MEMORY

- processes involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli. Images, ideas,
and skills after the original information is no longer present
- active any time some past experience has an impact on how you think or behave now or in the
future
Modal Model of Memory
ATKINSON and SHIFFRIN (1968)
Memory Types:
• Sensory Memory – initial stage that holds all incoming information for seconds or fractions
of a second
• Short-Term Memory – holds five to seven items for about 15 to 20 seconds
• Long-term memory – can hold a large amount of information for years or even decades
Control Processes (active processes that can be controlled by the person)
- rehearsal
- strategies used to make a stimulus more memorable
- strategies of attention that help you focus on specific stimuli
SENSORY MEMORY – retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation
- information decays very quickly
➢ Persistence of Memory – retention of the perception of light
- trail of light from a moving sparkler
- frames in film
➢ Measuring the capacity and duration of sensory memory (Sperling, 1960)
- array of letters flashed quickly on a screen
- participants were asked to report as many as possible
➢ Whole Report Method – participants asked to report as many as could be seen
- average of 4.5 out of 12 letters (37.5%)
➢ Partial Report Method – participants heard tone that told them which row of letters to
report
- average of 3.3 out of 4 letters (82%)
- participants could report any of the rows
➢ Delayed Partial Report Method – presentation of tone delayed for a fraction of a second
after the letters were extinguished
- performance decreases rapidly
➢ Iconic Memory – brief sensory memory of the things that we see
- responsible for persistence of vision
➢ Echoic Memory – brief sensory memory of the things that we hear
- responsible for persistene of sound
SHORT-TERM MEMORY – stores small amounts of information for a brief duration
- includes both new information received from the sensory stores and
information recalled from long-term memory
➢ Capacity of short-term memory
- Digit Span: how many digits a person can remember
- typical result: five to eight items
- but what is an item?
➢ Change Detection
➢ Chunking – small units can be combined into larger meaningful units
- chunk is a collection of elements strongly associated with one another but
 weakly associated with elements in other chunks
➢ Ericsson and Coworkers (1980)
- trained a college student with average memory ability to use chunking
-student had initial digit span of 7
- after 230 one-hour training sessions, student could remember up to 79 digits
-chunking them into meaningful units
➢ Alvarez & Cavanagh (2004)
- used colored squares as well as complex objects
- used the change detection procedure
WORKING MEMORY - limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of
information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and
reasoning
- similar concept to short-term memory
- is set up to process different types of information simultaneously
- has trouble when similar types of information are presented at the same
time
➢ Baddeley & Hitch (1974)
➢ Working memory differs from short-term memory
- short-term memory holds information for a brief period of time
- working memory is concerned with the storage, processing, and manipulation of
information, and is active during complex cognition
PHONOLOGICAL LOOP
➢ Phonological Similarity Effect
- letters or words that sound similar are confused
➢ Word Length Effect
- memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long words
- takes longer to rehearse long words and to produce them during recall
➢ Articulatory Suppression
- speaking prevents one from rehearsing items to be remembered
-reduces memory span
-eliminates word length effect
-reduces phonological similarity effect for reading words
VISUOSPATIAL SKETCH PAD – creation of visual images in the mind in the absence of a physical
visual stimulus
➢ Shepard & Metzler (1971)
➢ Mental Rotation Task
➢ Tasks that called for greater rotations took longer
THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE
➢ Acts as the attention controller
-focus, divide, switch attention
➢ Controls suppression of irrelevant information
➢ Perseveration – repeatedly performing the same action or thought even if it is not achieving the
desired goal
THE EPISODIC BUFFER – backup store that communicates with long-term and working memory
components
- hold information longer and has greater capacity than phonological
visuospatial sketch pad
Working Memory and the Brain
➢ Prefrontal cortex responsible for processing incoming visual ang auditory information
-monkeys without a prefrontal cortex have difficulty holding information in working memory
➢ Funahashi and Coworkers (1989)
-single cell recordings from monkey’s prefrontal cortex during a delayed-response task
➢ Neurons responded when stimulus was flashed in a particular location and during delay
➢ Information remains available via these neurons for as long as they continue firing
Working Memory and Neural Dynamics
➢ Stokes (2015)
- information is stored in short-term changes in neural networks
➢ Activity-Silent Working Memory
o Activity State – information to be remembered causes neurons to fire
o Synaptic State – neuron firing stops, but connections between neurons are
strengthened
Working Memory and Individual Capacity
➢ Vogel and coworkers (2005) determined participants’ working memory
- high-capacity working memory group
- low-capacity working memory group
➢ Shown either simple or complex stimuli
➢ Measured ERP responses
- high-capacity participants were more efficient at ignoring the distractors