Week 7 Flashcards

Question

Automaticity every day & in the lab

Answer 1

• With practice many tasks can be performed with little effort and concurrently with certain other tasks • Driving a car • Riding a bicycle • Classic demonstration in the lab – KEY RESULT: Shiffrin & Schneider (1977) • Ps given a memory set - targets to be searched for in the upcoming trial • For example, letters 'G' & 'M' • A trial was a rapid series of 20 square displays • Fixation dot at centre • Then each display had 4 letters around the centre • On each trial there was one or zero targets, the remainder distractors

Answer 2

• Ps had to press a key as soon as they saw a target, or press another key for “no target” at end of trial • S & S varied the display (“frame”) duration (40 ms +), number of items on each frame, nature of display items (e.g., letters vs. non-letters), number of items in the memory set. • Key independent variables for automaticity: 1. Size of memory set = 2 vs. 4 letters 2. Relationship between memory set and display items throughout trial block • Categorical (“consistent mapping”): targets came from one set • Mixed (“varied mapping”): targets and distractors came from same set • So in mixed condition a letter, say B, could be a target on one trial and a distractor on another trial • but in categorical condition B could only be a target OR a distractor (not both) throughout the block

Answer 3

In the categorical condition, Ps learn the targets and respond as soon as they see one. • After practice, there is no effect of memory set size (2 vs. 4) - evidence of automaticity. • In the mixed condition, it is not possible to use a simple response rule (see a B, respond target). • There is always a cost of having a larger memory set, even after nearly 10,000 trials!

Answer 4

1. Without awareness 2. Without conscious deliberation / obligatory 3. Without expenditure of resources 4. Fast 5. Rigid/habitual • (Shiffrin & Schneider found that Ps had great difficulty in categorical condition when the assignment of items was reversed.) • E.g.: • automatically reading a word that is looked at (Stroop task)

Answer 5

• Logan (1988) • Automaticity based on knowledge acquisition, is not all-or-none • Separate memory traces for each encounter with a stimulus. • Practice leads to storage of information about the stimulus and how to respond to it. • Rapid retrieval of relevant information about stimulus • Automaticity is memory retrieval – a single step direct-access retrieval of a past solution. • In the absence of practice, thought and application of rules is required.

Answer 6

Problems with traditional criteria for automaticity: • Many “automatic” processes do not meet all of the criteria for automaticity • Capacity & interference: • Even well-practised tasks, that can be performed without conscious awareness, can still be impacted by task load.

Answer 7

• Can have lack of awareness in intentional tasks • e.g., using cue for retrieval from memory • awareness of cue but not retrieval processes • Can also have awareness of many aspects of tasks that are highly routinised • Mistakenly taking a routine turn at an intersection does not mean that the action is “unconscious” • Rather, the link with intention is lost • Level of control critical: • Automatic performance can be reduced with additional demands • Automaticity depends on the situation.

Answer 8

``` Attention meets memory • What is attended to goes to Working Memory (WM)….and vice versa! • WM is the domain of conscious thought • WM involved in making decisions and initiating actions based on plans and in response to environmental input • WM involved in directing attention ```

Answer 9

Working Memory (WM) • Material disappears after a few seconds if not refreshed • Limited capacity (7…ish): • Information is displaced by new information. • In neuropsychology WM is distinguished from STM Compared to… Long-term memory (LTM)? • More permanent traces, vast capacity • Forgetting through interference; decay also? • Continual interplay between WM & LTM in perceiving, speaking & action.

Answer 10

Central Executive -Phonological loop -Visuo-spatial sketchpad -Episodic Buffer • CE co-ordinates activity of “subordinate” systems that store information • We will discuss the CE, Phonological loop and the V-S sketchpad • Episodic buffer - recent (and contentious) addition to model; links information across visual, verbal, and spatial domains

Answer 11

• CE: An attention controller that is an interface between WM systems and long term memory (LTM) • does not have its own storage capacity • Functions (there may be others!) • Co-ordination of the subsidiary WM systems • Control of encoding & retrieval strategies • Switching of attention • Mental manipulation of material held in the slave systems

Answer 12

• Random number/letter generation thought to require the CE • Under pressure of concurrent CE demands sequences become less random. • Baddeley & colleagues have shown interference between random number/ letter generation and: • Playing chess, reasoning • Problem solving • Generating items from semantic categories • Mental arithmetic

Answer 13

• Maintains verbal, sequential information in a phonological (soundbased) code • 2 components • Verbal store (“inner ear”) • Subvocal articulatory rehearsal process (“inner voice”) • Information decays after about 2 sec, unless maintained by rehearsal. • Articulatory rehearsal also may be used to enter information into the store. • Examples of tasks: • Remember password, phone number, recipe, instructions, in the short term • Digit span

Answer 14

* A: Phonological similarity effect * B: Irrelevant (unattended) speech effect * C: Word length effect * D: Concurrent articulation effect * Also called “articulatory suppression” has

Answer 15

• Conrad, 1964. Most confusions in immediate serial (ordered) recall for letters with similar sounding names • Conrad & Hull: more errors in serial recall for B, G, V, P, T than Y, H, W, K, R • Baddeley, 1966: Serial recall of phonologically similar vs. dissimilar 5-item sequences presented auditorily. • mad, man, mat, cap, cad, can, cat, cap (similar pool) • cow, day, bar, few, hot, pen, sup, pit (control pool) • % sequences correct: Control = 82%, Similar = 9.6% • Similar results for visual presentation • Recalling order information is the problem • Sound not spelling - effect found with caught, sort, taut, etc

Answer 16

• Confusions among phonologically similar items indicate use of phonological representations. • Absence of phonological similarity effect suggests that Ps have abandoned a phonological coding strategy • Distinguish from long term memory effects • LTM usually shows semantic not phonological confusions. • e.g., confuse movies, books with similar themes

Answer 17

• Sometimes called “unattended speech effect” • Speech impairs serial verbal recall of visually presented material. • Nonwords, Arabic and backward speech interfere: Not dependent on meaning of material. • Music sometimes interferes • White noise has no effect • Intensity of auditory stimulus not important • Baddeley’s interpretation: • Obligatory access of speech-like input to phonological store • Corruption of trace, added noise, rather than phonological confusion effect • Can get impairment for materials that don’t produce a phonological similarity effect

Answer 18

• Immediate memory span declines with the spoken duration of the list items. • Baddeley, Thompson & Buchanan, 1975. • Auditory lists, 4 - 8 items, items listed for Ps to refer to • Short: sum, hate, harm, wit, bond, yield, etc. • Long: association, opportunity, representative, organization, individual, etc. • Sequences correct: Short words Long words 56% 20% • Controlled number of syllables - coerce, typhoon, voodoo, etc. vs. ember, wiggle, phallic • Lower accuracy for items with longer-duration pronunciations

Answer 19

• Reflects the speed of subvocal rehearsal and hence the rate of refresh of the memory trace. • Less time to rehearse the word • Rehearsal involves central programming of speech but not output • patients without vocalisation show rehearsal • but not those with impaired speech programming.

Answer 20

• Cowan: delays at output associated with the longer articulation time of long items • More items forgotten in the time taken to say “representative” than in the time taken to say “dog” • But studies show word length effects even with probed recall. • Was the item “representative” in position 3?

Answer 21

• Also called articulatory suppression: • Repeating la-la, the, hiya etc, adversely affects serial recall & abolishes the word length effect. • Phonological similarity effect removed by articulation with visual but not auditory presentation • Interpretation: • Eliminates subvocal rehearsal • Impairs phonological recoding of visual material • What components of articulation are important? Role of irrelevant speech? • hearing speech is not a major factor • silent articulation interferes • but not non-speech actions (chewing, etc)

Answer 22

• Comprehension of oral and written language? Only as back up. • Brain injured patients with severely impaired verbal serial recall can understand and read most sentences • Vocabulary learning – children, learning a new language

Answer 23

• Visuo-spatial rather than verbal encoding of material • Tasks: Corsi tapping task (Neuropsych), memory for un-nameable shapes/patterns, navigation and tracking • Concurrent speech does not interfere with V-S tasks • Brandimonte & Hitch, 1992 • speech impairs verbal encoding of shapes (e.g., “umbrella”) • but does not affect visuo-spatial encoding of shapes • Baddeley suggests that V-S memory is based on a visuo-spatial code that supports imagery

Answer 24

• Visual vs. spatial representations • Consistent with imagery research, Baddeley recently has divided V-S sketchpad into: • Visual cache stores visual patterns • Inner-scribe -- spatially based rehearsal (e.g., of movement sequences) • Doesn’t require visual input • Spatial rehearsal performed by blind Ps

Answer 25

* Planning and execution of spatial tasks * e.g., in sport, driving, etc. * Manipulating visual images * Keeping track of changes in the visual perceptual world. * Maintaining orientations in space and directing movement. * Comprehending certain verbal information (in navigation etc.)

Answer 26

• The model describes and organises some key facts about human short term memory • Limitations of memory • Coding and modality effects • Insufficient development of how the stores interact and the interplay of WM and long-term memory • The Baddeley model may not be important in 50 years time • But the evidence gathered by Baddeley and the fruits of research stimulated by the model will always be important!

Answer 27

• Memory buffer that allows the retention of visual information, for a short time period, when it is out of view. Holds 3-4 items* • Gives rise to a coherent and continuous representation of the visual world, that would otherwise be disrupted by objects being occluded or saccadic eye movements etc • Allows relevant visual information to be used when undertaking goal-directed behavior and thoughts • What gives rise to the capacity limits of working memory? • Slot model (Luck and Vogel, 1997): Fixed number of object representations that can be held in memory at one time; once at this limit, no other items can be held in memory • Resource model (Alvarez & Cavangh, 2004): Limited supply of a representational medium is continuously distributed between objects; items that receive more resource are stored with less noise. • Complexity of objects influencing VSTM capacity favours resource model • Still under debate.

Answer 28

• Specific vs distributed? • VWM load detected across the brain (Naughtin et al, 2016, Cerebral Cortex)