Chapter 7

7.3 Memory : Meaning and Models

a) The Atkinson and Shiffrin Model
b) Tulving’s Model: Episodic, Semantic and Procedural
c) The levels of Processing Approach
d) The Parallel Distributed Processing Approach.
 Memory
• Place? Process?
– memory is a process + a place in the brain
• Definition?
– memory is an active system that receives information
from the senses, puts that information into a usable
form, organizes it as it stores it away, and then
retrieves the information from storage
• adapted from Baddeley, 1996, 2003
– Memory is the means by which we retain and draw on
our past experiences to use that information in the
present
• Tulvig, 2000
 Three Processes Of Memory

Encoding Storage Retrieval

• Encoding
– getting sensory information (sight, sound, etc.) into a
form that the brain can use
– set of mental operations that people perform on
sensory information to convert that information into a
form that is usable in the brain’s storage systems
• not limited to turning sensory information into signals for
the brain
– Encoding is accomplished differently in each of three
different storage systems of memory.
• rehearsing information or elaborating on the meaning
• Storage
– hold on to the information for some period of
time
– The period of time will actually be of different
lengths, depending on the system of memory
being used
• 20secs or permanent
• Retrieval
– getting the information they know they have out
of storage
– When required
 Models Of Memory
• The Traditional Model of Memory
– William James
– Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin
– Sperling
• The Levels-of-Processing Model
– Craik and Lockhart
• Integrative model: Working Memory
– Baddeley
• Multiple Memory Systems
– Tulving’s Model: Episodic, Semantic and Procedural
• Connectionist Perspective
 Traditional Model of Memory
• William James
– distinguished two structures of memory
• 1) Primary memory
– holds temporary information currently in use
• 2) Secondary memory
– holds information permanently or at least for a very long time
• Atkinson & Shiffrin Model
– three memory stores
• 1) sensory store
– capable of storing relatively limited amounts of information for
very brief periods
• 2) short-term store
– capable of storing information for somewhat longer periods but
of relatively limited capacity as well
• 3) long-term store
– very large capacity, capable of storing information for very long
periods, perhaps even indefinitely
– differentiates among structures for holding
information
• Stores
– differentiates among information stored in the
structures
• Memory
– three stores are not distinct physiological
structures
• the stores are hypothetical constructs— concepts that
are not themselves directly measurable or observable
but that serve as mental models for understanding how
a psychological phenomenon works
– emphasizes the passive storage areas in which
memories are stored
– also alludes to some control processes that govern
the transfer of information from one store to
another
– Sensory Store
• initial repository of much information that eventually enters
the short- and long-term stores
• iconic store
– Discrete visual sensory register that holds information for very
short periods
– information is stored in the form of icons
– Visual images that represent something
» usually resemble whatever is being represented
– George Sperling
• how much information we can encode in a single, brief
glance at a set of stimuli
• Research
– flashed an array of letters and numbers on a screen for a mere 50
milliseconds
– report the identity and location of as many of the symbols as they
could recall - remembered only about four symbols
» regardless of how many symbols had been in the visual
display
• Some participants mentioned that they had seen all the stimuli clearly.
But while reporting what they saw, they forgot the other stimuli
• Developed 2 procedures
– Whole-report procedure
» report every symbol they have seen
» three rows of four symbols each
– partial-report procedure
» report only part of what they see
» recall only a single row of the display
» row to be recalled was signaled by a tone of high, medium, or low pitch
corresponding to the top, middle, or bottom row, respectively
• To estimate the duration of iconic memory
– IV - interval between the display and the tone
– 0.10 seconds before the onset of the display to 1.0 second after the offset of
the display
• Conclusion
– immediately before or immediately after the appearance of the display
» 9 of the 12 symbols
– 1 sec later
» 4 or 5 of the 12 items (same as whole-report procedure)
– Iconic store can hold about 9 items
– information in this store decays very rapidly
– we are unable to distinguish what we see in iconic memory from what we
actually see in the environment.
» What we see in iconic memory is what we take to be in the
environment
– Refinements of Sperling’s experiment
• Experiment 1 (Averbach & Coriell, 1961)
– a small mark appeared just above one of the positions where
a letter had appeared (or was about to appear)
– at varying time intervals before or after presentation of the
letters
– report only a single letter at a time (minimized output
interference)
– Conclusions
» when the mark appeared immediately before or after the
stimulus display, participants could report accurately on
about 75% of the trials
» holding 12 items (75% of 16) in sensory memory
» when output interference is greatly reduced, the
estimates of the capacity of iconic memory may greatly
increase
• Experiment 2 - Averbach & Coriell, 1961
– when a stimulus was presented after a target letter in the
same position that the target letter had occupied, it could
erase the visual icon
– backward visual masking
» mental erasure of a stimulus caused by the placement of
one stimulus where another one had appeared previously
– If the mask stimulus is presented in the same location as a
letter and within 100 milliseconds of the presentation of the
letter, the mask is superimposed on the letter
» F followed by L would be E
– At longer intervals between the target and the mask, the mask
erases the original stimulus
– At still longer intervals between the target and the mask, the
mask no longer interferes
» because the target information already has been
transferred to more durable memory storage
• Visual information appears to enter our memory system through an
iconic store
• Store holds visual information for very short periods
• What can happen with this information
• 1) may be transferred to another store
• 2) may be erased
• Erasure occurs if other information is superimposed on it before
there is sufficient time for the transfer of the information to another
memory store
– Short-Term Store (STM)
• holds memories for a few seconds and occasionally up to a couple
of minutes (temporary storage)
• According to the Atkinson-Shiffrin model, the short-term store
– holds onto a few items +
– control processes > regulate the flow of information to and from the
long-term store
– Remains in the STM for 30 seconds, unless it is rehearsed to retain it
– stored acoustically (hearing)
• STM (immediate memory) capacity
– 7 +/- 2
– Chunking
• Factors influencing capacity
– number of syllables we pronounce with each item
» When each item has a larger number of syllables, we can recall
fewer items
– any delay or interference
» 7 item capacity drops to 3 items
• Experiment for visual capacity of STM
– Vogel, Woodman, & Luck, 2001
– presented experimental participants with two visual displays
(with same kind of stimuli) in sequence
– Stimuli 3 types
» colored squares
» black lines at varying orientations
» colored lines at different orientations
– The two displays could be either the same or different from
each other. If they were different, then it was by only one
feature. The participants needed to indicate whether the two
displays were the same or different.
– Conclusion
» Hold 4 items
» storage depends on numbers of objects rather than
numbers of features
– Long Term Store (LTM)
• memories that stay with us over long periods, perhaps indefinitely
• people’s names, where we keep things, how we schedule
ourselves on different days
• How much information can we hold in long-term memory? How
long does the information last?
– we do not know how to test the limits of long-term memory and thereby
find out its capacity
• Wilder Penfield
– operations on the brains of conscious patients afflicted with epilepsy
– memories from childhood
• Bahrick, Bahrick, & Wittlinger
– memory for names and photographs of their high-school classmates 25
years later
– Participants tended to recognize names as belonging to classmates rather
than to outsiders
– Recognition VS recall
• Bahrick & Hall
– Permastore
» very long-term storage of information
» knowledge of a foreign language
• Schmidt and colleagues, 2001
– studied the permastore effect for names of streets near one’s
childhood homes
– permastore can occur even for information that you have
passively learned
 The Levels-of-Processing Model
• memory does not comprise three or even any specific
number of separate stores, but rather varies along a
continuous dimension in terms of depth of encoding
• Theoretically there are an infinite number of levels of
processing (LOP) at which items can be encoded through
elaboration
– or successively deeper understanding of material to be learned
• no distinct boundaries between one level and the next
emphasis in this model is on processing as the key to
storage
– level at which information is stored will depend, in large part, on
how it is encoded
– the deeper the level of processing, the higher is the probability
that an item may be retrieved
• Experiment 1 (Craig & Tulvig, 1975)
– Participants received a list of words
– A question preceded each word
• Questions were varied to encourage item elaboration
on three different levels of processing
• physical, phonological, and semantic
– The deeper the level of processing encouraged by
the question, the higher the level of recall
achieved
• Experiment 2 (Melinda Burgess and George
Weaver, 2003)
– levels-of-processing framework applied to
nonverbal stimuli
– showed participants photos of faces and asked
them questions about the persons of the photo to
induce either deep or shallow processing
• Faces - deeply processed were better recognized on a
subsequent test than those that were studied at a
lower level of processing
• Experiment 3 (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977)
– self-reference effect
• participants show very high levels of recall when asked
to relate words meaningfully to the participants by
determining whether the words describe them
• Even the words that participants assess as not
describing themselves are recalled at high levels
• highest levels of recall occur with words that people
consider self descriptive

• Objects can be better remembered, for

example, if they belong to the participant
(Cunningham et al., 2008)
• Distinctive phenomenon or explained by LOP?
– each of us has a very elaborate self-schema
• self-schema is an organized system of internal cues
regarding our attributes, our personal experiences, and
ourselves
– we can richly and elaborately encode information
related to ourselves
• Critics of LOP framework
– particular levels may involve a circular definition
• the levels are defined as deeper because the
information is retained better
– paradoxes in retention
• strategies that use rhymes have produced better
retention than those using just semantic rehearsal
– Focusing on superficial sounds can result in better retention
than focusing on repetition of underlying meanings
– Acoustic Vs Semantic encoding & retrieval
• Performance is greater for semantic retrieval than for
acoustic retrieval
• Revised LOP
– The sequence of the levels of encoding may not be as
important as was thought before
– 2 variables
• 1) the way people process (elaborate) the encoding of an
item (e.g., phonological or semantic)
• 2) the way the item is retrieved later on
– The better the match between the type of elaboration
of the encoding and the type of task required for
retrieval, the better the retrieval results
– 2 kinds of strategies for elaborating the encoding
• 1) within-item elaboration
– encoding of the particular item (e.g., a word or other fact) in
terms of its characteristics, including the various levels of
processing
• 2) between-item elaboration
– elaborates encoding by relating each item’s features (again, at
various levels) to the features of items already in memory
 An Integrative Model: Working
Memory
• most widely used and accepted model
• Working memory
– holds only the most recently activated, or
conscious, portion of long-term memory, and it
moves these activated elements into and out of
brief, temporary memory storage
• The Components of Working Memory
– Alan Baddeley
– synthesizes the working-memory model with the LOP
framework
– five elements
• 1)The visuospatial sketchpad
– briefly holds some visual images
• 2)the phonological loop
– holds inner speech for verbal comprehension and for acoustic
rehearsal
– sounding out new and difficult words
– phonological storage
» Holds information in memory
– subvocal rehearsal
» used to put the information into memory in the first place
Tree, pencil, marshmallow, lamp, sunglasses, computer, chocolate, noise,
clock, snow, river, square, store.
 – articulatory suppression - When subvocal rehearsal is inhibited,
the new information is not stored
– amount of information that can be manipulated within the
phonological loop is limited
– Without this loop, acoustic information decays after about 2
seconds
• 3)the central executive
– coordinates attentional activities and governs responses
– gating mechanism that decides what information to process
further and how to process this information
– what resources to allocate to memory and related tasks, and how
to allocate them
– involved in higher-order reasoning and comprehension and is
central to human intelligence
• 4)subsidiary “slave systems”
– Perform other cognitive or perceptual tasks
• 5)the episodic buffer
– capable of binding information from the visuospatial sketchpad
and the phonological loop as well as from long-term memory into
a unitary episodic representation
– incorporation allows us to solve problems and re-evaluate
previous experiences with more recent knowledge
– Neuroscience
• PET techniques
– phonological loop
» activation in the left hemisphere of the lateral frontal and
inferior parietal lobes as well as the temporal lobe
– visuospatial sketchpad
» Which areas activate depends on factors like task
difficulty and the length of the retention interval
» Shorter intervals - areas of the occipital and right frontal
lobes
» Longer intervals - parietal and left frontal lobes
– central executive
» activation mostly in the frontal lobes
– episodic buffer
» bilateral activation of the frontal lobes and portions of
the temporal lobes, including the left hippocampus
 Multiple Memory Systems - Tulvig
• distinction between two kinds of explicit memory
– Semantic memory
• stores general world knowledge
• memory for facts that are not unique to us
• not recalled in any particular temporal context
– Episodic memory
• stores personally experienced events or episodes
• we use episodic memory when we learn lists of words or
when we need to recall something that occurred to us at a
particular time or in a particular context
 – lesions in the frontal lobe appear to affect
recollection regarding when a stimulus was
presented
– But they do not affect recall or recognition
memory that a particular stimulus was presented
• A person with semantic memory loss may
have trouble remembering what date it is or
who the current president is
• A person with episodic memory loss cannot
remember personal events like where she met
her spouse for the first time
• neuroscientific model called HERA
(hemispheric encoding/retrieval asymmetry)
– attempts to account for differences in hemispheric
activation for semantic versus episodic memories
• greater activation in the left than in the right prefrontal
hemisphere for tasks requiring retrieval from semantic
memory
• more activation in the right than in the left prefrontal
hemisphere for episodic retrieval tasks
• Non-declarative memory
– Memory for skills
– knowledge of how to tie their shoes
– also include emotional associations, habits, and
simple conditioned reflexes that may or may not
be in conscious awareness, which are often very
strong memories
• Amygdala - for emotional associations
• Cerebellum in the hind-brain - responsible for storage
of memories of conditioned responses, skills, and
habits
• Homework
– Different kinds of memory loss
– What kinds of diseases are associated with memory loss?
– Terms that need to be known
• Flashbulb memory
• Misinformation effect
• False memory syndrome
• Hindsight bias
• Recall Vs. Recognition
– Serial positioning effect
– Primacy effect
– Recency effect
• Mnemonists
 The Parallel Distributed Processing
Approach
• provides the structural basis for the connectionist
parallel distributed processing (PDP) model
• key to knowledge representation lies in the
connections among various nodes, or elements,
stored in memory, not in each individual node
– Activation of one node may prompt activation of a
connected node
– This process of spreading activation may prompt the
activation of additional nodes
– activation spreads through nodes within the network
• not exceeding the limits of working memory
• A prime is a node that activates a connected
node
– priming effect is the resulting activation of the node
• Working memory comprises the activated portion
of long-term memory and operates through at
least some amount of parallel processing
– Spreading activation involves the simultaneous
(parallel) activation (priming) of multiple links among
nodes within the network
• involves simultaneous processing of multiple
operations