Ch 5 - Short-term and working memory - Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind Research and Everyday Experience PDF

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The Modal Model of Memory  Memory: the process involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present  Modal model of memory (Atkinson and Shiffrin) o Proposes 3 types of memory (structural featu...

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The Modal Model of Memory  Memory: the process involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present  Modal model of memory (Atkinson and Shiffrin) o Proposes 3 types of memory (structural features):  Sensory memory: initial stage that holds all incoming information for seconds or fractions of a second  Short-term memory: holds 5-7 times for about 15-20 seconds  Long-term memory: can hold a large amount of information for years or even decades  Control processes: dynamic process associated with the structural features that can be controlled by the person and may differ from one task to another o Rehearsal: repeating a stimulus over and over Sensory Memory  Sensory memory: the retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation  Sparkler’s trail o The “light” you see after the movement of a sparkler is the retained light in your mind, not actual light  Persistence of vision: continued perception of a visual stimulus even after it is no longer present  Sperling o Whole report method: where subjects were asked to report as many letters as possible from the entire 12-letter display  Found that they could report an average of 4.5 out of 12  Some reported that they saw all 12 but as they were reporting them, the letters began to fade so by the time they were reporting, they recited 4-5 letters  Partial report method: where subjects saw the 12-letter display for 50ms and then immediately were told to recite which letter in the 4 rows they were arranged in  They were able to report about 3.3 of the 4 on average o Delayed partial report method: where the letters were flashed on and off and then the cue tone was presented after a short delay  When the cue tone was delayed for 1 second, people were able to recite the letters only slightly more that 1 letter in a row o Concluded that a short-lived sensory memory registers all or most of information that hits our visual receptors but they fade within less than a second o Iconic memory/visual icon: brief sensory memory for visual stimuli o Echoic memory: persistence of sound that lasts for a few seconds after the presentation of the stimulus Short-Term Memory  Short-term memory: system that stores small amounts of information for a brief period of time o Most of it is lost while only some reach the more permanent storing

o Our window on the present  Duration of short-term memory o Lasts 15-20 seconds or less o Memory is lost because it decays during the passage of time after the original stimulus o Proactive interference: interference that occurs when information that was learned previously interferes with learning new information o Retroactive interference: when new learning interferes with remembering old learning  Digit span: the number of digits a person can remember o About 5-9 items (George Miller)  Change detection: measure of the capacity of STM  Chunking: combining small units into larger meaningful units o Chunk: a collection of elements that are strongly associated with one another but are weakly associated with elements in other chunks Working Memory  Working memory: a limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning  Phonological loop o Phonological store: has a limited capacity that holds information for only a few seconds o Articulatory rehearsal process: responsible for rehearsal that can keep items in the phonological store from decaying o Can hold verbal and auditory information  Visuospatial sketch path: holds visual and spatial information  Central executive: where the major work of working memory occurs o Pulls info from long-term memory o Coordinates the activity of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch path  Phonological similarity effect: the confusion of letters or works that sound similar  Word length effect: occurs when memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long words  Articulatory suppression: reduces memory because speaking interferes with rehearsal  Preservation: repeatedly performing the same action or thought even if it is not achieving the desired goal  Episodic buffer: can store information and is connected to LTM Working Memory and the Brain  Major methods: o Analysis of behavior after brain damage o Recording from single neurons in animals o Measuring activity of the human brain o Recoding electrical signals from the human brain...