T1 L9 Basic principles of memory Flashcards
Who drew a distinction between primary & secondary memory?
William James
1890
Describe primary memory
Portion of present space of time
Linked to conscious experience
Retrieval is effortless
Describe secondary memory
Genuine past
Unconscious - permanent
Retrieval is effortful
What is sensory memory?
Sensations persist after the stimulus has disappeared
Subject to very rapid decay
Stores exist for visual & auditory sensory information
Describe Sperling’s first experiment
Presented matrix of letters for 1/20 seconds
Subjects had to recall as many letters as possible
Subjects only recalled 5-6
Describe Sperling’s second experiment
Sounded low, medium or high tone immediately after matrix disappeared which corresponded to 1 row
Recall was almost perfect
What is working memory?
Short-term store
What is the short term store for?
A work space to solve problems
Describe the dual task
Baddeley - 1986
B is preceded by A - BA True / false
A is not followed by B - BA True / false
Performed while remembering string of digits
Describe the results of the dual task
Reasoning time increases with digit load
Increase in reasoning time is modest
Error rate does not increase
What is the evidence for the phonological store?
Phonological similarity effect
Word length effect
Describe the phonological similarity effect
Baddeley - 1966 Presented lists of 5 words to write down in order List A - phonological words List B - same length List C - Semantic words List D - Random
What were the results of the phonological similarity effect?
Large effect of phonological similarity
No effect of semantic similarity
Describe the word length effect
Baddeley 1975
Shown lists of 5 words with increasing length
What are the results of the word length effect?
Correct recall related to number of syllables
Strong correlation between reading speed & correct recall
Describe the visuospatial sketchpad
Necessary for holding a sequence of visually guided actions
Necessary for seeing in the mind’s eye
What is the evidence for the visuospatial sketchpad?
De Renzi & Nichelli - 1975
Showed some patients with brain damage had impaired digit spans, some had impaired spatial spans
Della Sala - 1999
Viewing abstract pictures interfered with visual task but tracing outline of a series of pegs interfered with spatial task
What is the visuospatial sketchpad divided into?
Visual cache
Inner scribe
What is visual cache?
Passively stores visual information about form & colour
What is inner scribe?
Stores spatial & movement information & can rehearse contents of visual cache
Who introduced the concept of levels of processing?
Craik & Lockhart - 1972
What did Roediger & Karpicke do in 2006?
Encoding evidence: study-test versus studying alone
Describe the study-test versus studying alone experiment
Students were tested or restudied the passage
Memory was tested after 5 mins, 2 days or 1 week
What were the results of the study-test versus studying alone experiment?
Advantage for the study-test conditions after the delay
Studying & then testing yourself leads to better retention
Retrieval practice effort
What did Morris propose in 1977?
2 acquisition conditions 2 test conditions Processing is goal directed Shallow processing task might be better if retrieval uses the same type of processing Transfer appropriate processing
What did Godden & Baddeley do in 1975?
Subjects learnt list of words on land or under sea
Subjects tested for words on land or under sea
Context dependent memory
Also occurs for mood
