The Hard Limits of Memory Capacity - Dr. Candice C. Morey Flashcards
(background):
Why does change blindness occur?
(background):
- No matter what it feels like, you do not see the whole scene
- You attend to a small amount of information at any moment
- You don’t see the changes if they are not in the small set of things you are currently attending
- You haven’t memorized the bits you attended before
THERE ARE NO INDIVIDUALS REGARDING THIS.
- Susceptibility to change blindness is universal. It’s unrelated to other traits.
(background):
Describe the intuitive multi-store model of memory.
(background):
Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968
MULTI-STORE MODEL
(see relevant powerpoint slides for diagram)
(background):
What study supports the Multi-store model to be incorrect?
Describe this study.
(background):
Craik and Watkins (1973)
- Brain damage - some patients with amnesia can learn over time, but cannot immediately repeat back information.
- Information doesn’t need to go through short-term memory to be activated in long-term memory
- Let’s demonstrate this with a study from Craik and Watkins (1973)
PROCEDURE
• Participants monitored lists of words, keeping track of the latest event (e.g., last one starting with “g”)
- Surprise recall test for any of the words
- Does amount of time held predict recall, or something else?
RESULTS
• Short retention (i.e., Garden): 12% recalled
• Long retention (i.e., Grain): 10% recalled
– Not significantly different!
• Reported words (i.e., Giraffe): 23% recalled
– Significantly better!
CONCLUSION
• Conclusion: How long a word was held in mind was not useful for predicting which words would be recalled
– But whether the word became a response was useful
(background):
Describe the modern “state-based” models of memory.
(background):
(Cowan, 1988; D’Esposito & Postle, 2015)
(see relevant powerpoint slides for diagram)
(background):
What are the some of the principles of memory.
(background):
- Focus of attention is limited (remember the change blindness example)
- Brain uses anything it can to represent information
- ”Activated memory” can refer to using actions, like gestures or speech, to represent information
- These things are not exactly memory, but they serve memory (O’Regan, 1992)
(background):
Memory for images is highly _______.
(background):
Memory for images is highly limited, and susceptible to interference from:
– Verbal memory (Morey, et al., 2013; Morey & Mall, 2012; Morey & Miron, 2016)
– Classifying tones (Morey & Bieler, 2013)
– Not a matter of preference (Morey et al., 2013)
– Not just my lab that finds this!
(Morey’s research):
Summarise the study’s results.
(Morey’s research):
see relevant powerpoint slides for results diagram
(Morey’s research):
Summarise the study’s conclusions.
(Morey’s research):
CONCLUSION
• You probably remember less visual than verbal content from the immediate past.
• The verbalised content you remember is preserved from some kinds of interference and less likely to be quickly forgotten than the visual details you briefly remember.
(Morey’s research):
What does this conclusion mean for how memory works?
(Morey’s research):
- You make use of whatever is available to remember new information.
- Speech can be used to extend memory for verbal information across longer periods of time.
- There is probably not anything comparable for maintaining novel visual information.
(Morey’s research):
What does this conclusion mean for the population?
(Morey’s research):
- There is no good evidence that some people favor “verbal” memory whereas others are “visual” learners (Pashler, et al., 2008). Everyone who understands language and can speak benefits from verbalisation.
- Most people remember more verbal information than visual information, regardless of learning preferences.
- Most people remember more when they try “dual-coding”, thinking about information in multiple ways.
