Memory Flashcards
What does cogntive mean?
mental processing
What is cognitive psychology?
how the mind deals with information
it assumes that behaviour is influenced by how you process information from the world around you
What helps you make sense of the world?
reasoning and remebering
What do cognitive psychologists compare out minds to? and why?
computers
3 basic stages = input,processing, output (behaviour)
What does attention mean?
you focus on something to the exclusion of other things
What is a model?
a way of representing a psychological process that is complex in a more simplified way
not exact diagrams of what happens biologically
a way of explaining an idea so that it can be tested in experiments
Who came up with the Multi-store model of memory ?
Attkinson and Shiffrin
What is the multi-store model of memory?
a representation of how memory works in terms of 3 stores = sensory register, STM and LTM
also describes how information is transferred from one store to another
What are the 3 features of the memory stores?
coding
duration
capacity
What does coding mean?
the format information is stored in memory
What does capacity mean?
the amount of information that can be held in memory
What does duration mean?
the length of time information can be held in memory
What does semantic mean?
the meaning of words, something has a meaning
What does unitary mean?
each store is its own part and they are all seperate, they do not interact with the other stores
What is an iconic memory?
What something looks like
What is a echoic memory?
what it sounds like = acoustic
What does decay mean in terms of memory?
it has been forgotten
What is the sensory stores role?
all stimuli from the environment pass into the sensory store
there is a store for each sense
selects what relevant information we should pay atttention to and discards the rest
What is attention?
determins which information is transferred into the STM
What is the duration of the sensory store?
less than half a second
What is the coding in the sensory store?
modality specific = depends on the sense
What is the capacity of the sensory store?
very large
What was Sperling’s first method and findings for studying the sensory register?
displayed visual arrays to participants containing 3 rows of 4 letters
they were displayed for 50 milliseconds
participants could recall 4/5 letters and reported a presence of others
What was sperling’s further study on the sensory store? and its findings
used a report procedure
trained his participants to recognise 3 tones - 1 for each row
presented them with the visual arrays of 3 rows of 4 letters
the display was presented for 50 milliseconds
participants recalled a lot more with the tone
What was sperling’s findings?
a large amount of information is available so the capacity of the sensory register is very large but it decays very rapidly so duration is short
What is the capacity of STM?
between 5 and 9 chunks of information
7 +/- 2
What studies support the capacity of the STM?
Jacobs (1887)
Miller (1956)
What was Jacobs study of measuring digit span of the STM?
he read out lists of digits starting with 4 digits and asked the participants to recall them to him
if recalled corrcetly, the number of digits would increase until they incorrectly recalled a sequence
What did Jacobs find?
the mean digit span was 9 items for digits and 7 items for letters
What are the positives and negatives of jacobs study?
positives:
has been replicated with the same findings = valid and reliable
negatives:
very old study - could not be carefully controlled = EV and CO-V
What did miller do?
noticed that most things come in groups of 7 and he produced the chunking theory
What is the chunking theory?
if information is chunked or grouped together then you are able to remember more information
the larger the chunk = the less likely you are to remeber it
What is the problem with millers study?
may have overestimated the STM capacity
Who’s study showed that millers findings were an overestimate?
Nelson Cowon (2001) concluded that the capacity of the STM is 4+/- 1
What is the duration of the STM?
15-30 seconds
on average 18 secs
How can the duration of the STM be increased?
by maintenance rehearsal
What was Peterson and Peterson’s method of studying the STM duration? and what they found?
participants were breifly shown a trigram of 3 constonants and were asked to recall it after a period of 3,6,9,12,15 and 18 secs
before recall they were given the task to count backwards in 3s to prevent rehearsal
findings= as the time between presentation increased the less successful recall there was
What are the problems with Peterson and Peterson’s?
material was artificial
does not reflect everyday memory
lacked eternal and ecological validity
How is information coded in the STM?
acoustic (echoic)
What did Baddeley do to investigate the coding of the STM?
idenfied errors in recall of simular sounding words and simular meaning words
he showed them a list of words and asked them to recall them in the corret order
they were tested immediately after presentation
What did Baddeley find for coding in the STM?
more mistakes were made from words that were acoustically simular than semantically simular
the coding in the STM is acoustic
What are the positives and negatives of Baddeley’s STM study?
Positive:
identified a clear difference between two memory stores
negative:
artificial stimuli = limited application
What is maintenance rehearsal?
repeating information in your mind helps keep information in the STM
What is elaborative rehearsal?
repeating information in the mind over a longer period of time will tranfer information into the LTM
Why is the capacity of the LTM difficult to research?
thought to be unlimited
Why is the LTM’s duration hard to investigate?
it is hard to prove that the info is not stored somewhere else
we might be unable to retrive something
we can make up memories
What did Bahrick do to investigate the LTM duration?
identifying whether or not people can still remeber the names and faces of their class mates many years after they have left school
included 392 americans aged 17-74
some used free recall others used photo recognition
What is free recall in Bahricks study?
had to simply recall the names of their class mates that they remebered
What did Bahrick find?
memories can be held in the LTM without distortion for a long time
after many years there may be some degeneration which could be as a result of age
the duration of the LTM is many years possibly unlimited
What are the postives of Bahricks study on LTM?
did attempt to control how much contact participants had with the yearbook
high external validity, real-life memory
What are the negatives of Bahricks study on the LTM?
only one type of LTM was used = can not be generalised
couldnt control yearbook contact fully
class mates could be of emotional significance which means there could of been lots of opputunity for rehearsal = seeing them everyday
What is the coding in the LTM?
semantic
What does semantic mean?
according to the meaning of words
What was Baddeley’s study on coding in the LTM?
identifying errors in recall of semantically simluar and dissimular words and errors of recall of acoustically simular and dissimilar words
asked to recall after 20 mins
What did Baddeley find for coding in the LTM?
that people were most likely to make mistakes with semantically simular words = coding in the LTM is semantic
What are the postives and negatives of Baddeleys LTM coding study?
Positive:
good control over the IV = possible cause and effcet
negative:
lacks ecological validity
artificial stimuli
What does the research support show us about the MSMM?
that the STM and LTM are different and seperate stores
Why isn’t all the research good support of the MSMM?
used materials with very little meaning
artificial
lacks ecological validity
may not be a valid model of how memory works everyday
How does Clive Wearing support the MSMM?
suffered brain damage as a result from a virus
supports that there are two seperate stores for STM and LTM
What does clive wearing disaprove about the MSMM?
that the LTM is more complicated that just a unitary store
he had a distinction between procedural and declarative memory - he could still play piano and recognise photos
Who is KF?
Tim shallice and Elizabeth Warrington (1970) studied their client KF who had amnesia from a moter cycle incident
How does KF support the MSMM?
was reduced to 2 digits but could still form new LTMs which supports the distinction of the STM and LTM
How does KF disprove the MSMM?
the model could not explain how KF was able to form new LTMs without a normal functioning STM as the MSMM states that information must pass through the STM to access the LTM
some parts of KF’s STM functioned well (visual info) while others didn’t = the STM is not a unitary store
Who is HM?
he had an operation to treat epilepsy which involved the removal of the hippocampus which is central to memory function
his memory was assesed, he was 31 at the time and he thought he was 27
he would read the same magazine over again
he perfromed well on digita span tests = good STM
How does HM support the MSMM?
he performed well on memory tests involving digit span which shows good STM as he had damaged his LTM = the stores are seperate
How does HM disprove the MSMM?
he was able to develop new skills which involves procedural memory - a type of LTM = the LTM is not a unitary store
What is incidental rehearsal?
things we have learnt without rehearsal eg. gossip
How does incidental learning disprove the MSMM?
suggests that some information can pass straight to the LTM while other information can be rehearsed and not enter the LTM
= the nature of the material is important in memory and this is ignored in the MSMM?
Who made up the Working memory model?
Baddeley and Hitch
What is the Working memory model?
an explaination of how one aspect of memory (STM) is organised and how it functions
it suggests that STM is a dynamic processor of different types of info. using subunits
it is coordinated by a central decision-making system
What is STM better described as?
the working memory
What is the working memory?
refers to the things we are currently working on/thinking about/ paying attention to
What is the WMM concern?
concerned with the ‘mental space’ that is active when we are temporarily storing and manipulating info.
What is the central executive?
co-ordinates the activities of the three subsystems in memory and allocates the appropriate subsystem to that activity.
focuses and divides our limited attention and allocates subsystems to tasks.
What is the capacity of the CE?
very limited = can only attend to a limited no. of things
What is the coding of the CE?
modality free = it does not store info.
What is the phonological loop?
processes info in terms of sound which can be written or spoken material
it is divided into two substores
What is the PL divided into?
the articulatory control system
the phonological store
What is the phonological store?
holds words you hear
known as the ‘inner ear’
What is the articulatory control system?
silently repeating words you hear to yourself
known as the ‘inner voice’
it allows maintenance rehearsal
What is the capacity of the PL?
2 secs worth of what you say/ hear
What is the coding of the PL?
acoustic (echoic)
What does the PL contribute to?
our learning of the sounds of language
acceses the LTM to store and retrieve info about language sounds
allows us to develop vocab and learn new languages
What is the Visuo-spatial Sketchpad?
it processes visual and spatial info
known as the ‘inner eye’
used when you have to visualise a spatial task
What is the capacity of the VSSP?
limited
(Baddeley 2003) - about 3-4 objects
What is the coding in the VSSP?
visual and spatial
What did Robert Logie do to the VSSP?
1995:
subdivided the VSSP into:
the visual cache and the inner scribe
What is the visual cache?
stores visual data
What is the inner scribe?
records the arrangement of objects in the visual feild
What does spatial mean?
the relationship in space between things/objects and how things are organised together