Memory Flashcards
What is coding?
The format in which the information is stored in the various memory stores
What is capacity?
The amount of information that can be held in a memory store
What is duration?
The length of time information can be held in memory
How is short-term memory coded?
Mainly acousticly
What is the capacity of short-term memory?
5-9 chunks of information
What is the duration of short-term memory?
18-30 seconds
How is long-term memory coded?
Mainly semantic
What is the capacity of long-term memory?
Unlimited
What is the Multi-Store Model of Memory?
A representation of how memory works in terms of 3 stores;
- Sensory register
- Short term memory
- Long term memory
What is the sensory register?
The memory stores for each of our five senses in the echoic store and the iconic store
What is the iconic store?
The store of visual information
What is the echoic store?
The store of auditory information
What is maintenance rehearsal?
- Occurs when we repeat material to ourselves over and over again
- This information is kept in our short-term memories as long as we rehearse it
- If we rehearse it long enough, it passes into our long-term memory
What is retrieval?
- Material that is stored in long-term memory has to be transferred back into our short-term memory when we want to recall it
What are the limitations of the Multi-Store of Memory (MSM)?
- Too simplistic
- Doesn’t apply to everyone
- The model could miss out important information
What is a unitary store?
1 type of store
What are the 3 types of long-term memory?
- Episodic Memory
- Semantic Memory
- Procedural Memory
What is Episodic Memory?
- Long-term memory store for personal events
- Time-stamped
- Need to be deliberately recalled
What is Semantic Memory?
- Long-term memory store for our knowledge of the world
- Facts
- Not time-stamped
- Constantly added to
- Need to be deliberately recalled
What is Procedural Memory?
- Long-term memory store of our knowledge of how to do things such as waling, talking
- Do not need conscious awareness and it does not need to be recalled, no deliberate effort
What is the working memory model?
- A representation of short-term memory
- Suggests that STM is a dynamic processor of different types of information using sub-units coordinated by a central decision-making system.
What is the central executive?
- The component of the WMM that coordinates the activities of the three subsystems in memory
- An attentional process that monitors incoming data, makes decisions and allocates slave systems to tasks
- Limited processing capacity
What are the 3 slave systems of memory?
- Phonological loop
- Visuo-spatial sketchpad
- Episodic buffer
What is the phonological loop?
- Deals with auditory information and preserves the order in which the information arrives
- 1st slave system
What can the phonological loop be subdivided into?
- Phonological store
- Articulatory process
What is the phonological store?
- Part of the phonological loop
- Stores the words you hear
What is the articulatory process?
- Part of the phonological loop-
- Allows maintenance rehearsal
- The capacity of this ‘loop’ is said to be two seconds worth of what you can say
What is the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
- Stores visual or spatial information when required
- Limited capacity (3-4 objects)
- 2nd slave system
What can the visuo-spatial sketchpad be subdivided into?
- Visual cache
- Inner scribe
What is the visual cache?
- Part of the visuo-spatial sketchpad
- Stores visual data
What is the inner scribe?
- Part of the visuo-spatial sketchpad
- Records the arrangement of objects
What is the episodic buffer?
- A temporary store for information
- Integrates the visual, spatial and verbal information processed by other stores
Maintains a sense of time sequencing - Can be seen as the storage component of the central executive
- Limited capacity of about 4 chunks
- Added to the model in 2000
What are the 3 explanations for forgetting?
- Inference (proactive and retroactive)
- Retrieval Failure
- Context-dependent Forgetting
What is inference?
Forgetting because one memory blocks another, causing one of both memories to be distorted or forgotten.
What is proactive inference?
- Forgetting occurs when older memories, already stored, disrupt the recall of new memories
- The degree of forgetting is greater when the memories are similar
What is retroactive inference?
- Forgetting occurs when newer memories disrupt the recall of older memories already stored
- The degree of forgetting is greater when the memories are similar.
What was McGeoch and McDonald’s aim?
To discover the effects of similarity on the interference of memory
What did McGeoch and McDonald do?
- Studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between 2 sets of material
- Participants had to learn a list of 10 words until they could remember them with 100% accuracy, then learned a new list
- Group 1- Synonyms
- Group 2- Antonyms - words with opposite meanings to the original
- Group 3- Words unrelated to the original ones
- Group 4- Nonsense syllables
- Group 5- Three-digit numbers
- Group 6- No new list - these participants just rested
What did McGeoch and McDonald find?
- When the participants recalled the original list of words, their performance depended upon the nature of the second list
- The synonyms (most similar material) produced the worst recall