| What is short-term memory? | Our conscious representation of 'the present moment'.
A temporary store in which we integrate current sensory experience with long-term memory to achieve current goals.
Limited capacity. |
| What is the duration of short-term memory? | 15-30 seconds. |
| What mechanism did Atkinson and Shiffrin propose? | Maintenance rehearsal, allowed ability to keep information active in STM. |
| What does a digit span task test for? | Tests the ability to recall a sequence of random digits in the order that they were presented (serial recall). |
| What were the first attempts to measure the duration of STM called? | Brown-Peterson task. |
| What was the Brown-Peterson designed for? | Measure the decay of the STM trace over time by filling the retention interval with a task that prevented verbal rehearsal of the letter names. |
| What does verbal rehearsal do? | Keep information active in a STM and strengthens the trace to increase the chance it will be stored in LTM. |
| What is the primacy effect? | That we can recall the first few items in a list because the opportunity to rehearse them increases the likelihood that they are transferred into long-term memory. |
| What is the recency effect? | That we can easily recall items near the end of a list because they are still contained in short-term memory. |
| What is the hardest item group to retrieve in the serial position effects and transfer to LTM? | Items in the middle of the list are the hardest to recall because: (a) they were presented too long ago to be in STM.
(b) so many items came before and after them that there was little opportunity for rehearsal, limiting transfer into LTM. |
| How is recency effect reduced? | Introducing a filled retention interval. |
| How are primacy effects eliminated? | If rehearsal is prevented by introducing a concurrent task (repetition of a word). |
| What did Craik & Tulving (1975) test for? | The idea that LTM for words is influenced by the 'depth' (level) of the encoding process used in STM. |
| What does deep processing involve? | Reorganisation of the information.
Formation of association.
Creation of (interactive) mental images. |
| What does shallow processing involve? | Simple repetition of material (rehearsal).
Processing of surface features (i.e. upper or lower case letters instead of meaning).
Deep processing results in richer 'network of associations' and increases the likelihood of recall. |
| What did Alan Baddeley propose? | Model of working memory. |
| What is the initial three-component model of working memory? | Visuo-spatial sketch-pad
Central executive
Phonological loop |
| What was later added in the model of working memory? | Episodic buffer (EB) |
| What does the phonological loop do? | Hold speech-based (auditory and verbal) information. |
| What does the visuo-spatial sketch-pad do? | Hold visual information.
Temporary store for representations of visual and spatial information such as faces, objects, written words and cognitive maps.
Enables the mental manipulation of visually and spatially represented information (e.g. mental rotation of objects, visual and spatial mnemonics, mental arithmetic, "cognitive maps" for navigation). |
| What does the episodic buffer (EB) do? | Provides a storage system that binds together the inputs from the visual/spatial and auditory systems and integrates them in multimodal (i.e. multi-sensory) representation of the current contents of awareness.
Modelling space separate from LTM. |
| Why was there a need for the episodic buffer? | Need to account for interactions between the visual and phonological STM buffers and LTM. |
| What is digit-span backwards a test of? | Phonological/verbal working memory, as you must actively manipulate the information in memory, rather than just maintaining the sequence.
Important in language development and verbal reasoning tasks. |
| Give examples of when executive processes are used? | Goal orientation.
Focus attention.
Control of social behaviour.
Switching between tasks, updating memory, inhibition of distracting information.
Planning and problem solving. |
| What are executive processes governed by? | Circuitry in the pre-frontal cortex, especially dorsalateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). |
| Where are executive processes (central executive) based? | Within networks in the pre-frontal cortex. |
| What network is the phonological loop (PL)? | Left-hemisphere fronto-temporal lobe network. |
| What networks is the visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSS)? | Right occipital-parietal network. |
| Where is the episodic buffer located? | Parietal cortex (association cortex). |
| What does the neural basis of working memory look like? | See image. |
| Summarise the working memory system | Located across an integrated cortical network.
Left and right hemisphere systems for PL and VSS, respectively, governed by pre-frontal executive system (DLPF and ACC), producing an integrated episodic trace in parietal cortex. |
