Chapter 5 - Short-Term and Working Memory

Question 1

-Memory:

Answer 1

: processes involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas and skills after the original information is no longer present

-Active anytime some past experiences have an impact on how you think or behave now or in the future

Question 2

Modal Model of Memory

• Atkinson and Shiffran (1968)
• Three different types of memory

Answer 2

1. Sensory Memory – initial stage that holds all incoming information for seconds or fractions of a second
2. Short-term memory – holds 5 to 7 items for about 15 to 20 seconds
3. Long-term memory – can hold a large amount of information for years or even decades

Question 3

-Control processes:

Answer 3

active processes that can be controlled by the person

• rehearsal
• strategies used to make a stimulus more memorable
• strategies of attention that help you focus on specific stimuli

Question 4

-sensory memory –

Answer 4

the retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation

• persistence of vision: retention of the perception of light
• sparklers trail of light
• frames in film
• holds large amount of information for a short period of time
• collects information
• holds information for initial processing
• fills in the blank

Question 5

-Measuring the capacity and duration of sensory memory (Sperling, 1960)

Answer 5

• array of letters flashed quickly on a screen
• participants asked to report as many as possible
• whole report method: participants asked to report as many as could be seen
• average of about 4.5 of 12 letters (37.5%)
• partial report method: participants heard tone that told them which row of letters to report
• average of 3.3 of 4 letters (82%)
• participants could report any of the rows
• delayed partial report method: presentation of tone delayed for a fraction of a second after the letters were extinguished
• performance decreases rapidly
• this brief sensory memory for visual stimulus is called iconic memory or visual icon, and the persistence of sound is called echoic memory, lasts for a few seconds after the initial presentation

Question 6

-COGLAB: Partial Report

Answer 6

• in the early beginning studies of psychology, researchers were interested in something called the “perceptual span.” Their quest was to determine how much information could be gathers in a single percept. For example, when you read text, how many letters can you interpret in a single glance? Or how many coins can you distinguish if you briefly glance them? The goal was to identify the limits of perceptual abilities.
• a variety of studies seemed to draw similar conclusions: people could accurately report about 4.5 items from a brief percept
• the fact was built into may theories of cognition until a set of experiments by Sperling proved it wrong
• Sperling suggested that the 4.5 item limit was imposed not by the capabilities of the perceptual system, but by the observers; abilities to recall items that had been seen. He designed the partial-report experiment
• whole report method: participants asked to report as many as could be seen
• average of about 4.5 of 12 letters (37.5%)
• partial report method: participants heard tone that told them which row of letters to report
• average of 3.3 of 4 letters (82%)
• participants could report any of the rows
• delayed partial report method: presentation of tone delayed for a fraction of a second after the letters were extinguished
• performance decreases rapidly

Question 7

-Iconic memory

Answer 7

brief sensory memory of the things that we see

-responsible for persistence vision

Question 8

Echoic memory

Answer 8

brief sensory memory of the things we hear

-responsible for persistence of sound

Question 9

Short-Term Memory

Answer 9

• stores small amounts of information for a brief duration
• includes both new information received from the sensory stores and information recalled from long-term memory
• Measuring the duration of short-term memory
• read 3 letters, then a number
• begin counting backwards by threes
• after a set time, recall the 3 letters

Question 10

COGLAB: Brown-Peterson

Answer 10

• The participant viewed a trigram of consonants (e.g., GKT, WCH,…) and then performed a number of algebraic computations (e.g., counting backward by 3s) for less than 20 seconds
• Solving math problems seems to be very different from recalling consonant trigrams, so it was unlikely that there was any interference to disturb the memory of the trigram.
• The conclusion was that there exists a short-term memory (STM) system that holds information for several seconds. Without an active effort by the participant, information in STM fades away. STM is now a fundamental part of most theories of cognitive psychology.

Question 11

-Peterson and Peterson (1959)

Answer 11

• after 3 seconds of counting, participants performed at 80%
• after 18 seconds of counting, participants performed at 10%
• the reduction in performance is explained by the existence of decay, which is the vanishing of a memory due to the passage of time and exposure to competing stimuli
• short term memory, when rehearsal is prevented, is about 15-20 seconds

Question 12

-Proactive interference:

Answer 12

occurs when information learned previously interferes with learning new information

-your native language may make it more difficult to learn and remember a foreign language

Question 13

-Retroactive interference:

Answer 13

occurs when new learning interferes with remembering old learning

-after you get a new telephone number and use it for a while, you may have difficulty remembering the old number

Question 14

-Capacity of short-term memory

Answer 14

• digit span: how many digits a person can remember
• but what is an item?
• change detection – can we notice change in two images?

Question 15

COGLAB: Memory Span

Answer 15

• memory span was approximately seven (plus or minus two) for a wide variety of stimuli.
• It could be systematically influenced by a variety of stimulus characteristics. Memory span for letters that sound similar and for long words should be shorter.
• These findings have suggested that the capacity of short-term memory is controlled by verbal processes.
• typical result: 5-8 items
• but what is an item?

Question 16

-Chunking:

Answer 16

small units can be combined into larger. Meaningful units

-Chunk: collection of elements strongly associated with one another but weakly associated with elements in other chunks

Question 17

Ericsson et al. (1980)

Answer 17

• Trained a college student with an average memory ability to use chunking
• S.F. had an initial digit span of 7
• After 230 one-hour training sessions, S.F. could remember up to 79 digits
• chinking them into meaningful units

Question 18

Alvarez and Cavanaugh (2004)

Answer 18

• used colored squares as well as complex objects

- used the change detection procedure

Question 19

Working Memory

-similar concept to short-term memory

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Answer 19

WM: limited capacity for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning and reasoning

• working memory differs from STM
• STM holds information for a brief period of time
• WM is concerned with the processing and manipulation of information that occurs during complex cognition

Question 20

Phonological Loop

-phonological similarity effect

Answer 20

-letters or words that sound similar are confused

Question 21

Word-length memory

Answer 21

• memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long words
• takes longer to rehearse long words and to produces them during recall

Question 22

-articulatory suppression

Answer 22

• prevents one from rehearsing items to be remembered
• reduces memory span
• eliminates word-length effect
• reduces phonological similarity effect for reading words

Question 23

-The phonological loop has 2 parts,

Answer 23

the phonological store, and the articulatory process

Question 24

phonological store:

Answer 24

is a memory store that can retain speech-based (phonological) information for a short period of time. Unless rehearsed, the traces within the store are assumed to fade and decay within about 2 seconds, after which they are no longer usable

Question 25

articulatory control process

Answer 25

is responsible for two different functions: it translates visual information into speech-based code and deposits it in the phonological store, and it refreshes a trace in the phonological store, offsetting the decay process

Question 26

Coglab: Phonological Similarity Effect

Answer 26

• When people are asked to recall a list of items, their performance is usually worse when the items sound similar than when the items sound different (Conrad, 1964). For example, “F” was most often misidentified as “S” or “X”.
• What is most surprising about the phonological similarity effect is that it occurs even when there is no auditory input, such as when you read the items (visually presented) silently to yourself. This result has been seen as suggesting that people recode the information (from visual to phonological). If you used only a visual representation, you would be more likely to confuse items that looked similar (e.g., E and F).
• According to the phonological loop model, the reason that you get a phonological similarity effect when there is no auditory input is that the articulatory control process has converted the visual information into phonological form.
• One key prediction is that if you somehow prevent the articulatory control process from converting the information, the phonological similarity effect will be removed.
• This demonstration is based on an experiment reported by Murray (1968) and uses a technique called articulatory suppression to prevent the articulatory control process from recoding the visual information into phonological information.
• When you did not engage in articulatory suppression (quiet), you should recall more dissimilar than similar letters. When you engaged in articulatory suppression, performance should be worse than when you did not, and you should also find no difference in recall of similar and dissimilar letters.

Question 27

• word-length effect

- Word-length memory

Answer 27

• memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long words
• takes longer to rehearse longs words and to produces them during recall
• spoken duration appears to be crucial
• memory spans are greater for words like “bishop “and “wicket” than for “harpoon” and “labile”
• memory span and articulation rate are highly correlated in all age groups – our span increases as we can articulate more rapidly
• Overt or covert articulation serves to maintain items in the phonological store by refreshing their fading traces. The faster it can run, the longer the memory span
• people who can remember the number of items that they can pronounce in about 2 seconds

Question 28

-articulatory suppression

Answer 28

• prevents one form rehearsing items to be remembered
• reduces memory span
• eliminates word-length effect
• reduces phonological similarity effect for reading words

Question 29

Visuospatial Sketchpad

-Visual imagery:

Answer 29

the creation of visual images in the mind in the absence of a physical stimulus

Question 30

Shepard and Metzler (1971)

Answer 30

• mental rotation task
• tasks that called for greater rotations took longer
• WM is set up to process different types of information simultaneously
• WM has trouble when similar types of information are presented at the same time

Question 31

-Brooks (1968)

Answer 31

• memorize sentence and the consider each word (mentally)
• Response was either
• Phonological: say yes if it is a noun and no if it not
• Visuospatial: point to Y if a word is a noun and N if it is not
• Pointing was easier than speaking
• Task (memorize sentence) involved the phonological loop
• pointing response involved the visuospatial sketchpad
• verbal response involved phonological loop
• conducting two verbal tasks overloaded the phonological loop

Question 32

-Brooks (1968) (2)

Answer 32

• visualize the capital letter F, starting at the top left corner
• Response is either
• Phonological: say out if it is an exterior corner and in if it is in an interior corner
• Visuospatial: point to out if it is an exterior corner and in if it is in an interior corner
• speaking was easier than pointing
• the task (visualizing the capital letter) involved the visuospatial sketchpad
• pointing response involved the visuospatial sketchpad
• verbal response involved the phonological loop
• conducting two visuospatial tasks overloaded the visuospatial sketchpad
• results show that is the task and the response draw on the same WM component, performance is worse than if the task and the response are distributed between WM components

Question 33

The Central Executive

-Attention Controller

Answer 33

• Focus, divide, switch attention
• controls suppressions of irrelevant information
• Perseveration: repeatedly performing the same action of thought even if it is not achieving the desired goal

Question 34

Episodic Buffer

Answer 34

• backup store that communicates with LTM and WM components

- hold information longer and has greater capacity than phonological loop or visuospatial sketchpad

Question 35

WM and the Brain

Answer 35

• prefrontal cortex responsible for processing incoming visual and auditory information
• monkeys without a prefrontal cortex have difficulty holding information in the WM

Question 36

-Funahashi et al. (1989)

Answer 36

• single cell recordings from monkey’s prefrontal cortex during a delay-response task
• neurons responded when stimulus was flashed in a particular location and during delay
• information remains available via these neurons for as long as they continue firing

Question 37

Working Memory and the Neural Dynamics

-Stokes (2015)

Answer 37

-information is stored in short-term changes in neural networks

Question 38

• actively-silent working memory:

- Activity state:

Answer 38

information to be remembered causes neurons to fire

Question 39

Synaptic state:

Answer 39

neuron firing stops, but connections between neurons are strengthened

Question 40

hy is more working memory better?

-reading span test

Answer 40

• reading a list of sentences
• “when at last his eyes opened, there was no glimmer of strength, no shade of angle”
• “the taxi turned by Michigan Avenue where they had a clear view of the lake”
• Report the last words of sentences
• reading span test performance correlated with reading ability

Question 41

-Vogel et al. (2005)

Answer 41

• determined participants’ WM
• high-capacity WM groups
• low-capacity WM groups
• shown either simple or complex stimuli
• measured ERP responses
• Results:
• high-capacity participants were more efficient at ignoring the distractors par