SHORT-TERM

& WORKING MEMORY

 ▪ sensory memory
Memory – the process involved in retaining, retrieving, and using ▪ short-time memory
information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the ▪ working memory
original information is no longer present. ▪ long-time memory
▪episodic memory
▪procedural
memory
! Memory is active any time some past experience has an effect on the ▪semantic memory
way you think or behave now or in the future
 THE MODAL MODEL OF MEMORY
▪Atkinson & Shiffrin (1986)
▪structural features and control
processes (dynamic processes
associated with the structural features
that can be controlled by the person;
e.g., rehersal)
1. Sensory memory – an initial stage
that holds all incoming information
for seconds/ fractions of a second.
2. Short-term memory (STM) holds five
to seven items for about 15 to 20
seconds.
3. Long-term memory (LTM) can hold a
large amount of information for
years/decades
 = the retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation
▪for visual stimuli = iconic memory/ visual icon (<1 second); for auditory
stimuli = echoic memory (2-4 seconds)
▪demonstrated in things such as the trail left by a moving sparkler
persistence of vision = the continued perception of a visual stimulus
even after it is no longer present

SENSORY Sperling’s Experiment

to measure the capacity and

MEMORY duration of the sensory store

- how much information
people can take in from
briefly presented stimuli
(flashed arrays of letters)

• whole report method (as

many as possible);*fading*
• partial report method
• delayed partial report
method
SHORT-TE = the system involved in storing small amounts of information
for a brief period of time

RM ☺ most of this information is eventually lost; only some of it

reaches the more permanent store of LTM

MEMORY ▪a window to the present (everything we think about or know at a

particular moment in time involves STM)
(STM) ▪the effective duration of STM is about 15 to 20 seconds or less
THE CAPACITY OF STM

DIGIT SPAN
▪“seven, plus or minus two”
▪the capacity of STM is five to nine items (newer experiments with the procedure of change detection –
four items)

! the amount of information held in STM can be expanded by CHUNKING

▪chunking = the combination of small units into larger, more meaningful units
▪chunk = a collection of elements that are strongly associated with one another but are weakly
associated with elements in other chunks
B C I F C N C A S I B B vs. C I A F B I N B C C B S
THE CAPACITY OF STM

rather than describing short-term memory capacity in terms of number of items, it should be described
in terms of amount of information
Alvarez & Cavanagh (2004) - change detection experiment
▪ from low information (colored
squares) to high information (cubes)

(in the actual experiments, there were six

different objects in each set)

▪ the average number of objects that

could be remembered for each type
of stimulus is showed in (b)
Information in STM can be manipulated in the
service of mental processes such as computation,
learning, and reasoning.
 introduced by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) (they
proposed the name working memory, rather than
short-term memory, for short-term memory
processes, which are dynamic and involve both
holding information and manipulating it)

WORKING
= a limited-capacity system for temporary storage
MEMORY and manipulation of information for complex
tasks such as comprehension, learning, and
reasoning
▪= manipulation of information that occurs during
complex cognition
CONCEPTUAL DELIMITATION
although often used interchangeably, MSD and working memory are different concepts:

SHORT TERM MEMORY

▪stores information for a short period
(remembering a phone number)

e.g.,: when you remember a phone number, but later realize that the last 2 digits are reversed and
mentally rearrange them
WORKING MEMORY
▪stores the information short-term
AND
▪manipulate this information
FROM THE MODAL MODEL
TO BADDELEY’S WORKING MEMORY MODEL

*under certain conditions it is possible to carry out two tasks simultaneously

THE VISUOSPATIAL
SKETCH PAD: holds visual
THE PHONOLOGICAL and spatial information –
LOOP: helps coordination and visual
▪ the phonological store imagery
(has a limited capacity and
THE CENTRAL
holds information for only
EXECUTIVE:
a few seconds)
▪ pulls information from
▪ the articulatory rehearsal
LTM
process (responsible for
▪ coordinates the activity
rehearsal that can keep
of the P.L. and V.S.P. by
items in the phonological
focusing on specific parts
store from decaying)
of a task and deciding
how to divide attention
▪ might have a role in
inhibiting information
that doesn’t serve the
current goal
THE PHONOLOGICAL LOOP

▪ three phenomena that support the idea of a phonological loop:

WORD-LENGTH ARTICULATORY
PHONOLOGICAL
EFFECT SUPPRESSION
SIMILARITY EFFECT
when memory for lists of when irrelevant stimuli
the confusion of letters or
words is better for short interfere with rehearsal,
words that sound similar
words than for long words thus reducing memory
THE VISUOSPATIAL SKETCH PAD

visual imagery – one of the functions of the visuospatial sketch pad

Shepard and Metzler’s Mental Rotation Experiment
Look at the two pictures and decide, as quickly as possible, whether they represent two different views
of the same object:

Lee Brooks (1968) - interference can affect the operation of the visuospatial sketch pad (holding the
image of the letter and pointing are both visuospatial tasks; the visuospatial sketch pad becomes
overloaded)
THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE

▪coordinates how information is used by the phonological loop and visuospatial

sketch pad
▪can be thought of as an 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)
▪patients with frontal lobe damage have trouble controlling their attention
▪ the phenomenon of perseveration = repeatedly performing the same action or thought even if it is not
achieving the desired goal
it represents a breakdown in the central executive’s ability to control attention
THE EPISODIC BUFFER

“the concept of an episodic buffer is still at a very

early stage of development”

▪ can store information (thereby providing extra

capacity)
▪ is connected to LTM (thereby making
interchange between working memory and
LTM possible)
 WORKING MEMORY AND THE
BRAIN
THE EFFECT OF DAMAGE TO THE PREFRONTAL
CORTEX – the case of Phineas Gage
▪an accident in which ignited gunpowder propelled a tamping rod into
this left cheek and out through the top of his head causing damage to
his frontal lobe
▪the accident caused a dramatic change in these low impulse control,
poor ability to plan, and poor social skills
⇒the frontal lobes are involved in a variety of mental functions,
including personality and planning
WORKING MEMORY AND THE
BRAIN
THE EXPERIMENTS ON MONKEYS USING THE DELAYED-RESPONSE TASK
▪the task required a monkey to hold information in working memory during a delay period
The monkey sees a food reward in one of two food wells. Both wells are then covered, a screen is lowered,
and then there is a delay before the screen is raised again. When the screen is raised, the monkey must
remember which well had the food and uncover the correct food well to obtain a reward. Monkeys can be
trained to accomplish this task. However, if their PFC is removed, their performance drops to chance level, so
they pick the correct food well only about half of the time.
WORKING MEMORY AND THE BRAIN

▪behaviors that depend on working memory can be

disrupted by damage to the prefrontal cortex
▪there are neurons in the prefrontal cortex that fire to
presentation of a stimulus and continue firing as this
stimulus is held in memory
▪there is a relation between working memory capacity
and cognitive control, which is involved in dealing
with temptation
▪current research on the physiology of working
memory has introduced the idea that:
▪ (a) information can be contained in patterns of neural
connectivity
▪ (b) working memory involves many areas of the brain