PY1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Long-Term Memory, Sensory Memory, Implicit Memory
14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 4 – Exploring Psychology
What is memory and how do we remember?
- Memory: is the process involved in retaining, retrieving and using information about
stimuli, images, events, ideas and skills are the original information is no longer
present (Goldstein, 2015)
- What we experience in the outside world that we store in in our brain and we can
use that information later on
- Drugs, mood, alcohol, distortion, age
Research issues
- Memory researches are interested in determining
o The types of memory that exists
o How each type of memory functions (e.g capacity, accuracy, forgetting)
o What factors harm or enhance memory (e.g drugs, mood, social influence)
o How memory changes with age
o The brain structure in remembering
- We use memory to remember:
o Ourselves (e.g name, likes and dislikes, music, film) – without memories no
self-identity
o Others (e.g name face, relationship)
o Events (what we have done, what others have done)
o General knowledge (what is 2 + 2? What is the capital of france)
o Actions (e.g writing, riding a bicycle)
o Locatons (e.g workplace, home)
How many types of memory?
- Atkinson and Shiffrins (1968, 1971) Multi-Store Model of Memory – partly wrong,
consistent with evidence however memory is more complex
- The first major model to describe the structure / functioning of human memory
- Suggested we have three types of memory:
o Sensory memory (SM)
o Short term memory (STM)
o Long term memory (LTM)
- The believed all sensory information enters SM and is held for less than a few secs.
Attention sends it to STM, which is a limited capacity temporary store. Rehearsal
(thinking about it) keeps it alive for STM. When rehearsal stops, it is quickly
forgotten or transferred to LTM, which is (potentially) permanent store. When
information stored in LTM is needed, retrieval processes send it back to STM for use.
- The model correctly distringuished three types of memory, the model was consistent
with evidence at the time
- Research from the 1970s onwards, however, showed Atkinson and shiffrins model
was an oversimplification
- Sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory each have several
subtypes. Each subtype differs in what it store / how it functions
Sensory memory
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- Storing temporarily from sensory stores
- Has one store for each sense. They pick up all sensory information (e.g sights,
sounds) and store it for less than a few secs (how long depends on the store)
- Researchers have only studied
o The iconic (visual) store
o The echoic (auditory) store
o The haptic (touch) store
o As information must be presented / removed before attention can be paid to
it (attention sends it to STM)
Short-Term / Working Memory
- Has 4 unique components
o The phonological loop: stores language (written words, spoken words) /
sound based information
o The visuo-spatial sketchpad: stores image and spatial information
o The episodic buffer: stores multi-modal information
o The central executive: an attention system (not strictly a type of memory)
People often use the term Short-Term memory and Working Memory interchangeably but
they are distinct
Short term memory
- See info, store and immediately recall it
- A system for temporarily holding small amounts of information
- No other significant ongoing mental processing is occurring
- STM tasks involve studying and immediately recalling words, digits, objects,
locations, visual patterns, or sequences of movements
Working Memory –
- also short term memory but a different way of studding it – how information is
manipulated and used and then producing it + seeing whilst engaging in other tasks
and how well you recall it
- A system temporarily holding and manipulating information during the performance
of a rage of ogitie tasks suh as oprehesio, learig ad reasoig
(Baddley, 1986)
- Verbal and visuo-spatial WM tasks involve studying immediately, recalling digits,
words, objects locations, etc. whilst manipulating this information or completing a
secondary task (e.g decision making)
- The working memory system incorporates STM but also includes processes
necessary to maintain and manipulate information whilst completing other tasks (e.g
conversations, driving, maths)
Long-Term Memory
- Often divided into
o Explicit memory: memories we consciously bring to mind
▪ Semantic memory: memories of facts (e.g capital of france)
▪ Eposidic memory: memories of events (e.g your 18th birthday)
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o Implicit memory: memories that do not require conscious thought
(automatic)
▪ Procedural memory: memories of skills (e.g writing, riding a bike)
▪ Primining: perception of one object influences processing of later
objects (e.g seeing a word speeds up subsequent processing of
related words)
^ all Retrospective memory
Prospective Memory: our ability to remember to do things in the future. It is not separate
memory system (LTM and attention are involved) but there are two distinct types
- Time based prospective memory: remembering to complete a task after a set amont
of time (e.g taking food out of the oven after 30 mins)
- Event-based prospective memory: remembering to complete a task in response to a
cue (e.g passing on a message next time you see your friend)
Short Term Memory pre 97s
- the ability to hold in mind, in an active and highly available state, a small amount of
information (johansen, 2008)
- the information held may been forwarded form sensory memory or retrieved from
Long-Term Memory
- It is studied by presenting participants with information (e.g numbers, words,
pictures and then asking them to immediately recall this information
Verbal STM
- From the 1880s -1970s researchers assumed we had one short term memory system
only
- STM research during this period primary focussed on recall of verbal information (e.g
numbers, letters, words) This is called verbal STM
- Few studies examined recall of visuo-spatial information until that verbal STM and
visuo-spatial STM are separate systems / function differently
- In modern terms, this pre 1974 Verbal STM research was focussing on the
Phonological Loop component of Working Memory (we did not realise other
components existed)
- This pre-1974 research identified:
o The capacity of Verbal STM
▪ Miller (1956) showed we can store 7 peieces of information (on
average) in Verbal STM
▪ Example; if you asked people to study and recall the letters – w, j, u, k,
a, f, p, d, n. – then people will (on average) recall 7 letters
▪ Whilst verbal STM can only hold 7 (+/-2) pieces of information, these
pieces can be quite large
▪ LTM can group related pieces of information together in Verbal STM
so they form a single chunk
▪ Miller (1956) showed we can store 7 (+/-2) chunks of information
o The duration information can be held in verbal STM
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Memory: is the process involved in retaining, retrieving and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas and skills are the original information is no longer present (goldstein, 2015) What we experience in the outside world that we store in in our brain and we can use that information later on. What is the capital of france: actions (e. g writing, riding a bicycle, locatons (e. g workplace, home) Atkinson and shiffrins (1968, 1971) multi-store model of memory partly wrong, consistent with evidence however memory is more complex. The first major model to describe the structure / functioning of human memory. Suggested we have three types of memory: sensory memory (sm, short term memory (stm, long term memory (ltm) The believed all sensory information enters sm and is held for less than a few secs. Attention sends it to stm, which is a limited capacity temporary store. Rehearsal (thinking about it) keeps it alive for stm.
