Memory (continued) & Memory: Structure and Processes

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II. Modern Models of Memory

B. Levels of Processing Theory

Craik and Lockhart--incoming stimuli are subjects to a series of different analyses; a memory trace for a stimulus consists of the record of processes carried out on that stimulus (the more varied the processes carried out, the stronger the memory trace); deeper processing > shallow; subject asked to make judgements about a list of words (based on meaning or superficial aspects);

maintenance rehearsal--forms of processing that just maintain the information in short-term; does not do anything to encode, but not necessarily shallow processing

elaborative rehearsal--forms of processing that make new connections; creates a more varied trace but not necessarily deep processing

Craik and Watkins--told subjects to remember the most recent word that starts with a specific letter; varied amounts of time; results: rehearsal time made no difference in performance; disagrees with Adkinson and Shiffren model but supports levels of processing

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I. Short-Term Memory

A. Brown-Peterson paradigm

subjects presented with a string of consonants, told to remember, then given a specific number to count backwards by 3s from (to prevent rehearsal)

varied the lag in different trials

showed the duration of short-term memory (~15-30 seconds)

B. Capacity of STM

Miller-- 7 +/- 2 paper; argued that this number represents chunks, not just individual digits/letters; chunks--information units that can be defined at different levels of complexity; doesn't change the 7 +/- 2 capacity

DeGroot--chess experts and novices presented with chess layouts and asked to recreate them; experts were able to chunk them and do much better when the layouts were legal configurations, but not when they were illegal configurations

C. Types of Mental Representations (codes)

auditory--sound based, internal speech; most errors in recall were auditory based (C --> P, not R --> P)

visual--debate about if this has to do with STM or iconic memory

semantic--Wickens, release from proactive interference; subjects presented with a list of words from one category, memory performance declined until they were given words from a new category; performance went back up

D. Retrieval of Information from STM (Sternberg Paradigm)

E. Biological Reality of STM

STM evidence from amnesiacs

anterograde amnesia--trouble learning new things after brain trauma; difficulty in encoding, but does not affect STM

Amnesiacs-->no primacy effect but recency effect remains

II. Long-Term Memory and Forgetting

A. Decay Theory

passage of time alone causes forgetting; why is this questionable? says time is the cause of forgetting

Jenkins and Dallenbach--subjects given list of nonsense syllables and asked to remember them, one group went about their day as usual, the other went to sleep for the retention interval; results: much better performance for the group that was asleep; disagrees with decay theory because there should not have been a difference between the two if time is what causes us to forget

B. Interference

retroactive interference--new learning interferes with things learned earlier

proactive interference--old learning interferes with new learning

paired-associate learning

hard to learn new keyboard mappings, this is why we still use the QWERTY keyboard (proactive interference)

C. Cue-Dependent Forgetting

Tulving and Psotka--subjects given a list of words from several different categories; some given more lists to remember than others (up to five); there was no more interference with cued recall

encoding specificity--memory cues are if they match the manner in which the material was originally encoded (study: river-bank; test: water-?)

context dependent memory--people do better on memory tests if the study context matches the test context (e.g. underwater/on land)

state-dependent memory

mood-dependent memory