Memory Flashcards
What is cognitive psychology?
The study of internal mental processes. It looks at how people perceive think remember speak and solve problems.
Who devised the multi store model?
Atkinson and shiffrin
What does the msm claim?
That information flows through a series of storage systems
What are the 3 storage systems?
Sensory register
STM
Ltm
How does each stage differ?
Coding
Capacity
Duration
What is coding?
The form in which the information is stored
What is capacity?
How much information can be stored
What is duration?
How long information can be stored for
What is the diagram of the msm?
Sensory register-decay Attention Stm-displacement, decay Rehearsal Rehearsal Retrieval Ltm- retrieval failure, decay, interference
How does the msm work?
Information gathered by the sense organs enters the sensory register
Only the small amount paid attention to passes to s for further processing. The rest of the info is lost very quickly
Info in the STM that’s actively processed enough (thought about) mainly through rehearsal, transfers to ltm
What is the sensory register?
Part of the memory system that receives and stored info from the environment through our senses. If the info in the sensory store receives attention it’s transferred to stm. However if we don’t pay attention to the info it decays and is forgotten.
What is coding in the sr?
Modality specific
What does modality specific mean?
It’s stored in the form it arrives in
Does each of the 5 senses have its own memory store?
Yes
What store does visual info enter?
Iconic store
What store does sound info enter?
Echoic store?
Who’s research supports coding in the sr?
Crowder
What did crowder find?
Sr only holds info in the iconic store for a few milliseconds, but for 2 to 3 seconds in the echoic store. This supports the idea of sensory info being coded into different sensory stores
What does crowders research suggest?
They have different durations also
What’s the phrase to remember crowder?
All crows have different durations
What’s the capacity in the sr and each sensory store?
Very large
Who’s research supports capacity being large in the sr?
Spelling
What was spellings method?
Flashed a 3+4 grid of letters onto a screen for 1/20th of a second and asked it’s to recall the letters of one row. As the info would fade very quickly he sounded different tones (high medium and low) to indicate which row had to be recalled (1st 2nd 3rd)
What did sperling find?
Recall in the indicated row was high, which suggests all the info was originally there, indicating that the capacity of the sr is quite large
What’s the phrase to remember sperling?
He sperred letters into a screen
What’s the duration of the sr\sensory stores?
0.5 s
Who’s research supports the limited duration in the sr?
Walsh and Thompson
What did Walsh and Thompson find?
The iconic sensory store had an average duration of 0.5s which decreases as individuals get older. This suggests sensory memories is limited and dependant on age
What’s the phrase to remember Walsh and Thompson?
Walsh is an old name
What is the stm?
Stm temporarily stores info received from the sr (info that’s been paid attention to)
What’s the coding of stm?
Acoustic- how it sounds
How do we encode the info being transferred from sensory memory to stm?
By verbalising it- we either say it out loud to ourselves or we repeat it to ourselves mentally
Who’s research supports encoding in the stm and ltm?
Baddeley
What did baddeley investigate?
The possibility that the stm and ltm process info in different ways
What did baddeley construct?
A pool of short familiar words for each 4 career glories
What were the 4 categories?
Acoustically similar words (map, mad, mat)
Acoustically dissimilar words (pen, cow, pit)
Semantically similar words (tall, high, broad, wide, big)
Semantically dissimilar (foul, thin, late, safe, strong)
How did he test stm?
For each caterogry he presented a random sequence of 5 words and asked it’s to write them down immediately after In the order they were shown x
What did baddeley find for the stm?
Words that sounded similar were much harder to remember than the words of any other 3 catergories
What was the conclusion from this?
Stm codes acoustically
How did he modify the exp to text ltm?
Extended the length of the word lists from 5 to 10 and prevented Pts from rehearsing (interrupting them after each presentation
Each list was presented 4 times and them recall was tested after a 20 minute interval
What did baddeley find for ltm?
Acoustic similarity had no effect on recall, but pts had difficulty recalling works that are semantically similar (meaning)
What was concluded from this?
Words similar in meaning interfered with each other and so info in the ltm coded semantically
What’s the phrase to remember baddeley?
It’s bad that stm codes acoustically and ltm codes semantically
What’s the capacity if stm?
Limited capacity- only small amount of info is held in the store.
5-9 items (7 plus or -2, magic number 7)
But can be increased my chunking
What is chunking?
Method of increasingly stm capacity by grouping info into larger units
Who’s research supports stm capacity?
Miller
What did miller use to find out the capacity?
Immediate digit span test
What’s millers method?
Pts were ead a series of numbers and repeated them back to the researcher in the same order that they heard them. The number of the digits they had to recall was increased until the Pts were unable to recall them accurately. He repeated this using different stimuli like words, dots and musical tones
What did miller find?
The average digit span was 7 plus or minus 2. He concluded that the capacity of stm wa delimited to 5-9 items or chunks of info
How does miller say stm can be increased by chunking?
Individual digits or letters can be combined to form a single item or chunk of information. Digits can be combined to form a telephone number and letters can form a work like C A T=cat. The number of items that can be stored in stm remains limited but the amount of info stored in these chunks can be expanded
What’s a phrase to remember miller?
Miller was 72
What’s the duration of the stm?
30 s
How can the duration be extended?
By rehearsal, which if done long enough will result in transfer of the info into ltm
Who’s research supports arms duration?
Peterson and Peterson
What was p and ps method?
Tested 24 undergrads in 8 trials. On each trail the student was given a trigram (ycg) to remember and a 3 digit number. Then asked to count backwards in 3a from that 3 digit number until told to stop to prevent mental rehearsal if the trigram. On each trial they were told to stop counting after a different amount of time (3,6,9,12,15,18) this is the retention interval
What did p and p find?
Around 90% of trigrams were recalled correctly after 3 seconds compared to only 5% after 18 seconds. It suggests that stm may have a very short duration unless we rehearse the info.
What is long term memory?
Storing info over lengthy periods of time- indeed for a whole life time, with any info stored longer than 30 s counting as ltm
What is the capacity of ltm?
The potential capacity is unlimited
Info may be lost due to decay and interference- but such losses don’t occur due to limitation of capacity.
How does Linton support capacity of ltm?
Conducted an experiment on her own ltm. Over many years she kept a daily diary if event cards and gave every day a key word. When she tried to recall any days evens by giving the key word, she could do so with an accuracy if 70%- even up to 7 years later.
Shows the huge capacity of the ltm- as an estimated 11,000 items were recorded on the cards
What’s the duration of ltm?
Ltms can last a lifetime- most elderly people have detailed childhood memories.
Info can decay overtime if not used
What was bahricks study?
Tested 733 adults who’d taken part or were taking part in a high school or uni course in Spanish. He Pts who weren’t currently enrolled in a Spanish course had t studies Spanish from periods ranging from 1-50 years. After the first 3 years of Spanish study, Pts recall declined. After this, a lot of Spanish words were still available in ltm and didn’t decline much more
What does bahricks study show?
Shows although Pts hadn’t in a while, some Spanish word still remained in their memory- demonstrating ltm can be infinite
The msm is supported by research studies that show that stm and ltm are indeed qualitatively different. How does baddeley a study support this?
He found we tend to mix up words that sound similar when using our arms. But we mix up words that have similar meanings when we use our ltms. The strength of this study is that it clearly shows coding is acoustically and ltm is semantic. So they’re different sites and this supports the mans view that hear 2 memory stores are separate and independent
What studies give further support as they show sr stm and ltm are separate?
Crowder Sperling Walsh and Thompson Baddeley Miller Peterson and Peterson Linton Bahrick
What case study if a brain damaged patient can we use to support stm and ltm being separate stores?
Clive wearing
What is the case of Clive wearing?
After contracting a viral infection (enphalitis) he was left with extensive brain damage. He was till able to walk talk and play music but lost the ability to from new long term memories. This meant he couldn’t transfer info from the stm to lol. He had relatively normal functioning stm memories but as they have a duration of up to 30s anything that happened to him after that time he completely forgot. He could remember things from his past prior to his brain damage. This severely deliberating condition provides evidence that stm and ltm are completely separate entities in the human brain and supports the validity of the msm of memory
How is the serial position effect by Murdock used to support stm and ltm being separate stores?
This comes from experiments were Pts are read a list of words and then immediately asked to recall the words in any order. Words at the beginning and end of a list are recalled better than those in the middle. Words at the beginning of the lift (primacy effect) are recalled because they’ve been rehearsed and transferred to ltm. Words at the end of the list (recent effect) are recalled as they’re still in the stm.
According to the mam, what matters about rehearsal?
The amount of it you do so the more you rehearse some info (e.g. A list of words) the more likely you are to transfer it to the ltk and remember it for a long time
However, what did Craig and Watkins find?
This prediction is wrong. What really matters is the type. They discovered two types of rehearsal. Mein tendency rehearsal- type describes in the msm, but this doesn’t transfer it to the ltm it just maintains in the stm (hence the name)
Elaborating rehearsal- needed for long term storage. Where you link info to your existing knowledge or think about what it means. This is another research finding that can’t be explained by the model
Why can the wmm be used as a limitation?
Shows stm is more complex than the msm suggests due to the stm having different stores and studies to support these
