Working Memory Flashcards
What is currently the most widely accepted model around working memory?
- As multiple components
- A brain system that provides temporary storage and manipulation of the information necessary for such complex cognitive tasks as language comprehension, learning and reasoning
What are 2 ways for measuring capacity of short-term memory?
- Memory-span procedures
- “Brown-Peterson” paradigm
What are two tasks used as memory procedures?
- Participant presented a sequence of items, required to repeat them back; start with 1 item, increasing number of items by 1 until participant make mistakes
- Point at which the participant is able to recall all items correctly 50% of the time is designated as her/his memory span
Reading span task: Task requires participants to read a series of sentences aloud and recall the final words
Describe the task set by the Brown-Peterson paradigm
- Participants had to recall trigrams (strings of three letters) at intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18 seconds after the presentation of the last letter
- After oral presentation of each trigram, participants asked to count backward by threes from a three-digit number spoken immediately after the trigram
What is the difference between auditory and visual presentation in the context of memory?
-Larger memory span
Which of rhythmic and non-rhythmic is better for memory span?
-Rhytmic presentation
Describe the modal memory process
- Environmental
- Sensory stores
- Short term stores
- Response output
- Long-term store
What are the 3 types of sensory stores?
- Visual
- Haptic
- Auditory
Which idea of the model was subsequently proven right?
- Longer an item remain in short-term store
- More rehearsal it receives
- More likely to be transferred to long-term store
What were the difference between long-term and short term memory?
- Coding differences
- Long term based on coding of semantic memory
- Short term based on coding of superficial memory
What other evidence did STM model provide?
-That STM and LTM were both structurally different and were neurally disociable structures
Describe two difficulties that brain-damaged amnesic patients suffered
- Difficulty learning new information
- Could recall info prior to accident
- Short-term buffer appeared to be intact (rehearsal)
- Their long-term storage was grossly impaired (rehearsal interrupted)
What is the recency effect when comparing immediate vs delayed recall?
- Decreased recency effect
- Recency effect established for immediate recall
- Delayed recall shows no recency effect
What is one flaw of the modal model?
- Multiple working memory tasks should limit working memory capacity
- However it is found that the number of working tasks does not affect capacity
- More what the demand of these tasks affects memory capacity
- Difficulty of task cannot determine memory capacity because difficulty is subjective
Describe the predicament of patient KF
- Suffered injury to the left parieto-occipital regions and showed severe limitations in verbal STM
- K.F. could get information into LTM and retrieve info
- Info had to be presented visually not auditory
What did the case of KF show about working memory?
- K.F. must have an alternative route into long-term memory that didn’t involve working memory
- Or there are several systems for working memory which were not damaged
What did Badeleys working memory involve?
- Central Control (Central Executive)
- Slave system (Visuospatial sketchpad) (Phonological loop)
- Visuo for visual semantics and phono for auditory language
- Both processed for episodic LTM
Describe methodology for assessing working memory
- Dual Task methodology
- Perform two tasks at once with two assumptions
- if tasks use same component, they cannot be performed successfully together
- if two tasks use different components, it should be possible to perform them as well together as separately
What were the results for the dual-task methodology
- visual tasks interfere with visual retention (eg, football/driving)
- verbal tasks interfere with verbal retention (eg, articulatory suppression)
- demanding verbal/visual tasks interfere with reasoning (tap executive function)
- So there must be multiple short term memory systems
What is the phonological loop responsible for?
-Speech coding
What are the two components of the phonological loop?
- Phonological store where lexical info is coded and stored for about 2 seconds
- Articulatory loop where info from other modalities can enter store but only through recoding into a phonological form
- This process is called phonological rehearsal
What is capacity of phonological loop?
-7 +-2
What is main determinant for capacity of phonological loop and how long is capacity?
- Rehearsal rate
- 2 seconds
What is evidence for phonological loop?
-Phonological Similarity Effect
words that are similar in sound are harder to remember
-Word length effect
words that are shorter are easier to remember than longer words (More monosyllabic than polysyllable words remembered)
-Articulatory suppression
Overt or covert inner speech disrupts lexical memory. Such as repeating word the
-the Unattended Speech Effect
Lexical-based sounds disrupts lexical based tasks
