There are three stores, the sensory store, the STM, and the LTM.
The Sensory Store: Can store for up to two seconds, and can maintain up to two items.
STM: Memories are acoustic. 7+or-2 items are recorded. Up to 30 seconds-worth can be recorded.
LTM: Memories are mainly semantic, but could also be acoustic. It can hold a certain number of items from minutes to years. Memories are often cue dependent.
Transferral: To transfer from the sensory store to the STM, attention is mainly needed. In order to maintain the memory in the STM, simple maintenance rehearsal is needed. In order to transfer a memory to the LTM, more in-depth rehearsal is needed. In order to remember the memory, it's retrived back into the STM.
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Describe WMM
Three stores: The Central Executive (CE), Phonological Loop (PL), and Visuo-spatial Sketchpad (VSSP)
CE is responsible for the control and coordination of mental operations including reasoning, comprehension, learning and memory. It is modality free (sound, sight, touch). However, it has a limited capacity. It controls our attention, allowing us to switch from one thing to another.
PL deals with verbal material.
Two sub-stores, Phonological store (inner ear): stores speech-based sounds for a few seconds.
Articulatory rehearsal system (inner voice): used to rehearse verbal information in our heads rather than out loud.
VSSP (inner eye) stores and processes visual and spatial information.
They act indepedantly- visual info shouldn't interfere with processing verbal information.
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Episodic and Semantic Memory
Episodic memory is a record of the episodes/experiences in our lives, and are time-referenced. Thus, retrieval of these memories are dependent on recalling the context of the situation. Due to context being referenced in recall of these memories, they are likely to be transformed.
Semantic memory is our factual info/general knowledge store, and, despite not being time referenced, can be in temporal form. Retreival of a semantic memory is not dependent on context, and is not likely to change.
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Describe Reconstructive Memory
Suggests it's an imaginative reconstruction of past events, and we don't remember accurately; instead, we are influenced by our prior knowledge.
'Schemas' = packets of information we have about the world and they affect how we interpret events.
When we retrieve stored memories, we use previous experiences to interpret the info, and then it's reconstructed.
If there are any gaps in our memory, we may use a schema to organise that information.
Thus, schemas may lead us to distort unfamiliar information so that it fits in with our existing knowledge.
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