Cog Psych Exam 2

memory

process involved in retaining, retrieving, and using info about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present

sensory memory

retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation

short term memory (STM)

info that stays in memory for brief periods, about 10-15s

modal model of memory

input to sensory memory to short-term memory to long-term memory; information can go between short-term memory and long-term memory; rehearsal in short-term memory can increase the likelihood of info entering long-term memory; output from short-term memory

persistence of vision

continued perception of a visual stimulus even after it is no longer present (not being able to imagine/visualize, acting seeing something)

Sperling (1960)

participants were asked to remember a 3×4 grid of letters and report rows depending on the tone played; found that participants saw an average of 82% of all letters but were unable to report them because they faded as initial letters were being reported; sensory memory registers all/most info that hits our visual receptors, but info decays within less than a second

iconic memory

visual memory

echoic memory

auditory memory

recall

participants are presented with stimuli and, following a delay, asked to report as many stimuli as possible

proactive interference

old learning interferes with remembering new learning

retroactive interference

new learning interferes with remembering old learning

digit span

the number of digits a person can remember

Luck and Vogel (1997)

subject sees the first display, and must indicate whether the second display is the same or different; performance began to decrease once there were four squares in the display; 4 items can be held in short term memory

Alvarez and Cavanagh (2004)

tested memory capacity for objects of different types; memory capacity for colored squares was 4.4, only 1.6 for cubes; more info in the item, fewer items that can be held in visual short term memory

chunking

small units like words can be combined into larger meaningful units like phrases, or even larger units like sentences, paragraphs, or stories

working memory

limited-capacity system for temporary storage of info and manipulation of info for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

found that participants can hold numbers in the mind while reading a short passage and can still recall the numbers and passage content; developed working memory model

components of working memory

phonological loop, central executive, visuospatial sketch pad

phonological loop

verbal and auditory information

visuospatial sketch pad

visual and spatial information

central executive

attention controller; determines how attention is focused on a particular task, how it is divided between two tasks, and how it is switched between tasks

phonological similarity effect

confusion of letters or words that sound similar

word length effect

occurs when memory for lists of words is better for short than long words

articulatory suppression

disrupts verbal working memory by preventing rehearsal by being forced to repeat an irrelevant sound like “the, the, the, …”

visual imagery

creation of visual images in the mind in the absence of a physical visual stimulus

Shepard and Metzler (1971)

showed participants a pair of cubic images and asked them to decide whether the objects were the same or different; when the object was rotated 40 degrees, it took 2s to decide that a pair was the same shape, but for 140 degrees it took 4s

mental rotation

rotating an image of an object in the mind

perseveration

repeatedly performing the same action/thought even if it is not achieving the desired goal; patients with frontal lobe damage have problems controlling attention; when a consistent rule is switched, they continue following the old rule even when receiving negative feedback

episodic buffer

stores info, thereby providing extra capacity, and is connected to long term memory, thereby making interchange between working memory and long term memory possible

Peterson and Peterson (1959)

participants were told three letters and a number and told to count backwards by 3 from that number and when told “recall” to immediately stop and say the three letters; participants remembered about 80$ of the three-letter groups if they began recall after counting for 3s, but only recalled 12% after counting for 18s; decay → memory trace vanishes after passage of time; later analysis by Keppel and Underwood showed that there was little decrease in performance if only the first trial was included, which means interference is the issue (not decay)