Working Memory Flashcards
What is working memory?
Small amount of information that can be held in mind and used in the execution of cognitive tasks
John Locke (1690)
Distinguished between contemplation and memory
William James (1890)
Distinction between primary memory, the items of consciousness and the trailing edge of what is perceived in the world, and secondary memory, the items in storage but not currently in consciousness
Ebbinghaus (1885/1913)
Tried to memorise nonsense syllables
Found it easy to recall lists of 7 but harder to recall lists of 12
Also found that he forgot most of the words in the first 20 minutes
Information processing approach to cognition
1950s
Alternative to behaviourism
Humans are processing systems: we encode, store and retrieve information, then produce a behavioural output
Based on computer metaphor
Assumptions of information processing approach
Information moves through a series of stores
Information moves serially
Cognitive system has a limited capacity
Tasks and mental processes can be placed on a ____ relative to how much ______ they require. This varies from an _____ process to an ______ process.
Continuum
Capacity
Automatic
Effortful
Atkinson and Schiffrin (1968)
First information processing models of memory
Proposed that we don’t just have one system or process for storing information, but several
Sensory memory
STM
LTM
What are executive control processes?
Ability to switch attention to other tasks
Ability to suppress attention to irrelevant things
Cognitive development involves changes in
Hardware - capacity of memory and the speed information can be processed in different systems
Software - children’s ability to use strategies (metacognitive abilities)
Overview of processing limitations (Brainerd, 1983)
Encoding
Retrieval
Capacity/storage
Metacognitive
Encoding limitations
May be driven by failure to attend to the right information
May be failure to use an effective encoding strategy
What is selective attention?
The ability to attend to a specific part of a task
Miller & Seier (1994)
Asked young children to remember the location of animals
Children make this task more difficult by also looking at the location of task-irrelevant household items
Older children look in the right place initially
Children under ___ were thought to not use rehearsal
10
Flavell et al, 1966
It is now recognised that young children can use ____ but in a less effective way than ___
Rehearsal
Adults
With age, children can read or say words at a faster rate and ____ increases accordingly
Memory span
Rehearsal bilingual study
Primarily Welsh-speaking children have better memory for numbers in English than in Welsh as they are quicker to say and therefore easier to rehearse
(Ellis & Hennelley, 1980)
Organisation - Moely et al (1969)
Children younger than 10 do not spontaneously group items into categories that can be easily remembered
Elaboration
Children remember pairs of words better if they are provided with an association between them
Young children seen unable to make their own associations
Or they use less effective/distinctive elaborations
Retrieval limitations
Children may know the retrieval strategy but retrieve the wrong one from memory
Reflects lack of knowledge of using the strategies
Tommy puppy study
Help Tommy remember when he got a puppy for Christmas
10 year olds were able to name a strategy to remember
Only half of 5 year olds can
Storage limitations
Limit of the amount of information that a child can store and thus remember
Storage capacity increases with…
Age
____ can affect storage ability
Experience
Chess study
10 year old chess experts vs adults
Asked to memorise either digits or chess board positions
10 year olds were better at the chess positions, adults better at digits
Shows experience affects storage ability
Working memory span is usually ____ than a child’s short term memory span
Two items less
Metacognitive limitations
Children have poor metacognitive skills and limited experience, they therefore may not be aware that they have limitations so they may not make an effort to encode something properly
More knowledge can sometimes lead to ____ errors in recall
More
Errors in recall
Recalling details that have never been mentioned
Overgeneralising facts to situations in which they do not apply
Adding facts that fit with previous knowledge but did not apply to specific situation
Implications for EWT
Piaget’s and Inhelder’s (1951) Probability Judgement Task
4 and 5 year olds were shown 10 tokens, 7 with one symbol and 3 with another
Had to predict which token would be pulled from the bag
Best strategy would be to predict the most frequent token all the time, but children only did this on the first trial
Explaining the results of the Probability Judgement Task
Suspected a storage limitation (children had forgotten the frequency of the tokens)
Gave them a second set of tokens to remind them which one was both frequent
Then suspected a retrieval limitation (children retrieve the most recent information, their last response, and based their decision on this)
When children were reminded about frequency before they made a decision, they were more successful
Working memory supports many other developing skills
Language
Academic skills - particularly maths
General school readiness (ability to sit still, attend and pay attention)
3 - 4 year olds with better working memory learned novel labels for toys ______ than children with poor working memory skills
Significantly faster
Working memory is also important for language ______
Comprehension
Working memory skills at age 4 predict _____ and _____ skills at age 6, while controlling for SES
Reading
Writing
Working memory at age 5 was a better predictor of ____ and _____ at age 11 than ______
Literacy
Numeracy
IQ
Working memory skills in 7 - 8 year olds predict ______,, even after controlling for ______
Maths achievement
Vocabulary
Visual-spatial WM is most strongly associated with maths in ______
Younger children
Verbal WM is most strongly associated with maths performance in ______
Older children
Verbal WM is used when maths is presented ______
Horizontally
Visual WM is used when maths is presented _______
Vertically
Around ____ of children could be classified as having poor working memory
10%
What do children with poor working memory do when their memory becomes overloaded with information?
Abandon the task or guess
How can teachers help children with poor working memory?
Auditory - Giving one instruction at a time
Visual support - Write instructions on the board, use checklists, visual aids such as number lines
How can psychologists help children with poor working memory?
Test what kind of interventions are most effective
Interventions can be…
Specific training on whatever the child is struggling with
Cognitive training targeting a domain-general skill like working memory
Training targeting metacognitive aspects of memory such as strategies
