Short term and working memory Flashcards
The processes involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present.
Memory
_____ is active any time some past experience has an effect on the way you think or behave now or in the future (Joordens, 2011).
Memory
The model proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin that describes memory as a mechanism that involves processing information through a series of stages, including short-term memory and long-term memory. It is called the modal model because it contained features of many models that were being proposed in the 1960s.
modal model of memory
___ is an initial stage that holds all incoming information for seconds or fractions of a second.
Sensory memory
____ holds five to seven items for about 15 to 20 seconds
Short-term memory (STM)
_____ can hold a large amount of information for years or even decades
Long-term memory (LTM)
The modal mode of memory proposed what three types of memory?
Sensory memory, Short-term memory and Long-term memory.
Types of memory indicated by boxes in models of memory. In the modal model, the types are sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
structural features
In Atkinson and Shiffrin’s modal model of memory, active processes that can be controlled by the person and that may differ from one task to another. Rehearsal is an example of this.
Control processes
The process of repeating a stimulus over and over, usually for the purpose of remembering it, that keeps the stimulus active in short-term memory.
rehearsal
A brief stage of memory that holds information for seconds or fractions of a second. It is the first stage in the modal model of memory
Sensory memory
The continued perception of light for a fraction of a second after the original light stimulus has been extinguished. Perceiving a trail of light from a moving sparkler is caused by this
Persistence of vision
Procedure used in Sperling’s experiment on the properties of the visual icon, in which participants were instructed to report all of the stimuli they saw in a brief presentation.
whole report method
Procedure used in Sperling’s experiment on the properties of the visual icon, in which participants were instructed to report only some of the stimuli in a briefly presented display. A cue tone immediately after the display was extinguished indicated which part of the display to report.
partial report method
Procedure used in Sperling’s experiment on the properties of the visual icon, in which participants were instructed to report only some of the stimuli in a briefly presented display. A cue tone that was delayed for a fraction of a second after the display was extinguished indicated which part of the display to report.
delayed partial report method
Process by which information is lost from memory due to the passage of time.
decays
Brief sensory memory for visual stimuli that lasts for a fraction of a second after a stimulus is extinguished. This corresponds to the sensory memory stage of the modal model of memory.
iconic memory
Brief sensory memory for auditory stimuli that lasts for a few seconds after a stimulus is extinguished.
echoic memory
An example of ____ is when you hear someone say something, but you don’t understand at first and say “What?” But even before the person can repeat what was said, you “hear” it in your mind.
echoic memory
A memory mechanism that can hold a limited amount of information for a brief period of time, usually around 30 seconds, unless there is rehearsal (such as repeating a telephone number) to maintain the information in short-term memory. Short-term memory is one of the stages in the modal model of memory.
Short-term memory (STM)
Subjects are asked to report stimuli they have previously seen or heard.
recall
The number of digits a person can remember. Digit span is used as a measure of the capacity of short-term memory.
digit span
___, who summarized the evidence for this limit in his paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,”
George Miller (1956)
Combining small units into larger ones, such as when individual words are combined into a meaningful sentence. Chunking can be used to increase the capacity of memory.
chunking
Used in connection with the idea of chunking in memory. A chunk is a collection of elements that are strongly associated with each other but weakly associated with elements in other chunks.
chunk
___ did an experiment using Luck and Vogel’s change detection procedure. But in addition to colored squares, they also used more complex objects
George Alvarez and Patrick Cavanagh (2004)
What two proposals have been made about how the capacity of short-term memory should be measured?
“number of items” (Awh et al., 2007; Fukuda et al., 2010; Luck & Vogel, 1997) or “amount of detailed information” (Alvaraz & Cavanagh, 2004; Bays & Husain, 2008; Brady et al., 2011)
A limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning.
Working memory
_______ is concerned with the manipulation of information that occurs during complex cognition (for example, remembering numbers while reading a paragraph)
working memory
Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974; Baddeley, 2000) model of working memory:
the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketch pad, and the central executive.
The part of working memory that holds and processes verbal and auditory information.
phonological loop
Component of the phonological loop of working memory that holds a limited amount of verbal and auditory information for a few seconds.
phonological store
Rehearsal process involved in working memory that keeps items in the phonological store from decaying.
articulatory rehearsal process
The part of working memory that holds and processes visual and spatial information.
visuospatial sketch pad
The part of working memory that coordinates the activity of the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketch pad. The “traffic cop” of the working memory system.
central executive
three phenomena that support the idea of a system specialized for language:
the phonological similarity effect, the word length effect, and articulatory suppression.
An effect that occurs when letters or words that sound similar are confused. For example, T and P are two similar-sounding letters that could be confused.
phonological similarity effect
The notion that it is more difficult to remember a list of long words than a list of short words.
word length effect
Interference with operation of the phonological loop that occurs when a person repeats an irrelevant word such as “the” while carrying out a task that requires the phonological loop.
articulatory suppression
The______ handles visual and spatial information and is therefore involved in the process of visual imagery
visuospatial sketch pad
A type of mental imagery involving vision, in which an image is experienced in the absence of a visual stimulus.
visual imagery
Rotating an image of an object in the mind.
mental rotation
addeley describes the central executive as being an____
attention controller
Difficulty in switching from one behavior to another, which can hinder a person’s ability to solve problems that require flexible thinking. Perseveration is observed in cases in which the prefrontal cortex has been damaged.
perseveration
A task in which information is provided, a delay is imposed, and then memory is tested. This task has been used to study short-term memory by testing monkeys’ ability to hold information about the location of a food reward during a delay.
delayed-response task
Shintaro Funahashi and coworkers (1989) conducted an experiment in which they recorded from neurons in a monkey’s ___while the monkey carried out a delayed-response task.
Prefrontal cortex
Short-term changes in neural network connectivity that has been hypothesized as a mechanism for holding information in working memory.
activity-silent working memory
The test used by Daneman and Carpenter to measure reading span.
reading span test
Daneman and Carpenter concluded that _____ capacity is a crucial source of individual differences in reading comprehension
working memory
An electrical potential, recorded with disc electrodes on a person’s scalp, that reflects the response of many thousands of neurons near the electrode that fire together. The ERP consists of a number of waves that occur at different delays after a stimulus is presented and that can be linked to different functions. For example, the N400 wave occurs in response to a sentence that contains a word that doesn’t fit the meaning of the sentence.
event-related potential (ERP)
Suppose someone has told you a phone number, and you’re repeating it over and over again to yourself with the hope that you’ll remember it before you dial the number. This example is a type of a ___ called ___.
control process; rehearsal
The trail left by a moving sparkler is an example of the ___ at work.
sensory memory
suppose you’re shown five rows containing five letters each. You’re then told to recall only one row of letters. In doing so, you’re utilizing ___.
the partial report method
Iconic memory is to echoic memory as _____ is to _____.
vision; sound
Remembering a fun family trip to the beach when you were six years old requires recalling a(n) ________ memory from ________ memory.
episodic; long-term
Check My Work
While taking this quiz, you are relying on which of the following?
. semantic memory
Currently, it is generally believed that the upper limit for short-term memory is ___.
about 4 items
When you’re trying to understand what your professor is talking about in a lecture, which of the following is LEAST important to aid this process?
visuospatial sketch pad
According to the phonological similarity effect, we’re more likely to confuse words or letters that ___ similar. For example, “F” is more likely to be misidentified as ___.
. sound; “S”
According to Broadbent, where does the process of rehearsal take place?
short-term memory
What distinguishes working memory from short-term memory?
complexity
If someone is showing perseveration, then they’ve likely had damage to the ___ lobe of the brain.
frontal
___ has helped to bolster the idea that the ___ is important for holding information for brief periods of time.
The delayed-response task; prefrontal cortex
When you go to the movies, how many distinct stimuli are being registered by your sensory memory each second?
24
According to Baddeley, the central executive controls ________.
Attention
At this point in time, what is considered the primary function of the episodic buffer?
storing information
According to Stokes’s model of activity-silent working memory, where is energy being directed during the silent state?
synapses
According to the activity-silent working memory model, neurons fire ________.
at stimulus input and remembering
Funahashi and Stokes both focused on which concept relating to memory?
delay
Daneman and Carpenter’s research on reading span looked at differences in memory ________ among individuals.
capacity
