Solution Manual for Cognition, 6/E Mark H.

Ashcraft
Gabriel A. Radvansky

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Solution Manual for Cognition, 6/E Mark H. Ashcraft Gabriel A. Radvansky

Instructor’s Manual Cognition, 6th ed. Radvansky/Ashcraft

Chapter 5: Short-Term Working Memory

5.0 Chapter Overview

Brief duration memory effects, the working memory model, and the larger role of working memory
cognition.

5.1 Chapter Contents

Short-Term Memory: A Limited-Capacity Bottleneck
• Short-Term Memory Capacity
• Forgetting from Short-Term Memory
STM Retrieval
• Serial Position Effects
• Short-Term Memory Scanning: The Sternberg Task
Working Memory
• The Components of Working Memory
• The Central Executive
• The Phonological Loop
• The Visuospatial Sketchpad
• The Episodic Buffer
Assessing Working Memory
• Dual-Task Method
• Working Memory Span
The Impact of Working Memory in Cognition
• Working Memory and Attention
• Working Memory and Long-Term Memory
• Working Memory and Reasoning
• Sometimes Small Working Memory Spans Are Better
• Overview

5.2 Chapter Summary

Short-term or working memory is an intermediate memory system between the sensory memories and long-
term memory. Its capacity for holding information is severely limited, on most accounts to only 7 +/– 2 units of
information. The process of recoding and chunking—grouping more information into a single unit—is the
means of overcoming this limitation or bottleneck in the information-processing system.
Whereas decay as an explanation of forgetting from short-term memory is logically possible, most of the
research implicates a process of interference or competition as the reason for short-term forgetting. With an
attention-consuming distractor task, such as counting backward by threes, even a very simple stimulus can be
lost from short-term memory. The research suggests that this loss is a product of two kinds of interference:
retroactive interference from the distractor task and proactive interference from multiple trials on the same kind
of material.
Serial position curves reveal the operation of two kinds of memory performance. Early positions in a to-be-
recalled list are sensitive to deliberate rehearsal that transfers information into long-term memory, whereas later
positions tend to be recalled with high accuracy in the free recall task; this latter effect is called the recency
effect and is due to the strategy of recalling the most recent items first. Asking people to perform some
distractor task before recall usually eliminates the recency effect because the distractor task prevents people
from maintaining the most recent items in immediate memory. The rehearsal that is necessary to transfer
information into long-term memory is a short-term, working memory activity.
Sternberg’s paradigm, short-term memory scanning, provides a technique for investigating the way in
which we search through information held in short-term memory. Sternberg’s results indicated that this search
is accomplished in a serial exhaustive fashion at a rate of about 38 ms per item to be scanned or searched. The
Sternberg task illustrates ways in which the short-term memory search processes of different kinds of people
(children, adults, people under the influence of drugs) might be investigated and how other kinds of memory
search processes might be studied (e.g., long-term memory).

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Instructor’s Manual Cognition, 6th ed. Radvansky/Ashcraft

Working memory consists of a central executive system, a phonological loop, a visuospatial sketchpad, and
an episodic buffer. These different parts of the working memory system have been attributed to different
regions of the brain. The central executive is the main control center for working memory, and regulates the
control and flow of information. The most commonly investigated subsystem is the phonological loop, the
system responsible for memory span performance. Baddeley’s results suggest that when the memory span task
is difficult, the phonological loop can drain off mental resources from the central executive. When this happens,
the task being performed by the executive suffers in speed or accuracy. The same arrangement applies to the
visuospatial sketchpad. The episodic buffer is primarily used to integrate information from the various
modalities, as well as from long-term memory.
There are two main strategies for assessing working memory. One is to use a dual-task method in which
people are given two tasks, and the researcher assesses the impact of one on the other. An alternative strategy is
to test participants’ working memory span, and to then examine difference in cognitive performance as a
function of their span (e.g., high vs. low span).
This approach has revealed a substantial number of tasks that show a strong relationship between span and
performance. The implication of these results is that working memory span assesses an individual’s controlled
attention processes, which are significant aspects of one’s performance all the way from selective attention tasks
up through reading comprehension.

5.3 Key Terms

Articulatory Loop: a sub-part of the phonological loop used for actively rehearsing verbal information. (p.
155)
Articulatory Suppression Effect: the finding that people find it difficult to maintain verbal information in
working memory if they have some source of verbal interference, even if it is just repeating the same
simple word over and over again. (p. 155)
Boundary Extension: the finding that people tend to misremember there being more to an image than what
they actually experienced, as if they are mentally extending the boundaries out. (p. 159)
Brown-Peterson Task: a short-term memory task showing forgetting caused by proactive interference. First,
people are given a to-be-remembered three-letter stimulus, and then they are shown a number. They are to
count backward by threes from the number. At the end of the variable length period of counting, the people
are to report the original three-letter stimulus. (p. 141)
Central Executive: the control portion of working memory; in charge of planning future actions, initiating
retrieval and decision processes as necessary, and integrating information coming into the system. The
mechanism responsible for assessing the attention needs of the different subsystems and furnishing
attentional resources to them. Any executive or monitoring component of the memory system that is
responsible for sequencing activities, keeping track of processes already completed, and diverting attention
from one activity to another can be called an executive controller. (p. 154)
Chunk: unit or grouping of information held in short-term memory; a rich, complex item that can hold
something as impoverished as a single digit or letter, or as complex and elaborate as a word or phrase. (p.
139)
Decay: forgetting that is caused by the passage of time before testing. Simple loss of information across time,
presumably caused by a fading process, especially in sensory memory; also, an older theory of forgetting
from long-term memory. (p. 140)
Dual-Task Method: a means of assessing working memory by giving people a secondary task to perform while
they are doing some other, primary working memory task. Performance is assessed as a function of the
influence of the secondary task on the primary task. (p. 161)
Episodic Buffer: the component of working memory responsible for integrating and binding together
information from the different modalities, as well as from long-term memory. (p. 160)
Free Recall: the memory task in which the list items may be recalled in any order, regardless of their order of
presentation (contrast with serial recall). (p. 145)
Mental Rotation: mental manipulation of a visual STM code that reorients the imagined object in space. (p.
157)
Phonological Loop: the speech- and sound-related component responsible for rehearsal of verbal information
and phonological processing; the articulatory loop is the component responsible for recycling verbal
material via rehearsal. (p. 155)
Phonological Similarity Effect: the finding that people find it more difficult to retain and remember similar-
sounding words in working memory. (p. 155)

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Instructor’s Manual Cognition, 6th ed. Radvansky/Ashcraft

Phonological Store: a sub-part of the phonological loop used for passively retaining verbal information. (p.
155)
Primacy Effect: in a recall task, the elevation of recall at the early positions of the list (compare recency effect).
(p. 145)
Proactive Interference: when older material interferes forward in time with recollection of the current
stimulus; interference or difficulty, especially during recall, because of some previous activity, often the
stimuli learned on some earlier list; any interference in which material presented at one time interferes with
material presented later. (p. 143)
Process Model: a stage model designed to explain the several mental steps involved in performance of some
task, usually implying that the stages occur sequentially and that they operate independently of one another.
(p. 149)
Recency Effect: the elevated recall of the last few items in a list, presumably because the items are stored in
and retrieved from short-term memory (compare primacy effect). (p. 145)
Recoding: the process of grouping items together, then remembering newly formed groups. (p. 140)
Release from PI: when the decline in performance caused by proactive interference is reversed because of a
switch in the to-be-remembered stimuli; can be used to illustrate that STM must hold and use semantic
information. The sudden reduction in proactive interference when the material to be learned is changed in
some fashion, such as improved recall on a list of plant names after several trials involving animal names;
the initial decline was caused by proactive interference, and the improvement on the last trial is caused by
release from PI. (p. 144)
Representational Momentum: the finding that people will misremember moving objects as being further
along their path of travel than they actually were when they last saw them. (p. 159)
Retroactive Interference: newer material interferes backward in time with your recollection of older items; the
interference from a recent event or experience that influences memory for an earlier event, such as trying to
recall the items from List 1 but instead recalling the times from List 2. (p. 143)
Serial Exhaustive Search: memory set is scanned one item at a time (serial), and the entire set is scanned on
every trial, whether or not a match is found (exhaustive). A search process in which all possible elements
are searched one by one before the decision is made, even if the target is found early in the search process.
(p. 151)
Serial Position Curve: the display of accuracy in recall across the original positions in the to-be-learned list,
often found to have a bowed shape, indicating lower recall in the middle of the list than in the initial
positions (primacy effect) or the final positions (recency effect) of the list. (p. 145)
Serial Recall: a recall task in which people must recall the list items in their original order of presentation
(contrast with free recall). (p. 145)
Short-Term Memory (STM): older term focused on the input and storage of new information; embodies the
notion of a limited-capacity system and situates that limitation in short-term memory. (p. 138)
Sternberg Task: short-term memory scanning task devised by Saul Sternberg. (p. 147)
Visuospatial Sketchpad: the visual and perceptual component of working memory. (p. 156)
Working Memory: newer term with the connotation of a mental workspace; the elaborate conscious attentional
system where cognitive effort is expended. Working memory includes processing. The limitations of
working memory derive from limitations on how much work can be done at one time, how much working
memory capacity there is to share among several simultaneous processes. It includes a phonological loop, a
visuospatial sketchpad, and an episodic buffer, each of which can deplete central executive resources when
necessary. (p152)
Working Memory Span: the amount of information a person can actively maintain in working memory at one
time. (p. 164)

5.4 Key People

Baddeley (& Hitch): working memory. (p138)
Brown and the Petersons: Brown-Peterson task, originally taken as evidence for the role of decay in short-
term memory loss. (p138)
Cowan: working memory. (p139)
Engle: working memory span. (p153)
Intraub: boundary extension. (p159)
Jonides: neurophysiological investigation of regions involved in visuospatial vs. verbal working memory
processing. (p153)

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Solution Manual for Cognition, 6/E Mark H. Ashcraft Gabriel A. Radvansky

Instructor’s Manual Cognition, 6th ed. Radvansky/Ashcraft

Keppel & Underwood: proactive interference in the Brown-Peterson task. (p. 142)
Miller: selective attention studies; limitations on short-term memory (Miller’s magical number seven plus or
minus two); chunking; recoding. (p. 138)
Shepard: mental rotation. (p. 157)
Sternberg: serial-exhaustive memory search; Sternberg search task. (p. 147)
Smith: neurophysiological investigation of regions involved in visuospatial vs. verbal working memory
processing. (p. 153)
Waugh & Norman: interference vs. decay in short-term memory. The data support an interference account. (p.
141)
Wickens: release from PI. (p. 143)

5.5.1 Lecture Suggestions (Effectiveness/Student Reactions)

• Stress the importance of understanding the fundamental concepts—in particular, the working memory
system and the importance of method of representation. Be sure the students have the basic skills required
before jumping in the deep end.
• Take your time with the Sternberg memory search task. Discuss the obtained findings as compared to those
from easy and hard visual search tasks.
• Because short-term/working memory is so close to consciousness, and involves consciousness, have the
class discuss what implications this research has for consciousness, and why our conscious intuitions about
short-term/working memory are so often wrong.

5.5.2 Lecture Suggestions (Content)

• Demonstrate working memory capacity by reading students successively larger lists of letters or words in
serial order. When it is clear that most of the class cannot recall all of the words in a list, present a sentence
that well exceeds their word span to illustrate the benefit of organization and chunking.
• Demonstrate release from PI (use 15 seconds of backwards counting before recall, have the students
practice backwards counting before you read the items from the first list).
List 1: Banana, Coconut, Apricot, Pineapple, Lemon, Raspberry.
List 2: Orange, Mango, Pear, Honeydew, Watermelon, Plum.
List 3: Cherry, Lime, Papaya, Tangerine, Grape, Strawberry.
List 4: Apple, Kiwi, Peach, Cantaloupe, Kumquat, Blueberry.
List 5: Carpenter, Doctor, Accountant, Salesman, Plumber, Lawyer.
• Demonstrate serial position curves by having students write the names of current or former pets on 3x5
cards (or do “online” in class with instructions to say “skip me” if they didn’t have a pet and/or if their pet
name has already been spoken). Stop at about 20 items (and possibly run the demonstration experiment a
second time if there are sufficient students). Have people indicate by hand whether or not they got each of
the names correct after the free recall test phase. Plot the serial position curve on the board.

5.6 Research Project Ideas

• Identify two aspects of your life in which chunking has helped you to encode more information.
• Use PsycInfo to find a recent (no more than two years old) Journal of Experimental Psychology (JEP:
HPP, JEP: LMC or JEP: General) article on working memory. Summarize the contribution of that article
and discuss how the article expands on the knowledge presented in the text. Include a photocopy of the
front page of the article used.
• Have students read Miller’s original article (easy to find with an online search) and have them write a brief
(no more than two pages) summary of the evidence that he cites.

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