PSYC 3610 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Long-Term Memory, Echoic Memory, Sensory Memory
20 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 3 WORKING MEMORY
What is Working Memory?
Some Terminological Clarifications
Contrasting with Long-Term
Memory
Sensory Memory
Sperling’s experiment on sensory
memory
Working Memory Capacity
George Miller and the Magic
Number 7
The Digit Span Task
Chunking
Pronunciation Time
The Duration of Information in
Working Memory
Brown-Peterson Task
Interference
The Serial Position Curve and Its
Implication for Working Memory
Free Recall Test
Serial Position Curve
Baddeley’s Working Memory Model
Baddeley’s Idea
Working Memory Systems
Phonological Loop
Visuospatial Sketchpad
Episodic Buffer
Central Executive
Working Memory and the Brain
Neuroimaging and Working
Memory
Applications of Working Memory
Reading Fluency
Verbal Fluency
Diagnosis of ADHD
Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease
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What is Working Memory?
• Working memory: the neural structures and cognitive processes which
maintain the accessibility of information for short periods of time in an active
conscious state
• A short-term memory system
o Working memory’s function is to temporarily hold information over a
short period of time.
• A limited capacity system
o Can only hold so much information and no more
• The current contents of working memory are thought to be that which we are
consciously aware.
o Can be considered as the consciousness itself -whatever you are
conscious of right now is exactly what your working memory is
representing right now
• Choking under pressure – overload in the working memory
Some Terminological Clarifications
• Short-term memory: an older term used to describe the memory system that
holds information for a short period of time, up to 15 seconds
o Associated with theory that is no longer considered to be correct
o Now used in everyday speech in a way that is different from its former
use in memory
• Primary memory: a term used to mean short-term memory
o Current conceptions of working memory postulate that it ia both the
active area where we rehearse new information and the area that
holds information after it has been retrieved from long-term memory.
o Thus, it is neither primary nor secondary to long-term memory.
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Contrasting with Long-Term Memory
• Working memory
o Short duration
o Limited capacity
o Consciousness involved
• Long-term memory
o Long duration
o Large capacity
o Conscious awareness is only involved if it is also activated in the
working memory
Sensory Memory
• Sensory memory: a very brief memory system that holds literal information
for a fraction of a second to allow cognitive processing
o Attention determines whether or not it goes to the working memory.
• Sensory memory occurs prior to conscious access.
• Sensory memory is thought to be composed of separate memory systems for
each perceptual system
o Iconic memory: visual sensory memory
o Echoic memory: auditory sensory memory
• Sometimes considered a buffer system, because it holds information from our
senses for a brief period of time so that we can extract more information from
what we are seeing or hearing.
o Allows our cognitive mechanisms to detect and attend to relevant
information
Document Summary
Contrasting with long-term memory: working memory, short duration, limited capacity, consciousness involved, long-term memory, long duration, large capacity, conscious awareness is only involved if it is also activated in the working memory. Sperling"s experiment on sensory memory: participants were shown a matrix of 12 letters in a 4 3 grid for a brief period of time (50 ms). In the whole-report technique, participants were asked to retrieve all of the letter from the matrix: they could only recall about 5 letters. Working memory capacity: capacity: the amount of information that can be maintained in working memory. In the experiments about the estimate of the duration of the working memory, participants were given three words to remember. 7: both peterson and brown favored an explanation based on decay information not being rehearsed naturally vanishes or decays after 20 seconds or so. The serial position curve and its implication for.
