Short Term Memory - Human Cognitive Processes - Lecture Slides, Slides of Brain and Cognitive Science

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Forming New Memory Traces

• Information processing model

Sensory memory

Short term memory

Long term memory

Evidence for separate stores

• Serial position effect:
  • Primacy effect: tendency to recall words from beginning of list better than words in the middle
  • Recency effect: tendency to recall words from end of list better than words in the middle

Sensory memory

• Echoic memory
  • Auditory equivalent of partial report task
  • Echo has somewhat larger capacity than icon
  • Echo can last as long as 20 seconds (although this is controversial)

Short Term Memory

• Capacity of 7 + 2 items
  • Can chunk information to overcome this limitation
• Acoustic coding
• Retention duration = only about 18 seconds

(Brown-Peterson task)

Retrieval from STM

• Is search serial or parallel?
• Is search self-terminating or exhaustive?
• Sternberg’s task:
  • Encode a memory set (7 letters or less)
  • Probe presented (was T in the list?)
  • Time to search is the key dependent variable

Working memory

• WM as a limited-capacity “workspace” that

can be divided between storage and

processing

• Phonological loop stores auditory information
• Visuospatial sketch pad stores visual info
• Central executive directs the flow of information