Multi-Store Model of Memory Flashcards
What is memory?
The process of storing information and experiences for possible future retrieval
What does all cognition require?
memory
As cognitive psychologists what do we focus on?
the cognitive structure of the memory system and the processes operating within it
What are the different stages of memory?
- encoding
- storage
- retrieval
What’s the digit span task?
Someone speaks a series of numbers allowed. First 3 then 5 then 7 then 9 and the P is asked to repeat them. The highest number they can repeat indicates their short term memory
What does it mean that memory is not a monolith?
It is not just one uniform thing
What did William James (1890) figure out?
The distinction between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ memory
What is primary memory?
Information that remains in consciousness after it has been perceived and forms part of the psychological present
What is the secondary memory?
Information about events that have left consciousness, part of the psychological past
What did Hermann Ebbinghaus do (1885/1913)?
- performed hundreds of memory experiments on himself
- discovered/ invented/ pioneered many methods including:
- capacity of short-term memory - 7
- events of overlearning
- the serial positions curve
and many more
What are is another name for the multi-store model?
the modal model
What are the three stores in the modal model?
- sensory
- short-term store
- long-term store
Who came up with the modal model?
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
What are the stages of the modal model?
- Sensory input comes into the system and gets stored very briefly in the sensory stores
- Very quickly the information decays out
- However if you pay attention to the information it get transferred to the short term store
- Stay here for about 30 seconds or you can continue to rehearse it and it will stay there for longer
- If there is new information coming in it has a tendency to displace the old information in the short-term store
- If you can rehearse it enough it goes into the long-term store (however you can lose information by interference)
- When retrieving information from the long-term store it goes back into the short-term store and you report the information out of the short-term store
Who came up with the serial position curve?
Murdock (1962)
What is the experiment to get the serial position curve?
- Free recall task:
Study: words (or syllables) presented at a fixed pace
Test: recall words in any order
Recall % plotted as a function of word’s position in list.
Get serial position curve
What is the shape of the serial position curve?
- U shaped
- middle is flat with low recall (low recall for words said in the middle)
- upturn at the beginning - primacy
- large upturn at the end - recency
What is the recency effect?
- The last few items in a free recall test tend to be recalled well
- because it is in the short-term-store
How did Glanzer & Cunitz test for the recency effect?
- tested using delay condition
- saw if the last few items were recalled after a delay
- Results:
- In immediate recall there is a recency effect
- After 10 seconds some recency effect but not much
- After 30 seconds no recency effect
What did Glanzer and Cunitz’s delay condition show?
Filled delay between list and recall diminished recency effect
What is the primacy effect?
- first few items tend to be recalled
- because they are in the long-term-store
- the initial items are able to be rehearsed more than the items in the middle
How did Rundus and Atkison (1970) test for the primacy effect?
- Asked people to rehearse out-loud
- Recorded number of rehearsals each item got
- Results: number of rehearsals corresponds to recall
What did Rundus and Atkinson’s show?
Primary effect is related to number of rehearsals: Early items receive more rehearsals and are better recalled
What does the recency effect show?
that the short-term store can handle a few items and information is held for about 30 seconds
What does the primacy effect show?
rehearsal is what’s crucial to transfer things into the long term score – not affected by delay
What can help with short-term memory?
- Mnemonic strategies:
- ‘chunking’ into meaningful segments
- visualisation
- method of loci
What are mnemonic strategies?
When you associate something with information already in long-term memory
How did Miller (1956) investigate the capacity of the short term store and what were the results?
- Using the digit span task
- people can usually recall lists of lengths 5-9 (7 +/- 2)
What was the Brown-Peterson Paradigm to do with decay and what are the results?
- Ss given a nonsense trigram (e.g. ‘WDL’) to remember
- Then count backwards in 3s from a number (numbers shouldn’t interfere with letters)
- Declining performance over time
- Around 30 seconds performance is bad
- This only happens when you can’t rehearse the information
- trace decay of unrehearsed items occur exponentially over - 20 to 30 seconds
What is the Phonological confusability effect?
Information in Short-term-store stored using phonological code
What was Conrad’s (1964) experiment on the phonological confusability effect and what did he find?
- Visually Presented letters: Recall performance worse on similar sounding letters
- e.g. ‘C G V T’ is harder to recall than ‘F T K M W;
- Similar to errors made when trying to discriminate spoken letters against distracting noise
What was Baddeley’s (1966) phonological confusability effect experiment and what did he find?
- Immediate recall worse is words phonologically similar
- E.g. ‘map man can mad cap’
- No effect of semantic similarity (in immediate recall) (words have similar meanings)
what are the features of the short term store?
- Duration: around 20-30 seconds
- Capacity: 7 +/- 2 ‘chunks’
- Code phonological
- Displaced by subsequent items
- Trace decay (fades if not rehearsed)
What is our long term capacity and duration?
difficult to evaluate but assumed to be limitless
What is the semantic confusability effect?
Information in long-term-store stored using semantic code
How did Baddeley (1966) investigate the semantic confusability effect?
- Delayed recall (20 mins)
- Recall worse if words semantically similar
E.g. ‘Great Big Huge Wide’ - No effect of acoustic/phonological similarity
What are the features of the long term store?
- Duration: infinite?
- Capacity: limitless?
- Code: semantic
- Interference
What is the capacity of the sensory store assumed to be?
fairly large
What is the duration of the sensory store assumed to be?
short
How does a tachistoscope work?
P is looking through an occluded lens. Lens very briefly opens and lets the P see the card on the other side (usually with something on it). Computer controlled
How does the full report technique work and what are the results?
- (<1 sec) presentation of a matrix of letters, e.g. three rows of letters like this: A X V E
- If asked to report all letter, could only report 3-4
Why is reporting a bottleneck?
you forget other letters while reporting the first few?
Who came up with the Partial report technique?
Sperling (1960)
What is the partial report technique and what are the results?
- After display, participant cued to report one row but they don’t know which row
- Could still report 3-4.
- Therefore, they stored ALL 12 letters
Give features of the iconic store
- visual store
- duration around 500 msec
- capacity: 12+ letters (depends on stimuli)
- loss via: decay
Give features of the echoic store
- auditory store
- duration around 1-4 seconds
- capacity: (depends on stimuli)
- loss via: decay
What are the iconic and echoic stores both part of?
The sensory store
Give features of the sensory store
- Duration – 500 ms (iconic), 1-5 sec (echoic)
- Capacity: large-ish
- Code: modality specific
- Decay: fades if not selected
What does the strongest evidence for multi-store models come from?
patients with memory disorders
What in anterograde amnesia?
- Inability to make new memories: cannot transfer new information into long term stores)
- But intact short-term memory (and long term memory prior to incident)
- Reduced primacy but intact recency (Baddeley & Warrington, 1970)
What happened with Henry Molaison (patient HM)?
- Intractable epileptic seizures
- Surgery at age 27 (1953)
- Scoville removed medial temporal lobes (MTL) bilaterally (same part on both sides) very unusual
- Seizures calmed immediately after the surgery
- Profound amnesia after surgery
What did Brenda Milner find when she studied HM in 1955?
- HM had profound anterograde amnesia
- Couldn’t acquire new memories
- Digit span normal
- Memory for past intact (up to 3 years pre-surgery)
- Could acquire some skills
What did Shallice and Warrington (1970) find when studying KF?
- impaired short term store
- normal long-term memory
- impaired short-term memory (poor digit span)
What are there double dissociations between (with memory patients) and what does this show?
- between patients that lose short term memory vs patients that lose long term memory
- shows that different brain regions affect different parts of the memory
What problem does neuropsychological evidence pose to the modal model?
if you have no short term how does it get into long term memory?
Why do we remember much more than we attend to and rehearse?
Much unrehearsed info gets into LTS (implicit learning, ‘incidental’ encoding)
What are the main weaknesses of the modal model?
- Oversimplification of stores
* Focus on structure at the expense of process
