Cognitive Psychology AO1

Cognitive Psychology AO1

The Multi-Store Model, Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)

-          Sensory memory is taken in from the environment, it lasts 1-2 seconds and then if no attention is given to it, then the information is forgotten

-          If information is given attention then it is passed on into the short term memory, which can hold 5-9 items at a time

-          There the information lasts 15-30 seconds before it is either forgotten by displacement or moved on into the long term memory

-          Information is moved to the long term memory by rehearsal and there, the capacity is infinite so can hold a great deal of information

-          However, this information can be lost through lack of use (decay) or interference (confusing information)

The Working Memory Model, Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

-          Proposed as an alternative for MSM, challenging the concept of a single unitary store for STM

-          Four Components: central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad, episodic buffer

-          Central Executive: controls the slave systems, directs attention to particular tasks, involved with problem solving and decision making, limited capacity so has a limited number of things it can attend to at a time

-          Phonological Loop: controls auditory information, further broken down into the phonological store/primary acoustic store (inner ear) and articulatory loop (inner voice)

-          Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad: processes visual and spatial information (how things look and where they are – inner eye)

-          Episodic Buffer: general store, recalls information from LTM and integrates it into STM when required

Explanation of Long Term Memory: Episodic and Semantic, Tulving (1972)

-          Semantic Memory: structured record of facts, meanings, concepts and knowledge about the external world

-          Episodic Memory: stored information about events that we have experienced in our lives

-          Procedural Memory: involves the knowledge of knowing how to do things (memory of motor skills)

-          Time Referencing: believed that episodic memory was dependent on time referencing: memories about events that happened to you are linked to the time in which they occurred, applies to episodic memories as the memory is linked to the date in which it took place

-          Spatial Referencing: episodic memory is continuous as we experience the event at one time in some temporal frame of reference, whereas semantic memory is fragments of different pieces of information learnt at different points of time

-          Retrieval: episodic memory can be contextual, meaning that people can have different interpretations of the same event and would therefore have different memories of it, whereas semantic memories are factual and therefore cannot be disputed

-          Semantic memories can act independently of episodic memories, however we need semantic memories to assist episodic memories as they help with facts such as objects, people, and events that occurred

-          Both semantic and episodic are declarative and rely of the medial temporal lobe, whereas procedural memory is…