Ch. 4 Short-Term & Working Memory

Short-term memory (STM)

responsible for holding onto a small amount of information that has recently been taken from the environment

Long-term memory

has a large capacity and contains your memory for experiences and information that have accumulated throughout your lifetime

Chunking

a memory unit that consists of several components that are strongly associated with one another

Brown/Peterson and Peterson Technique

presenting participants with some items that they must remember. Participants will perform a distracting task then participants are asked to recall original items

• Participants study 3 unrelated letters of the alphabet (e.g CHJ), 3 digit number, counted backwards by three’s from this number

Rehearsal

repeating items silently

Serial-position effect

refers to the U-shaped relationship betweeen a word’s position in a list and it’s probability of accurate recall

Recency effect

items at the bottom of a list to be recalled better than items in the middle of a list

Primacy effect

enhanced recall accuracy for items at the beginning of a list

• don’t need to compete w/ earlier items

• people rehearse early items more frequently

Semantics

the meaning of words and sentences

Proactive interference (PI)

difficulty learning/recalling new material because previously learned material interferes w/ formation of new memories

Release from Proactive Interference (PI)

a memory phenomenon where proactive interference is reduced when a person switches from one category of stimuli to a new category

• Increased recall for new category

Atkinson-Shiffrin Model

proposed that memory involves a sequence of separate steps. In each step, information is transferred fromm one storage area to another

• Sensory input —> sensory memory —> short term memory —> long term memory

Sensory memory

a storage system that records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy

• According to Atkinson-Shiffrin Model, info is stored here for 2 seconds or less than most is forgotten

Control processes

intentional strategies such as rehearsal that people use to improve their memory

Working memory

brief, immediate memory for the limited amount of matieral that you’re currently processing; part of working memory actively coordinates your ongoing mental activities

Working memory approach

proprosed by Baddeley, immediate memory is a multi-part system that temporarily holds and manipulates information while we perform cognitive tasks

Phonological loop

can process a limited number of sounds for a short period of time

• processes language, sounds you hear, sounds that you make

• active during subvocalization (silently pronouncing words that you’re reading)