Cognitive Content Flashcards
What is the centeral executive in the working memory model- Baddeley & Hitch 1974
- Monitors overall systems- ‘supervisory role’
- Limited capacity
- Decides how slave systems should function (allocates tasks)
- Deals with all sensory & cognitive tasks
- Does not store any information
What is the phonological loop in the working memory model- Baddeley & Hitch 1974
- A slave system
- Temporarily stores verbal info and deals with auditory info
Subsystem- Phonological store (inner ear):
- stores verbal info for a few seconds
- Decays rapidly
Subsystem- Articulatory rehersal system (inner voice):
- Reherses and stores verbal info from the phonological store
- Allows maintenance rehersal
- 2 seconds
What is the visuospatial sketchpad in the working memory model- Baddeley & Hitch 1974
- Second slave system
- Temporarily stores visual and spatial information
- Used for navigation
- Limited capacity- 3/4 objects
2 subsystems
- Visual cache- visual data
- Inner scribe- records objects in the visual field
What is the episodic buffer in the working memory model- Baddeley & Hitch 1974
- Third slave system- added in 2000
- Integrates the acoustic, visual and spatial information from other slave systems
- Maintains a sense of time sequences by recording events that are happening
- Limited capacity of 4 chunks
- Retrieves from the long term memory
What are the strengths of the working memory model- Baddeley & Hitch 1974
Expands on the multi- store model
KF case study:
- Struggled to process verbal info but visual memory was unaffectedd
- Proves the seperate processes
Applied to real life tasks:
- Phonological loop- reading
- Problem solving- centeral executive
- Visuospatial sketchpad
What are the weaknesses of the working memory model- Baddeley & Hitch 1974
New additions:
- The episodic buffer being added in 2000 causes some validity issues
Lack of clarity for the central executive:
- Doesn’t really explain anything
- The least understood part
What is the sensory memory in the multi-store model- Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968
- Information arrives from the 5 senses by intaking its environment
- Large capacity
- Short duration- less than a second
Evidence:
- Sperling 1960 & 1963
- Visual array of letters is presented, recall is precise but decays if there is a delay
What is the short-term memory in the multi-store model- Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968
- Encoding is acoustic- the memory trace is held in an auditory/verbal form (phonological similarity effect)
- Retrieval is based on rapid scanning
- Rehersal maintains info
- Duration of 15-30 seconds
- Capacity of 5-8 items
Peterson & Peterson (1959)
- Recall info with an interference task. Performance dropped after 15-18 seconds
What is the long-term memory in the multi-store model- Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968
- If info is linked to prior knowledge it is easier to search for
- Encoding is semantic- Baddeley
- Unlimited capacity and duration
- Info retrieved from long term to short term when needed
- Not stored as one memory trace- multiple copies
What are the strengths of the multi-store model of memory- Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968
Henry Molaison:
- Supports distinction between the long term and short term memory as the long-term was impaired and the short-term was unaffected
Glanzer & Cunitz:
- We remember words at the start and end of a word list rather than in the middle
Clive Wearing:
- Could still use the short-term memory to remember things for 20 seconds but couldnt make new memories
What were the weaknesses of the multi-store model of memory- Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968
KF case study:
- Could still add memories to the long term memory even though the short-term was damaged. The MSM doesnt explain this
Short-term memory:
- It is oversimplified and is more than one store
- Working memory model
Lacks ecological validity:
- Model is based on lab experiments and artificial tasks when in real life we use our memory to remember important things
What is Tulving’s (1972) long-term memory
Episodic memory:
- Recall events- memories
- Mental diary- allows us to ‘time travel’
- Time stamped
- Awareness autonoetic consciousness- aware that a memory is not a dream
Semantic memory:
- Stores knowledge of the world- facts
- Mental encyclopedia
- Experiences and events
How is info retieved from the long-term memory- Tulving 1972
- Context, when the event was learnt/experienced, helps with the retreival of episodic memories
- Retrieval changes information
- Semantic memory causes inferences, generalisation and rational/logical thought
- Retrieval leaves memory traces unchanged
What is time and spatial referencing in the long-term memory- Tulving 1972
Time referencing:
- Episodic memory dependent on the time in which the event occured
- Not relevant for semantic memory
Spacial referencing:
- Where something occured
- Input into episodic memory is continuous
- Input into semantic memory is fragmented
What is reconstructive memory- Bartlett 1932
- Memory is not perfectly formed, encoded and retrieved perfectly
- Memory is an active process in which we store fragments of information
- When we recall something we reconstruct these fragments into a whole
- Sometimes, the result has some elements missing and is distorted.
- Memory is not a completely accurate reccord of whats happeneing
