Week 9: STM & LTM

Question 1

What evidence did George Miller provide for the capacity of STM

Answer 1

The absolute identification task and serial recall task

Question 2

What did the absolute identification task and serial recall task find in STM?

Answer 2

Performance is virtually perfect until 7 items

Question 3

What happens when STM capacity is exceeded?

Answer 3

Items are lost from STM

Question 4

How many items can STM hold?

Answer 4

About 4 items

Question 5

What is the prediction about older info in STM?

Answer 5

Older info should not be in STM and should not affect STM contents or retrieval

Question 6

What happens to items in STM when retrieval takes place immediately?

Answer 6

Items are emptied out of STM without retrieval from LTM

Question 7

Why should interference from older associations not affect STM retrieval?

Answer 7

Because older info is not in STM

Question 8

What effect is associated with LTM in free recall?

Answer 8

Primacy effect

Question 9

How do faster presentation rates or increased list length affect LTM performance?

Answer 9

They reduce performance/primacy but not recency

Question 10

What effect is associated with SMT in free recall?

Answer 10

Recency effect

Question 11

What is proactive interference?

Answer 11

The finding that performance decreases as more items or lists are learned due to interference from older material

Question 12

What is PI release?

Answer 12

PI is less pronounced if the different lists contain different semantic item types

Question 13

Why should only LTM show PI and PI release?

Answer 13

Because older info is not in STM, only recent info is

Question 14

What is the prediction of STM models regarding the last item in a list?

Answer 14

The last item spends the least time in STM and should be weaker than prior items in LTM

Question 15

What did testing 10 lists on immediate free recall show about negative recency?

Answer 15

Normal primacy and recency effect were found, but worse performance on the final item in each list in a ‘last item’ recall test

Question 16

What are contiguity effects?

Answer 16

The tendency for subjects to make transitions between nearby items

Question 17

What do contiguity effects suggest about recall?

Answer 17

Recall tends to progress in a forward direction

Question 18

What is long term recency?

Answer 18

items presented at the end of a list or sequence are more likely to be remembered, even after a long delay, due to their recent position in the sequence

Question 19

What did many studies show about PI with short lists of items?

Answer 19

That PI occurs even with very short lists of items

Question 20

How does context change according to the stimulus sampling theory?

Answer 20

Context comprises a large set of elements that change gradually as events are experienced

Question 21

How does the temporal context model (TCM) account for various phenomena using a single store?

Answer 21

By considering interactions between current context and stored contexts associated with each of the items

Question 22

What phenomena can TCM explain?

Answer 22

Contiguity effects, short and long term recency, and spacing effects

Question 23

What can TCM not explain?

Answer 23

Primacy effects

Question 24

How do context based theories like TCM compare to dual store models?

Answer 24

They can explain more phenomena and may converge with theories of short term and working memory

Question 25

What are two reasons TCM is distinct from STM theories?

Answer 25

Items never drop out of context the way they do from an STM buffer, and context is always used as a cue for LTM

Question 26

What effects are always observed in short time scales?

Answer 26

Recency and contiguity effects