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