Working Memory - Lecture Notes | PSY 373, Study notes of Psychology

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Working Memory

PSY 373, Human Memory

February 23, 2009

Housekeeping

• Should have already completed Sternberg Exp.
• Phonological similarity for Thursday.
• First experiment report due March 5 (see supplemental readings).
• Read Ch 4 if you haven’t already.

The first two SU Human Memory

classes (55 Ss)

RT (ms) S Pres Abs Avg 1 615 720 665 3 785 790 790 5 890 900 890 (^5001 2) Set size 3 4 5

600

700

800

900

RT (ms)

Positive Negative

Slope about 50 ± 15 ms/item.

Theory vs experiment

• It’s not a theory that you get a linear slope!
• It’s not a theory that the slopes are the same for pos/neg!
• We saw this in a sloppy at-home demonstration.

The arc of history of studies of

short-term memory

• In the 1950’s and early ’60’s, primary memory.
• In the late ’60’s and 1970’s, short-term memory (STS)
• Thereafter, “working memory.”

Different meanings of “working

memory”

• “Working memory capacity” studies.
• “Focus of attention” theory
• Baddeley’s working memory.

Focus of attention (fig 4.5)

• Elaborates Raaijmakkers and Shiffrin’s idea that STS is the currently-activated subset of WM.
• Difference between “currently activated” memories and “focus of attention.”
• Amenable to detailed cognitive modeling a la Atkinson and Shiffrin.

Capacity studies of WM

• Construct a measure that is referred to as working memory capacity.
• E.g. “Reading span” (Daneman and Carpenter,
  1980. or “Operation Span” (Turner and Engle,
• Determine if span correlates with other things.

Reading span (Daneman and

Carpenter, 1980)

• Read a series of sentences.
• At the end, you’re supposed to remember the last word of each sentence.
• You presumably hold the word in mind while reading the next sentence.

WM span measures correlate with a

lot of stuff

• Reading comprehension, language comprehension, spelling... -... vocabulary learning, writing and reasoning
• Perhaps this “working memory” is a basic property of human intelligence.

Operation Span: Let’s try it

What factors could affect performance

in operation span?

Elaboration over the rehearsal buffer

• Rehearsal buffer describes rehearsal ok... -... but not many of the operations needed in short-term memory.
• Explicitly separate out the “control” from the “store(s).”

A working memory task: Is Spain

larger than Texas?