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Memory & Attention & Conciousness

Q: What is the digit span and how is it used in the phonological loop of working memory or short term memory span.

The digit span is the amount of digits that people can keep in a mind for a brief period and report back accurately - this is usually 7 digits. The short term memory span , or according to the model of Baddeley, phonological loop of working memory are words people can keep in mind for a brief period and report back accurately .

Q: What is the difference between the amount that can be remembered in the digit span and working memory span?

The working memory span is usually 2 items shorter than the digit span which is 7 The working memory span is usually 5. It could be an arithmetic sentence to solve or a sentence to remember the last word in.

Q: Why can the short term memory span be called the phonological loop of working memory and how does it differ culturally?

The phonological part of the model is by vocal repetition , the working memory holds on to the verbal information. People can subvocally keep in working memory as much material as they can state aloud for two seconds . Chinese speakers have longer digit spans than english, difference noticable as early as four years. They have shorter digit names that can be articulates more quickly than english.

Q: How can you demonstrate the importance of a working memory by performing two tasks such as driving a car and talking on a cell phone?

Dual tasks often consume a portion of the working memory, performing one interferes with performing the other . When people used their cell phones whilst driving the accident rate during phone use was four times that for the same group who didn't. In an simulated driving experiment by Strayer & Johnson, double the driving mistakes were made.

Q: What are the two categories in explicit or declarative memory and what does it contain

Explicit memory is memory you can e xplicit state or declare . You can consciously talk about it. The two categories are episodic (memories) and semantic . (words)

Q: What is the stroop interference effect an example of and how does it compare to the wisconsin card sorting task?

The stroop interference effect is an example of being unable to shut down fast thinking - even when it leads to the wrong answer. The amygdala plays a role in the fast thinking, which is also used in the Wisconsin card sorting task where the rules aren't explicitly told and is only provided feedback

Q: How does the case of H.M prove there are different memory stores and how can you have semantic memory without episodic memory?

H.M had surgery due to severe epilepsy and had parts of his brain removed; temporal lobe and hippocampus. The epilepsy went away but he could no longer encode explicit (long term memory) Even though he could not store new active memories, his skills could improve and he could create new procedural memories. The amnesia H.M had is called temporal lobe amnesia.

31 important questions on Memory & Attention & Conciousness

What is the digit span and how is it used in the phonological loop of working memory or short term memory span.

The digit span is the amount of digits that people can keep in a mind for a brief period and report back accurately - this is usually 7 digits.

The short term memory span, or according to the model of Baddeley, phonological loop of working memory are words people can keep in mind for a brief period and report back accurately.

What is the difference between the amount that can be remembered in the digit span and working memory span?

The working memory span is usually 2 items shorter than the digit span which is 7 The working memory span is usually 5.

It could be an arithmetic sentence to solve or a sentence to remember the last word in.

Why can the short term memory span be called the phonological loop of working memory and how does it differ culturally?

The phonological part of the model is by vocal repetition, the working memory holds on to the verbal information. People can subvocally keep in working memory as much material as they can state aloud for two seconds.

Chinese speakers have longer digit spans than english, difference noticable as early as four years. They have shorter digit names that can be articulates more quickly than english.

How can you demonstrate the importance of a working memory by performing two tasks such as driving a car and talking on a cell phone?

Dual tasks often consume a portion of the working memory, performing one interferes with performing the other. When people used their cell phones whilst driving the accident rate during phone use was four times that for the same group who didn't.

In an simulated driving experiment by Strayer & Johnson, double the driving mistakes were made.

What two processes can mental processes (mentale processen) be divided in and what is considered dual processing?

Dual processing is the usage of both effortful and automatic thinking used mainly during problem solving.

Effortful processes - more often concious
Automatic processes - often unconcious

What does damage to the prefrontal lobe look at and how was this shown in the case of Phineas cage.

The case of Phineas gage, who got a metal rod through his brain destroying much of his prefrontal cortex.

He could still walk, talk, eat but had a major shift in personality control. People didn't recognise him.

People with prefrontal lobe damage usually do badly in tasks like the Wisconsin Cart Sorting task, have issues with planning, decisions and regulating emotion.

What are the two categories in explicit or declarative memory and what does it contain

Explicit memory is memory you can explicit state or declare. You can consciously talk about it.

The two categories are episodic (memories) and semantic. (words)

What is the model of the minds network of storage and how does it look? (loftus & Collins)

The model of network storage from Loftus and Collins look like spider diagram, with the connections being closest being strongest. (the strenght of association)

What is the stroop interference effect an example of and how does it compare to the wisconsin card sorting task?

The stroop interference effect is an example of being unable to shut down fast thinking - even when it leads to the wrong answer.

The amygdala plays a role in the fast thinking, which is also used in the Wisconsin card sorting task where the rules aren't explicitly told and is only provided feedback

How does the case of H.M prove there are different memory stores and how can you have semantic memory without episodic memory?

H.M had surgery due to severe epilepsy and had parts of his brain removed; temporal lobe and hippocampus. The epilepsy went away but he could no longer encode explicit (long term memory)
Even though he could not store new active memories, his skills could improve and he could create new procedural memories.

The amnesia H.M had is called temporal lobe amnesia.

What is the Stroop experiment/test?

The stroop experiment is created by Mr. Stroop and there were words and shapes written into colours and people were asked to name the colors rapidly.

There were distractions/interferences to make it harder, the word yellow might have been in the colour blue, or the word truck in the colour red. It was a timed experiment.

What is the similarity between the stroop interference and the ponzi & muller-lyer illusion?

In both cases the automatic processing of the fast system is responsible for the mistakes or visual illusion.

What are the two types of Temporal lobe amnesia and what is the other amnesia that occurs in people?

There are two types of amnesia; retrograde amnesia (past memories activation) which is usually strongest nearest to point of impact, and there is anterior amnesia (forward amnesia) the disability to create new memories.
The other type is infantile amnesia, the inability to remember words from infancy which ceases at 4. May be related to developing prefrontal cortex fuctioning.

What is pre-attentive processing and what are the two types of evidence for this?

The metaphorical gate between the sensory memory and the working memory is called the pre-attentive process because here information is screened out before it enters our working/short term memory.

The two types of evidence for preattentive processing is selective listening and selective viewing.

What does the research on selective-listening and selective viewing prove us?

The research on selective-listening is the cocktail party phenomenon and the selective listening is the gorilla experiment of Simons & Chabris.

It tells us we screen out information unconciously, checking if they're irrelevant sounds when focussing on tasks.

The cocktail party phenomenon talks about hearing a person say your voice in a crowded noisy room and possible the first two words before that, even though you weren't paying attention and the gorilla experiment is a youtube video where you watch players pass the ball and disregard the gorilla that comes on screen.

How is selective viewing shown by radiologists with x-rays and how is it used by magicians and pickpockets?

Selective viewing shows that not only people miss the gorilla during youtube videos, but also the image of a gorilla on an xray scan. 83% of the radiologists missed it.

Magicians and pickpockets use this unintentional blindness. To perform their skill or rob you. Unintentional blindness happens less with dangerous situations.

Who coined the time long term working memory and what is it?

Long term working memory was coined by Ericson and Delaney, they conceived this memory for interrelated set of items that is crucial for solving the problem at hand

What is meant with shifting attention and how is it different from split attention

Shifting attention talks about being able to move from one stimuli to the other, whilst having a trace of auditory memory in the memory store like the cocktail party phenomenon. "shifting in time"
It's different from split-attention because with split attention you attend more than anyone stimuli at the same time.

What did Andrea Halpern demonstrate with hierarchical organization?

People who studied the organised chard instead of the disorganised chart had more memory capabilities in the experiment.

What is the auditory sensory memory called and what is a brief trace of a sound called?

An auditory sensory memory is called echoic memory, and a brief trace of a sound is called an echo.

What is the maximum time an echo can be stored into your echoic memory?

It can fade over seconds and vanishes within at most 10 seconds. Accuracy of repetition is usually when repeated immediately and it fades after a signal delay.

What is the visual sensory memory also called and what is a brief trace of a visual stimulus?

The visual sensory memory is called iconic memory and a brief trace of a visual stimulus is called an icon.

What is priming and how was this shown in an experiment by Eagle with a tree with a rabbit?

Priming is like the activation of a neural network or schema. It enables people to make quicker links.

Priming is not experienced conciously whilst the effects are on the conciousness.

In the experiment of Eagle with a tree and 1 second flashes of a duck which people couldn't have conciously seen, they unconciously drew ducks on all of the scenes.

What are the three general conclusions of brain mechanics of preattentive processing?

The three general conclusions of preattentive processes.

1. Stimuli not attended to nevertheless activate sensory and perceptual areas of the brain.

2.attention magnifies the activity that task-relevant stimuli produce in sensory and perceptual areas of the brain and diminishes the activity that task-irrelevent stimuli produce.

3. Neural mechanisms in the anterior (forward) positions of the cortex are responsible for control of attention.

How does left-hemisphere damage cause issues with remembering past events?

Patients with left-hemisphere damage resulting in right spatial neglect remember past events (associated with the left side of a mental number line) poorly, as much as they neglected visual objects in the left visual field.

This suggests spatial representations are related to the same brain areas as some types of temporal representations.

What are the three techniques that help encode information into your long term memory

X hierarchy
x chunk
x cisualise

What is consolidation and what helps consolidation happen in long term memory?

Consolidation is making memory more permanent. There are two forms of long term memory; labile and stable.
Consolidation is the process of getting labile long term memory, putting into your working memory and turning it into stable long term memory.

What is the role of retrieval in memory consolidation and what did the experiments of Karpicke & Roediger show?

In the experiments of Karpicke & Roediger it shows that students who learned once and repeated 3 times where more succesful than students who learned 4 sessions or had an alternative way of learning.

It seems that retrieving the information consolidates memory and facilitaties learning.

How are childhood memories influenceable and how did Elizabeth Loftus use this in her experiments of false memories?

Childhood memories are more subject to distortion by suggestion and imagination then memories later in life.
Elizabeth Loftus managed to convince people that they were lost in a mall at 5 years, even though it never happened.

How can source confusion and social pressure contribute to false memory construction?

Our mind reorganises information and searches for obscure ties even when there's none. Our memories can be distorted by information delivered by others.

Social pressure may cause new information to get into our mind and change the story due to leading questions or suggestions.

What are the three phases in prospective memory?

1. Formed an intention
2. Intention must me maintained.
3. Switch to execute task

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Inleiding Psychologie II

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