Memory (P1)

Memory (P1)

1. Working memory model (Baddeley and Hitch)

   • They felt that short-term memory consists of multiple stores and not just one unitary store and that STM is an active process
   • Central exec: Gives tasks to memory systems, processes all info, focus on most demanding, limited capacity. Phonological loop: Codes our perception of sounds, capacity= 2 seconds worth of what you would say Audiculatory loop: Coding of words heard or seen (Subvocal repetition) Visual spatial sketchpad: Visual cache- Codes info about colour and form. Inner scribe- Arrangement of spatial info/memory of visual fields. Capacity=3-4 objects. Episodic buffer: The convenience store-Holds and merges together info from LTM,CE,visual and audio. Allows us to work out how things relate. Capacity=4 chunks.
   • AO3
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       • A strength of the WMM is real life evidence from brain damaged patients KF found that a damaged STM was what performed the worst in audio tasks compared to visual tasks. Brain damage is restricted to his phonological loop and not his visual spatial sketchpad. From Brain Scans The left prefrontal cortex is active during central executive tasks, as the difficulty increased so did the activity suggesting that the central executive is being overloaded.
       • The strength of the model is that it has real world applications. Phonological loop is used when reading which has allowed us to gather an understanding of dyslexia. Helped to treat ADHD as teaching strats can be introduced to ensure students can access work. This is a strength because it is valid as we can successfully treat people based on what it is saying.
       • Another strength of the working memory models comes from dual task studies.
         • This provides support for the working memory model because it shows that when they use just one component during one task it gets overloaded showing there are different components to our working memory.
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       • However, problems with evidence from brain damaged patients. There are issues with using finding from individuals such as KF to support a whole model.
         • Therefore, this is a weakness because we cannot replicate such studies on others and therefore it is difficult to generalise findings to all, meaning it has low population validity.
       • Although there is a lack of clarity over the Central Executive

2. Multi-store model

   • Sensory register
     • Coding- Senses, Capacity- If we pay attention, Duration- Milliseconds
   • STM
     • Coding- Acoustic, Capacity- 5-9 items, Duration- 18 Secs
     • Baddeley (Coding)=Found that ppts remembered acoustically dissimilar words better in immediate recall tasks.
     • Jacobs (Capacity)=Gave a list of numbers and asked ppts to instantly recall. This found that chunking items together makes you remember more.
     • Peterson and Peterson (Duration)=ppts had to remember trigrams. Then count backwards in threes from given numbers. Preventing rehearsal.
   • LTM
     • Coding- Semantically, Capacity- unlimited, Duration-Lifetime
     • Baddeley (Coding)= List 3 was the least effectively recalled list in the research after a 20 minute wait. Proving that our LTM confuses the words that mean the same thing, showing our LTM encodes semantically.
     • Bahrick (Duration)= High school graduates, recall group=name to photo, Recognition group= assign names to a photo. 60% accurate after 47 years (Recognition group). Less than 20% accurate after 47 years (Recall group)
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     • Lots of supporting lab based evidence, Controlled studies support the existence of STM and LTM stores, Insert research (Baddeley lists), These differences support the basis of the model that STM and LTM are different.
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     • Overly simplistic model of human memory, It might be too simplistic to suggest something as complex as human memory can be explained into two single unitary stores, More than one STM- Working memory- The working memory model suggests that the STM is broken into separate stores, Suggesting the model is overly simplistic not taking these different stores into account.