Task 1 working memory

Question 1

Short term memory

Answer 1

where information can be maintained as long it is actively attended to (e.g. rehearsal)

Question 2

Working memory

Answer 2

the active and temporary representation of information that is maintained for the short term in a person’s mind to help him/her think and allow her to decide what to do next
o Working memory involves the temporary retention of information just experienced or just retrieved from long-term memory
o Can be influenced by phonological and articulatory factors, performance gets worse when phonological similar (confusion) (word length→ the time you need to pronounce it)

Question 3

Cognitive control

Answer 3

is the manipulation of the working memory for planning, task switching, attention, stimulus selection and the inhibition of inappropriate reflexive behaviours

Question 4

Supervisory attentional system

Answer 4

modifies behaviour when automatic responses are inappropriate, changes the periodisation of cues for attention

Question 5

Primacy effect

Answer 5

we are more successful remembering the first things on the list

Question 6

Recency effect

Answer 6

we are more successful remembering the last things on the list

Question 7

Prefrontal cortex

Answer 7

Due to intense connections to more posterior parts of the brain the prefrontal cortex is thought to be important for executive functions and working memory which is done by the combination of internal and external stimuli, short term memory is often impaired to in case of brain damage to the frontal lobes
o the most abstract plans (make sandwich, move all disks to right peg) depend on the most anterior (front) part of the frontal lobes. if the goals and plans to be maintained in working memory are specific and concrete (such as spreading peanut butter on the sandwich), they are likely to be localized in the more posterior regions of the frontal lobes

Question 8

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Answer 8

Manipulation important brain region supporting the maintenance of items in working memory, seems that neurons here are encoding a combination of sensory and movement information, support higher-order cognitive-control functions such as monitoring and manipulation of stored information

Question 9

Primary and secondary sensory and motor regions

Answer 9

Activity has been seen these regions are connected to the DLPFC, which is able to sustain activity despite distractions

Question 10

Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

Answer 10

Maintenance supports the active controlled encoding and retrieval of information, interactions with posterior cortical regions might explain phonological rehearsal loop, more important for remembering something (encoding of new information)
o Activated by simple rehearsal, especially internal rehearsal

Question 11

Frontal lobe

Answer 11

associated with higher intellectual abilities, as wells as organisation, foresight and inhibition of impulses
o dysexecutive syndrome: A disrupted ability to think and plan

Question 12

Lesion at Posterioir regions of frontal cortex

Answer 12

disrupt performance in domain specific motor learning tasks but not in domain-general monitoring tasks

Question 13

Lesion at middle part of DLPFC

Answer 13

impair performance in general monitoring tasks but not in domain-specific tasks

Question 14

Schizophrenia

Answer 14

• Problems with memories and executive control
• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is dysfunctional in schizophrenia but not in ventral regions, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex areas are often more activated than in normal people possibly due to compensation of the dysfunctionality of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
• Impairment of Prefrontal cortex might be due to deficiencies in cortical dopamine processing (less dopamine leads to more receptors→ dopamine is important for maintaining information)

Question 15

ADHD

Answer 15

• involves dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex and its cortical and subcortical connections, including connections to the cerebellum and the basal ganglia
• they have a smaller right prefrontal cortex, the region associated with spatial attention and working memory
• One view is that people with adhd have “noisy” basal ganglia that sometimes send inappropriate signals to the prefrontal cortex, resulting in distractible behaviour, while at other times the basal ganglia do not signal the prefrontal cortex when appropriate, resulting in perseveration or inattention

Question 16

Depression

Answer 16

• Impaired in removing negative emotions from memory
• Dopamine shortage
• Less efficient phonological loop and executive control

Question 17

Limits of short-term memory

Answer 17

o	Limited capacity (about 5-9 concepts which are linked to long-term, lower is more common)
o	Attention (when you get distracted the information are lost)

Question 18

Improving short-term memory

Answer 18

o Recoding: Associate e.g. numbers to meaningful dates in history

Question 19

Improving working memory

Answer 19

o Eat right, fresh vegetables, avoid sugar and grain carbohydrates
o Exercise, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage
o Stop multitasking
o Sleep

Question 20

Delayed nonmatch-to-sample task (DNMS)

Answer 20

A test of visual memory in which a subject must indicate which of two novel objects is not the same as one that was recently seen.

Question 21

2 back test

Answer 21

a participant is read a seemingly random list of items, usually numbers. a certain item—let’s say the number 7— is designated as the “target.” Whenever the target number 7 is read, the participant is to respond with the number that was read two numbers previously (hence the name 2-back). sound tough? Try it. if the numbers read aloud are 4 8 3 7 8 2 5 6 7 8 0 2 4 6 7 3 9 . . . , what would the correct responses be? (answer: “8” to the first 7, “5” to the second 7, and “4” to the third 7.)

Question 22

Self ordered memory task

Answer 22

On trial 1 a participant is shown the first card and is asked to choose any of the six items on it. The participant in Figure 9.6 has chosen the rose. This card is then flipped over. next, on trial 2, the participant is shown the second card (with the same six items in a different order) and is asked to choose any of the five items not yet selected. in Figure 9.6, the participant has chosen the goat. This second card is then flipped over. Then the participant is shown the third card and must pick any of the four remaining items that were not chosen on the previous two cards, that is, any image except the rose or the goat. This self-ordered task continues until the participant has pointed to all six different items without repeating any
o Controlled updating of short-term memory buffers

Question 23

Tower of hanoi

Answer 23

Setting goals an planning

Question 24

Winsconsin Card sorting test

Answer 24

people are shown cards with graphics that differ in three characteristics, or dimensions: colour, shape, and number. One sample card might have three red circles, while another card might have one yellow triangle. On each trial they are told to guess which of four piles a particular card goes on, and then they are informed if their choice is correct or not.
o This task taps into people’s working memory and executive control because it requires not only learning a rule and keeping it in mind while they sort, but also learning to change the rule and keep track of the new one without confusing it with the old

Question 25

Stroop task

Answer 25

The names of colours are printed from top to bottom, each in a colour that does not correspond to the name. The task is to recite the colours that the words are printed in (colour of ink) without being distracted by what the words say.

Question 26

intelligence

Answer 26

has less to do with processing speed but more with executive control of working memory
• 3 to 4 times more accurate than IQ for predicting academic success

Question 27

Atkinson shiffrin model

Answer 27

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin’s model depicted incoming information as flowing first into sensory memory (shown as having distinct visual, auditory, and haptic, i.e., touch, registers). Elements of sensory information that are attended to are then transitioned to short-term memory (STM). From there they go through various control processes and in some cases are transferred into long-term memory (LTM).

Question 28

Baddeley’s working memory model

Answer 28

two important distinctions: maintaining (rehearsal in memory buffers) and manipulation (which depends on the central executive), and memory buffers are material specific (auditory or spatial and objects)
o Visuospatial sketchpad: holds visual and spatial images for manipulation, right side of the brain
o Phonological loop: Auditory memories are maintained by internal speech rehearsal (loop) left side of the brain
o Central executive: The component that monitors and manipulates the two working memory buffers (transferring from and to long-term memory)
o Episodic buffer: links meaning to information (not yet in the model)

Question 29

Transient memories

Answer 29

are short-lasting mental representations, sometimes persisting for only a few seconds (Atkinson, Shiffrin name sensory and short term memory)

Question 30

State based unitary model of memory

Answer 30

networks of neurons located anywhere in the brain – from primary sensory cortices to multimodal association cortices – can activate stored information in a temporary fashion, allowing it to be used as working memory to support a variety of goal-directed behaviours
o The state-based approach to working memory suggests that the frontal cortex maintains high-level representations of goals and plans that guide the flow, activation, and distinctiveness of representations across posterior regions of the cortex

Question 31

Left ventrolateral PFC

Answer 31

Phonological loop

Question 32

Right ventrolateral PFC

Answer 32

Visualspatial sketchpad

Question 33

Verbal information storage in brain

Answer 33

Left posterior cortical speech and language areas

Question 34

Object and location information in brain

Answer 34

Right posterior cortical visual areas