University of Leicester
Year 1 Psychology
Learning and Memory
Professor Graham Davies
Lecture 4
Copies of Overheads
Working Memory and Levels of
Processing
Varieties of Amnesia
• anterograde amnesia – inability to learn information
subsequent to accident (some stroke victims)
• retrograde amnesia – inability to remember prior to
accident (concussion)
• classic case of anterograde amnesia: HM (Milner,
1966)
-
Good memory for events prior to operation
But little or no recall for subsequent events
Support for the modal model from
anterograde amnesia
• Normal memory span but grossly defective
superspan (Drachman & Arbit, 1966)
• Normal recency effect but greatly reduced
primacy effect (Baddeley & Warrington,
1970)
Refutation of the modal
model from later studies
• Anterograde amnesia patients can learn
motorskills (jigsaw puzzles) and even verbal
material with prompting (Warrington &
Weizkrantz, 1970)
• Some aphasic patients show grossly
defective STM but relative intact LTM
(Shallice & Warrington, 1970) “double
disassociation”
More generalised criticism of the Modal Model:
Levels of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972)
• Pre-occupation with structure at the expense of process
• Memory as a bi-product of processing rather than a deliberate act
• Pre-occupation with rehearsal at the expense of other control
processes
• How a stimulus is processed determines recall as much as the
stimulus itself (Craik & Tulving, 1975)
‘Short-term memory’ not a passive state but the centre of
the cognitive system
The ‘Working Memory’ Approach
(Baddeley, 1986)
• If all information goes through short-term memory, then
filling STM with irrelevant material should seriously impair
cognitive function
• Simultaneous rehearsal of 3 digits does not impair free
recall, 6 digits does (the ‘dual task’ approach) Baddeley &
Hitch, 1974)
• Modular approach to memory
- The central executive
- The phonological loop
- The visual sketchpad
Testing working memory with dual
tasks
• ‘Knock out’ phonological loop (‘one,two, three..’)
and the normal superiority of single (‘sum’) to multisyllable (‘university’) words is lost (Baddeley et al.
1975)
• ‘Knock out’ sketchpad (simultaneous tracking_
and the normal effectiveness of imagery – based
mnemonics is lost (Baddeley & Lieberman, 1980)
• Working memory approach used profitably in
understanding retrograde amnesia, dyslexia,
vocabulary development and mental arithmetic – a
simple but versatile idea.