Memory (AO1) Flashcards
Name the five components of WMM. What are 3 of them also known as?
- Central executive
- LTM
Slave systems:
- Phonological Loop
- Episodic Buffer
- Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad
What is the Central executive?
- Focuses our memory on the most important tasks. The function of the CE is to direct attention to particular tasks, determining at any time how the brain’s ‘resources’ are allocated to tasks - the three slave systems
What is the phonological loop?
- This has a limited capacity and deals with auditory information. It also maintains the order of information.
Baddeley (1986) subdivided this loop into:
- The phonological store: holds the words you hear, like an inner ear
- An articulatory process: used for words that are heard or seen. These words are repeated silently. This is a form of maintenance rehearsal.
What is the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad (VSS)?
- Used when you have to plan a spatial task (like getting from one room to another, or counting the number of windows in your house).
- A temp. store for Visual and/or spatial information.
What is visual and spatial information?
- Visual information is what things look like. Spatial information is physical relationship between things.
What is the episodic buffer?
- Baddeley added this because he realised the model needed a general store. The phonological loops and visuo-spatial sketchpad deal with storing specific kinds of information.
- The central executive has no storage capacity therefore there was no space to hold information that relates to both visual and acoustic information.
- Has limited capacity, just like all other working memory units.
- Integrates information from the other working memory units and maintains a sense of time sequencing. It sends information to LTM.
Basic structure of MSM?
Environmental Stimuli —> Sensory Register —> STM —> LTM
What is the Sensory Register?
- The sensory register is the place where information is held at each of the senses - the eyes, ears, nose, fingers, tongue, etc, and the corresponding areas of the brain.
- The capacity of these registers is very large. The sensory registers are constantly receiving information, but most of this receives no attention and remains in the sensory register for a very brief duration
What is the STM?
- Information is held in STM so it can be used for immediate tasks. STM has a limited duration - it is in a fragile state and will decay if it isn’t rehearsed. STM has a limited capacity
What is the LTM?
- Potentially unlimited both in duration and capacity, if the memory is permanent. Evidence suggests that when we think we have “forgotten” something we either never actually made the memory permanent or we have just “misplaced” the memory.
What is maintenance rehearsal?
- Repetition keeps information in STM but eventually such repetition will create a long-term memory (LTM).
- Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed a direct relationship between rehearsal in STM and the strength of the LTM.
What is retrieval?
When we use a memory from LTM it must first pass through STM before we can use it.
What is attention?
If a person’s attention is focused on one of the sensory stores, then the data is transferred to short-term memory. Attention is the first step in remembering something.
What IS retrieval failure?
An explanation for forgetting and argues that it occurs due to an inability to retrieve a memory which is there, just unable to reach. This is caused by a lack of sufficient cues.
What are cues?
Things that serve as a reminder. They may meaningfully link to the material to be remembered or may not be meaningfully linked, such as environmental cues (a room) or cues related to your mental state (being sad/drunk)
