Working memory - 2

Question 1

What is purpose of VSSP?

Answer 1

• Maintaining and manipulating visa-spatial information
• spatial orientation
• solution of visuo-spatial problems
• Interface between visual and spatial information
• bind visual information with motor/haptic/tactile information

Question 2

Evidence for VSSP

Answer 2

• sketchpad disrupted by requiring participants to tap repeatedly a specified pattern of keys or locations, a procedure that impairs the use of visuospatial imagery
• unattended patterns or visual noise may disrupt the visual component of the system
• Corsi span (test in which task is to reproduce visuo-spatial sequences using set of 9 identical cubes mounted at locations on board) and auditory digit span impaired independently in patients with different lesions

Question 3

How was it proposed that VSSP can be divided?

Answer 3

• visual cache: stores info about visual form and colour

- inner scribe: deals with spatial and movement information (and basic mechanism for rehearsal)

Question 4

How does the stroke victim LH perform?

Answer 4

• performed much better on memory tasks involving spatial processing than on tasks involving the visual aspects of imagery (eg, judging animal sizes)
• occipital lobe impaired

Question 5

What is the central executive?

Answer 5

• the ‘black box’
• drives the system; allocates the resources
• has no storage capacity
• limited capacity so cannot attend to many things at once
• temporary activation of long-term memory

Question 6

What were the 4 assumed functions of the central executive?

Answer 6

1. the coordination of simultaneous tasks and task switching
2. the control of encoding and retrieval strategies of temporarily stored information (also when retrieved from the long-term store)
3. the selection of attention and inhibitory processes
4. the retrieval and manipulation of long-term stored information

Question 7

What was the study investigating the Central Executive?

Answer 7

-asked participants to think of random digits that bore no connection to each other (by tapping in numbers on a keyboard) Either carried out on its own, or with one of the following tasks:
Reciting the alphabet
Counting from 1
Alternating between letters and numbers e.g. A1 b2 c3

Question 8

What was the finding of the central executive study?

Answer 8

-generated number stream was much less random in condition 3 – Baddeley said they were competing for the same central executive resources

Question 9

What was the binding problem?

Answer 9

• how into from two subsidiary systems could be bound together
• because in real world we recall things in multi modal format

Question 10

What theory was proposed to solve binding problem?

Answer 10

-Episodic buffer

Question 11

Purpose of episodic buffer

Answer 11

• integrates info across modalities and from different sources
• limited storage capacity
• buffer retrieval through conscious awareness
• originally thought to be capable of manipulating information; but now thought to be a passive structure on which bindings achieved elsewhere can be displayed

Question 12

What does episodic buffer account for?

Answer 12

• finding that amnesic patients can retain relatively large amounts of complex information briefly (e.g., sentence span)
• findings that articulatory suppression does not have devastating effect on recall of visually presented numbers (drops from 7 to 5 digits)

Question 13

What is binding process unaffected by?

Answer 13

-attentional load

Question 14

What is attention useful for?

Answer 14

• Visual bindings (objects colour, shape)

- Verbal bindings (words into chunks)

Question 15

What inför feeds into VSSP?

Answer 15

• Visual
• Spatial
• Haptic

Question 16

What info feed into phonological loop?

Answer 16

• Speech
• Sign lip reading
• Music environmental sound

Question 17

What info feeds directly into episodic buffer?

Answer 17

• Smell

- Taste

Question 18

What is an issue with the baddeley working model?

Answer 18

-Limited links with LTM and working memory in early multicomponent models

Question 19

Where is central executive found?

Answer 19

-Prefrontal cortex

Question 20

What is the left ventral cortex role?

Answer 20

-Verbal working memory

Question 21

What is the right ventral cortex role?

Answer 21

-spatial working memory

Question 22

What is purpose of ACC?

Answer 22

-Attention controller

Question 23

Where does the phonological loop occur?

Answer 23

-Broca’s & wernicke’s

Question 24

What is the role of occipital lobe?

Answer 24

-VSSP

Question 25

What is role of parietal lobe?

Answer 25

-Episodic buffer

Question 26

Is there much difference between WM in different individual?

Answer 26

-Substancial differences in WM capacity

Question 27

What can it be said about individuals who have low-capacity WM?

Answer 27

-Low-capacity individuals have more difficult ignoring distracting information than do high-capacity individuals

Question 28

Describe how working memory changes as you age

Answer 28

-Stability in WM performance between 20-50 years and thereafter linear decline from 55 years onwards

Question 29

Why is the role of dopamine and fronto-striatal function important?

Answer 29

-Reduced striatal dopamine levels impair the updating regulation by striatum, which makes PFC representations more rigid and distractor resistant

Question 30

What is fluid intelligence?

Answer 30

-Gf reasoning abilities consist of strategies, heuristics, and automatized systems that must be used in dealing with novel problems, and solving inductive, deductive, and conjunctive reasoning tasks

Question 31

What percentage of variance between variance in WM capacity and fluid intelligence ?

Answer 31

-50%

Question 32

Who do WM training programs benefit?

Answer 32

-Childrens academic and intellectual attainment

Question 33

What are limited benefits in WM training?

Answer 33

-limited benefits in terms of specific gains on short-term and working memory tasks

Question 34

Which areas of WM training are seen as less effective?

Answer 34

-academic based reading and arithmetic outcomes

Question 35

What are some of the questions regarding episodic buffer?

Answer 35

- how to measure capacity? | - How is rehearsal maintained?

Question 36

What is the main question of phonological loop?

Answer 36

-precise nature of forgetting within the phonological store remains controversial – time-based trace decay or interference?

Question 37

What is the question regarding taste and smell?

Answer 37

-are there Seperate subsystems for this?

Question 38

What is main question regarding?

Answer 38

-visual and spatial aspects appear to be clearly separable but linked within the sketchpad; is this true of haptic, tactile, and kinesthetic memory?