Memory

Question 1

multi-store model

Answer 1

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968)

• modality-specific sensory stores
• a short-term store
• a long-term store

Question 2

iconic store experiment

Answer 2

=brief sensory store for visual information

• Sperling (1960) showed 12 letters in grid
• participants reported 4 or 5
• when asked to report one row, they could, but only if the delay between the removal of the letters and presentation of the prompt was 1s or less
• therefore, this store decays quickly

Question 3

echoic store experiment

Answer 3

= brief sensory store for auditory information

Treisman (1964)

• participants asked to repeat auditory message while ignoring a second message
• if the second message was identical, they only noticed if it started within 2s
• therefore, this store decays quickly

Question 4

capacity or “span” of short term memory?

Answer 4

Miller (1956) showed that participants could recall digit strings up to length of 7 ± 2 digits (also could do for words)

Question 5

information can be retained in short term by rehearsing it

Answer 5

Rundus (1971)

• participants read list of 20 words out loud
• found that the more they rehearsed, the more likely the word was to be recalled
• first few words had high likelihood of recall (primacy effect)
• last few words had high likelihood of recall (recency effect)

Question 6

decay hypothesis

Answer 6

short-term memory forgetting due to time passing

Peterson & Peterson (1959)

• asked participants to remember 3 letters for a few seconds while counting backward in threes.
• ability to remember diminished rapidly with time
• issue: maybe counting task caused interference

Question 7

interference hypothesis

Answer 7

short-term memory forgetting is due to interference of other info, rather than the passage of time

Waugh & Norman (1965)

• (1) manipulated the speed with which digits were presented to participants for, faster = less passing of time
• (2) included many other digits to interfere
• found that faster rate did not affect ability to recall digits
• however, number of interferring digits did have effect

Question 8

experimental evidence for separation of short term and long term memory

Answer 8

Glanzer & Cunitz (1966)

• remember lists of words
• recency effect eliminated when participants counted backwards prior to recall (short term memory affected by task)
• primacy effect not effected by counting backwards (long term memory used, not affected)

Question 9

neural evidence for separation of short term and long term memory

Answer 9

Scoville & Milner (1957): patient with medial temporal damage - had impaired long term memory

Shallice & Warrington (1970) patient KF with parieto-occipital damage, had impaired short term memory

Question 10

criticisms of multi-store model

Answer 10

• Craik & Tulving, 1975: rehearsal helps LT memory, but depth of processing is more important ironic
• Patient KF didn’t require short term for long term
• Patient KF had worse ST memory for letters/digits than for visual stimuli = element of modality in ST
• Baddeley & Hitch (1974) dual task (auditory rehearsal and grammatical reasoning) did not affect performance = may be separate

Question 11

working memory model

Answer 11

Baddeley & Hitch (1974)

-auditory-verbal phonological loop (ST)
-a visuo-spatial sketchpad (ST)
-an episodic buffer which holds and integrates information (2000)
-a central executive for
selecting and initiating cognitive processing routines

Question 12

how were the components of working memory separated

Answer 12

• multiple dual-task experiments
• Robbins et al. (1996) chess move selection
• word repetition = phonological loop
• key pressing = visuo-spatial
• random number generation = central exec

chess requires central exec and visuo-spatial sp, but not phonological loop

Question 13

what are the two empirical observations about the phonological loop?

Answer 13

• phonological similarity effect

- word-length effect

Question 14

phonological similarity effect

Answer 14

• harder to remember phonologically similar words (this effect is not found with visual/semantic stimuli)
• suggests speech based representations are used in storing words, and recall requires discrimination between

Question 15

word length effect

Answer 15

• recall of long word harder than short words
• Baddeley (1975) asked participants to silently mouth digits (articulatory suppression) during presentation and recall of words. this eliminated the word length effect, showing that the phonological loop is determined by rehearsal out loud.

Question 16

phonological loop system

Answer 16

• Baddeley (1990) drew distinction between
• a phonological store (speech perception)
• an articulatory control process (speech production)

Question 17

how does the phonological loop system help in the explanation of the phonological similarity effect and the word length effect?

Answer 17

the phonological similarity
effect: confusions between similar representations in the phonological store

word-length effect can be attributed to the time taken to rehearse longer words via the articulatory control process

Question 18

visuospatial sketchpad original experiment

Answer 18

Baddeley et al. 1975

• asked participants to learn material using verbal learning or imagery learning
• when combined with pursuit rotor tracking, imagery based performance was disrupted

Question 19

Pursuit rotor tracking involves visual perception as well as spatial localization. Are both these important?

Answer 19

Baddeley & Lieberman (1980)

-verbal learning vs imagery learning
-visual task (brightness judgement) vs spatial task (pointing at pendulum while blindfolded)
-Learning using the imagery-based strategy
was most clearly disrupted by the spatial concurrent tasks

Question 20

visuospatial working memory divided into two theory

Answer 20

Logie (1995)

VISUAL CACHE
-info about visual form and colour, subject to interference by new visual info

INNER SCRIBE
-info about spatial information, allows active rehearsal of information in the visual cache

Question 21

patient +fMRI evidence for logie (1995)

Answer 21

Beschin et al. (1997) patient NL, had preserved
spatial skills but could not describe details of a scene from memory

Farah et al. (1988) reported
patient LH, who performed better on spatial processing tasks than on visual imagery tasks.

Zimmer (2008): visual tasks = occipital and temporal lobes; spatial task = parietal cortex

Question 22

things unexplained by original working memory model with PL (speech) and VSSP (visual)

Answer 22

sometimes their roles overlapped, must be combined somewhere

Baddeley et al.
(1984) articulatory suppression reduces memory for visually-presented material but does not eliminate it as would be predicted by the phonological loop model

Also: patients with severely impaired short-term phonological memory, with an auditory span of only
1 digit, can typically recall up to 4 digits with visual presentation

Chincotta et al. (1999) studied
memory span for Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) and digit words (one, two, three), finding that participants
used both verbal and visual representations in performing the task.

Question 23

things unexplained by or loop capacity

Answer 23

memory span for meaningful sentences can be as much as 15-16 words, vastly exceeding normal phonological
loop capacity (Baddeley et al., 1987)

this CANNOT be explained by ‘chunks’ as Baddeley & found that amnesic patients with impaired long term memory can exhibit normal sentence span/play bridge while keeping track

Question 24

Neural evidence FOR episodic buffer

Answer 24

Prabhakaran et
al. (2000)

• Participants performed working memory task with both verbal and spatial info.
• Right frontal cortex was greater = integrated info
• Posterior region = modality specific stuff

Question 25

four functions of central executive

Answer 25

Smith & Jonides (1999) 1. switching attention between tasks 2. planning sub-tasks to achieve a specified goal 3. selective attention to certain stimuli 4. updating the contents of other working memory stores

Question 26

task to study central exec

Answer 26

random generation

Question 27

baddeley studies on central exec to discover various functions

Answer 27

- Asked participants to hold 1-8 digits in mind while creating a random sequence of key presses - The harder the task, the less random the key presses (LIMITED CAPACITY) - alternating numbers and letters decreased performance (SWITCHING ATTENTION)

Question 28

Impairment to the functions of the central executive name and region +CHALENGE

Answer 28

dysexecutive syndrome frontal lobes of the brain Stuss and Alexander (2007) think this notion is flawed: patients with only partial damage are able to carry out some degree of executive function different regions within the frontal cortex may be associated with sub-components of central exec

Question 29

fmri studies on central exec region

Answer 29

1: dorsolateral regions of the frontal lobe showed greater activation under dual-task than single-task conditions 2: lateral frontal cortex as the neural basis of “general intelligence”, characterised as a specific system involved in control of diverse forms of behaviour.

Question 30

Atkinson & Shiffrin’s (1968)

Answer 30

multi-store model distinguished short term ("in mind") and long term memory stores (unlimited capacity)

Question 31

limit of long term memory early studies (silly bananas being like oh fuck its so unlimited)?

Answer 31

theoretically unlimited, but there are a finite no. of neurons in brain! Standing (1973) tested memory for many thousands of pictures, found remarkably good memory even for 10,000+ Lindauer (1986) suggested that capacity may be constrained by the rate of acquisition. Found humans humans can 100 stimuli per minute, which equates to ~3 billion stimuli in a lifetime

Question 32

first proper study of long term memory

Answer 32

Ebbinghaus (1885) taught himself lists of syllables - measured time taken to learn the lists - measured time to relearn lists after various hours, calculated time 'saved' as retention - retention decreased with a longer interval (expected) - but the RATE of retention slowed down/plateau'd after first hour

Question 33

factors improving long term memory (and yes/no depending on whether you are doing it)

Answer 33

PRACTICE (Y) - Pirolli & Anderson (1985) asked participants to practice sentences, found that long-term memory improved with number of days of practice. LEVEL OF PROCESSING (N) -Craik & Lockhart (1972): thinking about a word’s meaning was associated with considerably better memory than simply repeating it -Craik & Tulving (1975) found that semantic (meaning) processing better than phonological or visuo-spatial ELABORATION (N) -Anderson & Bower (1972) participants that finished a sentence remembered it better ORGANISED MATERIAL (N) ``` SPACING LEARNING (Y) -Bahrick (1979) found increasing intervals = better long-term retention ```

Question 34

why do we forget?

Answer 34

INTERFERENCE? -Jenkins & Dallenbach (1924): forgetting during waking hours than during sleep, suggesting that interference from other events is more important than decay -Baddeley & Hitch (1977) asked rugby players to recall the names of teams they had played against, the number of games they had played influenced their memory, rather than the time over which the games were played.

Question 35

TWO MAIN FORMS OF INTERFERENCE

Answer 35

proactive interference (previous learning interferes with later learning) -Underwood (1957) found that the more nonsense syllable lists a participant had previously learned, the more forgetting of new syllables the participant exhibited after 24 hours ``` retroactive interference (later learning disrupts things learned earlier) -Loftus & PalmeR (1974): eyewitness memory for an event can be interfered with by post-event questioning ```

Question 36

FAMOUS AMNESIC PATIENT (ergh not him again)

Answer 36

Patient HM - epilepsy surgery: bilateral removal of his MEDIAL TEMPORAL LOBES - unable to remember people/names/words/objects - still had intellectual functioning/language comprehension/semantic knowledge/motor learning

Question 37

Squire (1992) issues with multi-store model thinking there is a unitary long term memory

Answer 37

taxonomy of long term memory EXPLICIT (concsious) -> episodic (personal) vs semantic (facts) IMPLICIT (not concsious) -> perceptual (priming) vs procedural (motor skills conditioning)

Question 38

distinction between explicit and implicit memory systems + HOW TO STUDY THEM

Answer 38

Schacter (1987) explicit memory: conscious recollection of a previous experience -studied with list of word tasks/recall implicit memory: when performance on a task is facilitated but no conscious recollection -studied with fragment completion/word stem completion

Question 39

Early task studies on dif between explicit and implicit

Answer 39

Jacoby & Dallas (1981) - deeper processing affected explicit but not implicit memory - changing modality affected implicit but not explicit memory

Question 40

patient studies FOR EXPLICIT VS IMPLICIT MEM

Answer 40

- generally patients with amnesia impaired on explicit memory but not implicit memory - performance of amnesic patients on pursuit rotor or Gollin figures tasks, improves over trials, despite the patients not being able to recall having done the test before - patients impaired on implicit but not explicit much rarer - patient MS (lesion in occipital cortex) had this = double dissociation

Question 41

fMRI data for explicit vs implicit mem

Answer 41

Schacter & Wagner (1999) explicit in medial temporal lobe Simons et al. (2003): implicit in a posterior region of the brain known as fusiform cortex

Question 42

early distinction of episodic vs semantic memory

Answer 42

Tulving (1972) EPISODIC - events/episodes - specific to each person SEMANTIC - objects/people/facts/etc - culturally shared

Question 43

task studies on episodic vs semantic

Answer 43

jacoby & dallas (1981) -different levels of processing improved episodic memory, but not semantic memory jocoby (1983) -double dissociation: reading a word out of context improved semantic, but generating a word themselves improved episodic

Question 44

patient studies on episodic vs semantic

Answer 44

Burgess (2001) 147 cases of amnesia involving damage to the hippocampus/fornix. Episodic memory problems worse than their problems with semantic memory. Vargha-Khadem et al. (1997) 3 children with more selective hippocampal damage showed very impaired episodic but not performed normally semantic tasks (much rarer)

Question 45

Tulving (1998)

Answer 45

SPI model ``` serial encoding (S) parallel storage (P) independent retrieval (I) ``` SEMANTIC can exist without EPISODIC, but EPISODIC cannot exist without SEMANTIC (therefore double dis should NOT be possible)

Question 46

evidence of double dis of episodic/semantic anyway

Answer 46

(Early) Alzheimer’s Disease: medial temporal lobe atrophy -> impaired episodic memory; preserved semantic knowledge (Early) Semantic Dementia: lateral temporal lobe atrophy -> impaired semantic memory; preserved episodic knowledge

Question 47

But how do you explain how patients with Semantic Dementia are performing the episodic task, if not with help of semantic memory (as SPI model suggests)

Answer 47

Graham et al. (2000) Multiple Input Hypothesis proposed that perceptual information might be able to feed directly into episodic memory (esp in absence of semantic mem) -patients with semantic dementia had normal episodic memory when perceptual info was identical in study and test, but impaired when different (e.g. telephone represented in dif way)

Question 48

further evidence for interdependence of episodic and semantic

Answer 48

Harand et al. (2012): some memories that are stored as episodic can later become semantic Burianova et al. (2010) compared patterns of brain activation during episodic, semantic memory retrieval, and found that similar neural networks were involved in all of these.