I. Some basics

A. three processes

1. encoding: translating info to be used in processing

2. storage: holding for later use

3. retrieval: accessing stored info; forgetting is the inability to retrieve

B. modal model (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1971)

1. sensory memory, short term memory, long term memory

2. serial position effect

a. primacy = LTM; recency = STM

II. Sensory Memory

A. preliminary characteristics

1. initial brief storage of sensory info

2. separate sensory stores for each sense system

B. Sperling (1960) & iconic store

1. whole report vs. partial report

a. 4-5 letters even with 500 msec presentation

b. with partial report 3-4 letters were reported

2. capacity: 9/12, 12/16, or greater?

3. coding: icon- visual only

a. tones to report vowels vs. letters = whole report

b. successful cues: color or brightness

4. duration: 150 - 250 msec

a. delay of cue

b. position vs. identity: position does fade

C. Echoic store

1. partial-report vs. full report revisited

a. the 3-eared/4-eared listener

2. capacity: 9 -16 items

3. duration: 250 - 4000 msec

4. the suffix effect (Crowder, 1972)

a. auditory presentation followed by auditory cue

b. masks info in echoic store

D. Sensory stores in summary

1. modality specific

2. relatively large in capacity, but brief in duration

3. stimuli is relatively unprocessed

E. Function of sensory stores

1. temporary storage to select items for further processing

2. not important at all

a. Neath (1998) and telephone operators!

III. Short-term Memory

A. capacity of STM

1. 7 + 2 (Miller, 1956)

a. dots, marbles, nonsense syllables, etc.

2. influences

a. chunking

b. # of syllables

B. coding in STM

1. auditory

a. evidence from Conrad (1964)

        2. visual

                a. Posner & Keele (1967)

        3. semantic encoding

                a. release from proactive inhibition/interference (Wickens and others 1963, 1973)

1. presentation of same category items (e.g., letters, numbers, animal names) leads to a build up of PI

2. experimental group "switched" within the 10 trials

3. those with the switch showed release from PI

C. duration & forgetting

1. two possibile mechanisms: decay (fading over time) & interference

a. two types of interference: proactive and retroactive

2. decay in about 20 seconds

a. Brown-Peterson task (paradigm)

a. Waugh & Norman’s (1965) probe digit task

1. scanning from multiple categories

A. Atkinson & Shiffrin’s original conception

1. STS acts as a storage place & activates info in LTM

2. control processes

a. control of the short term buffer

b. coding

B. Baddeley & Hitch (1974) tested these assumptions 1. store digits while doing another task (e.g., verifying sentences like "A is preceded by B")
  a. acc. to A & S, this should be nearly impossible 2. found that it took longer with 6 digits, but could be done

3. proposed "working memory"

a. storage and processing space

C. the model

1. central executive

a. limited resources and capacity

b. controls processing

2. phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketch pad a. storage and maintenance

b. tasks requiring greater use of the central executive are more disruptive/disrupted

 
1. Teasdale et al. (1995) and stimulus-independent thoughts (SITs)

A. H. M.

1. lesions in temporal lobe & hippocampus

a. loss of new episodic memories

b. anterograde amnesia

c. some retrograde amnesia for the years before the operation

2. intact STM

3. LTM for procedural skills

B. frontal lobe and working memory

1. damage increases distractibility

C. PET scans

1. limbic area for familiar stimuli

2. also, evidence for working memory

a. blood flow in left frontal and left parietal: verbal WM

b. right parietal, temporal, and frontal: spatial WM

D. creating long-term memories

1. STM as a reverberating circuit = long term potentiation

E. many questions

1. localized vs. distributed memory processes?

2. basic neural processes in any one complex activity?