Working Memory

Question 1

Brown + Petersons

Answer 1

• Giving people small amount of material if you stop rehersing they forget things very rapidly even without interference
• Seperate type of memory: STM

Question 2

Free recall experiment- primacy + recency

Answer 2

• Health ppts showed primacy + recency effect
• Shows there are LTM+ STM
• Recency effect when delayed for just a few seconds, goes away
• Warrington did it on patients with impaired LTM but still good STM
• Recency effect present - last few words recalled
• Primacy effect had poor recall

Question 3

Multi-store model of memory

Answer 3

• Info comes through sensory stores (may decay) into the ST stire when attended to (displacement possible) and then when rehersed goes into LTM (interference may impact this)

Question 4

Modal Model

Answer 4

• Atkinson + SHiffrin
• Most common model
• Simply holding memory in STM will transfer it to LTM
• Env input goes into sensory registers and to STM which acts as a tempory WM (rehersal, coding, decision, retrieval strategies) and is then trasnfered to LTM which can be retirieved back to STM

Question 5

Problems with the modal model of memory

Answer 5

• Assumes info is automatically transfered to LTM
• Craig + Lockhard –> not how long the info is held but what you do with the material = deeper level the better retention
• Patients with imaired STM weren’t studied as very rare

Question 6

Baddeley - Reasoning + LTM

Answer 6

• Combined digit span with the target task
• Given simple verbal reasoning task
• As digit load increses, reasoning time was slower = slower

Question 7

Working Memory Model

Answer 7

• Central executive –> choosing strategies, controls everything, attentional system
• Phonological loop –> sound + speech system
• Visuospatial sketchpad -p> imagery system

Question 8

Phonological loop

Answer 8

• When remembering letters
• Mistakes are made when there are similar sounding words even when presented visually
• Temporary acoustic store that memory trace fades over time

Question 9

Conrad - Phonological loop study

Answer 9

• Remembering sequence of items that had similar or dissimilar sounds
• Words that sounded similar were harder to recall
• Words similar in meaning were recalled slightly worse than when had no similar meaning
• When they doubled the sequence to 10
• Similar meaning recalled much worse
• Similar sound recalled a little bit worse than dissimilar

Question 10

Different language + phonological loop - Baddeley

Answer 10

• Different lang have different length of time to say words
• Memory span goes down as number of syllables in a word increases
• Chinese digits are packed more tightly so can be rehersed faster = very good verbal span

Question 11

Neural basis of the phonological loop

Answer 11

• PET scans
• Temporal parietal region responsible for phonological store + speech perception
• Broacas are - responsible for speech production - link to ohono loop

Question 12

Patient PV - Phonological loop deficit

Answer 12

• Phono loop is necessary for learning words + acquiring vocan
• Tried to teach PV words of foreign lang
• Word word pairs (bith english words) vs word - russian pair ( one word was russian alternative)
• Word-russian require phonological memory
• Word-word results were consistent with normal people (undamaged phono loop)
• Very very poor word-russian results

Question 13

Phonological loop + lang impairement

Answer 13

• Smith, Gathercole + Baddeley
• Predicted phono loop deficit in those with lang impairement
• Problem with repeating back sudo words
• Have substantial effect of word-length
• Phonological memory may cause lang impairement - even worse than 6 year olds with sane lang ability as them
• Phono loop issues associated with problems learning to read + earlier acquisition of lang but this gradually builds up over time

Question 14

Visuo-spatial sketchpad - Corsi block

Answer 14

• Aray of blocks with numbers (patients can’t see numbers)
• Test sequence of blocks by tapping them (7, 5,3)
• Gradually increase length of sequence

Question 15

Visuo-spatial sketchpad - matrices

Answer 15

• Pattern span test
• 2 by 2 matrix with coloured blocks
• Then blank matrix + have to fill in teh coloured squars
• Size of matrix increased
• Spatial span

Question 16

Visuo-spatial sketchpad disruption - Brooks

Answer 16

• Matrix test
• 4 by 4 shown + has starting block indicated
• Listen to instructions
• Can typically remember 8 sentences
• If adjectives in sentence telling them which blocj to select is substituted with nonsense remember 5 or 6
• Combine this with tracking task
• Errors go up when combined

Question 17

LTM + Tracking task

Answer 17

• Can use location to help remember sequence of items
• Imagine house to help remember shopping list - place something in door, window etc
• Imagery works best when there is no tracking task but once there is a tracking task this advantage disappears

Question 18

Seperation of spatial + visual info

Answer 18

• Pengiment study baddeley
• Sit in dark room = visual task interferred bu spatial not
• Logi showed if remembering visual image can be disrupted by a pattern of another image
• Seperate spatial + pattern of visuo-spatial sketchpad

Question 19

The central executive - Normal + Shallice SAS model

Answer 19

• Beh controlled at 2 levels: Automatically = frees attention for other things
• Supevisory = attention cotrolled that can override standard habit
• Frontal lobe deficit meant had difficulty controlled attention as both frontal lobes impacted - problems focusing + breaking away from attention

Question 20

Episodic Buffer

Answer 20

• System that can hold multi-dimensional episodes
• Conscious awareness
• COntains + stores temporary info we are consciously aeare of
• Assumes everything runs through CE –> if this is nblocked episodic buffer would suffer
• Features are binded together
• Baddeley + Hitch –> if you block CE, PL + VS doesn’t present binding - binding occurs outside of WM

Question 21

Embedded process model (Cowan 1988)

Answer 21

• Tried to measure capacity of focussed attention
• Unlike millers magic 7 number, can hold 4 chunks but pack more info into each chunk
• Everything is embedded in LTM
• Features of LTM can be activated + can focus attention on activated features
• Controlled by CE

Question 22

WM + LTM

Answer 22

• WM is useful for interfacing between LTM perception + semantics + action
• Way info comes in from LTM is veriable

Question 23

Recency effect in LTM

Answer 23

• Remember parties - more likely to remember last one
• Recency occurs in LTM
• Number of items trying to remember causes forgetting (amount of parties)
• Recency is application of last in first out strategy
• Needed to maintain self in place + time