Short term memory

Question 1

Memory

Answer 1

-Ability to retain and retrieve learned information and knowledge

Question 2

Assumptions

Answer 2

• Overestimate ability to draw from memory

- Underestimate capacity: 20,000 - 100,000

Question 3

Importance

Answer 3

-Survival, understanding and meaning

Question 4

Clive wearing

Answer 4

-Retrograde and anterograde amnesia
-couldnt form new memories or recall old
Always felt like he was just waking up
-Still had procedural memories and semantic (piano playing)

Question 5

Evidence for dissociation between STM and LTM

Answer 5

• Fractionating memory: Repeat number in STM to dial then Move to LTM to tell a friend later
• Neural evidence: Different brain wave activity for info rehearsed in STM and retrieved from LTM

Question 6

Multi-store model forgetting

Answer 6

• sensory memory: decay and displacement
• STM: attended info, mental work bench, decay and displacement
• LTM: rehearsed info is subject to retrieval failure

Question 7

Evidence for STM format and duration

Answer 7

• Format: series of letters presented quickly must be held in STM to copy down, showed acoustic errors were made
• Duration: memorize groups of three consonants and count backwards in threes or do mental math, recall decreased over time

Question 8

WMM addresses criticisms of STM

Answer 8

• More complex
• Accounts for flashbulb memory and amnesia patients with impaired STM but intact LTM and savant syndrome ( info doesn’t need to be rehearsed to reach LTM)
• Can account for both visual and auditory information
• Active process so accounts for mental arithmetic, verbal reasoning and comprehension etc.

Question 9

PET scan supports WMM

Answer 9

• Left hemisphere = phonological loop
• Right hemisphere = visuospatial sketchpad
• Frontal lobe = central executive

Question 10

Applications for WMM

Answer 10

-Education interventions for children with learning difficulties

Question 11

Central executive

Answer 11

• Allocates tasks to each slave’s system based on priority
• Inhibits competing stimuli
• Support: People can multitask
• Alzheimer patients can complete tasks using phonological loop and visuo spatial sketchpad individually not simultaneously

Question 12

Phonological loop

Answer 12

• Articulatory loop: inner voice (2-4 seconds)
• Phonological store: inner ear rehearsal and retrieval
• Support: Articulatory suppression effect (Couldn’t say irrelevant speech out loud and recall words)
• word length effect (more syllables = longer rehearsal)
• phonological similarity (semantically similar harder to remember than acoustically similar)

Question 13

Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Answer 13

• Visual cache (Inner eye): stores visual information e.g. form and color, allows us to remember the layout of a room and mental rotation etc.
• Inner scribe: Stores information about spatial position, orientation and movement
• Support: mental rotation and mental manipulation

Question 14

Episodic buffer

Answer 14

• Integrates visual, spatial and verbal information
• General storage
• Episodic memories from LTM can bind to other memories to make more memorable