Models of Memory Flashcards
Wood and Cowan ( 1995)
The impact of attention on recall. A track was played though headphones with there being different tracks in both ears. A group was told to pay attention to the right ear track by repeating it aloud and ignore the left with some having the track play backwards for 30s. Another group was told to pay attention to the left ear ignoring the right and a final group didn’t listen to anything. After this, they were given a series of questions about the track. Participants who paid attention to the left ear did better in the questions, ppts who didn’t did no better and the ppts who didn’t listen to anything guessed.
Recall is better when attention is paid which highlights the role of attention on memory.
- Lacks ecological validity
- good control
What did the Working Memory model replace?
The STM ( Atkinson and Shifrin)
Why is the STM model wrong?
Assumes that information in our STM is guaranteed to transfer into the LTM and that the short term store is essential for access to the LTM
Draw the working memory model
ON ipad
What is involved in the central executive?
- decides which information is intended to and which parts of the brain to send that information
- most important component of the WMM
What is involved in the phonological loop?
- Spoken/ written material
- 2 components ( the phonological store = where spoken words are entered directly and are stored for 1 to 2 seconds and writen words are converted into a spoken code before converting)
- Articulatory control process = rehearses the infomation that is stored in the phonological store
What is involved in the visual spatial sketchpad?
- visual and spatial info
- keep track of where you are relative to other objects and manipulates that info into the LTM
What is involved in the episodic buffer?
- communicates with both the LTM and WMM
Evaluation for WMM
- little evidence of the central executive
- WMM is just a theory of the STM
- can be used to explain thinking and problem solving
- can explain verbal reasoning and comprehension
Hitch and Baddeley (1976)
To determine whether the working memory model is just an information store or can be used to explain informational processing. The participants had to complete a verification task which involved determining whether a statement was true or false with there being different degrees of complexity like A follows B and A does not follow B. One group had to just complete the task but another had to repeat something aloud at the same time. The mean time it took to complete the verification task and the error rate was recorded. The reasoning time for the task and the complexity of the articulation task correlated with the more processing the task required the longer it took to work out.
Shows that the short term store is more complex than what is outlined in the MSM as it has a limited processing capacity that allows not only to store but to manipulate information.
Glanzer and Cunitz
To test the hypothesis that there are 2 storage mechanisms that produce the serial position curve in free recall. Pariticpants were shown 15 word lists with each word being shown for a second and there being a 2 second interval between each word. There was then a hashtag or a number that appeared on the screen. The group that had the hashtag had to immediately write down all the words they could remember however the group with the number had to count down from that number and then had either no delay, a 10 second delay or a 30 second delay before writing down what they can remember.
There was good recall for the first few items ( primary effect) then a downwards curve that then went back up again for the final few words ( recency effect)
Outline the multistore model of memory
-proposed by atkinson and shifrin who argued that memory comprises of 3 stores ( sensory store, short term store, long term store)
-Information comes to us through our senses and enters the sensory store (SS). We don’t know the capacity of the SS, but it holds the information for no more than about one second. If we don’t pay attention to it then the information fades away. However, if we do pay attention to the information, it is encoded into our short-term memory store (STM).
-STM is also limited in duration (no more than about 30 seconds) and also in capacity (5-9 items). New information can push out information already in STM (a process called displacement) so to hold onto it the information needs to be processed again by maintenance rehersal ( when info is repeated so that it can remain in the STM or with enough processing can go into the LTM
- If no further processing occurs in STM, however, then the information may simply fade away (decay).
-When the learned information is needed, it is retrieved from LTM and brought back into STM where it can be used.
The multi-store model of memory proposes that information is processed in a linear way, from input to long-term storage, and argues that without the appropriate processing it will be forgotten.
