Cognitive Psychology Exam 2 PT.2

PT.2

What is the Modal Model of Memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968)? 

A model proposing three separate memory stores—sensory memory, short-term memory (STM), and long-term memory (LTM)—through which information flows in sequence. 

What are the characteristics of sensory memory? 

Very brief storage (milliseconds to seconds), large capacity, stores unprocessed sensory information (visual, auditory, etc.). 

What was Sperling’s (1960) whole report technique? 

Participants briefly viewed a 3×4 letter grid and tried to recall all letters—typically recalled about 4–5. This demonstrated limits of sensory memory capacity, as participants were unable to recall all letters despite brief exposure.

What was Sperling’s partial report technique? 

: Participants were cued to recall only one row immediately after display—showed near-perfect recall, suggesting high capacity but very short duration of sensory memory. 

What is iconic memory?

Visual sensory memory lasting about 0.3–0.5 seconds. 

What is echoic memory? 

Auditory sensory memory lasting about 2–4 seconds.

What are the characteristics of STM?

Short-term memory (STM) has a limited capacity of about 7±2 items and a duration of approximately 15-30 seconds without rehearsal. It is used for temporarily holding and manipulating information.

What is chunking? 

Chunking is a memory strategy that involves grouping information into larger, manageable units, increasing the capacity of short-term memory by organizing data into meaningful patterns.

What is encoding specificity? 

The principle that memory retrieval is most effective when context and cues at retrieval match those at encoding. 

What is working memory? 

A limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information needed for complex tasks like reasoning and comprehension. 

What is the phonological loop?

A subsystem that holds and rehearses verbal and auditory information. 

What are the phonological store and articulatory rehearsal process? 

• Phonological store: Passive store for auditory information (~2 seconds). 

• Articulatory rehearsal process: Actively refreshes items through subvocal repetition. 

What is the visuospatial sketchpad? 

System for temporarily holding and manipulating visual and spatial information. 

What is the visual cache? 

A component of the visuospatial sketchpad that stores visual information such as color and form.

What is the inner scribe? 

Handles spatial and movement information; rehearses data from the visual cache. 

What is the episodic buffer? 

A multimodal storage system that integrates information from the visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop, linking it to long-term memory.

What is the central executive? 

Supervisory system that allocates attention, coordinates subsystems, and manages cognitive control.It plays a crucial role in reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making by directing focus and processing resources.

What is articulatory suppression? 

Repeating an irrelevant sound (e.g., “the, the, the”) prevents use of the phonological loop, reducing memory for verbal material. This phenomenon demonstrates how verbal processing can be disrupted, leading to poorer recall performance.

What is the word length effect? 

Shorter words are recalled better than longer ones because they fit more easily in the phonological loop’s time-based capacity. 

What is the phonological similarity effect? 

Similar-sounding words are harder to recall accurately because they’re easily confused in the phonological store. 

What evidence supports the phonological loop? 

• Word length effect (Baddeley et al., 1975) 

• Phonological similarity effect 

• Articulatory suppression disrupting verbal recall. These phenomena demonstrate the limitations of working memory capacity, particularly in verbal processing contexts.