Types of LTM and WMM

Episodic Memory

• Our Ability to Record events, (like a diary!) e.g. Tuesdays psychology lesson.
• They're quite complex as they are 'time stamped' so you remember when they happened.
• You make a concious effort to remember these events

Episodic Memory

Semantic Memory

• Store thats holds knowledge of the world, like facts and figures. e.g. knowledge of a particular subject.
• Has a very large capacity.
• Not 'time stamped'
• Constantly added to, and recalled deliberately.

Semantic Memory

Procedural memory

• Memory for actions and skills - how we do things.
• Recalled without concious effort e.g. riding a bike.
• Difficult to explain to others/to a novice.

Procedural memory

However....

Case Studies are induvidual and have a serious lack of control, as they're only about one person.

However....

Tulving (1994)

Used PET scans, and asked pps to recall episodic and semantic memories.

Both were found to be recalled in the prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain, which is divided into two; left pre-frontal cortex was involved in recalling semantic memories and the right was episodic.

Tulving (1994)

Declarative Memory: conciously recalled (episodic and semantic)

Non-Declarative Memory: unconciously recalled

Declarative Memory: conciously recalled (episod...

Central executive

Attentional process that monitors all incoming data, makes decisons and allocates slave systems to tasks.

• Has a very limited processing capacity

Central executive

Phonological loop

Slave system.

Deals with auditory information and preserves order which information arrives

Subdivided into:

Phonological store - stores words you hear

Articulatory proces - allows maintinence rehearsal.

Phonological loop

Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Second slave system

Stores visual and/or spatial information.

Limited capacity of around 3-4 objects Baddely (2003)

Logie (1995) subdivided it into:

• Visual cache which stores visual information.
• Inner scribe, which records arrangement of objects in the visual field

Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Episodic Buffer

Third slave system

Added by Baddely in 2000.

Temporary store for information, integrates visual, spatial amd verbal information processed by other stores and mainting a sense of time sequencing.

Seen as storage component of central executve, and has limited capacting of 4 chunks (Baddely 2012)

Links working memory to LTM and wider cognitive processes like perception

Episodic Buffer

Dual task performance

• Supports seperate existance of visuo-spatial sketchpad.

Baddely et al (1975); showed pps had more difficulty doing two visual tasks than doing visual and verbal.

This increased difficulty is because both tasks compete for the same slave system, which doesn't happen when they're different.

This suggests there is a seperate slave system which processes the visual input.

Dual task performance

Central executive?

Psychologists suggest that this component doesn't explain anything.

Baddely himself said it was the most important but least understood.

It needs to be more clearly specified that simply being 'attention' eg; it mau consist of seperate components.

Central executive?

Phonological loop

Baddely et al (1975); demonstrated people struggle to remember lists of lng wrds than short words.

This is the word length effect, as there is small space for rehearsal in the articulatory process.

This effect dissapears if a person is given an articulatory suppression task, a repetitive tasks which keeps the AP busy.

Phonological loop

Brain scanning

Braver et al (1997); gave pps tsk which involved the central executive, while having a brain scan.

Researchers found greater activity in the left pre frontal cortex, which increased with harder tasks.

So in the WMM, as demands on the CE increases it has to work harder to fufil its function.

Brain scanning