PSY 368 Human
Memory
Working Memory cont.
Demos and reviews
Baddeley’s Model
Visual scribe
Articulatory
Control
Phonological Loop
• Two parts: Phonological Store (PS) and
Articulatory Control Process (ACP)
• PS - stores auditory info for 1-2 s and then it starts to decay
• ACP - recodes visual info into auditory code for storage and
controls rehearsal
• 4 Main Effects in Serial Recall Task to account for
•
•
•
•
Phonological similarity effect
Articulatory suppression effect
Irrelevant speech effect
Word length effect
Phonological Loop
• Demos
Listen to list,
recall words in
order
Rhinoceros
Zinc
Gorilla
Tuberculosis
Measles
Calcium
Uranium
Carbon
Hippopotamus
Mumps
Listen to list,
Listen to list,
recall words in recall words in
order
order, while I
read the words
say ‘the’ aloud
Planet
Musician
Land
Property
Trumpet
House
Star
Comet
Orchestra
Moon
Bronze
Book
Magazine
Bike
Copper
Dress
Copier
Soda
Shoe
Rock
Listen to list,
recall words in
order, while I
read the words
say ‘the’ aloud
Block
Brick
Stick
Blue
Chew
Trick
Prick
Clue
Click
Blimp
Read list, recall
words in order,
while I read the
words say ‘the’
aloud
Gold
Code
Bold
Hold
Told
Cold
Mode
Slowed
Hope
Goad
Phonological Loop
• Phonological Similarity Effect
• Memory worse for items that
sound alike than those that look
alike or have similar meanings
• Visual items are recoded to
auditory for storage and rehearsal
by ACP
• Works for both auditory
presentation and visual
presentation of the letters.
e.g., Baddeley (1966)
• List 1 (Easy to remember/dissimilar
phonology and semantics):
• PIT, DAY, COW, PEN, HOT
• List 2 (Only slightly harder than List
#1/similar semantics) :
• HUGE, WIDE, BIG, LONG,
TALL
• List 3 (Much harder than List
#1/similar phonology) :
• CAT, MAP, MAN, CAP, MAD
• What happens if you prevent the recoding of visual
information into auditory information?
Phonological Loop
• Articulatory Suppression Effect
• Engaging in an auditory task after study removes phonological
similarity effect for visual items
• Procedure: Say “the” aloud over and over
• No re-coding of visual info by ACP
• Phonological info gets in directly, doesn’t need re-coding
Auditory presentation: PGTCD
(similar sounding) harder to recall
than RHXKW (different sounding)
Visual presentation: PGTCD
(similar sounding) recalled equally as
RHXKW (different sounding)
No re-coding, so no chance for similar
sounds to interfere
Peterson & Johnson (1971)
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
With suppression
Dissimilar
Similar
Visual
Auditory
Item Type
Phonological Loop
• Irrelevant Speech Effect
• Background speech presented during study decreases memory for
visual items
Salame & Baddeley (1982)
9
67
83
2
‘one’ ‘four’ ‘five’ Semantically similar
‘tun’ ‘sore’ ‘fate’ Phonologically similar
‘tennis’ ‘double’ Phonologically different
Quiet control
Phonological Loop
• Irrelevant Speech Effect
• Background speech presented during study decreases memory for
visual items
Salame & Baddeley (1982)
• Amount of disruption is determined by
phonological similarity
• In other experiments
• showed no word-length effect for irrelevant
speech
• If rehearsal is prevented, irrelevant speech
effect disappeared
Conclusions:
• Irrelevant speech interferes with recoding of visual info to auditory
Phonological Loop
• Word-length Effect
Baddeley, Thomson, and Buchanan
(1975)
Results
• Recall decreases as the length
of time it takes to say a word
increases.
• Rehearsal takes longer for
longer words - can’t rehearse
as many times
• Retrieval from PS also takes longer due to auditory coding of items
• Reading rate correlated with memory ability
• Digit span depends on language - how long it takes to say numbers
Baddeley’s Model
• Potential Problems with the model
• Some of the supportive results can’t be replicated
(e.g., irrelevant speech effect)
• Model can’t explain all results:
• why word-length effect is larger for visual than auditory items
• why it differs based on serial list position
• Why some effects persist after extended delays (e.g., 5 mins)
• Model is not precise in explanation of effects
Cowan’s Activation Model
• Cowan (1999)
• WM = info that is
currently highly activated
from STM or LTM
• Focus of attention
• Emphasizes attention’s role in
activation
• Activation of info when
attention is oriented to it
• Activation will decay to
cause loss of info from WM
(also interference)
WM
STM
Cowan’s Activation Model
• Central Executive
• Focuses attention and other
control processes
• Capacity of about 4 chunks
• Duration of 20s without
reactivation
• STM
• activated items that are
just outside of attention passive store
• Things within attentional
focus are available to
consciousness
WM
STM
Cowan’s Activation Model
• Potential problems with the model
• Only general descriptions so specific predictions are
hard to make
• Activation is not operationally defined very well when is something is “activated”?
• What causes decay? Passage of time isn’t causal
Nairne’s Feature Model
• Items represented in WM as individual features
(e.g., color, length, etc.)
• Features indicate
• presentation info (e.g., font, size, gender of voice, etc.)
• meaning info (e.g., what the item means, category, etc.)
• Stays the same regardless of presentation
• Features represented by -1 or +1 when studied
(yes or no for a feature, 0 if no info for feature)
• Interference: Later items with same features
overwrite feature info for previous items
Nairne’s Feature Model
Bold
Lower Upper Blue
SCHOOL +1
-1
+1
-1
+1
+1
-1
-1
fish
• “fish” presented after “SCHOOL”
- features in common can be overwritten - SCHOOL
can become 0, -1, +1, 0
- interference
During retrieval, item features are compared with items in
memory - lost features can be updated and restored
Nairne’s Feature Model
• Quantitative model - numerical predictions are
possible - can simulate data to generate
predictions for studies
• Simulations show that model can predict:
1) Recency effect
2) Suffix effect
3) Phonological similarity effect
4) Word length effect
Summary of WM
(1) Focus on processing (vs. storage)
(2) Three main modern models
-
Baddeley model
-
-
Central executive controls VS, PL, EB
Cowan activation model
-
-
WM = attention focus, STM = activated
Nairne feature model (quatitative)
-
Items coded as features with overwriting interference
Exam 1 review
Chapters 1-4
Ebbinhaus and forgetting curve
Seven Sins of Memory
Review of research methods
Modal systems theory(ies) of
memory
Sensory memory
Iconic and echoic
Partial report task
Short term memory
Chunking
Serial and free recall
Recency and primacy
Working memory
Baddeley’s model
Phonological loop
Episodic buffer
Visuo-spatial buffer
Cowan’s model
Nairne’s model
Duration, capacity, encoding,
retrieval from the different memory
systems
Various Effects (suffix, modality, etc.)
Identify the “classic experiments &
researchers”