9/10/2022

THE STRUCTURE OF MEMORY I

Dr Tim Byron
tbyron@uow.edu.au
Consultations: email to setup a Zoom

WEEKS 11-13
• Week 11:
• Structure Of Memory I & II
• Week 12:
• Everyday Memory
• Speech Production & Comprehension
• Week 13:
• Cognitive Biases
• Music

• You might recognise

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS THING this as an Australian 50c
BEFORE? piece
• For you to be able to
recognise this thing, you
need to be able to
access the past (those
other times you saw
this 50c) with the
present (what you’re
looking at now)
• Psychologists call this
ability to access the past
‘memory’

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THE SCIENCE OF MEMORY

• We all have a conscious experience of our
minds…but we consciously experience the
result, not the working that got there
• The mind as an information processor

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY IN 2 ND YEAR

(AND ONWARDS)
• A scientific endeavour
based on indirect
observations Experimental
conditions
• Indirect observations can
be interpreted in multiple Behavioural output
ways • accuracy
• Agreement on the facts • errors
(mostly) but competing
interpretations of the
facts

STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION

• Cognitive psychology all about figuring out
the information processing that underlies
memory function
• Why not just do neuroimaging?
• Physical structures vs how information is
processed

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES
FOR THIS LECTURE
• By the end of this lecture you should be able to:

• Define and describe primary and secondary memory

• State evidence for and against separate memory
stores
• Compare and contrast multiple store and unitary
views of memory
• Differentiate between storage-based and levels-of-
processing views of memory

ENCODING – STORAGE - RETRIEVAL

• Take this little bit of music:
• Computers digitally encode sound
information
• That information is stored somewhere
• To play the file, the computer has to be able
to quickly retrieve it from the storage

ENCODING – STORAGE - RETRIEVAL

• So, if/when you recognise ‘Don’t Start Now’ by
Dua Lipa:
• Your brain has encoded some kind of information about
the song
• That information is stored somewhere
• To recognise the song, your mind quickly retrieves that
information in order to compare it with what you just
heard
• So, what we need to understand is: how is
information encoded, stored and retrieved?

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THE STRUCTURE OF MEMORY

• William James (1890): distinction between primary
and secondary memory
 Primary memory: “for a state of mind to survive in
memory it must have endured for a certain length of time”
(James goes on to say that primary memory is a bit like an
after-image of a conscious event)
 Secondary memory: “is the knowledge of a former
state of mind after it has already once dropped from
consciousness; or rather it is the knowledge of an event, or
fact, of which meantime we have not been thinking, with
the additional consciousness that we have thought or
experienced it before.”

ALL AGREE ON A DISTINCTION BETWEEN

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY MEMORY
• But…what exactly is the structure that
underlies this distinction?

Multi-store Models of Memory Unitary Models of Memory Levels of processing models

(e.g., Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968, (e.g., Cowan, 1999, 2005)? (e.g., Craik & Lockhart 1972)?
or Baddeley, 2012)?

Sensory Registers
(visual)
(auditory)
(others)

Short-term store (STS)

(including control
processes)

Long-term store (LTS)

MULTI-STORE MODELS OF MEMORY

• When we say stores here, think the RAM and
the hard drive in your computer – separate
stores of information with different purposes

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Environmental input
Atkinson and
Shiffrin (1968)
Sensory Registers
(visual)
(auditory)
(others)

Short-term store (STS) Rehearsal

(including control
Response Output
processes)

Long-term store (LTS)

Environmental input  Retention of information for

short periods of time for the
purpose of attentional capture
 Modality specific, e.g.
Sensory Registers
(visual) ○ Iconic – information decays
(auditory) within 0.5 seconds
(others)
○ Echoic – responsible for
recovering a conversation
when you are accused of not
Short-term store (STS)
listening (playback of info in
(including control echoic store)
processes)

Long-term store (LTS)

Environmental input • Short-term store (STS)

• Limited capacity (remember Miller (1956))
• Information quickly degrades
• Possible mechanisms for why that
Sensory Registers degradation occurs:
(visual) • Decay – becoming less popular as an
(auditory) explanatory mechanism
(others) • Interference – material with similar
features clouds your memory of other
information
• Interfering material:
Short-term store (STS) • happened earlier – proactive interference
(including control • happened after – retroactive interference
processes)

Long-term store (LTS)

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Environmental input
• Limited duration – about 20
seconds without rehearsal
• Testing the duration of
unrehearsed information - Peterson
Sensory Registers & Peterson (1959)
(visual) • Consonant trigrams, with silence
(auditory) vs vocal rehearsal
(others)

Short-term store (STS)

(including control
processes)

Long-term store (LTS)

Environmental input
•Long-term store
 Unlimited in capacity
Sensory Registers  Permanently stored
(visual)
(auditory) experience
(others)
 Loss of memory due to
interference
Short-term store (STS)
(including control
○ Inhibits access to the
processes) target memory

Long-term store (LTS)

FREE RECALL CURVE

Retrieved from LTS Retrieved from STS
recency
Proportion correct recall

Environmental input

primacy Sensory Registers

(visual)
(auditory)
(others)

Short-term store (STS) Rehearsal

(including control
processes)

Long-term store (LTS)

Serial Position

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Environmental input •Behavioural evidence for multi-

store:
•STM tasks more affected by
speech sounds, LTM more affected
Sensory Registers
(visual)
by semantics (Baddeley 1966)
(auditory) •Qualitative evidence: James 1890
(others)
•Neuropsychological evidence:
•Double dissociation between LTM
disorders (e.g, Clive Wearing) and
Short-term store (STS)
(including control
STM disorders (e.g., P.V. in Vallar &
processes) Baddeley, 1984)

Long-term store (LTS)

Environmental input •Arguments against:

•Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) is
oversimplified
Sensory Registers •People with poor STM (e.g., PV)
(visual) surprisingly good at learning facts
(auditory) etc
(others)
•Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) posit
rehearsal as the mechanism by
which STM becomes LTM
Short-term store (STS) •LTM is obviously intimately
(including control
processes)
involved in STM tasks

Long-term store (LTS)

A Unitary View of Memory

past
present

STM
near present

All memories underpinned

by the same processes in a
single store

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ANOTHER UNITARY MODEL

Embedded Processes Model of Working Memory (Cowan, 1999; 2005)

Short-term store
Long-term store
has limited capacity
because of length of
time information Focus of
can remain
activated attention

Limited capacity in
Activated the number of
memory – chunks of
information that
short-term store can be held

A hierarchy of
representations at differing
levels of activation

WHAT ABOUT THE EVIDENCE FROM

AMNESIC PATIENTS?
• How to explain individuals with intact STM but
impaired LTM (from a unitary store perspective?
• Hippocampus and surrounds are used to form
novel relations
• If STM tasks require the encoding of novel
relations
• Poor performance
• Question about how well studies have
controlled for LTM involvement

ARGUMENTS AGAINST UNITARY STORE

MODELS
• Oversimplified approach to short term memory
• Activated long-term memory?
• Short-term memory vs working memory
• Findings from studies in neuroimaging and amnesic
patients
• Hippocampus involvement in LTM not STM
• STM processing in medial temporal lobe surrounding
hippocampus
• More consistent with multi-store approach

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THE LEVELS OF PROCESSING FRAMEWORK

Craik and Lockhart (1972)

Memory as a by-product of processing
• Attentional and perceptual processing affects what is
stored in long-term memory
• Memory traces are records of perception and
comprehension of stimuli
Deeper processing results in longer lasting memory
• Depth -> meaningfulness

ENCODING MEMORIES:
LEVELS OF PROCESSING
• What information is there in ‘CAT’?
• The way that it looks – CAT
• The way the word sounds
• The general meaning(s) of the word
• The specific meaning in a particular context
• Your pre-existing personal associations with the
idea of ‘cat’

ENCODING MEMORIES:
LEVELS OF PROCESSING
• Craik & Lockhart (1972)
distinguished between three
different ‘levels’ of processing of
written words:
• Shallow surface level (what word
looks like ‘TPAIN’?)
• Intermediate phonemic level (what
does ‘VANE’ rhyme with?)
• Deeper semantic level (what does
‘STATION’ mean?)
• Craik & Lockhart – deeper
encoding levels are more
effective for LTM

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ENCODING MEMORIES:
DUAL CODING
• Allan Paivio (1971): mentally, a cat isn’t just a
group of letters on a screen, a particular set of
phonemes, or a concept made up of words
• If you close your eyes and imagine a cat…
• We have visual imagery about cats too
• It turns out we remember things better when we
can use dual coding (when information is
encoded both as visual imagery and as verbal
imagery)

THE PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE -

LEVELS OF PROCESSING FRAMEWORK

• Craik and Lockhart (1972)

• Maintenance versus elaborative rehearsal
• Maintenance rehearsal – repetition of
prior analyses
• Elaborative rehearsal – additional
semantic analysis of the to-be-
remembered material
• Only means of enhancing long-term
memory

PROBLEMS WITH THE LOP VIEW

• Problem of measurement
 How to determine depth of
processing?
• How to measure elaboration or
distinctive processing?
• Demands of the task at retrieval (see
transfer-appropriate processing)
• Processing does not necessarily
proceed from structure to meaning
• Empirical challenges
 Positive versus negative trials
○ Better memory for congruent
items
 Elaboration – different levels and
types of elaboration lead to
different memory performance

○ Meaning influences earlier

processing
○ Simultaneous access to “levels”

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GLOSSARY

• Primary/short-term • Forgetting • Double dissociation

memory • Modality (specific) • Embedded Processes
• Secondary/long-term • Decay Model
memory • Interference • Hippocampus
• Multi-store model of • Articulatory suppression • Levels of Processing View
memory • Free recall task • Maintenance rehearsal
• Unitary store view of • Serial position curve • Elaborative rehearsal
memory • Primacy • Distinctive processing
• Encoding • Recency
• Storage • Phonology
• Retrieval • Memory span

5 MINUTE BREAK!

• It may help you remember this

stuff better…

THE STRUCTURE OF MEMORY II

Dr Tim Byron
tbyron@uow.edu.au
Consultations: email to setup a Zoom

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR THIS

LECTURE
• By the end of this lecture you should be able to:

• Define working memory and name the components

together with their function
• Relate research evidence to WM components
• Identify and give examples of the various types of
long-term memory
• Consider the implications of neuroimaging findings
for the conceptualisation of long-term memory

STRUCTURE OF THE STRUCTURE OF

MEMORY LECTURE
• The structure of working memory – the
phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad,
central executive, & episodic buffer
• The structure of long-term memory –
declarative vs procedural, semantic vs
episodic, etc

SHORT-TERM VS WORKING MEMORY

• Is the bit in-between the sensory registers and long-
term storage a short-term store of information or a
workspace where information can be manipulated?
• Examples of questions where you probably use
working memory:
• What’s (44 + 19)/(1.5 x 2) = ?
• If Amy hates Joe, Joe is indifferent to Jessica, Jason thinks
Amy is great, Layla loves Joe, and Jessica incorrectly thinks
Layla and Jason dislike each other, who best to invite to hang
out together, if you only get three people?

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THE SERIAL RECALL TASK

• Correct answers:

• LIST WORD TASK SHORT THINK ITEM PSYCH

• MAB WIV PUM DAS GUB ZIF POY

• CAT CORE CAN CON COT CANE CAR

THE SERIAL RECALL TASK

• Simple but powerful task: remember all the
presented items (usually words or numbers)
in order
• Where in the list errors are made, and what
errors are made, are informative
• Much verbal working memory research is
based on it

EVIDENCE THAT THEORIES OF STM

NEED TO EXPLAIN
• Phonological similarity effect (Baddeley, 1966)
• In serial recall tasks, all else being equal, we
remember the first list better:
• COW DAY BAR FEW HOT PEN SUP
• MAD MAT MAN CAP CAD CAN CAT

The mistakes we make on such

tasks are usually phonemic, and
so similar phonemic
information in the words we
have to remember leads to
errors

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EVIDENCE THAT THEORIES OF STM

NEED TO EXPLAIN
• Word length effect (Baddeley et al., 1975)
• In serial recall tasks, all else being equal, we
remember:
• Words with one syllable better than words with five
syllables (Experiment 1)
• Disyllable words with short vowels (e.g., wicket)
better than disyllable words with long vowels (e.g.,
harpoon) (Experiment 3 & 4)
• A linear relationship between reading rate and correct
recall (Experiment 6)

EVIDENCE THEORIES OF STM NEED TO EXPLAIN

• Evidence for different systems:
• a double dissociation between verbal
working memory and visuospatial working
memory (e.g., PV has verbal STM deficits but
not visual, others vice versa)
• Brooks (1968): had participants characterise
the corners in letter shapes as either inside
or outside OR say whether each word in a
sentence was a noun or not
• To answer, either a) point at answer or b) say
the answer

BROOKS (1968) AS EVIDENCE

• On the sentences task, it was faster to point

• On the corner-counting task, it was faster to
say it out aloud
• Much like the Stroop task: what interferes?
• Verbal output interferes with verbal memory,
spatial output interferes with spatial memory

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EVIDENCE SEPARATING THE VISUO- AND THE -SPATIAL

• Evidence for different systems

• Neuropsychological: a double dissociation between
visual working memory and spatial working memory
(Della Sala et al, 1999)
• Neuroscience: Visual tasks appear to be associated with
occipital and temporal lobes, spatial tasks with the
parietal lobe (Zimmer, 2008)
• Interference studies: spatial tasks interfere more with
other spatial tasks/visual tasks interfere more with other
visual tasks (Klauer & Zhao, 2004) but executive
processes also play a role (Vergauwe et al., 2009)

THE MULTI-COMPONENT MODEL OF WM

• Central executive is a controller which is
responsible for flexible processing
• Also involved in reasoning and language
comprehension
• Slave systems
• Phonological loop - stores speech-based
information
• Visuo-spatial sketchpad - stores visual/spatial
information, mental imagery
• Episodic buffer
• Multidimensional code – fed by information
from the slave systems, direct perception and
LTM
Baddeley (2012)
• (maybe) requires attention

THE PHONOLOGICAL LOOP

• Two subcomponents:
• Phonological store holds speech sounds for
a limited amount of time (roughly 1.8 to 2
seconds)
• Articulatory rehearsal process (subvocal
articulation)

Baddeley (2012)

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THE VISUO-SPATIAL SKETCHPAD

• Works with visual/spatial information
(where the phonological loop works with
verbal info)
• Logie & van der Meulen (2009):
• the visual cache (what) and the inner
scribe (where)

Baddeley (2012)

THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE

•Attentional control system
• selection of strategies, processes
• co-ordination of resources
• Miyake et al. (2000)
• Inhibition – e.g., Stroop task
• Shifting – switch between mental
sets
• Updating – changing the contents
of WM

THE EPISODIC BUFFER

The episodic buffer is assumed to be
responsible for
• The binding of modality-specific
information, LTM knowledge, and
perception into a memory episode
(multi-representational code)
We experience an event as seamless –
all components are integrated

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LONG-TERM MEMORY
• Includes what the average person thinks of
when they think of memory
• “What happened to you in April 2016?”
• “What’s the currency currently used by Japan?”
• But LTM also includes other situations where
there’s been encoding and storage in a way
where retrieval can be achieved
• Declarative memory: “knowing that”
• Non-declarative memory: “knowing how”

SQUIRE’S TAXONOMY OF LTM (2004)

MEMORY

DECLARATIVE NON-DECLARATIVE

SEMANTIC EPISODIC PROCEDURAL PRIMING AND SIMPLE NON-

(FACTS) (EVENTS) (SKILLS & PERCEPTUAL CLASSICAL ASSOCIATIVE
HABITS) LEARNING CONDITIONING LEARNING

emotional skeletal
responses responses
MEDIAL TEMPORAL STRIATUM NEOCORTEX REFLEX
LOBE & PATHWAYS
DIENCEPHALON
AMYGDALA CEREBELLUM

But this model is increasingly

seen as oversimplified (e.g.,
Cabeza & Moscovitch, 2013,
arguing for a component
process framework that’s more
flexible than this)

NON-DECLARATIVE MEMORY: E.G.,

PROCEDURAL MEMORY
• The skill to ride a bike is a memory too!
• This would be a procedural memory – you’ve
learned a procedure, but you probably can’t
declare exactly everything that goes into
riding a bike

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PROCEDURAL VS DECLARATIVE

EXPLICIT VS IMPLICIT MEMORY

• Explicit memory: we know it, and we are
aware of it
• Implicit memory: we know it but we are
unaware
• E.g., language: ‘the new season of the Mandalorian
comes out soon’ vs ‘the season comes new the of
Mandalorian soon out’

EPISODIC VS SEMANTIC MEMORY

• “Knowing when” vs “knowing that” (e.g., temporally
dated information, versus undated information)
• Are they actually separate structures?
• Served by similar brain regions (diencephalon, temporal lobe,
hippocampus)
• Similar kinds of information (and in fact, the lines between them
are a bit blurry)
• …but people with neuropsychological deficits with poor
semantic memory but good episodic memory (and vice versa)
• Interdependent? (more research needed!)

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DECLARATIVE LTM: EPISODIC MEMORY

• “Knowing when…”
• (‘What year did Morrison become PM?’)
• A temporal scaffold for structuring our
memories (and thus having more luck
retrieving events from our storage)

DECLARATIVE LTM: SEMANTIC MEMORY

• “Knowing what…”
• (e.g., what is the capital of Sweden?)
• You probably don’t remember when you learnt
that it was _________, so you’re not using the
temporal scaffolding of episodic memory to
remember that
• Episodic memory organised by time, semantic
memory organised by clusters of ideas

SIMILAR INFORMATION INTERFERES…

• Similarity between target information and
interfering material causes retroactive interference
(McGeoch & Macdonald (1931)

5 Retroactive interference: new

Mean number items

things interfere with old things

4
recalled

0
Synonyms Antonyms Unrelated Nonsense Numbers None
words syllables
Type of interfering material

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MASSED VERSUS DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE

• Glenberg (1979): repetitions improve (LTM
semantic) memory for items, but distributed
repetitions improve memory more than
clustered repetitions
• Seabrook et al. (2005): children who receive
distributed three 2 min lessons perform better
on a grapheme-phoneme correspondence test
than those who have one 6 min lesson
• You (2022): I’m better off distributing my study
or practice

RELATING CONCEPTS
• We don’t just have a list of ideas in semantic
memory – they relate to each other…
• …but how? PARK
FUR WALK
• Collins & Loftus (75): has
can
DOG
is a

BONE ANIMAL

DEESE-ROEDIGER-MCDERMOTT
PARADIGM
• You may have memories of this research
paradigm
• Ask people to remember a theme list of words
• …their answers commonly include central
concepts to that theme that weren’t in the list
• Explained by spreading activation in the Collins
and Loftus model

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BARSALOU (2009)
• ‘Situated simulation theory’: Concrete concepts
aren’t just encyclopaedia entries, but are based
around perceptual and motor systems (e.g., the
idea of ‘lick’ activates the part of the motor
cortex corresponding to the tongue – Hauk et al,
2004)
• What gets activated about the idea of, say, ‘light’
depends on how you relate to the light
• Abstract concepts too?

REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

• Does a memory we forget get deleted or do
we forget how to find it?
• Tulving and Pearlstone (1966): LTM recall is
better with category name cues
• Example…
• four-footed animals, weapons, crimes,
entertainment, food flavouring, professions

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REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING:

ENCODING SPECIFICITY
• Recall more effective with a cue: cues as the
key to unlock the door of recall
• Encoding specificity principle: a cue
facilitates recall only where info about its
relationship to the target item is stored when
the target item is stored
• Informational overlap + cue distinctiveness

REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING:

CONTEXT AS A CUE
• Godden & Baddeley (1975): people learned lists
of words either:
• On dry land OR
• Underwater (e.g., while scuba diving)
• They then had to remember those words either:
• On dry land OR
• Underwater
• Results?

BUT! Murre (2021) recently attempted to replicate

this research and found little difference between
groups… is it dodgy research?

• Participants recalled about 50% more information when learning and testing context was
the same
• No effect of context when recognition memory was tested

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GLOSSARY:
• Working memory
• Phonological loop
• Rehearsal loop
• Phonological short-term store
• Visuospatial sketchpad
• Visual cache
• Inner scribe
• Dual task methodology
• Central executive
• Inhibition
• Shifting
• Updating
• Episodic buffer
• Binding
• Homunculus
Declarative memory Semantic hierarchy
Non-declarative memory Superordinate category
Procedural memory Basic category
Anterograde amnesia Subordinate category
Retrograde amnesia Semantic network
Episodic memory Semantic distance
Semantic memory Spreading activation
Explicit memory/ tasks DRM paradigm
Implicit memory/ tasks False memory
Retroactive interference Process-based account of LTM
Proactive interference
Release from proactive interference
Massed practice versus distributed practice

READING
• Readings:

• EYSENCK & KEANE (2020). Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s

Handbook. Eighth Edition.
• Chapter 6: pp. 239-265
• Chapter 7: pp. 296-343
• (If you have the 2015 edition, the chapter numbers are the
same as the 2020 edition, and the Chapter 6 readings are
everything up until the 'Learning Through Retrieval' section,
while Chapter 7 is just the entire chapter)
• Read the textbook!

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