Short-term, working memory

Question 1

What was the Brown-Peterson task?

Answer 1

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

Question 2

What were the results of the Brown-Peterson task?

Answer 2

the memory of the 3 letters sharply declined as more time passed counting backwards by 3s

Question 3

What were the conclusions of the Brown-Peterson task?

Answer 3

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)

Question 4

What was the Waugh-Norman probe digit task?

Answer 4

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)

Question 5

What were the results of the Waugh-Norman study?

Answer 5

the two groups, despite the time difference, varied little in their results

Question 6

What did the results of Waugh -Norman suggest?

Answer 6

refuted Brown-Peterson task, concluded that forgetting in STM was caused by interference and not decay

Question 7

What was the ACTUAL cause of forgetting in the Brown-Peterson task?

Answer 7

proactive interference

Question 8

What is proactive interference?

Answer 8

older material interferes with recollection of new material

Question 9

What did the Wicken’s experiment demonstrate?

Answer 9

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))

Question 10

What is a serial position curve

Answer 10

graph depicting both primacy and recency effects on people’s ability to recall items on a list

Question 11

What is the recency effect?

Answer 11

better recall for items at the end of a list

Question 12

What causes the recency effect?

Answer 12

The last words heard are still in working memory at testing.

Question 13

What is the primacy effect?

Answer 13

better recall for items at the beginning of a list

Question 14

What causes the primacy effect?

Answer 14

rehearsal

Question 15

What are the major functions of the central executive in Baddeley’s model of working memory?

Answer 15

1. planning for future actions
2. initiating retrieval and decision processes
3. integrates information coming into the system

Question 16

What are the components of Baddeley’s model of working memory?

Answer 16

1. central executive
2. phonological loop
3. visuospatial sketchpad (VSSP)
4. episodic buffer

Question 17

What is the phonological loop?

Answer 17

speech/sound component responsible for rehearsal of verbal information

Question 18

What are the parts of the phonological loop?

Answer 18

1. phonological store
2. articulatory loop

Question 19

What is the function of the phonological store?

Answer 19

holds onto verbal information, can be forgotten if not rehearsed (inner ear)

Question 20

What is the function of the articulatory loop?

Answer 20

involved in the active refreshing of information in the phonological store (inner voice)

Question 21

What is the function of the visuospatial sketchpad?

Answer 21

visual/spatial information, holding a visual image in working memory

Question 22

What is the articulatory suppression effect?

Answer 22

finding that people have poorer memory for a set of words if they are asked to say something while trying to remember the words

Question 23

What is the phonological similarity effect?

Answer 23

finding that memory is poorer when people are asked to remember a set of words that are phonologically similar (confused in phonological store)

Question 24

What is the word length effect?

Answer 24

finding that reporting long words is worse than reporting short words

Question 25

What is the evidence for the VSSP?

Answer 25

mental rotation, people find it easier to mentally rotate items that are easily physically manipulated

Question 26

How did logie, zucco, and baddeley incorporate the dual task method in their experiment?

Answer 26

they paired to primary tasks with 2 secondary tasks (visual memory span task and letter span task paired with 2 secondary tasks, one adding one imaging)

Question 27

What were the results of logie, zucco, and baddeley?

Answer 27

found that there was a substantial decline in performance when two tasks used the same pool of resources

Question 28

What were L,Z, and B’s conclusions?

Answer 28

the impact of dual tasks is on the encoding aspect of a task rather than the retention of information in STM