what does WM do regarding diff sets of instructions?
keeps them all alive in our mind until we have been and done them
- keeps track of where we are in the list
what is WM? Baddeley def
system for the temporary maintenance and manipulation of information, necessary for the performance of such complex cognitive activities as comprehension, learning, and reasoning
what are the key aspects of WM?
maintenance - keeps info stored somewhere
manipulation - w/o it is STM rather than WM
what is the multicomponent model? (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974)
VSS, PL, EB, CE
what does the episodic buffer do?
integrates info – links between info – names and faces, can integrate chunks together so that LTM is better
what does the Central Executive do?
attention, focus, ability to shift between things – what it is and what its doing is still slightly unknown
what is the embedded process model? (Cowan, 1999)
CE, LTM, activated portion of LTM, focus of attention
activated = STM - what we do something with
focus = how our WM is working
- all overseen by CE
what is wrong about Miller’s magic number regarding capacity?
7 +/-2
BUT we can recite a phone num - 11 digits - when we chunk it, it only occupies 3 units of space in memory
- we chunk info together into a unit
- capacity = 3/4 units of info
at what age does a child have the same basic structure of capacity as adults?
5
what are temporal restrictions?
- before rehearsal will only last 20 secs before its gone
- decays slowly
- starts to decay after 2-3 secs
- need to use techniques like rehearsal to reset that clock
what part of the brain is involved in delay tasks?
lateral PFC
- correlates with the accuracy of the response
- magnitude correlated pos with the decay happened afterwards - maintained location
what is active when parts recall faces?
FFA
what is active when parts recall houses?
parahippocampal gyrus
how can we alter the activation?
depends on the instruction given
what did Blokland et al study? (2011)
whether WM was heritable
- n back
- sequence of screens and had to say whether the stimulus now matches what you saw n ago
- looked at correlations in activation between MZ and DZ twins - stronger in MZ than DZ
what are the test retest correlations Blokland et al did?
we can pick out how much is due to measuring error – showed that the non genetic influence is mostly due to an environmental error
what did Dumontheil et al study? (2011)
genetic diffs/ changes to WM
- met allele associated with better performance on WM tasks and reduced PFC activity
- dot matrix task - when have a blank screen need to recall in order seen in
what did Dumontheil et al show?
those with met/met alleles initially performed worse on WM tasks but by adolescence did better
what did Young study? (2017)
environmental influence
- impact of growing up in an unpredictable environment
- Unpredictable environment has pos effects on those parts of memory which are used in unstable environments
what did Young find in experiment 1?
those in a predictable environment their updating was worse in the uncertain condition
what did Young find regarding a retrieval task?
those who grew up in a predictable environment were better at recall in an unpredictable environment – if grew up in a unpredictable environment they did worse
what did Young find regarding capacity?
higher childhood unpredictability had sig decrease in WM capacity under uncertain conditions
what did Mooney et al find regarding SES? (2021)
Doesn’t matter what kind of WM we are assessing – lower working memory scores from lower SES – storage and processing
what did Leonard et al find regarding SES and brain areas? (2015)
Higher SES – higher vol in hippocampal vol and DLPFC
Lower SES – reduced complex WM span
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lecture 1 - intro to cognition and intelligence23
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lecture 2 - measures of Individual Differences28
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lecture 3 - intelligence and cognition28
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lecture 4 - Working Memory32
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lecture 5 - inhibition and task switching23
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lecture 6 - personality - extroversion and neuroticism26
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lecture 7 - personality 226
