CHAPTER 4: SHORT-TERM WORKING MEMORY

Working Memory
- The use of STM as a temporary store for information needed to accomplish a
particular task
- Maintains and manipulates information

Theory of Memory – Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968, 1971)

- Emphasizes interaction among sensory store, STM, and LTM
- STM
o Second basic component
o Limited in both capacity and duration
 Information lost within 20-30 seconds if not rehearsed
o Needed when we perform most cognitive tasks
 Reflects its important role as working memory
- LTM
o Unlimited in capacity
o Holds information over a much longer interval
o Often takes a fair amount of effort to get information in
- Figure 4.1 shows that STM can combine information from both environment and
LTM whenever a person tries to learn new information, make decisions, or solve
problems
Forgetting
Rapid Rate of Forgetting From STM

- Probability of correct recall declined rapidly over 18-second retention interval

o Implies rehearsing verbal information is needed to keep it available in STM
o Eg. Shows why if we are momentarily distracted after looking up a telephone
number, we will have to look it up again before dialling

Decay vs Interference
- Interference theory: proposal that forgetting occurs because other materials
(memory for other material/performance of another task) interferes with the
information in memory
- Decay theory: proposal that information is spontaneously lost over time, even when
there is no interference from other material
 - Findings support the contention that interference, rather than decay, is the primary
cause of forgetting

Interference
- Retroactive interference
o Caused by information that occurs AFTER an event (after learning)
- Proactive interference
o Caused by information that occurs BEFORE an event (before learning)
- Release from proactive interference
o Reduction of proactive interference by having information be dissimilar from
earlier materials

Capacity
The Magic Number 7 (Miller)
- Digit span/Memory span task
o Requires that a person recall a sequence of items in their correct order
- Memory span
o The number of correct items that people can immediately recall from a
sequence of items
- Absolute judgement task
o Identification of stimuli that vary along a single sensory continuum
- Chunks
o A cluster of items that has been stored as a unit in LTM
o Recoding the information to form chunks  help overcome limited capacity
of STM
o FBI-TWA-CIA-IBM > F-B-I-T-W-A-C-I-A-I-B-M

Memory Codes
- Distinguish between STM from LTM  rapid forgetting rate & limited capacity
- Acoustic (speech-based) codes are predominant memory codes in STM; semantic
(meaning-based) codes are predominant codes in LTM
o Acoustic code: A memory code based on sound of stimulus
o Semantic code: a memory code based on meaning of stimulus

Acoustic Codes and Rehearsal

- Motivated by people’s reliance on verbal rehearsal as means of preserving info in
STM
o Relation between memory span and verbal rehearsal
 Evidence indicates that two separate verbal-processing rates
influence a person’s memory span
 Speed at which a person can pronounce the items on the list
used to test memory span
 Speed at which a person can retrieve the items from STM
 Both determine how many items a a person can keep active in
STM
  Correlates with memory but not with each other
Acoustic Confusion
- An error that sounds like the correct answer
- Occurs in STM
- Shows that acoustic codes are important; but does not reveal how error occur
o One way of accounting for error – use auditory components to represent
names of items
Phenomes
- Any of the basic sound of a language that are combined to form speech
o Eg. C (“sē): the sound s and ē
- Major assumption of model by Laughery (1969)
o Each auditory component representing an item can be independently
forgotten
 Eg. If a name consists of two phonemes, a person might remember
one phenome but not the other
o Auditory components can be forgotten at different rates

Acoustic Codes in Reading

- Subvocalizing
o Silently speaking to oneself
o Limits reading speed to rate of speaking (covert speech not much faster than
overt speech)
 Could read faster if no translation of printed words  speech-based
code
o Unnecessary; but facilitate retention of detailed/complex information
- Lexical alteration
o Substituting a word with similar meaning for one of the words in a sentence
 Eg. Her child had plunged through the windshield (youngster)
- Semantic alteration
o Changing the order of words in a sentence to change the meaning of the
sentence
 Eg. The solemn physician distressed the anxious mother  The
solemn mother distressed the anxious physician
**supressing subvocalization did not interfere with performance when the subjects
listened to the sentence
o Suppression interfered specifically with reading, not language comprehension
(listening)
o Counting interfered only with recall following reading  translating visual
material into an acoustic code helps preserve detailed information in text
- Paraphrase
o Using different words to express the same ideas in a sentence

Recognition of Items in STM

Searching STM
- Memory set
 o A set of items in STM that can be compared against a test item to determine
if the test item is stored there
 Eg. Showed a set of numbers  present test digit  decide whether
test digit was a member of memory set
- Self-terminating search
o A search that stops as soon as the test item is successfully matched into an
item in the memory set
 Eg. Given digits 5, 3, 7, 1  test digit 3  respond yes after matching
3 in memory set
- Exhaustive search
o A search that continues until the test item I compared with all items in
memory set
 Eg. Given digits 5, 3, 7, 1  test digit 3  respond yes after
comparing test digit with all digits in memory set

Degraded Patterns
- Two operation needed:
o Encode: to create a visual/verbal code for a test item so it can be compared
with the memory codes of items stored in STM
o Scan: to sequentially compare a test item with items in STM to determine if
there’s a match
- Slope
o A measure of how much response time changes for each unit of change along
the x-axis (memory-set size)
o Indicates the amount of additional time needed to compare when another
digit is added to memory set

Working Memory
Baddeley’s Working Memory Model
- Consists of three components
o Phonological loop
 Responsible for maintaining and manipulating speech-based
information/acoustic information
 Has two components
 Phonological store – holding verbal information
 Rehearsal mechanism – keeps the information active in
phonological store
 Learns how to pronounce new words
 By storing unfamiliar words until they are permanently learned
and stored in LTM
o Visuospatial sketchpad
 Responsible for maintaining and manipulation of visual/spatial
information
o Central executive
 Responsible for selecting strategies and integrating information
 Manages use of working memory
 Decision making component of working memory
 Develop logical-reasoning and conclusion
- Baddeley’s Revised Working Memory Model
o Baddeley and Hitch initially thought that central executive might function as a
storage system where visual and verbal codes could be integrated
o Proposed a fourth component
 Episodic buffer
 Storage system that can integrate memory codes from
different modalities
 Serve as a limited capacity store that can integrate information
from both visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop
 Creates multimodal code to form a model of the environment
that can be manipulated to solve problems
o Multimodal code: An integration of memory codes
such as combining visual and verbal codes