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