Cognitive Lecture 2: Iconic And Echoic Memory

Front 1

What is the purpose the Sensory Memory system?

Back 1

To hold sensory information

Front 2

Describe stimulus persistence

Back 2

This describes the phenomenon of Something that resembles the actual physical stimulus continues to be present for a short period of time after stimulus offset.

Front 3

Describe Information persistence

Back 3

This describes the phenomena that Information can be extracted (noted) from the stimulus even after it is no longer present

Front 4

Sperling (_____)?

Back 4

1960

Front 5

Please describe the procedure and findings of Sperling (1960) experiment 1 "How much can be seen in a single brief exposure"?

Back 5

The experimental procedure

Sperling (1960) briefly exposed Ps to flashing letters that they did not have time to conciously study, showed in a 3x4 grid exmple:

A H G

P L M

Z F W

Each array held between 3- 12 letters and was shown for 0.05 seconds.

He varied the number of letters in the grid, and asked Ps to recall all the letters, both the letter and their place in the grid.

Findings

Sperling found that participants often claimed to have seen more information than they could report back.

Sperling found that, regardless of how many letters an array contained, ~4.5 letters was recalled for each array.

Front 6

Please describe the experimental procedure and findings of Sperling (1960) experiment 2 " stimulus exposure duration"

Back 6

Procedure & Findings

Sperling tested if the ~4.5 item recall was due to short exposure duration (ie 0.05seconds). He exposed participants to arrays varying between 0.015seconds - 0.5 seconds exposure time, but he found that exposure time had little effect on recall (recall still ~4.5 letters).

Front 7

Explain the reason why Sperling developed the "Partial Report Paradigm"

Back 7

After experiment 1 and 2, Sperling developed the Partial Report Paradigm.

Because participants often reported having seen more than they could actually report, it implied 2 things

1. A memory limit exists on our ability to report back the letters, and

2. A sensory memory exists in which this information is Stored.

Front 8

Describe the procedure and findings of Sperling experiment 3 "Partial Report" and what he concluded regarding this

Back 8

Procedure

The participants where presented with letters in a square as in experiment 1 and 2.

They were asked to only recall a few letters (I. E. One row). after stimulus offset, an auditory cue would tell ps which line to recall.

Sperling theory was that, as participants didn't know which row they were going to be asked to recall, they had to encode all the letters therefore participants results where calculated as this:

# letters recalled per row X # of rows presented

Because logically, any any row could have been picked for recall.

Findings

Sperling found that partial report produced far better recall than whole report.

Conclusion

Sperling concluded that partial report was governed by the Sensory Memory (which has large capacity and very rapid decay) whereas whole report was governed by the STS (which has a very limited storage capacity).

Front 9

Describe the procedure and findings of Sperling (1960) experiment 4 "Decay of available information"

Back 9

Sperling wanted to test the rate of decay in sensory memory so he

1. Presented letters to ps as in previous experimemts

2. Cued a particular array (like before) but delayed cue presentation between -0.10ms (ie before stimuli offset) - 1 second.

Findings

Sperling found that performance dropped rapidly with cue delay. After I sec delay, recall was down to whole report level.

Front 10

Describe the procedure and findings of Sperling experiment 5 "Background illumination"

Back 10

2 different lighting conditions

Condition 1: 'normal' - dark before/ dark after array

Condition 2: 'Baxt' (after Baxt 1871) : dark before/ light after array

Findings

Exposure time of array #letters recalled

Normal condition Baxt Condition0.015 sec 4.3 2.60.05 sec 4.3 2.8 CONCLUSIONexposure time has no large effect on no. words recalled (partial report) however post-exposure lighting has a big impact. Results suggest that info available to participants is stored as the persistence of sensation of the visual stimulus (ie stimulus persistence)

Front 11

Describe the procedure, findings and conclusion of Sperling experiment 6 "Partial Report by semantic class"

Back 11

Arrays shown consisted of BOTH numbers and letters i.e

A 1 B

2 C 3

D 4 E

Participants has to report (in partial report) by semantic class (ie only letters only, numbers only etc). FINDINGSTask estimated no. of items available Whole report 4.3cue by letters (partial semantic report) 4.5cue by numbers (partial semantic report) 4.8cue by row (partial report) 7.5CONCLUSIONPartial report by position is more effective than partial semantic report. This is because quick stimulus flash doesnt give room for semantic analysis and also because the sensory memory system is precategorical.

Front 12

Summarise the experimental hypothesis of all six of Sperlings experiments and what they mainly found?

Back 12

Experiment

1. How much can be seen in a single brief exposure?

Finding: approx 4.5 items

2. Does stimulus exposure duration matter?

NO

3. Does partial repport help recall?

YES

4. How quickly does sensory memory information decay?

wthin 1 second

5. Does different pre- and post- exposure lighting affect recall?

Yes, Baxt lighting worsens recall a lot

6. How does recall cueing by semantic class affect recall?

Worse than location partial report, at about the same level as whole report

Front 13

What are Sperlings main findings about which stimulus report encodes to which memory system?

Back 13

Whole report - Short-term memory

Partial report - sensory memory

Front 14

Descrive Sperlings (1967) memory model

Back 14

LIGHT ---> VIS ------ RECOGNITION BUFFER -> 1. sound

2. AIS

3. T- Written letters

VIS - Visual Info. Storage AIS- Auditory INfo Storage T-translator

1. Light enters the visual system, is stored uninterpreted in VIS (ie iconic memory). Info fades from VIS in <1 second

2. Participants can extract info from VIS into the recognition buffer, through repitition

3. In the recognition buffer, items are recognized by semantics (ie letters, numbers etc) and converted into motor instruction for speech, writing etc. 4. Participants can retain info in the recognition buffer through rehersal. Rehersal enters into AIS, from where it can re-enter the buffer through scanning process.

Front 15

In Sperling (1967) memory memory what do the following terms stand for?

VIS

AIS

Back 15

VIS - Visual Information Storage

AIS - Auditory Info Storage

Front 16

Moray, Bates and Barnett (1965) tested Sperlings (1960) memory model on other modalites. Describe the procedure and findings of Moray, Bates and Barnett (1965)

Back 16

Participants heard 4 different streams of information from 4 different location.

They asked Ps to recall a partial spatial report (ie repeat information from only one of the 4 streams)

FINDINGS

Partial report had better recall effect than whole report also in echoic memory, concluding that Sperling (1960) Partial Report is also applicable on other modalities

Front 17

Moray, Bates and Barnett (1965) tested Sperlings (1960) memory model on other modalites. Describe the procedure and findings of Moray, Bates and Barnett (1965)

Back 17

Participants heard 4 different streams of information from 4 different location.

They asked Ps to recall a partial spatial report (ie repeat information from only one of the 4 streams)

FINDINGS

Partial report had better recall effect than whole report also in echoic memory, concluding that Sperling (1960) Partial Report is also applicable on other modalities

Front 18

Darwin, Turvin and Crowder (1972) continued to build on the work and findings of Moray, Bates and Barnett (1965). Descrive their findings

Back 18

Repeated the experiment of Moray et al. and found that echoic memory has a slightly longer life span than iconic memory.

Front 19

What does the term 'modality' mean?

Back 19

The mode stimulus is exposed in

Front 20

Describe the modality effect. What difference does this imply between echoic memory and iconic memory and what may this be proof for?

Back 20

Auditory presented digits are recalled better than visually presented digits on immediate serial recall, especially the last digits in the list (ie the most recent ones).

This implies echoic memory has a longer lifespan than iconic memory. May also be a proof of PAS.

Front 21

Describe the theory of the Precategorical Aucoustic Store (PAS) by Crowder and Morton (1969)

Back 21

PAS is a precateogiral auditory store where auditory items are stored in precategorical form för å least a few seconds. This process is automatic (ie passive).

Info is lost from PAS from either

1. Decay

2. Overwriting

Front 22

How does the modality effect explain PAS?

Back 22

Auditory presentation of stimuli in free recall experiments permit the last words on the list to remain in PAS after other modalities have decayed (this is called the recency effect). For example, homophones (rite,right,write) do not generate a recency effect because PAS does not distinguish between spelling, only sounds.

Front 23

What is the suffix effect?

Back 23

The last item on an auditory list is best recalled (due to the recency effect) but that is abolished by the suffix effect (suffix- a final ending word).

Front 24

In the suffix effect, the semantic meaning of the suffix is irrelevant. Why?

Waa

Back 24

Because PAS is precategorical. It is the suffixes acoustic properties that affect recall. A less acoustic similarity to list words generate a smaller suffix effect (such as a buzzer or trumpet waaaaa)

Front 25

Some experiments, such as Ayres et al. (1979) "waa" and Neath, Surprenant and Crowder (1993) "baa" suggest that PAS is not precategorical, because the presence or absence of the suffix effect depend on the nature of the suffix. Explain these 2 experiments and their findings, and their shared conclusion.

Back 25

The presence or absence of the suffix effect depends on the nature of the suffix. If it is interpreted as a spoken word, a suffix effect arises. If it is interpreted as a non-vocal sound, a suffix effect does not arise. This is shown in both Ayres et al. (1979) and Neath, Surprenant and Crowder (1993). Ayres et al (1979)- all particiants heard a trumpet noise after stimuli offset and before recall. Condition 1: ps were told it was a person sawing "waa"Condition 2: ps were told it was a trumpet tone "waa". Conclusion: there was a suffix effect only for the condition that thought it was a person saying "waa". Neath, Surprenant and Crowder (1993)- all praticipants heard a noise after stimuli offset and before recall. Condition 1: ps told it was a person saying "baa"Condition 2: ps told it was an actual sheep saying "baa". Conclusion: a suffix effect was found only on condition 1.

Front 26

Does lip reading give rise to a suffx effect?

Back 26

Yes

Front 27

Try to describe the idea/theory of Temporal distinctiveness theory (TDT) by Glenberg&Swanson, 1986)

Back 27

eacu auditory item has a 'time-tag' stating when it was encoded into the auditory list. The item is recalled based on this time tag. i.e. the memory trace of an item includes a component regarding the temporal context. Th more specific the temporal component (aka time-tag), the more likely it is that the itm can be recalled. The theory infers that auditory items have more specific time tags than other stimuli and therefore generate more long-term recency effects and modality effects for auditory stimuli

Front 28

Who proposed the Temporal Distinctiveness theory?

Back 28

Glenberg and Swanson (1986)

Front 29

Gelnberg and Swanson (_____)?

Back 29

1986

Front 30

Both Gardiner&Gregg (1979) and Glenberg&Swanson (1986) conducted an experiment with auditory distractors in between each word they then had to recall. Describe the experiment, findings, and what it led Glenberg&Swanson (1986) to propose.

Back 30

Both studies provided ps with a list of words for recall. Between each word, an auditory distractor was introduced. According to PAS theory, an auditory distractor should take several seconds, thus overwriting the words for recall encoded in PAS, and no recency effect should be experienced. However, a recency effect still occured. This led Glenberg&Swanson (1986) to propose the Temporal Distinctiveness Theory

Front 31

Gardiner and Gregg (______)?

Back 31

1979

Front 32

There are 4 strong arguments critiquing the Precategorical sensory store theory by Sperling (1960). What are they?

Back 32

1. Ps may be using different encoding and/or recall strategies for whole and partial reporting. 2. Studies have shown that even using post-categorical cueing, the partial report can still generate superior results to the whole report (even though the precategorical sensory store is supposedly pre-categorical) 3. The role of output interference - in partial report, there are fewer items to report so superiority of the partial report may be due to, in part, less output interference, rather than recall from a specialised sensory memory store. 4. Forgetting due to loss of location information - different types of information may decay at different speeds. (Item info vs. item location) meaning that the item itself is potentially not forgotten, only its location (and as ps had to recall both the letter and its location in the whole report, this may have inferiorated the whole report).

Front 33

What is output interference?

Back 33

Forgetting increases as the total number of items to recall increases. I.e. during the time it takes to report back letters (output them), other letters that were encoded have had time to decay.

Front 34

Sperling (______)?

Back 34

1960

Front 35

Sperlings later model, sperling (_____)?

Back 35

1967

Front 36

Moray, Bates and Barnett (______)?

Back 36

1965

Front 37

Darwin, Turving and Crowder (____)?

Back 37

1972

Front 38

Crowder and Morton (_____)?

Back 38

1969

Front 39

Ayres et al (____)?

Back 39

1979

Front 40

Neath, Surprenant and Crowder (_____)?

Back 40

1993

Front 41

Glenberg and Swanson (____)?

Back 41

1986