What is semantic memory?
- Non-contextual
- Abstract
- Non-autobiographical
- Identifying objects, interpret speech, recognise situations
What is episodic memory?
- Context-sensitive
- Personal
- Autobiographical
- Remember plot, prior actions of characters
What is short-term (working memory)
- Memory used for current actions - duration of several seconds or minutes
What is long-term memory?
Information in a more permanent store that must be retrieved for use
What is the serial position curve?
- When someone is presented with a list of words.
- You remember the most at the beginning and end of the list
- You remember the least words in the middle of the list
- It shows a distinction between long and short term memory
What is the primacy effect?
It reflects the transfer of items to long-term memory
What is the recency effect?
It is found in later list items that are still “fresh” in WM
How can you eliminate the recency effect?
- By making participants do a task before recalling the list (e.g. counting backward by 3’s from 100)
The recency effect is gone but not the primacy effect
What are differences between LT and ST memory?
STM has low capacity
Forgetting is due to decay interference from later and prior items
STM is highly sensitive to the order of item presentation
What are the 3 components in the modal model?
- Sensory memory
- STM
- LTM
In the modal model, what does sensory memory do?
- Handle initial sensory analysis
- Modality specific - one for vision, touch, sound
- High capacity, but material decays quickly unless moved to STM store
What does STM store do in the modal model?
- Holds in memory what is needed for current actions
- Control processes involved in rehearsal, coding (chunking), decision, and retrieval strategies
What does the LTM store do in the modal model?
- Vast capacity, long-term retention
- Supports short term store (identify words, objects)
How do items go from STM to LTM?
- Rehearsal keeps material in STM
- Material that is in STM long enough gradually gets transferred to LTM
What are criticisms of the modal model?
- Should the sensory systems be considered ‘memory’ processes?
- Rehearsal isn’t what gets material into LTM (depth of processing research)
- There is a more complex interplay between STM and LTM
What are contributions to the modal model?
- The idea that memory behavior is due to the properties of different stores or systems (information processing) remains influential
- Influenced the development of the most influential account of STM
What happens in a typical task for LTM?
- Study phase
- Retention interval
Then there will either be a recall or recognition test
What are some episodic memory experiments?
Materials- nonsense words, faces or pictures without and without verbal labels
Item vs relational- study single items and test associations between words and pictures. Cues are not provided
What are some recall tasks?
Free recall- Participants produce words in any order that they wish, until they cannot recall anymore
Serial recall- Produce the words in the order that they were studied
Cued recall- A cue is provided for each word on the study list which makes recall easier
What is an explicit memory test?
- Participants are told that they should retrieve items that occurred in the study phase
- When P’s do the test, they deliberately and intentionally try to remember just this memory episode
- In case of reduced memory function (brain injury) P’s often perform very poorly in explicit tests
What happens in implicit memory tests?
These are tests in which P’s are asked to identify items or give the first thing that comes to mind
- effects of study on memory can be seen
- P’s with reduced memory function may perform well on implicit tests
