Memory pt2

Question 1

What is Fodor’s (1983) concept of horizontal memory?

Question 2

What is Crowder’s (1989) concept of coding modularity?

Answer 2

1. Memory should not be considered a warehouse.
2. Looks at memory as a facilitator of functions like vision and sound.
3. There are specific processes for memory depending on its purpose/domain.

Question 3

What is the most influential model of working memory?

Answer 3

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Question 4

What is the role of STM in Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) model?

Answer 4

It provides online support for any cognitively demanding task that is currently being undertaken.

Question 5

What is the role of the central executive in Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) model?

Answer 5

The central executive was the overall control mechanism for the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad.
The element of an episodic buffer was added later and this also fell under the control of the central executive.

Question 6

What is the phonological loop involved with?

Answer 6

Processing speech based verbal material through the phonological store and an articulatory rehearsal process.
This is then pushed through the output buffer to prepare for a response, if necessary.

Question 7

Is there interplay between auditory and visual perception?

Answer 7

Yes. This can be seen with the McGurk effect. However, there is clear evidence that both processes are separate.

Question 8

What is the phonological similarity effect (Conrad, 1964) ?

Answer 8

Similar sounding items within a list are harder to recall in short term. Shown for both letters and words.

Question 9

What is the Irrelevant Speech effect (Colle and Welsh, 1976; Salame and Baddeley, 1982)?

Answer 9

Memory for visually presented verbal items is impaired by simultaneous presentation of spoken material which the observer has been asked to ignore.
Evidence of a dedicated phonological processor.

Question 10

What is the word length effect (Baddeley et al., 1975)?

Answer 10

Immediate serial recall of shorter monosyllabic words is significantly better than longer, complex multi-syllable words.

Question 11

What is articulatory suppression?

Answer 11

Repeating of a single and simple word when performing another task will cause significant impairment.

Question 12

What were the findings of Logie et al. (1990) experiement 2?

Answer 12

When testing for memory span, participants in dual-task conditions performed worse than those in single-task conditions.
This was especially apparent when the dual-task condition involved similar processes. For example, dual visual processing tasks.

Question 13

What did Klauer and Zhao (2004) report on?

Answer 13

Separate systems for processing visual and spatial materials. This is similar to Goodale and Milner’s theory of dorsal and ventral streams.

Question 14

What is Norman and Shallice (1986) finding on the central executive?

Answer 14

The central executive focuses on attentional control. Regulation of routine and habit in situations where there is schemata in play.

Question 15

What is Baddeley’s (1996) point of view on the central executive?

Answer 15

1. It is about managing focus.
2. Dividing and switching attention resources
3. Relating working memory content to LTM

Question 16

What is the role of the episodic buffer? from Baddeley (2000)

Answer 16

1. Integrating inputs from various sources and networks.
2. It is believed to have limited capacity.
3. Provides additional capacity to original parts of the model. For example, the recall of jokes in verbatim.
4. Assists in processing information in multi-dimensional spaces, which is the norm of our human existence.

Question 17

Can the working memory be trained? (Groome & Eysenck, 2016)

Answer 17

There isn’t research supporting it.
What appears to be happening is that users of these training tools are simply getting better at certain tasks as prescribed by the tools but not improving their working memory per se.
There is no transfer of improvement to untrained tasks

Question 18

What is working memory important for? (Miyake & Friedman, 2012)

Answer 18

1. other cognitive ability
2. general intelligence
3. control of diet
4. exercise
5. racial prejudice
6. infidelity

Question 19

What are some tactics to better remember things?

Answer 19

1. First-letter mnemonics - Eg. OCEAN, ROYGBIV, BODMAS
2. Rhyme mnemonics - Eg.
3. Chunking (Wickelgren, 1964)
4. Method of loci (Simonides, 500BC)
5. Face-name system (Lorayne & Lucus, 1974)
6. Keyword system (Atkinson, 1975)
7. Peg-word system (Higbee, 1977)

Question 20

How is information encoded and why are some better remembered than others?

Answer 20

1. Deep elaboration, deep processing due to distinctiveness (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1980) and speaking out loud to improve distinctiveness (Macleod, 1980)
2. Visual imagery resulting in dual coding (Paivio, 1971). Concrete versus abstract words. Pictures are better remembered than words.
3. Mind maps (Buzan, 1974)
4. Worrying subtracts resources from working memory. It is the equivalent of a dual task decrement.

Question 21

What affects eye witness memory?

Answer 21

Different verbal descriptions of car crashes affected how eye witnesses estimate speed of the cars (Loftus & Palmer, 1974).

Question 22

How common and strong are childhood memories before 7 years of age?

Answer 22

1. under 3 - very few

2. Between 3 and 6 - pretty weak

Question 23

Why are childhood memories before 7 years weak?

Answer 23

1. Repression (Freud, 1915)
2. Lack of cognitive self ( Howe & Courage, 1997)
3. Social cultural development (Fivush, 2010)
4. Lack of language

Question 24

What are the theories on childhood amnesia?

Answer 24

1. Two-stage theory (Jack & Hayne, 2010) - absolute then relative amnesia
2. Neurogenic hypothesis (Josselyn ^ Frankland, 2012) - process of generating new neurons in the hippocampus is protracted

Question 25

What is Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 25

Dementia - long term decline in memory affecting emotion, language, motivation and personality.
Alzheimer’s disease - a progressive neurodegenerative disease that occurs in 60 to 70% of dementia patients. The cerebral cortex and hippocampus shrink, and ventricles are enlarged and filled with cerebrospinal fluid.

Question 26

What is Korsakoff’s syndrome?

Answer 26

Associated with chronic alcoholism

Question 27

What are flash blub memories?

Answer 27

A special neural mechanism for important memories. Eg. memory of where I was when 911 happened!
Emotion is particularly important.

Question 28

What is the misinformation effect (Loftus & Palmer, 1974)?

Answer 28

When a person is exposed to a misleading question, it leads to apparent permanent loss of original memory, which is then replaced with false memories.