Process Models of Memory

Question 1

What is the Eriksen ISI?

Answer 1

• fuse the random-dot display to see a nonsense syllable

Question 2

What is Visible persistence?

Answer 2

the continued apparent visibility of a stimulus beyond its physical duration.

Question 3

What did the inverse duration effect cause problems for?

Answer 3

The notion that we have an iconic memory store

Question 4

What was Eriksen and Collin’s (1967) experiment to prove the visual ‘icon’ memory store theory (iconic store)?

Answer 4

• Stimuli: two patterns of dots that form a nonsense syllable when superimposed
• S1 + S2. S2 presented after a delay
• If you could still superimpose it after a delay shows you still have some visual perception of S1
• If you increase the delay performance will decrease e.g. ISI = 50 will perform better than ISI = 100
• ISI = inter-stimulus interval (in msec)
• Interpreted as evidence for icon decaying over around 300 msec

Question 5

What did DiLollo and Hogben say about the persistence of visual information?

Answer 5

• that it is a phenomenon of visual processing not the sensory memory store
• they said that Data from Sperling and Eriksen & Collins were ambiguous
• they said that it could be due to the inverse duration effect

Question 6

How does the dot fusion experiment support the decay from memory theory?

Answer 6

• Decay starts from offset of S1
• Decline in performance as ISI (inter-stimulus interval) increases due to less effective overlap between memory traces of S1 and percept of S2

Question 7

How does the dot fusion experiment support the visual processing theory?

Answer 7

 Processing starts from onset of S1 and runs its course. Decline in performance as ISI increases due to less effective overlap between processing of S1 and processing of S2

Question 8

Why using the classic dot fusion experiment can’t you tell whether visual information is due to decay from memory or visual processing?

Answer 8

they predict the same pattern: declining performance as ISI increases

Question 9

What is the key difference between the decay from memory and visual processing theory and so how can we test the difference? (Hogben and Di Lollo 1974)

Answer 9

• the decay from memory theory: a visual is shown and after it is shown the information decays after about 30 seconds
• Visual processing theory: an image is shown and it starts getting processed from the beginning, there is a set amount of time in which it is being processed and after this it is gone
   Memory Decay starts from offset of S1
   Visual processing starts from onset of S1 and runs its course
   So if we manipulate the duration of S1 (SOA) and keep the gap (ISI) at 0, the theories make different predictions

Question 10

What is the SOA?

Answer 10

stimulus onset asynchrony - the duration of the stimulus

Question 11

What happened in dot-fusion experiment where the duration of S1 was manipulated?

Answer 11

• If decay from memory:
   Decay starts from offset of S1
   Predicts NO decline in performance as S1 duration increases because effective overlap doesn’t change (=ISI of 0 msec)
• If overlap of visual processing:
   Processing starts from onset of S1 predicts: decline in performance as SI duration increases because effective overlap decreases (same as with ISI)
• Result:
   Inverse duration effect (performance decreases)

Question 12

How did Coltheart (1980) explain the decay from memory vs visual processing argument?

Answer 12

• he said there were three separate phenomena:
• neural persistence’ (overlap in neural processing; very brief)
• ‘Visible persistence’ (overlap in visual processing; Di Lollo <200 msec)
• ‘Informational Persistence’ (icon that decays’ Sperling -150-300 msec)

Question 13

Who came up with the working memory (WM) model in 1974?

Answer 13

Baddeley and Hitch

Question 14

How did ‘dual task paradigms’ give evidence to the working memory model?

Answer 14

• Participants would be given both a primary task (e.g. hold a few words in mind for some period of time) and a simultaneous secondary task (e.g. rehearse a sequence of digits)
• If both could be performed at the same time it was taken as evidence that the WM system was more complex than a simple short-term store
• And if the secondary task interfered with the primary task, then that was because they both relied on the same processing mechanism

Question 15

Why did Baddeley come up with the WM theory?

Answer 15

He thought there was so much going on in the STS that it couldn’t just be a single box

Question 16

Give an example of a dual task paradigm that gave evidence to the working memory model

Answer 16

1. Remember and overtly (out-loud) rehearse sequences of 0-8 digits – secondary task
2. At the same time perform a simple True/ False reasoning task e.g. (A precedes B): AB (true) – primary task
   - Results: It is possible to carry out both tasks, despite both requiring STS
    Error rate held constant (fairly low) when concurrent digit load changes
    Reasoning time goes up as the concurrent digit load increases
    Increase in reasoning time is significant but not large (35%) = speed-accuracy trade-off
   - Shows there must be more than a single component to your short-term store

Question 17

What are the three components of the working memory model?

Answer 17

• There is a phonological store
• There is a central executive Store
• There is a Visuo-spatial Sketch pad (inner eye)

Question 18

What’s the phonological loop?

Answer 18

• Originally called articulatory loop
• It’s your inner voice
• Made up of the phonological store and central executive

Question 19

How does the phonological store work?

Answer 19

• Auditory word presentation -> Phonological store -> articulatory control process
• Visual word presentation -> Articulatory control process -> phonological store
• If articulatory control process blocked by another task then visual words won’t be able to get to the phonological store whereas auditory words still will
• rehearsal process analogous to subvocal speech (inner voice)

Question 20

How do dual task results provide evidence for the phonological loop?

Answer 20

 Articulatory Suppression: what happens if you prevent material being articulated
 Articulate irrelevant items (overtly or covertly) while performing a verbal span task
 Result: word length effect disappears (for written words only)
 Explanation:
 Articulation of irrelevant items dominates articulatory control process, so words cannot be rehearsed – word length has no influence
 But spoken words go straight to the phonological store
 Shows an interaction between control conditions and articulation:
 Word length effect dependent on articulation
- phonological confusability effect

Question 21

How does the word span task provide evidence for the phonological loop and the word-length effect?

Answer 21

 Greater span for short words than for long words, whether written or heard
 And this seems to correspond well with speed at which the words are read
 Spoken Duration appears to be crucial:
 Memory spans are greater for short-duration words (‘bishop’) than for long-duration words (‘harpoon’) even though they have the same number of syllables (Baddeley et al., 1975)
 Shows that you articulate the words in the phonological loop

Question 22

what are the two components in the phonological system?

Answer 22

• Phonological Store:
   Stores memory traces for a few seconds before they fade
• Articulatory (Phonological) Loop:
   Rehearsal Process analogous to subvocal speech (inner voice)

Question 23

What is the phonological loop for?

Answer 23

• Learning to Read
   Lower memory spans -> reduced reading ability
• Vocabulary acquisition
   Correlation between non-word repetition ability (which requires the phonological loop) and vocabulary size (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989)
• Language Comprehension
   Patients with STM impairments have difficulty comprehending complex sentences

Question 24

What is the visuo-spatial sketch pad?

Answer 24

A workspace in which an image can be stored and manipulated to guide behaviour

Question 25

What is the Rooks Matrix Task (1967) and what were the results?

Answer 25

 Learn sequence of sentences to remember
 Spatial (left/ right, beneath/above:
 ‘In the starting square put a 1’
 ‘In the next square to the right put a 2’
 Non-Spatial
 ‘In the starting square, put a 1’
 ‘In the next square to the quick put a 2’
 Result: Recall – 8 spatial vs 6 non-spatial
 Benefit of special imagery
 Non-spatial condition: performance better with written instructions
 Spatial condition: performance better with auditory instructions
 Visual (written) instructions & spatial imagery interfere

Question 26

What is Baddeley’s (1975) dual task to provide evidence that the sketchpad relies on spatial coding?

Answer 26

1. Brooks Matrix task 2. Pursuit rotor task (spatial distractor) – do these tasks at the same time
    Spatial distractor – keep the stylus on the cursor. Experimenter can tell when on the cursor
    Result: tracking disrupts spatial but not non-spatial (nonsense) condition

Question 27

What is the Sketch-pad for?

Answer 27

• Not as well studied as the phonological loop
• Geographical location – learning our way around our environment
• Planning and performing spatial tasks

Question 28

What is the central executive?

Answer 28

• Most complex and least understood component of WM
• A ‘workspace’ divided between storage and processing demands
• In some ways the central executive functions more like an attentional system than a memory store: Baddeley
• Model suggests CE co-ordinates the activity of the 2 slave systems
• Other potential roles for the CE include coordinating retrieval strategies and selective attention

Question 29

What are the problems with the working model?

Answer 29

• Articulatory Suppression: this secondary task doesn’t fully prevent registration of visually presented words (which should be recorded phonologically)
• STM-impaired patients: visual and verbal spans are usually similarly affected (e.g., digit span of 2, visual span of 4) – why would that be the case if independent sub-systems are responsible
• Rehearsal: how is non verbal visual information rehearsed? How do pre-verbal children rehearse verbal information?
• Consciousness: How can consciousness ‘bind’ information from different modalities without a multimodal short term store

Question 30

What did the levels of processing model bring into question and why?

Answer 30

• LoP brought into question the notion that ‘rehearsal’ was necessary to transfer items from STS to LTS

• Firstly it was clear from surprise memory tests that people can successfully encode items they’ve been exposed to even when they didn’t rehearse them
• The nature of the orienting task seemed to determine the likelihood of successful retrieval

Question 31

Who is the levels of processing model associated with?

Answer 31

Fergus Craik

Question 32

What is the levels of processing (LoP) framework?

Answer 32

• Stimulus processing (of words at least) can occur at a number of different levels:
• Types of processing of words:
   Orthographic – to do with the letters that make up the words
   Phonological - sounds
   Semantic – meanings
• Level:
   Orthographic is shallow
   Phonological is a bit deeper
   Semantic you have to go deeper still – (semantic information is the meaning of something. You can only understand it by finding associations with previously known knowledge)
   Gradient from shallow to deep processing
• The deeper the processing the better the retention – processing is better when you’ve processed to a semantic level

Question 33

How does evidence from incidental learning paradigms support the idea that encoding can occur without rehearsal?

Answer 33

 Subjects are unaware that their memory will be tested
 Therefore they weren’t intentionally encoding (rehearsing)
 What processes were active at encoding?
 How does the process affect retention?
 Finding: deeper the processing the better the memory

Question 34

What is Craik’s (1977) different orienting tasks during encoding?

Answer 34

 Orthographic: is the word upper or lower case?
 Phonological: does the word rhyme with mat?
 Semantic: does the word fit the end of the sentence?
 Results:
 The deeper the processing the better the retention
 Semantic tasks have about the same retention as intentional encoding tasks

Question 35

What two types of rehearsal does the LoP make a distinction between?

Answer 35

• Type 1: Maintenance rehearsal
• Type II: Elaborative rehearsal
• Found that only type II rehearsal is associated with increased retention

Question 36

What was Craik and Watkins (1973) experiment to test if maintenance rehearsal works?

Answer 36

– Ss listen to list of 21 words and told to recall last word beginning with ‘g’
 Control how many g words appear
 As Ss don’t know which ‘g’ word will be last, they will rehearse the first one until the next one appears
 By varying the number of words between ‘g’ words, the amount of rehearsal can be systematically varied
 Amount of rehearsal had no effect on subsequent recall (maintenance rehearsal)

Question 37

How did Crail and Tulving use semantic orienting tasks to test for the elaboration effect (1975)?

Answer 37

 Q. could the word ‘watch’ fit into the follow sentence
 Low elaboration: ‘she dropped her…’
 High elaboration: ‘the old man hobbled across the room and dropped his…in the jug’
 Result: high elaboration led to better retention
 Speculative Explanation: elaborate processing increases the number of associations between stimulus and context

Question 38

What are problems with LoP

Answer 38

• Circularity of the definition of ‘depth’
   Better memory (semantic > orthographic)
   Depth of Processing (semantic =’deep’, orthographic = ‘shallow’)
   In order to break circularity, an independent measure of depth is required
• Concepts such as ‘elaboration’ are as slippery as ‘depth’
• ‘Shallow’ orienting tasks almost certainly involve some automatic semantic processing (e.g., Stroop):
   If you are prevented words in different font colours and you just have to say the word
• It’s possible that ‘deep’ processing only leads to better performance under certain testing conditions

Question 39

How did Lockhart and Craik respond to the criticism that the theory is circular?

Answer 39

qualitatively different domains of processing, e.g., semantic v phonemic can be defined as deep or shallow in absence of effects on memory performance

Question 40

What was Morris, Brandsford & Franks (1977) orienting task experiment and what was the result?

Answer 40

• Orienting task
   1. Deep (semantic): ‘The…had a silver engine’ (train)
   2. Shallow (rhyme) ‘… rhymes with legal’ (eagle)
• Test task:
   1. Standard recognition: did you see the word ‘train?’
   2. Rhyming recognition: Did you see a word that rhymes with: regal?
• Result: LoP effect for recognition test, but opposite for rhyming test
• For the standard test the proportion recognised was higher for the semantic task than the rhyme task
• For rhyming recognition the proportion recognised was higher for the rhyme task than the semantic task
• Deep processing does not always enhance memory

Question 41

What was Morris, Brandsford and Franks (1977) transfer appropriate processing theory and what was Craik’s response?

Answer 41

• Memory performance depends on the extent to which processes used at the time of learning are the same as those used when memory is tested
• ‘Deep’ orienting tasks often produce better results because the test task engages the same ‘deep’ processes
• A form of encoding which is ‘shallow; for one purpose may be ‘deep’ (a better match for another
• Craik responded: ‘Deeper encoding processes result in traces that are potentially very memorable, provided that an appropriate retrieval cue is available at the time of retrieval.