Working Memory Flashcards
What is the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model?
Information comes into a very brief-lived memory store (referred to as the sensory store), then moves from there into short-term memory, and then from there into longer-term memory. Not all information taken into the sensory store makes it into short-term memory, and not all information that makes it into short-term memory makes it into long-term memory. We can think of this information as being forgotten.
What are the components of the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model?
Sensory Stores
Iconic Memory
Echoic Memory
Short-term Memory
Rehearsing
Long-term Memory
What are Sensory Stores?
Very short-term forms of memory, and are the processes by which our sensory/perceptual systems briefly continue to represent sensory information after a stimulus disappears.
What is Iconic Memory?
Visual form of sensory stores. Takes everything (visual stimuli) (unlimited capacity). Lasts a fraction of a second (less than 500 miliseconds). During that time, you have a pretty much complete representation of what you just saw, almost like a photograph.
What is Echoic Memory?
The auditory sensory store. Seems to last for around two or three seconds. Longer than iconic memory because the auditory system is geared toward representing information over time.
What is Short-term Memory?
After the sensory stores, information that we consciously attend to moves into short-term memory. Limited capacity (approx. 7 items), lasts less than 30 sec (unless “rehearsed”), and currently “in mind”.
What is Rehearsing?
You can think of “rehearsing” as repeatedly going over the items or repeating them in order to keep them in mind. For verbal materials, rehearsal consists of saying the items to yourself over and over.
What is Long-term Memory?
Some items from short-term memory then move on to long-term memory. ‘Unlimited’ capacity, lasts indefinitely (some memories last longer than others), and needs to be “retrieved”. Retrieval brings the information back into short-term memory, sometimes thought of as the mind’s workspace.
What is the evidence for spearation of long-term memory and short-term memory?
Selective Disruption
Serial Position Curve
- Primacy Effect
- Recency Effect
Filled Delay
Anterograde Amnesia
Retrograde Amnesia
What is Selective Disruption (also sometimes called dissociation)?
The idea is that if you can interfere with one process without interfering with the other, and vice versa, different mechanisms must be responsible for the separate processes.
What is the Serial Position Curve?
One line of evidence for dissociating short- and long-term memory. A subject is given a large number of items to remember (often words, because that’s easy to test). Then they’re asked to remember as many as they can. We can graph people’s performance based on where in the list each item was – the item’s “serial position.”
What is the Primacy and Recency Effect (Serial Position Curve continued)?
When given a list of information and later asked to recall that information, the items at the beginning (primacy) and the items at the end (recency) are more likely to be recalled than the items in the middle.
(Primacy and middle are considered LTM)
What is a Filled Delay?
A procedure where one is shown a list of words, but then asked to perform some task for a short period of time before being allowed to recall the words. This has almost no effect on memory for the early and middle items in the list, but severely impacts memory for the last few items.
What is Anterograde Amnesia?
The inabiliy to form new long-term memories. The early parts of the SPC can also be disrupted in patients with anterograde amnesia.
What is Retrograde Amnesia?
Hollywood amnesia. A loss of long term memories that you used to have. Patients with anterograde amnesia do just fine on the last few items in the list (for SPC), but not on the early or middle portions of the list.
What is Baddeley’s Model?
A researcher named Alan Baddeley showed that short-term memory contains at least two systems: one for verbal memory, and one for visual/spatial memory. That is, he dissociated short-term memory into separate processes. Short-term memory was renamed working memory, to distinguish the new model from older ideas.
What is Verbal working memory (Phonological Loop)?
A simplified way to think of this is that verbal working memory is just a process of repeating things to yourself in your head, and then listening to what you said and repeating it again. This process of talking to yourself, of rehearsing information in verbal working memory, is called the phonological loop.
(Making your mouth move when you speak are also active during verbal working memory rehearsal, as are Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, which, in an oversimplified sense, are involved in speech production and reception)
What is Phonological Store and Articulatory Rehearsal?
(PS) Linked to speech perception Holds information in speech-based form (i.e. spoken words) for 1-2 seconds. (AR) Linked to speech production. Used to rehearse and store verbal information from the phonological store.
What is the Word Length Effect?
It’s easier to remember lists of short words than lists of long words. Again, this suggests that words are being represented phonologically in working memory—if words take longer to say, you can rehearse fewer of them in working memory.
What is Visuospatial working memory (Visuospatial Sketchpad)?
Visuospatial memory can be further dissociated into two separate components: spatial working memory, which is memory for locations or movement, and visual working memory, which is memory for shapes, colors, and objects.
What is Double Dissociation?
The idea is that if you can interfere with one process without interfering with the other, and vice versa, different mechanisms must be responsible for the separate processes.
How does Double Dissociation provide evidence for Verbal vs. Visuospatial split through: Corsi Blocks Task vs Immediate Serial Recall of Words and Block Letter Task vs Noun Task?
Memory for words was disrupted by the meaningless syllable but not the tapping, and memory for spatial locations was disrupted by the tapping but not by repeating a syllable. This strongly suggests that visual spatial memory and verbal spatial memory operate separately.
What is the Central Executive?
Theorized to be in charge of organizing working memory, making decisions about what information to bring into working memory (both from the sensory store and long-term memory) and what information to get rid of. The central executive is thought to be responsible for allocating attention within working memory, as well as manipulating information within working memory. The prefrontal cortex has been suggested by many to be the site of the central executive.
(Makes decisions about what to hold in WM/Manipulates info in WM/Allocates resources to visual or verbal WM)
What are the “Verbal” working memory effects for ASL?
One can also show a sign length effect that mirrors the word-length effect—lists of signed words that take longer to produce are harder to remember than lists of signed words that take less time. This strongly suggests that the verbal working memory system is really a language working memory system, whether that language is produced by the mouth or the hands.
(Sensorimotor based, just like spoken lang. Effects of similarity, length etc. “Verbal WM” is really “lang” WM)
What is Atkinson-Shiffrin Encoding Claim?
According to the Atkinson-Shiffrin model, rehearsal (sheer stupid repetition of items) is what gets information to stick. The longer an item spends being held in short-term memory, the likelier it is to be remembered over the long term. (False)
(Amount of time spent in STM determines the likelihood of getting into LTM)
What are problems with the Atkinson-Shiffrin Encoding Claim?
People have remarkably little memory for information that has spent time being rehearsed in short term memory.
i.e. Penny, Apple Logo or Logos
(Maybe pennies and logos aren’t a fair test. After all, do we really look at them?
What is Levels of Processing Theory (LOP) Claim?
Popular briefly in the 1970’s, suggested that it’s the “depth of coding” that determines whether information will get into LTM memory. “Deep” encoding meant thinking about the meaning, while “shallow” encoding meant thinking about the surface properties of the stimulus such as the sound or what it looked like. For example, the level of processing theory predicts that you will remember a list of words better if you spend your study time thinking about the definitions of those words than if you spend your study time thinking about words that begin with the same letter as the study words. (False)
Deep: meaning
Shallow: surface properties (look or sound like)
LOP Claim Problems: How is LOP disproven through the Sound vs. Meaning Experiment?
Researchers started testing using a cued recall method (Sound vs. Meaning). This is when you give people a hint to try to recall each word. It turns out, the results depend crucially on what kind of hint you give. When the cue directs people’s attention to how a word is spelled, suddenly words that were “shallowly” encoded are remembered better than words that were “deeply” encoded. According to LOP, this is impossible. The words that were encoded in terms of sound simply wouldn’t be there in memory anymore.
What is Elaborate Encoding?
This states that memory for something depends on how well you can enmesh that thing in a network of rich, prior associations. That is, you remember better if you take what you’re trying to remember and link it up with things you already know.
i.e. It’s easier to remember a story you hear about people you know well than about people you don’t know well
What is the relationship between LOP and Elaborate Encoding?
Levels of Processing wasn’t completely wrong-headed. “Deep encoding” tends to help because it offers more opportunity for elaboration, linking up with other networks of meaning, than does shallow encoding. However, “shallow encoding” could also be very elaborative—say you were a professor of phonology.
What are Semantic Networks?
Ideas and concepts are represented in our minds as “nodes” in a richly interconnected network of relationships between those ideas. Activating one particular node (so in this case a word or idea) spreads activation along the network to other nodes closely linked to the first. The more connections you have to an idea, the easier it will be to find when you are searching your memory banks.
Mutiple retrieval paths are better
The rich get richer
What is Chunking?
Grouping several items together into a familiar pattern, essentially treating them as a single unit.
i.e. For instance, it’s hard to remember a long string of letters: TPJQIMCNKUACUIG. But it’s easy to remember a few words with the same number of letters: QUICKCATJUMPING.
What are Mnemonic Techniques?
A device, such as a formula or rhyme, used as an aid in remembering.
i.e. Method of Loci, Peg word mnemonic/Acronyms, rhymes, sentences
Schoolhouse Rock was shown on TV in the ‘70’s, during Saturday morning cartoons, using catchy songs to help kids learn stuff. Many kids memorized the Preamble to the Constitution this way, and learned about various parts of grammar.
What is the Method of Loci?
It’s based on the assumption that you can best remember places that you are familiar with, so if you can link something you need to remember with a place that you know very well, the location will serve as a clue that will help you to remember.
What is the Peg Word Mnemonic?
In the Peg Word mnemonic technique, you first memorize the short rhyme. Then, using these words as pegs, you create a visual image of each of the words you wish to remember.
How does Elaborative Encoding provide a possible explanation for the phenomenon of Infantile Amnesia?
Poor memory from early age could be a result of under or not yet developed complex semantic nets, so we have nothing to attach anything to—the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor.
As a side note, it’s also believed that some brain structures essential for memory (notably the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus) lag behind in development.
What is Encoding Specificity?
A further twist on elaborative encoding is the effect of the context/situation on later remembering. This simply states that memory is better when context at retrieval matches that at encoding than when not.
If you study underwater you’ll later remember better underwater than on land. If you study semantically and are cued semantically you’ll remember better. (This explains the experiment where Levels of Processing went wrong.) If you study expecting a multiple choice test you’ll do better on a multiple choice test than a fill-in-the-blank test, and vice versa.
Also refered to as “transfer appropriate coding” or “context dependent memory.”
What are Flashbulb Memories?
Memories for dramatic, important events. Vivid, detailed, like a moment captured on camera. They are not a special or different kind of memory. They are not always accurate. Highly emotional events are remembered better than neutral events, but only the central details. Emotion may actually draw attention away from other details of the situation
Why?
Hypothesis 1: Emotion heightens memory encoding
Hypothesis 2: Emotion narrows your focus of attention (“Weapon focus”)
What is a Boundary Extension?
The process in which people, in essence, zoom out the field of view when remembering a picture or scene.
When people see the picture shown below on the left, later they draw it something like the drawing shown on the right:
What is Word Fragment Completion?
People do better on words seen recently.
Amnesics preform normally.
What is Mirror Tracing?
The mirror-image tracing study requires that the participant use the mouse to trace the star as shown in image, first with one hand, and then with the other hand. Because mirror image tracing is primarily a visual-spatial task, and each half of the brain controls the contralateral side of the body, it is expected that right-handed participants will take longer to complete the task with their right hand (controlled by the left hemisphere) compared to their left hand ( controlled by the right hemisphere).
Amnesics show normal aquisition of new skill.
