Short term and working
memory
Module 4
Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) modal
model of memory
What all characteristics of
short-term memory is
highlighted by this model?
Page 135 – 142: home
work
(details of Sensory and
Short-term Memory)
STM Working Memory
STM involves dynamic processes that unfold over time and thus STM is much
more than just storing information for a brief period of time and should be
called working memory rather than short-term memory. [Baddeley and Hitch
(1974)]
• Working memory: A limited-capacity system for temporary storage
and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as
comprehension, learning, and reasoning
• E.g., multiplying 43 times 6 in your head
Model of Working Memory
Three main components:
1. Phonological loop (consist of phonological store and articulatory
rehearsal process)
• Evidence: Phonological similarity effect (acoustic confusion effect); word
length effect; articulatory suppression
2. Visuospatial sketch pad (consist of visual and spatial information)
• Evidence: visual imagery and visual recall test
3. Central executive (coordinates verbal and visual information)
• Related to executive attention (attentional controller); studied through
focused attention tasks
Phonological loop
• Phonological Similarity Effect: Confusion of letters or words that sound
similar - Memory span is smaller for similar sounding words than for
dissimilar sounding words.
• Exp. A series of letters flashed on the screen
• task - write down the letters in the order of the presentation [Conrad, 1964]
• Participants misidentified the target letter to another letter that sounded like the
target
• E.g. “F” was most often misidentified as “S” or “X”
• two letters that sound similar to “F,” but was not as likely to be confused with letters like “E,”
that looked like the target.
• Thus, even though the participants saw the letters, the mistakes they made were
based on the letters’ sounds
• People maintain information in STM is by rehearsing the sound of words.
Similar sounding words are more confusable in a sound-based rehearsal
Demonstratio
List 1n List 2
• The word length effect: WM capacity is Beast Alcohol
influenced by word length Bronze Property
Wife Amplifier
Golf Officer
Inn Gallery
Limp Mosquito
Dirt Orchestra
Star Bricklayer
• Memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long
words
• The second list will be more difficult to remember because it takes
more time to pronounce and rehearse longer words and to
produce them during recall (Baddeley et al., 1984).
Articulatory Suppression
• Interrupting phonological loop operation (??)
by rehearsing irrelevant words
• Task 1: dishwasher, hummingbird, engineering,
hospital, homelessness, reasoning
• Task 2: read the list while repeating “the, the, the . . .”
out loud
• Reduces memory because speaking
interferes with rehearsal
Same or
The Visuospatial Sketch Pad different?
• Handles visual and spatial information
• Studied through Mental Rotation task
More demos:
https://www.psytoolkit.org/experiment
-library/experiment_mentalrotation.ht
Visual recall test (Della Sala et. al., 1999)
• Look at the pattern (in 1) and indicate which
of the squares (in 3) need to be filled to
duplicate this pattern
• Patterns are difficult to code verbally, so
completing the pattern depends on visual
memory
• Participants were able to complete patterns
consisting of an average of 9 shaded squares
before making mistakes
• Remembering the patterns of matrix
illustrates the operation of visual imagery
Task 1: Pointing task
What happens when the Point to “Out” for an outside corner and “In” for an
operation of visuospatial sketch inside corner. Move your response down one level in
for each new corner.
pad is disrupted?
Task 2: move around the outline of the F in a clockwise direction in your mind, say “Out” if the
corner is an outside corner or “In” if it is an inside corner.
Central executive
• Control center of the working memory system
• Coordinates how information is used by the phonological loop and
visuospatial sketch pad
• How attention is focused on a specific task
• How it is divided between two tasks, and how it is switched
between tasks
• (Baddeley, 1996)
The episodic buffer – an added
component
• E. g., people can remember long sentences
consisting of as many as 15 to 20 words -
through chunking (grouping information
in a meaningful manner)
• Successful chunking depends on knowing the
meaning and relating it with existing ideas
• interchange of information between working
memory and long-term memory is needed to
increase the capacity of working memory
(through chunking)
• Hence an additional component of
working memory was added which
represents a way of increasing storage
capacity and communicating with LTM.
Working memory in the brain
• Pre-frontal Cortex play an important role in
holding information for brief periods of time
(working memory)
• Animal research exploring the effect of frontal
lobe damage on memory tested monkeys
using the delayed-response task
(Goldman-Rakic, 1990, 1992)
• Monkey first learn to perform a delayed response
task.
• Then their PFC is removed. After the removal of
PFC, their performance drops to chance level, so
they pick the correct food well only about half of
the time.
Working memory in the Brain
Neurons in Prefrontal lobe responsible
for working memory
• Shintaro Funahashi and coworkers
(1989) recorded from neurons in a
monkey’s PFC while the monkey carried
out a delayed-response task
• The neurons that responded only when the
square was flashed in a particular location,
continued responding during the delay
• The firing of neurons indicates that
information about the object’s location
remains available for as long as the neuronal
firing continues.
