Chapter 5: Short-Term and Working Memory

Notes
Memory
is the process involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images,
events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present
is active any time some past experience has an effect on the way you think or behave now or in
the future
There are 5 types of memory:

brief persistence of the image or senses, which is one of the things that makes it possible to
perceive, is called sensory memory
Information that stays in our memory for brief periods, about 10 to 15 seconds if we don’t
repeat it over and over, is short-term memory or working memory
Long-term memory is responsible for storing information for long periods of time— which
can extend from minutes to a lifetime.
Long-term memories of experiences from the past, like the picnic, are episodic
memories
The ability to ride a bicycle, or do any of the other things that involve muscle
coordination, is a type of long-term memory called procedural memory
Another type of long-term memory is semantic memory—memories of facts such as
an address or a birthday or the names of different objects

THE MODAL MODEL OF MEMORY

proposed 3 types of memory:
sensory memory
 is an initial stage that holds all incoming information for seconds or fractions of a
second
short-term memory (STM)
holds five to seven items for about 15 to 20 seconds
Long-term memory (LTM)
can hold a large amount of information for years or even decades

structural features
The types of memory listed above, each of which is indicated by a box in the model
control processes
e dynamic processes associated with the structural features that can be controlled by the
person and may differ from one task to another
ex: rehearsal—repeating a stimulus over and over
 encoding
The process of storing information in long-term memory
retrieval
process of remembering information that is stored in long-term memory

SENSORY MEMORY
is the retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation

The Sparkler's Tail and the Projector's Shutter

persistence of vision
is the continued perception of a visual stimulus even after it is no longer present.
 lasts for only a fraction of a second

Sperling’s Experiment: Measuring the Capacity and Duration of the Sensory Store
 Sperling concluded from these results that a short-lived sensory memory registers all or most of
the information that hits our visual receptors, but that this information decays within less than a
second.
iconic memory or visual icon
brief sensory memory for visual stimuli
echoic memory
persistence of sound
lasts for a few seconds after presentation of the original stimulus
the "what?" phenomenon
SHORT-TERM MEMORY: STORAGE
Everything we think about or know at a particular moment in time involves STM because short-
term memory is our window on the present
(1) What is the duration of STM? (2) What is the capacity of STM?
these were answered through recall

What Is the Duration of Short-Term Memory?

lasts 15 to 20 seconds or less
effective duration of STM (when rehearsal is prevented, as occurred when counting backwards)
is about 15 to 20 seconds or less

How Many Items Can Be Held in Short-Term Memory?

digit span
the number of digits a person can remember
 According to measurements of digit span, the average capacity of STM is about five to nine
items—about the length of a phone number
“The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two"
change detection
More recent measures of STM capacity have set the limit at about four items
chunking
small units (like words) can be combined into larger meaningful units, like phrases, or even
larger units, like sentences, paragraphs, or stories
chunk
a collection of elements that are strongly associated with one another but are weakly
associated with elements in other chunks
chunking in terms of meaning increases our ability to hold information in STM
We can recall a sequence of 5 to 8 unrelated words, but arranging the words to form a
meaningful sentence so that the words become more strongly associated with one another
increases the memory span to 20 words or more
Chunking enables the limited-capacity STM system to deal with the large amount of
information involved in many of the tasks we perform every day

How Much Information Can Be Held in Short-Term Memory?

rather than describing memory capacity in terms of “number of items,” it should be described in
terms of “amount of information"
When referring to visual objects, information has been defined as visual features or details of
the object that are stored in memory
a study showed that the greater the amount of information in an image, the fewer items that
can be held in visual short-term memory
WORKING MEMORY: MANIPULATING INFORMATION
working memory
a limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for
complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning
concerned with the manipulation of information that occurs during complex cognition
What kind of model can take into account both (1) the dynamic processes involved in
cognitions such as understanding language and doing math problems and (2) the fact that
people can carry out two tasks simultaneously?

phonological loop
holds verbal and auditory information
phonological store - which has a limited capacity and holds information for only a few
seconds
articulatory rehearsal process - which is responsible for rehearsal that can keep items
in the phonological store from decaying
visuospatial sketch pad
holds visual and spatial information
central executive
is where the major work of working memory occurs
pulls information from long-term memory and coordinates the activity of the
phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad by focusing on specific parts of a task
and deciding how to divide attention between different tasks
"traffic cop" of the working memory system
The Phonological Loop
three phenomena that support the idea of a system specialized for language:
Phonological Similarity Effect
is the confusion of letters or words that sound similar
Word Length Effect
occurs when memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long words
Another way that the operation of the phonological loop has been studied is by determining
what happens when its operation is disrupted.
This occurs when a person is prevented from rehearsing items to be remembered by repeating
an irrelevant sound, such as “the, the, the . . .”
repeating “the, the, the . . .” overloads the phonological loop, which is responsible for holding
verbal and auditory information
not only reduces the ability to remember a list of words, it also eliminates the word length
effect

The Visuospatial Sketch Pad

handles visual and spatial information and is therefore involved in the process of visual imagery
the creation of visual images in the mind in the absence of a physical visual stimulus
mental rotation
rotating an image of one of the objects in the mind
an example of the operation of the visuospatial sketch pad because it involves visual
rotation through space
The Central Executive
is the component that makes working memory “work,” because it is the control center of the
working memory system
coordinate how information is used by the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad
"attention controller"
determines how attention is focused on a specific task, how it is divided between two tasks, and
how it is switched between tasks
related to executive attention (introduced in chapter 4)
essential in situations such as when a person is attempting to simultaneously drive and use a
cell phone

An Added Component: The Episodic Buffer

episodic buffer
can store information (thereby providing extra capacity) and is connected to LTM (thereby
making interchange between working memory and LTM possible)
represents a way of increasing storage capacity and communicating with LTM

If the exact functioning of the episodic buffer seems a little vague, it is because it is a “work
in progress.”

WORKING MEMORY AND THE BRAIN

The history of research on working memory and the brain has been dominated by one
structure: the prefrontal cortex (PFC)
The Effect of Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex
the case of Phineas Gage when his head was hit by a rod damaging his prefrontal cortex
damage to the frontal lobe causes problems in controlling attention, which is an important
function of the central executive
delayed-response task

Prefrontal Neurons That Hold Information

An important characteristic of memory is that it involves delay or waiting
Something happens, followed by a delay, which is brief for working memory; then, if
memory is successful, the person remembers what has happened
Shintaro Funahashi and coworkers (1989) conducted an experiment in which they recorded
from neurons in a monkey’s PFC while the monkey carried out a delayed-response task
 The key result of this experiment was that Funahashi found neurons that responded only when
the square was flashed in a particular location and that these neurons continued responding
during the delay
For example, some neurons responded only when the square was flashed in the upper-right
corner and then during the delay; other neurons responded only when the square was
presented at other positions on the screen and then during the delay. The firing of these
neurons indicates that an object was presented at a particular place, and this information
about the object’s location remains available for as long as these neurons continue firing

The Neural Dynamics of Working Memory

information can be stored by short-term changes in neural networks
activity-silent working memory
One idea, proposed by Mark Stokes (2015), is that information can be stored by short-term
changes in neural networks, as shown in Figure 5.23. Figure 5.23a shows the activity state, in
which information to be remembered causes a number of neurons, indicated by the dark
circles, to briefly fire. This firing doesn’t continue, but causes the synaptic state, shown in
Figure 5.23b, in which a number of connections between neurons, indicated by the darker
lines, are strengthened. These changes in connectivity, which Stokes calls activity-silent
working memory, last only a few seconds, but that is long enough for working memory.
Finally, when the memory is being retrieved, the memory is indicated by the pattern of
firing in the network, shown by the dark circles in Figure 5.23c.
Working memory, therefore, involves an interplay between a number of areas of the brain
This idea that a number of areas of the brain are involved in working memory is an example
of distributed representation
SOMETHING TO CONSIDER: WHY IS MORE WORKING MEMORY BETTER?
there are individual differences in the capacity of people’s working memory
high-capacity people are better at tuning out the distractors
The importance of being able to ignore distracting stimuli highlights the connection
between working memory and cognitive control
cognitive control
has been described as a set of functions, which allow people to regulate their behavior
and attentional resources, and to resist the temptation to give in to impulses
People with poor cognitive control are more easily distracted and are more likely to let
these distractions interfere with ongoing behavior
individual differences in cognitive control are closely related to individual differences in working
memory