Cognitive Psychology Chapter 4: Working Memory

Short Term Memory: Duration

-15 seconds -had people listen to nonsense syllables and then after the list was over, participants were asked to count backwards in intervals of 3. After a certain amount of seconds the participants were asked to recall as many letters in a group of three as they could. -the longer they let the participants count, the less likely they were able to recall. Our short-term memory only lasts a certain amount of time.

Evidence for Interference Theory

-Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924)

Sensory Store: Function

-TEMPORARY RECORD of all sensory stimuli and the environment -all the stimuli that your senses are picking up, but not necessarily giving attention to -when you give attention to the stimuli in your environment (such as the temperature of the room or how to ground feels against your foot), then the information is able to pass out of sensory into another store

Four Observations of Autobiographical Memory

1. Most memories from the past 10 years 2. Very few memories prior to the age of three (infantile amnesia) 3. Memories drop as time passes 4. Reminiscence Bump: memories from 18-24 are recalled no matter how old you are

TAP experiments

Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977)

Serial Position Curve

Refers to the U shaped relationship between a word's position in a list and its probability of recall

What does the Tulving and Thomas experiment show?

Retrieval cues that are there at encoding are the most successful retrieval cues

Short Term Memory: Function

TEMPORARY STORAGE of information that is held in awareness waiting to get into long term memory

Encoding specificity

a retrieval cue will be effective if it was encoded with the target event you will do better if key words match successful retrieval is all about the good retrieval cue

Levels of Processing

a) memory forms unintentionally as a byproduct of you trying to perceive things around you b) deeper processing is better c)Craik and Lockhart: came up with the idea d)Craik and Tulving experiment

Characteristics of WM

active and processing

Memory

an individuals mental store of information (past experiences) that influence present thought and behavior

episodic memories

any memory for a specific event at a specific time "what did you have for lunch last week?"

flashbulb memories

any memory you have for an emotional event, or a surprising event -we think that because they are vivid, they are more accurate but that is not always the case

Judgement of Learning

as you study, you judge whether you know the concepts well or not -asked "how likely are you to get this correct?" you are making a judgement of your learning by percentage

Monitoring

asses the state of process of your cognition (learning) (Judgement)

Evidence for Visuospatial Sketchpad

can't do a two spatial task at once: you cannot do visual tasks at once spontaneously create labels: people will see patterns in an organized way.

Evidence for the phonological loop

confusability of letters, word length effect, neurological evidence

Central Executive

coordinates material needed to complete the task, but does not store information. This tells the systems what to do

isolation

distinction can depend on context if a word is out of context then you will remember it better

Primacy Effect and how it explains short term memory

early items remembered -this shows that the items at the end of the list were still in short-term memory at the time of recall

Decay Theory

forgetting occurs because unused information weakens over time

semantic memories

general knowledge or trivia. meanings of words this is information that you just know -knowing what the capital of washington is

Encoding

getting information into long term memory through rehearsal or other strategies

Chunking

grouping items into strongly associated units

Where is the primary location for memory storage?

hippocampus

Confidence Judgement

how confident are you in this answer

Span

how much information you can hold in memory you can have a high span and a low span

priming

how one stimuli unconsciously makes you react to a different stimuli -in terms of patients with amnesia, they feel pain when they shake a person's hand because of the tac, but after they forget about the incident, they still remember the pain and are therefore more hesitant to shake someones hand but they dont know why

Precatagorization

how sensory store works: sensory stimuli is just being recorded, but it is not categorized or being interpreted

Miller's Magic Number

humans can generally remember between 5 and 9 items in our short term memory.

self generation

if you actually produce it youll be better at remembering it

self relevent effect

if you relate it to yourself you will remember it better

Anterograde amnesia

inability to form new long term memories damage to the hippocampus only have memories for 15-30 seconds

recognition

just recognize if youve experienced something

Controlling attention

keeping the goal in mind even when it is challenging

Recency Effect and how it explains short term memory

later items remembered -these are easy to remember because they are not competing with earlier items and because people rehearse these items more frequently

Sensory Store: Duration

less than one second for sights several seconds for sounds

Confusability of letters

letters that sound more similar are more likely to be confused

How to measure short term memory span

look at a list of words then repeat them after a distraction period (passive).

Rehearsal (according to the Modal Model)

maintenance: repetition elaborate: create meaning out of relationship

How to measure working memory span

measuring the ability to control attention stroop task

Explicit memories

memories that declarative and conscious

Autobiographical memory

memory for events and issues related to yourself -when you hear the cue STREET: what memory comes to mind? -when you hear the cue DOG: what memory comes to mind?

procedural

memory for procedures of tasks muscle memory remembering how to ride a unicycle

Goal of the Modal Model of Memory

method of explaining how one gets information and stimuli into permanent memory storage

context

more of the stuff is the same so more retrieval cues

Biology of Long Term Memory

new proteins, memory consolidation

implicit memories

non declarative and unconscious

Word Length Effect

one has better memory with short words because you use subvocalization to rehearse the words. Shorter words are easier to rehearse thus easier to recall

Baddley's Model

one system that is the boss that coordinates the two subsystems that deal with information

Sensory Store: Capacity

one's sensory store can hold all sensory information that is presented

Source memory

origin for memory easy to mix up because we are good at imagining that we actually can convince ourselves.

distinctiveness

orthographically distinct words remembered best

physical context

physical study conditions if you study and retrieve in the same context youll do better

retrieval

process of accessing info in memory

Visuospatial Sketchpad

processes visual and spatial information. shapes, colors, patterns, etc

retroactive interference

produced bimaterial encountered AFTER the target memory was encoded -because of all the lunches we had since then, we cannot retrieve the target memory of lunch from 4 weeks ago

proactive interference

produced bimaterial encountered BEFORE the target memory was encoded -you do not remember your locker combo in your senior year because you are mixing up the numbers with your combo from jr year

Working Memory Approach

proposed by Baddley and says that our immediate memory is a multipart system that temporarily holds and manipulates information while we perform cognitive tasks

Biology of Short Term Memory

quick, chemical changes in synapse

Control

regulate your behavior to control your cognition what you are doing to address your learning if you don't understand, you ask a question

Craik and Tulving experiment

showed sentences with a word at the end and asked if it rhymed showed sentences with a word at the end and asked if it fit in the sentence then they were asked which words were remembered the meaning test helped them remember -the duck floated on the log (DOG) -The ________ ate the bone (DOG) people remember the word better if the sentence had meaning as opposed to rhyming

Ronald Cotton Case

shows source memory error and race of suspect error

Morris, Bransford and Frank experiment

similar to the LOP experiment BUT there are two groups who are asked to remember a word via rhyming and a word via meaning. There is a group who takes the Standard Test and a group who takes the Rhyming test. LOP would suggest that meaning always trumps context. however, results show that the two match groups are the best about the way you think about material at the time of encoding is most helpful in retrieving info at the test

Memory distortions

source memory, flashbulb memory, cryptoamnesia,

Measuring the central executive

span tasks

Phonological Loop

stores and manipulates speech based material. Active during subvocalizatoin

phonetic code

stores information based on the way it sounds as opposed to the meaning

Absolute Accuracy

students judgements will match their performance exactly -if you predict you got 60 items correct, you should answer exactly 60 items correctly -you should answer 75% of the items you gave a 75% confidence rating -people are overconfident and they think they are getting more right

mental context study

study conditions: drunk or sober test conditions: drunk or sober results: the match groups did better than either of the mismatch groups

False Memory of Related Information

the DRM paradigm: study of associated words with others to prove false memory MTN SLEEP NEEDLE: none of those words were said, but people still will write them down because the words that were shown were all associated with that one word

Evidence for decay theory

the Ebbinghaus curve if you don't use memory, you won't retain it

Retrograde amnesia

the lack of memory for past events the Vow Bourne Identity physical or emotional trauma can cause this

retrieval cues

the more info provided the better your retrieval

How does the serial postion curves support the idea there is a difference between STM and LTM

the primacy effect shows the ability for long term memory because you are rehearsing the information the recency effect shows the ability for short term because you are relying on information that you just saw, not having rehearsed it

Applications for how police ask questions

the way a question is phrased can lead to misinformation or assumptions and not the plain truth that the eyewitness saw

subvocalization

the way we do articulatory control is through this. The voice you hear as you think or read both conscious and unconscious

Transfer appropriate processing

the way you think about the info at encoding should match the way you think about the material at retrieval

Tulving and Thomas (1971)

three groups at the experiment. Asked what they saw?

Applications for recovered memories of abuse

three groups: 1. never forgot abuse 2. repression but they recover it in daily life 3. repression but they recover it in therapy this puts into question the validity of childhood abuse because it can be prompted and therefore inaccurate

neurological evidence for the phonological loop

when a transcranial magnet was put on, the supramarginal gyrus was effected and people were unable to speak

What does the Stroop Task Prove?

when you keep the goal in mind you have a higher working memory -people who have

Forgetting

you once had the memory in long term memory but you forgot it forgetting is NOT failing to remember

recall

you provide information yourself

Metacognition

1. knowledge, thoughts, and awareness of one's cognitive skills 2. control processes used to regulate information

Short Term Memory: Capacity

7 +/- 2

What are the most effective methods of encoding?

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What is the difference between STM and LTM

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Modal Model of Memory

Atkins and Shiffrin (1968)

How does information go from sensory into short term memory?

Attention. When stimuli is given attention, it is able to go into short term memory

Relative Accuracy

Being more confident in correct responses than incorrect responses -you are more likely to get correct the questions you feel pretty good about

Applications for eye witness memory

Conditions that can lead to errors: leading questions, mug shots, oddball pictures

How does information go from short term memory into long term memory?

Control Processes: rehearsal and chunking

How is TAP different from ES?

ES is what you encoded needs to be there TAP is how you think about the material at encoding needs to match the test

Interference Theory

Forgetting occurs because of competition among similar memories -we cannot recall what we had for lunch three weeks ago because of the similar and competing memories of what we have eaten since then

Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924)

Independent Variable: length of delay Dependent Variable: how many nonsense syllables were recalled after a 2 hour or 8 hour delay. -2 hour delay had better memory at first -THEN, they did the same experiment but they added the variable of sleep. There was an equal level of performance for both groups, proving that its the new memories during the day that would cause you to forget the other information learned. but sleep helps with memory so this was an extraneous variable

Stroop Task

Kane and Engel (2001) -0% condition: word and ink color are never the same (easier to keep goal in mind) -50% condition: word and ink color are the same most of the time (forget the goal because you dont have to work as hard) -75% condition: hardest to keep the goal in mind because you dont need to

How is TAP different from LOP

LOP believes meaning is most important TAP believes that meaning isn't always the best, but we remember based off of how information is studied (not always meaning, but can be, as long as that is how the information is tested)

Articulatory Control

Whatever you do to store and manipulate information