memory Flashcards
what are the 3 stores in the MSM model?
Sensory register —> Short term Memory —> Long term Memory
what does the Sensory register do?
receives raw sense impressions
- Attention passed info into STM
- Coding = modality
what does the STM do?
- receives info from the SR by Attention or from the LTM by Retrieval
- keeps info by maintenance rehearsal
- coding = acoustic
- duration = approx 18 secs
- capacity = 7 +- 2 items
what does the LTM do?
- very long/ permanent memory storage
- to use info it must be Retrieved to the STM
- coding = semantic
- duration = very long/ permanent
- capacity = theoretically unlimited
Strengths of MSM
- Glazner & Cunitz found the LTM and STM are separate. Words at the start and end of word list are recalled more easily
research proving capacity of MSM
- Spearing (recall of a random row of a 12 letter grid was 75% suggests all rows are stored in SR)
- Jacobs (recall for lists averaged 7 items for letters and 9 for numbers. capacity of 7 +- 2)
- Wagenaar (tested himself on his 2400 diary entries and found 75% recall for critical details. suggests very large storage of LTM)
research proving duration of MSM
- Sperling (recall of a random row of a 12 letter grid was 75% all 12 could not be written as they were forgot too quickly)
- Peterson & Peterson (recall of 3 letter trigrams was less than 10% after 18 secs if performing an interfering task. suggest short STM duration)
- Bahrick (recall of school peers names from photos was 90% after 15 years and 80% after 48 years. suggests LTM duration is very long/ maybe limitless)
research proving coding of MSM
- Baddely (four 10 word lists were given to participants, words were acoustically similar or dissimilar and semantically similar or dissimilar. immediate recall was worse for acoustically similar words and recall after 20 mins was worse for semantically similar words. Suggests STM is coded acoustically and LTM is coded semantically)
weaknesses of MSM
-research is highly artificial (low mundane realism) which reduces ecological validity
- there are different types of LTM and WMM explains STM in more detail
- the capacity of STM can be altered (age or practice)
what are the Types of LTM?
- Episodic
- Semantic
- Procedural
what are Episodic Memories?
- experiences/ events
- time stamped
- declarative
- recalled consciously
what are Semantic Memories?
- facts, meanings and knowledge
- declarative
- recalled consciously
- not time stamped
- episodic becomes semantic over time
- longer lasting than episodic
what are Procedural Memories?
- unconscious memories of skills
- often learnt in childhood
- non-declarative
- not recalled consciously
strengths for types of LTM
- Vargha-Khadem (children with damage to hippocampus had episodic amnesia but could still learn and retain semantic info)
- Clive Wearing (has retrograde amnesia so can’t remember episodic memories but can remember facts about his life and can play the piano. semantic, episodic and procedural are all separate)
- Tulving (fMRIs identified which types of LTM memory are associated with different parts of the brain)
limitation of types of LTM
- generalising the findings of ideographic clinical cases to explain how memory works in the wider population is problematic
- types of LTM may not be truest distinct
who developed the Working Memory Model?
Baddely and Hitch - an active processor made of multiple stores - made to replace the STM
what is the WMM made up of?
- Central executive
- Phonological loop
- Visuo-spatial sketchpad
- Episodic buffer
what is the Central executive?
- receives sense information
- controls attention and filters info before passing on to the subsystems
- limited capacity (4)
- capable of dealing with 1 strand of info at a time
what is the Phonological loop?
- processes sound info
- acoustic coding
- made up of: Primary Acoustic Store (inner ear, storing recent words) & Articulatory Process (inner voice, storing sub-vocal repetition)
- capacity of 2 secs
what is the Visio-spatial sketchpad?
- processes visual and spatial info
- made up of: Visual Cache (passive store of form and colour) & Inner Scribe (active store of relationships in 3D space)
what is the Episodic buffer?
- a general store to hold and combine info from VSS, PL, CE and LTM
strength of the WMM
- Baddely (when doing two visual tasks it was found that performance was much better when the tasks were not using the same processing. this suggests the VSS and PL are different subsystems)
- Shallice and Warrington (KF has a selective impairment to his verbal STM but visual functioning was not affected. suggests PL and VSS are in separate brain regions)
- Baddely (found participants could recall more short words than long words. suggests PL is the time it says to say the words approx 2 secs, word length effect)
- the WMM seems more accurate than the STM components of the MSM in describing how memory is used as an active processor
limitations of WMM
- low external validity due to low mundane realism making it less generalisable
- the Central executive is a concept without full explanation of its function
- inferences must be made due to it being impossible to directly observe the processes of memory
what is interference theory?
we forget because our long term memories get disrupted by other information when it is coded