Attention
• System interrupt attracted by alternative stimuli (dog
in street)
• Conscious reallocation device
• Attention as limited resource
• Attention as bottleneck
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Cocktail party effect : Colin Cherry
Filter theory: Donald Broadbent
Attenuation theory: Anne Triesman
Late selection theory: Donald MacKay (pennies)
Spotlight model: Michael Posner
Memory: Central to the Self
• Early work of Ebbinghaus
– Methodology (recall, recognition, savings)
– Time course of loss
– Overlearning
• Serial position effect and its
implications: a multi-store model of
memory
Conclusion: a multi-store
model of memory
• The serial position results suggest a
separation of a short term and a long
term store or component of memory
• But there may be more!
Sperling: Sensory Storage
(iconic memory)
• Whole vs partial report
• Rapid decay
• Backward masking
H Z R B
P D S C
K V M W
G T X Y
N Q D P
C M L W
M B W X
Q V P T
N Z Y G
R Y D N
V B Q Z
G L S K
W P G D
B Q T C
K G N V
Sperling exper. Whole vs Partial Report
Delay of tone--fast decay
Summary: Iconic Memory
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Capacity: Very large
Duration: Very short
Transfer: Readout to STM
Loss: Phenomenon of backward
masking (and its necessity!)
A Multi-store model of memory
• Benefits and limitations
• First memory: sensory store
• Next: Short term memory
Short term memory
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Current contents of memory
Fundamental bottleneck in processing
Multiple interpretations
Capacity
Duration
Transfer
Loss
Basic Operations of STM
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How things enter it
How things stay in it.
How we search for things within it.
How things leave it
Peterson & Peterson: Decay
Waugh & Norman: Interference
Sternberg: Memory scanning
STM-WM (an alternative view)
• Another way of looking at it (STM vs Working
Memory) (Baddeley)
• The "bottleneck" issue and an example or
two.
• Beating the limits--the work of Chase and
Ericcsson: chunks & retrieval structures.
• Finally, how do things move on--elaborative
rehearsal
Baddeley: Model of
Working Memory
Chase, Ericcsson & Staszewski: Retrieval Structures