Working memory

Working memory

1. vs. stm

   • STM is concerned mainly with STORING INFO for a brief period of time (remembering a phone number)
   • WM is concerned with the MANIPULATION of info that occurs during complex cognition (remembering numbers while reading a paragraph) 
   • STM = single component; WM = multiple components 

2. visuospatial sketch pad

   • holds VISUAL and SPATIAL information 
   • helps form pictures or solve puzzles or find your way around campus 
   • Brooks (1968): pit VERBAL against SPATIAL ("out" and "in" with the letter F) (pointing to "out" and "in" is more difficult than saying it) 
   • holding the image of the F and also POINTING are both visuospatial tasks -> VSP becomes overloaded
   • SPEAKING "out" and "in" is an articulatory task handled by the phonological loop; therefore speaking didn't interfere with visualizing the F 
   • visual imagery
     • the creation of visual images in the mind in the absence of a physical visual stimulus 
     • Shepard and Metzler 
   • mental rotation
     • Shepard and Metzler 
     • rotating an image of an object in the mind 
     • example of VSP because it involves VISUAL ROTATION through space 

3. central executive

   • MAJOR WORK of WM
   • pulls info from LTM and coordinates the activity of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad by focusing on SPECIFIC PARTS of a task 
   • switches attention from one task to another
   • decides how to divide attention between tasks; an "attention controller" 
   • suppresses UNNEEDED info (Funahashi et al. 1989) prefrontal cortex - trained monkeys (DIFFERENT areas of the brain responsible for STORING information)
   • perseveration
     • repeatedly performing the same behavior even if it is not achieving the desired goal 
     • typical behavior of patients with frontal lobe damage 
     • because the frontal lobe plays an important part in WM, patients with frontal lobe damage have problem controlling their attention
   • delayed response task
     • early research on the frontal lobe and memory was carried out in monkeys using this task 
     • required monkeys to hold info in WM during a delay 
     • monkey knows which tray holds the food after he is shown the food and it is proceeded to be covered up 
     • task is impossible without prefrontal cortex 

4. phonological loop

   • holds VERBAL and AUDITORY information 
   • in use when trying to remember a telephone number or a name 
   • phonological store
     • has a limited capacity which holds info for only a few seconds
   • articulatory rehearsal process
     • responsible for REHEARSAL that can keep items in the phonological store from decaying
   • phonological similarity effect
     • the confusion of letters or words that sound similar 
     • related to Conrad's experiment (F sounding like S/X) 
     • occurs when words are processed in the phonological store part 
     • memory suffers for similar items because they are confused with one another 
   • word-length effect
     • occurs when memory for lists of words is better for SHORT words than for LONG words
     • longer words are harder to remember and recall 
     • occurs because it takes LONGER to rehearse the LONG words and to produce them during recall 
     • Baddeley experimented that people are able to remember the number of items that they can pronounce in about 1.5-2 seconds
     • number of words you can say aloud = close to your digit span 
     • example: different ways of saying 1999
   • articulatory suppression
     • when a person is prevented from rehearsing items to be remembered by repeating an irrelevant sound 
     • this repetition of an irrelevant sound results in AS 
     • this REDUCES memory because speaking interferes with rehearsal 
     • eliminates the word-length effect
     • example: listening to music while trying to memorize things

5. episodic buffer

   • working memory can hold MORE than would be expected based on just the phonological loop or VSP 
   • people can remember long sentences consisting of as many as 15-20 words 
   • EB can STORE INFO (thereby providing extra capacity) and is connected to LTM (thereby making interchange between WM and LTM possible) 
   • represents a way of increasing storage capacity and communicating with LTM

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