> Long term memory
The basic idea of the Baddely & Hitch model is that working memory is composed of 4 subsystems?
- Central executive
- Verbal short term memory
- Visuospatial short term memory
- Episodic buffer
Phonological loop?
- Verbal short term memory
- The subsystem dedicated to temporary storage of spoken and written material
Contains two subcomponents:
- Phonological store (inner ear, passiv)
- Articulatory control process (inner voice, active)
Phonological loop?
- Verbal short term memory
- The subsystem dedicated to temporary storage of spoken and written material
Contains two subcomponents:
- Phonological store (inner ear, passive)
- Articulatory control process (inner voice, active)
Phonological store (inner ear)
- Linked to speech perception
- Holds spoken words in mind for 1-2 seconds
- Called inner ear because it is like internally hearing words
- Passive
Articulatory control process (inner voice)
- Linked to speech production
- Used to rehearse and maintain verbal information from the phonological store (keep it refershed!)
- As long as we keep repeating it, we can retain the information in working memory
- Subvocal -> no sounds actually made
- Active
Visuospatial sketchpad?
- Visual Short Term memory
- Maintains visually presented information:
- Drawings
- Remembering kinesthetic (motor) movements
Contains two structures:
- Visual cache
- Inner scribe
Visual cache, substructure of Visuospatial sketchpad?
- “inner eye”
- Temporarily stores visual information that comes from perceptual experience and contains information about the form and color of what we perceive
- Visual equivalent of phonological store
- Passive
Inner scribe, substructure of Visuospatial sketchpad?
- Refreshes all of the stored information contained in the visuospatial scratchpad (computer screen)
- Briefly stores spatial relationships associated with bodily movement
- Visual equivalent of articulatory control process
- Active
(Important for mental rotation tasks)
Evidence for Phonological Loop? Phonological similarity effect
Phonological similarity effect:
Letters or words that SOUND similar are confused
Evidence for Phonological Loop? Word-length effect
Word-length effect:
Memory is better for lists of short words than for lists of long words.
Takes longer to rehearse long words and to produce them during recall
Evidence for Phonological Loop? Articulatory suppression
Prevents one from rehearsing items to be remembered:
- Reduced memory span
- Eliminates word-length effect
Evidence for Visuospatial Sketchpad? (2)
Mental rotation takes longer when shapes are rotated further (in degrees)
Memory for visual displays that are difficult to code into language
Central Executive?
A control system NOT a memory store
- Coordinates activities of the other subsystems
- Guides attention and allocates resources to maximize performance
- Coordinates, manipulates, and updates the content of the subsystems
- Key for laying down long term memory!
Episodic Buffer?
Extra capacity:
Stores information, supplements phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad
- Communicates with LTM
Integrative system:
Places events occurring in the sketchpad and loop into a coherent sequence
- Keeps track of episodes
Episodic Buffer puts the element of TIME or temporal order into working memory model?
- A third “assistant” system in Baddeley model
- Combines information from other subsystems, and long term memory into sequences or episodes
Example, remembering a sentence that is 15-16 words long versus a random list of 5-9 words
Working memory and stress? (3)
- WM gets worse above a certain level of stress
- Exercise and sleep alleviate stress
- Individual differences in working memory capacity
Visual Short Term Memory: Change Detection Task?
- Demonstrates the capacity of visual short term memory
- Results showed that change detection perforemace declined when there are more than 4 objects
- Suggestion that visual short term memory capacity is ~4 objects
- Results also demonstrated same capacity for feature-conjoined objects -> suggestion that VSTM stores “objects”, not features
Other study showed that VSTM is limated bu BOTH the number of objects and amount of information
Individual differences in visual short term memory?
- Correlates with measures of fluid intelligence
What accounts for differences in VSTM capacity?
- Different number of ‘slots’ (~4 or 5 objects)
- Different executive control efficiency
Efficient mechanisms can select only the most relevant information for storage
ERP Component, Contralateral Delay Activity (CDA)?
- EEG signal that increaese as more items are stored in visual working memory
- Neurological marker of working memory load
- Measured in posterior pariental and posteripr temporal lobes, 300-900ms after onset
- ‘Contralateral’ becuase hemispheres responf to the opposite side of the visual field
Differences in VSTM, study by Vogel et al.?
Results suggests efficiency of selective attention varies substantially across indiviudals
- High efficiency individuals filter out irrelevant info
- Low efficiency individuals don’t filter out distractions, thus waisting cognitive resources.
Indiviudal differences in working memory result from individual differences in selective attention!
