Short-term, working memory Flashcards
What was the Brown-Peterson task?
3 letters were presented to people, followed by a 3 digit number, they were asked to attend to the letters while counting backwards from the number by 3s
What were the results of the Brown-Peterson task?
the memory of the 3 letters sharply declined as more time passed counting backwards by 3s
What were the conclusions of the Brown-Peterson task?
they concluded that the decline in recall for the letters was due to decay (an increase in time decreases the amount of information remaining in STM)
What was the Waugh-Norman probe digit task?
people heard a list of 16 digits followed by a repeated digit which was the “probe” to recall the digit that followed the probe (16 and 4 second conditions)
What were the results of the Waugh-Norman study?
the two groups, despite the time difference, varied little in their results
What did the results of Waugh -Norman suggest?
refuted Brown-Peterson task, concluded that forgetting in STM was caused by interference and not decay
What was the ACTUAL cause of forgetting in the Brown-Peterson task?
proactive interference
What is proactive interference?
older material interferes with recollection of new material
What did the Wicken’s experiment demonstrate?
demonstrated the release from proactive interference (PI) when there is a switch in “to-be-remembered” stimuli (first 3 trails are numbers, 4th is letters))
What is a serial position curve
graph depicting both primacy and recency effects on people’s ability to recall items on a list
What is the recency effect?
better recall for items at the end of a list
What causes the recency effect?
The last words heard are still in working memory at testing.
What is the primacy effect?
better recall for items at the beginning of a list
What causes the primacy effect?
rehearsal
What are the major functions of the central executive in Baddeley’s model of working memory?
- planning for future actions
- initiating retrieval and decision processes
- integrates information coming into the system
What are the components of Baddeley’s model of working memory?
- central executive
- phonological loop
- visuospatial sketchpad (VSSP)
- episodic buffer
What is the phonological loop?
speech/sound component responsible for rehearsal of verbal information
What are the parts of the phonological loop?
- phonological store
- articulatory loop
What is the function of the phonological store?
holds onto verbal information, can be forgotten if not rehearsed (inner ear)
What is the function of the articulatory loop?
involved in the active refreshing of information in the phonological store (inner voice)
What is the function of the visuospatial sketchpad?
visual/spatial information, holding a visual image in working memory
What is the articulatory suppression effect?
finding that people have poorer memory for a set of words if they are asked to say something while trying to remember the words
What is the phonological similarity effect?
finding that memory is poorer when people are asked to remember a set of words that are phonologically similar (confused in phonological store)
What is the word length effect?
finding that reporting long words is worse than reporting short words
