memory Flashcards
What are the three features of each store in the multi-store memory model?
- coding
- capacity
- duration
For the coding in the sensory register, what are the different senses and their names?
iconic - vision
haptic -touch
echoic - sound
gustatory - taste
olfactory - smell
What is the capacity in the sensory register?
Very large, however only what is paid attention to is passed to the short term memory
What is the duration like in the sensory register?
Very short, as low as 250 milli seconds
What is the coding in the short term memory?
Information in the short term memory is stored acoustically
What is the capacity in the short term memory? How can it be improved?
Around 7 items plus or minus 2.
Can be improved by chunking
What is the duration in the short term memory? How can it be extended?
Short, 18-30 seconds. However, duration can be extended by rehearsal
When information is passed from STM to LTM what are the two types of rehearsal?
- maintenance rehearsal - repeating the info
- elaborative rehearsal - linking info that is already in the LTM
In the short term memory, what are the two ways information can be lost?
- Displacement - new info replacing it
- Decay - lost over time
What is the coding in the long term memory?
Stored semantically e.g we link waves to the ocean
What is the capacity in the long term memory?
no limit. Info can be lost, not because it ‘ran out of room’, it may be in the long term memory its just not accessible
What is the duration in the long term memory?
Potentially unlimited as recall from childhood is normal in old people
What was the Glanzer and Cunitz study?
Asking participants to remember to recall a list of words in any order
What was the results of the Glanzer and Cunitz study?
What does this show?
- most people remembered words from the start and then end of the list but the middle was usually forgotten
- this suggests that there are separate short term and long term memory stores. First ones go into the long term memory by rehearsal and the end are recalled by the STM
- words in the middle get displaced out of the STM by the end words
What was the Sperling (1960) study?
- Participants were given a grid 4 by 4 filled with letters
- Shown for 1/20th of a second
- asked to recall what they could remember
What was the results of the Sperling study and what does this tell us about the sensory register?
- It was found that the recall for one row was 75%
- This shows that all the rows were contained by the sensory register
- Therefore, the capacity is large
How is the short term memory coded?
Acoustically
How is the long term memory coded?
Semantically
What is the role of the central executive in the WMM?
- ‘Head of the model’
- controls attention
- receives sense info and filters it before passing it on
- capacity is 4 items - only 1 type of info at a time
What is the role of the phonological loop in the WMM?
Processes auditory coded info
What is the role of the primary acoustic store in the WMM?
- inner ear, holds words recently heard
What is the role of the articulatory control process in the WMM?
Inner voice, holds info via sub vocal repetition
What is the role of the visuo - spatial sketchpad in the WMM?
- Processes visual and spatially coded info, thought of as ‘inner eye’
What is the role of the visual cashe in the WMM?
- A passive store of form and colour
What is the role of the inner scribe in the WMM?
- active store holding holding the relationship between objects in 3D space
What is the role of the episodic buffer in the WMM?
Added to WMM in 2000, as the model needed a general store to hold and integrate info from VSS, PL, CE and long term memory
What was the Baddeley (1975) 1 test?
Participants were asked to perform two visual tasks, tracking moving lights at the same time as describing the angles of the letter F. Or a visual and verbal task
What was found in the Baddeley (1975) 1 test? What does this suggest?
- performance was much higher when the tasks were not using the same processes
- This suggests that there are two separate processes for visual and spatial
What was the Shallice and Warrington (1970) test? What does this suggest?
- Investigated the clinical case of KF. It was found that KF had selective impairment to his verbal short - term memory, caused by a brain injury, however the visual functioning of his STM was not affected.
- this suggests that the PL and VSS are separate processes located in separate regions of the brain
What is the Baddeley (1975) 2 test? What does it suggest?
- Participants were visually shown word lists and then asked to write them down in the same order. One condition had monosyllabic words e.g bond and the other had polysyllabic e.g opportunity. It was found they could recall more mono words than poly.
- This suggests that the capacity of PL is is not in number of words but in time it takes to say them - approx 2 seconds
What are the criticisms of the working memory model?
- too simplistic and too vague (central executive), not open for testing and no full explanation of its function
- It is impossible to directly observe the process of memory, this means the assumptions made could be false
- issues with external validity
What is episodic long term memories?
- personal experiences e.g wedding day
- includes details of event, context and emotion
- requires conscious recall and is time stamped
- requires conscious and its time stamped
- associated with hippocampus
What is procedural long term memories?
- memory of how to perform certain tasks, actions and skills
- e.g swimming
- Associated with the cerebellum
- does not require conscious recall
What is semantic long term memory?
- memories of knowledge, facts and concepts e.g capital cities
- not time stamps and requires conscious recall
- temporal lobe
Evaluation of long term memories?
- case of HM supports distinct LTM types
- Real world applications (Belleville 2006)
- Scientific principles, but case studies lack control
What are proactive interference?
when old information effects the learning of new information
What is retroactive inference?
- occurs when new information affects the recall of old information
When is inferences more likely to occur?
When information is similar
Evaluation of Interference
- research support: Baddeley and Hitch (1977) - rugby
- research support: Keppel and Underwood (1962) - trig rams
- does not explain why forgetting occurs when in situations where information is different
- most research is done in a lab and therefore lacks ecological validity
What is the encoding specificity principle?
Claims memory is most effective when information present at the time is available during recall
What is context - dependent forgetting?
Forgetting occurs when there are environmental changes between learning and recall
What is state - dependent forgetting?
Occurs when an individuals emotional/physical state is different when trying to recall information
Why can leading questions be negative?
Questions can suggest info to witnesses causing a change in recall e.g ‘did you see THE weapon?
What research could you use for leading questions?
Loftus and Palmer (1974) - car, smash etc
Evaluation of Loftus and Palmer (1974)
- Artificial video, lacks emotion and consequences, lacks ecological validity
- lacks population validity - only students
- In a second study participants were asked if they saw glass, the people who heard the verb, ‘smashed’ were more likely to say yes even though there was no glass
