COG PSYCH 6

Who is Clive Wearing?

• Amnesia from a viral infection

  • unable to form new memories

  • can remember new skill sets (e.g.: playing music)

  • Remembers their wife

  • Can't remember a joke, if you are friends, etc.

What is the main frame for memory?

• Acquisition

• storage

• retrieval

What consists of the Modal Model made by Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968, Waugh & Norman 1965?

• Sensory memory ( iconic memory, echoic memory)

  • plays a smaller role in modern theories

• Short term memory (STM)

  • largely replaced by working memory now

  • better understood as a status or activity rather than a place

• Long term memory (LTM)

What is Working Memory?

a dynamic form of short term storage, more modernized version too.

• less like a storage place , more like a status

• contains currently activated ideas or thoughts that are being worked on b a specific set of operations

• Duration: Temporary, fragile

• Capacity: limited

• Ease of entry: easy

• Ease of retrieval: easy

What is Long Term Memory (LTM)?

• Duration: Enduring

• Capacity: enormous

• Ease of entry: Effortful

• Ease of retrieval: Difficult, slow, even unsuccessful

What is the Recency Effect?

• better memory for a few items

• last few items are not displaced by future items

• Last few items in the list are in WM at the time of recall

• earlier items are displaced by new items

What is the Primacy Effect?

• better memory for first few items relative to the middle items

• Memory rehersal

  • at list progresses, less attention for each item

  • words later in list are rehersed less than earlier items

  • rehearsal increases the chance items will transfer from WM to LTM

How do we test claims about Primacy and Recency?

• Disrupting WM should affect recency, but not primacy

  • Delaying recall with a different task displaces content in WM

  • Early items are not affected because LTM does not depend on current activity

• Disrupting LTM should affect Primacy, but not recency

  • slowing list presentation improves retrievel of early items not recent ones

What is the function of working memory?

• Virtually all mental activities require WM

  • used for whenever multiple elements or ideas are combined or compared in the mind

• People differ in WM capacity

What is the Digit-Span Task?

• People hear a list of digits read to them and must repeat them back

  • list increases untill memory fails

  • number of digits peeps list back before failure in digit spam

• Avg. WM capacity is estimated at 7 plus or minus 2 items

• "7 plus or minus 2" chunks

  • a set of info can be condensed into smaller chunks of info

    • E.g.: HAPTROSLU ⇒ HAP TRO SLU

  • Chunking reduces WM load, does not increase capacity

Does the Digit-Span Task address Working Memory’s nature?

No.

• DS addresses only WM capacity, not its nature

  • WM is best thought of as a status

• Operation span measures WM capacity when WM is "working"

  • Various OS methods (e.g.: reading spam)

• WM capacity as measured by operation span correlates strongly with scores on

  • Reading comprehension tests

  • SATs

  • Reasoning tests

What is a Rehearsal Loop?

• the WM system has multiple components

  • Central executive

  • Articulatory rehersal loop (ARL)

    • subvocalization (silent speech) launches rehersal loop

    • Phonological Buffer passively stores the sound reps (internal echo)

• Concurrent articulation tasks

  • support the model of the ARL

    • repeating syllables while completing a verbal span test reduces the WM capacity

    • eleminates sound alike errors

    • reduces digit span by 30%

What are the two types of rehearsal?

• Maintenance rehersal

• relational or elaborative rehersal

  • is better than maintenance for LTM

    • repeated exposure does not guarantee memory

    • this holds true for more important things than logos (e.g.: emergency equipment)

What is Incidental and Intentional Learning?

• Incedental ⇒ learning in the absence of intention to learn

• Intentional ⇒ deliberate, with the expectation that memory will be tested

  • Has little to no effect

What is Shallow vs. Deep Processing? (Depths of Processing)

• Shallow processing ⇒ superficial engagement with the material

  • E.g.: DOG ⇒ in capital or lowe case letters

• Deep processing ⇒ Requires thinking about the meaning of the material

  • E.g.: does DOG fit into the sentence "He walked his _ _ _ _"?

• These effects are strong, but benefits of deep processing may not lie in the learning process itself

How do we connect these to retrieval?

• Deep processing promotes recall by facilitating later retrieval

  • consider learning a way to establish indexing, which consists of a path to the info

  • Making connections between to-be-remembered items, memories, and contexts facilitates retrieval

What is ‘Attention to Meaning’?

• Attention to meaning involves thinking about relationships

  • what words are related in meaning to the word im now considering?

  • what words have contrasted the meaning?

  • What is the relationship between the start of this story and the way the story is turned out?

What are Mnemonics?

• improve memory through organization

• First letter mnemonics

  • E.g.: every good boy deserves fudge"

• Visualization strats

• Peg-Wrod systems

  • e.g.: one is a bun, two is a shoe

  • to-be-remembvered items hung on "pegss"

  • mental imagery can help

Should we be using Mnemonics as students? If not, what can we do instead?

• Should we use them as students?

  • nope

  • trade off

    • can work well if deeper understanding is not necessary

    • overloads WM

    • Strats with multiple connections lead to better learning

• Understanding and memorizing

Memory is facilitated by what?

• memory is facilitated by organizing and understanding

  • contributions from memorizer

  • interconnections among acquisitions, retrieval, and storage

What does it mean by ‘contributions from the memorizer’?

• what were they doing at the time of exposure

• what do they already know?

What is the link between acquisitions, retrieval, and storage?

• not easily seperable

  • effective learning depends on how new info will later be retrieved

  • new learning is grounded in previously learned knowledge