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Echoic Memory and Primary
Memory
PSY 400, Human Memory, Spring 2005 January 30, 2007
Overview of today’s material
Echoic memory •
- The modality effect
- The suffix effect
- Precategorical acoustic store Primary/secondary memory •
- Miller (1956) and the James/Broadbent model
- The Brown-Peterson Task.
- The Waugh-Norman task.
Important stuff from last time
Sperling whole vs partial report procedure • Fast decay (?) of visual information across time • scale of seconds.
Echoic memory
Like iconic memory, but in the auditory modality. • Experimental paradigm: Suffix effect • Theory: Precategorical Acoustic Store (PAS) •
Some important terminology
a as performance plots curve position Serial • function of list order. Primacy effect: advantage for the first items over • items in the middle. Recency effect: advantage for the last items over • items in the middle.
The Modality Effect (fig 2.5)
Serial recall as a function of serial position for • words read aloud and words read silently Recency superior when words read aloud. • Note: The modality effect refers to a change in • the size of the recency effect
The Suffix Effect (Figure 2.6).
Extra material, or “suffix” at the end of the list. • E.g. “when you hear the word ‘zero’ recall the list: • zero. absence, hollow, pupil... helmet resembles suffix if away goes effect Recency • speech. Suffix effect also refers to a change in the recency • effect.
Things that don’t give a suffix effect
An unfilled delay. • A visually-presented word. • A tone, or a buzzer. •
Problems with PAS
Signers and lip-readers show suffix effect (not so • acoustic). Suffix effect depends on how suffix interpreted • (Fig 2.7)
Ayers (1979) Experiment
Trumpet “wa” suffix. • If PAS is precategorical, then suffix effect should • only depend on the physical properties of the suffix. All subjects heard a trumpet with a plunger before • recall.
Ayers (1979) Experiment (cont’d)
Two conditions differ on instructions: “when you • hear the person say ‘wa,’ recall the words” or “when you hear the trumpet go ‘wa,’ recall the words” Suffix effect for “person” instructions but not • “trumpet” instructions.
The “Ian Neath as a Sheep”
experiment (fig 2.7)
Four conditions: • saying Neath Ian and sheep a suffices, 1. two “baa.’;
- two instructions, “that’s a sheep” and “that’s a person saying baa” When S thought it was a sheep, no suffix effect, • even for speech.
Conclusions from sensory memory
Sensory memory studied extensively in visual and • auditory modalities Sperling’s iconic memory (vision), Crowder’s PAS • (audition). Precategorical nature of these stores questionable. • Interaction between perception and higher-order • processes, perception and memory?
Let’s have a quiz
Primary memory The Modal Model
we’re things of set The Memory: Primary • currently aware of, including the recent past. The set of things we could Secondary Memory: • remember if we wanted to.
The Brown-Peterson Task
Brown (1958) • Peterson and Peterson (1959) • Recall trigrams after a delay. •
Brown-Peterson task, Methods
No shocking! • Present consonant trigram. • Count backwards by threes (or distinguish even- • odd). Variable delay to recall. •
What is the purpose of the secondary
task?
What is the purpose of the secondary
task?
Prevent rehearsal. • If Broadbent’s theory is correct, then we should • be looking at decay from primary memory.
Decay versus interference
We forget over time, but why? Decay postulates that forgetting happens because • per se of time Interference means that other information comes • in and obscures or displaces older information. evil those (and snowman our about Think • squirrels)... or about rust.
Waugh and Norman (1965)
decay in primary vs Interference
memory
Probe digit task: •
? 8 9 2 1 5 3 7 4 3 Q:
8 A:
Different rate of presentation. • retroactive from decay distinguish to Allows • interference.
How would these results look if decay
were the cause of forgetting? How
about interference?
Waugh and Norman (1965) Results
0 1 0. 2 0. 3 0. 4 0. 5 0. 6 0. 7 0. 8 0. 9 0. 1 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 em st n g I ervenint N um b er ofI Pr opor tion C or s/tgi 1 di rect ss/tgi4 di
Interference wins
primary from decay about idea Broadbent’s memory was wrong.
Definition: Retroactive Interference
in decrement a is interference Retroactive • performance attributable to subsequent learning. Often shows up as a decrease in memory as a • function of recency.
Definition: Proactive Interference
in decrement a is interference Proactive • performance attributable to prior learning. Often shown as a decrement in performance with • practice. How can you distinguish from fatigue? •
Brown-Peterson and PI from
long-term memory
No forgetting with delay for one trial. • Release from PI. • (Graphics from Delosh and Merritt, • http://lamar.colostate.edu/ bclegg/PY453/STM.pdf)
Keppel and Underwood (1962)
Perfect performance on first trial, even with long delay. (see also figure in Greene book!) 5 0. 55 0. 6 0. 65 0. 7 0. 75 0. 8 0. 85 0. 9 0. 95 0. 1 3 2 1 al Tri Proportion (^) Correct 3 S econd s 9 S econd s 18 S econd s
Release from PI paradigm
Word trigrams from a category. • car bike ship E.g. • Some Ss get a category shift after a few trials. • shift from “methods of transportation” to E.g. • “vegetables”
Release from PI results
0 1 0. 2 0. 3 0. 4 0. 5 0. 6 0. 7 0. 8 0. 9 0. 1 4 3 2 1 al T ri P roport ion C orrect rol C ont alm enti Exper
Summary
Primary/secondary distinction • interference vs Decay • Proactive and retroactive interference • Waugh-Norman task and implications •
Methodological Concerns Lower overall performance than Sperling? •
How could our results of the experiment depend on different strategies a participant might use? What if we only concentrated on one row? What • effect would this have on the curve? How could we detect this? • were we when blink to tended we if What • supposed to be looking at the array?
Performance by Row of the Array
1000 750 500 250 0 ISI (ms) 0
1
2
3 Number Correct Top Middle Bottom
Theoretical interpretation (assuming
not covered in class yet)
How could you explain the results? Retinal afterimage? • Persistent neural activity in visual areas? • Precategorical iconic memory? • Persistent neural activity including visual areas • and other regions as well?
Theoretical interpretation (assuming
covered in class already)
Does the explanation from the literature make sense based on your personal experience? Sperling interpreted as “iconic” memory. • Others have elaborated this as including other • “categorical” information as well. I experienced a short-lived stimulus persistence— • “look at” image and “read it” for a short time. Usually could only see one or two rows. •
What might be different between our
data and Sperling’s?
phones (no environment stimulus Controlled • ringing, darkened room). Careful control over size of array on retina (fixed • distance to screen). What else? •
What do we mean by cognitive
theory?
Empirical phenomena: Findings relating memory • performance to task variables. Theoretical explanations: Hypothesized cognitive • mediators of empirical phenomena.
An example
the experiment, report partial Sperling’s In • empirical an is performance of decay rapid
. phenomenon Sperling’s hypothesis was that visual information • is stored in iconic memory. performance that not is hypothesis The • decreases—that is an empirical result.
