Week 9: STM & LTM Flashcards

1
Q

What evidence did George Miller provide for the capacity of STM

A

The absolute identification task and serial recall task

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2
Q

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

A

Performance is virtually perfect until 7 items

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3
Q

What happens when STM capacity is exceeded?

A

Items are lost from STM

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4
Q

How many items can STM hold?

A

About 4 items

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5
Q

What is the prediction about older info in STM?

A

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

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6
Q

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

A

Items are emptied out of STM without retrieval from LTM

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7
Q

Why should interference from older associations not affect STM retrieval?

A

Because older info is not in STM

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8
Q

What effect is associated with LTM in free recall?

A

Primacy effect

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9
Q

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

A

They reduce performance/primacy but not recency

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10
Q

What effect is associated with SMT in free recall?

A

Recency effect

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11
Q

What is proactive interference?

A

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

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12
Q

What is PI release?

A

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

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13
Q

Why should only LTM show PI and PI release?

A

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

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14
Q

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

A

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

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15
Q

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

A

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

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16
Q

What are contiguity effects?

A

The tendency for subjects to make transitions between nearby items

17
Q

What do contiguity effects suggest about recall?

A

Recall tends to progress in a forward direction

18
Q

What is long term recency?

A

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

19
Q

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

A

That PI occurs even with very short lists of items

20
Q

How does context change according to the stimulus sampling theory?

A

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

21
Q

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

A

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

22
Q

What phenomena can TCM explain?

A

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

23
Q

What can TCM not explain?

A

Primacy effects

24
Q

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

A

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

25
What are two reasons TCM is distinct from STM theories?
Items never drop out of context the way they do from an STM buffer, and context is always used as a cue for LTM
26
What effects are always observed in short time scales?
Recency and contiguity effects