Short-term Retention

11 Key excerpts on "Short-term Retention"

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  Philosophy of the Short Term

  • Jay Lampert(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  There must be short term retentions that make experience feel continuous from one moment to the next, as well as some long term storage of a knowledge base. When we listen to a person talking, for example, we have to retain the beginning of a heard word while we hear the end of it, and we have to know the meaning of the words, which we will have learned a long time ago. This kind of example leads Roman Jakobson to say that, “the role of short- and long-term memory constitutes one of the central problems of both general linguistics and the psychology of language.” 2 The literature in cognitive psychology on short term memory is complicated and disputed. I will draw from two frequently cited survey articles: Nelson Cowan’s “What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?” in Progress in Brain Research, 2008 ; 3 and Bart Aben et al., “About the Distinction between Working Memory and Short-Term Memory” in Frontiers in Psychology, 2012. 4 The conceptual speculations below about the meaning of the short term are my own. Short term memory is memory for a particular experienced image retained (again, in what Husserl calls secondary retention) only for a short amount of time, or to be more operationally precise, memory that can only be recalled a short amount of time later. One might think that short term memory is memory that simply lasts a shorter amount of time than long term memory. But we will see that most theorists of memory think of “memory” as an equivocal term, naming two different functions (not including “primary retention”) that may be performed on an original experience, one of which leads to its short term retention, and one of which leads to its long term retention. Short and long term memory thus tend to be defined primarily by the operations they perform on the original experience, and only secondarily by the length of time the original experience lasts

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  Cognition

  • Margaret W. Matlin, Thomas A. Farmer(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  However, its inluence is now diminished. For instance, most cognitive psychologists now consider sensory memory to be the very brief storage pro- cess that is part of perception, rather than an actual memory (Baddeley et al., 2009). Many researchers also question Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) clear-cut distinction between short-term memory and long-term memory (Baddeley et al., 2009; J. Brown, 2004). Although the Atkinson–Shiffrin model is no longer a viable information process- ing model of memory, it contributed to the growing appeal of cognitive psychology for decades after it was initially proposed. For instance, researchers conducted numerous studies to determine whether (a) short-term memory really is distinctly different from long-term memory, (b) what properties of items make them easier to store in short- term memory, and (c) how short-term processes inluenced what information was able to progress on to long-term memory for more long-lasting storage. PRACTICE QUIZ QUESTIONS 1) According to a famous article by Miller (1956), short-term memory (or working memory) has a capacity limitation of about: a) 2 or 3 bits of information. b) 7 ± 2 chunks of information. c) 10 ± 2 meaningful items. d) 15–20 energy chunks. 2) The irst short-term memory experiments used backward counting by threes, or a similar task, in order to: a) ensure that a person is not able to rehearse during the delay. b) ensure that suficient decay has occurred during the delay. CHAPTER 4 Working Memory 120 c) expand the capacity of the short-term memory system. d) provide the person with an easy way to chunk the information. 3) If people are presented a series of items (such as words), their percent recalled typi- cally shows a U-shaped function across serial positions. The recency effect seen in such data is usually attributed to information that: a) was transferred to long-term memory at the time of presentation. b) remains in short-term memory at the time of recall.

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  Human Factors Psychology

  • P.A. Hancock(Author)
  • 1987(Publication Date)
  • North Holland

    (Publisher)

  The central theme of this analysis was that the durability of memory depends on how the material was processed when it was received. Rather than characterizing memory as falling into one of two discrete categories, short-term and long-term, duration was viewed as a continuous function of the extent to which the material was made meaningful during its presentation. However, this analysis did not deny the distinction between primary memory (material currently in consciousness) and secondary memory (material which has left current awareness but which can be retrieved), as a close reading will show (Craik 8c Lockhart, 1972, p. 676). That distinction, originating with William James (James, 1890; Norman, 1976, p. 84), seems valid on intuitive grounds and has not been seriously questioned. Short - Term Memory 3 It is not clear how to classify the notion of short-term memory as it applies to keeping track of information in our truck dispatcher example. Perhaps this is primary memory in the sense used by William James, or perhaps it is material which has not been deeply processed in the Craik and Lockhart sense. The present analysis is neutral regarding these theoretical positions, and uses terms like immediate memory, short-term memory (STM), and working memory interchangeably. 1.2. DISTRACTION Our hypothetical truck dispatcher was faced with two types of problems - loss of STM due to distraction, and the need to retain more information than the capacity of STM allows. This section discusses the distraction problem. 1.2.1. The Brown-Peterson Effect The role of distraction in causing loss in STM was demonstrated almost simultaneously by Brown (1 958) in England and by Peterson and Peterson (1959) in the United States, and the result has become known as the Brown-Peterson effect. In the typical demonstration people are asked to retain three or four letters for 20 seconds while simultaneously counting backwards by threes during the retention interval.

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  Cognition

  • Thomas A. Farmer, Margaret W. Matlin(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Only a fraction of that material passed into your short-term memory, and then only a fraction passed from short-term memory to long-term memory. In fact, without glancing back, can you recall the exact words of any sentence in that previous paragraph? Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) information-processing model dominated memory research for many years. However, its influence is now diminished. For instance, most cognitive psychologists now consider sensory memory to be the very brief storage process that is part of perception, rather than an actual memory (Baddeley et al., 2009). Many researchers also question Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) clear-cut distinction between short-term memory and long-term memory (Baddeley et al., 2009; J. Brown, 2004). Although the Atkinson–Shiffrin model is no longer a viable information processing model of memory, it contributed to the growing appeal of cognitive psychology for decades after it was initially proposed. For instance, researchers conducted numerous studies to determine whether short-term memory really is dis- tinctly different from long-term memory, what properties of items make them easier to store in short-term memory, and how short-term processes influenced what information was able to progress on to long-term memory for more long-lasting storage. The Turn to Working Memory During the early 1970s, Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch were examining the wealth of research on short- term memory. They soon realized that researchers had ignored one very important question: What does short-term memory actually accomplish for our cognitive processes? Eventually, they agreed that its major function is to hold several interrelated bits of information in our mind, all at the same time, so that a person can work with this information and then use it appropriately (Baddeley et al., 2009; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974).

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  The Processing of Memories (PLE: Memory)

  Forgetting and Retention

  • Norman E. Spear(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  3

  Retention after Short Intervals

         

  OVERVIEW OF SIMPLE RETENTION

  Analytical research on memory processing often involves the systematic application of treatments that commonly result in forgetting. One such treatment is to teach the organism competing memories that interfere with retention of the target memory; another is to induce physiological malfunction, especially in the central nervous system. Of central interest in this chapter and the next is “simple retention,” the retention that occurs in organisms that have not been treated in such a way as to explicitly induce forgetting. We thus minimize consideration of forgetting that results from unusual sources of interference or physiological malfunction, whether purposely administered or accidentally encountered by the organism. Later we shall consider how such events result in retention loss and why this occurs. For now, we are concerned primarily with simple retention, the object of interest when we ask what portion of the words a person has learned will be given correctly by him a few seconds, minutes or hours later. Similarly, simple retention is the issue when we measure the probability that a rat will turn right in a maze one minute or one month after it has learned that food may be obtained on the right side but not on the left, or when we briefly present a symbol to a monkey and test whether it can distinguish it from among others after a 4-minute retention interval.

  The most important environmental circumstances for simple retention is length of the retention interval. As mentioned earlier, “retention interval” is defined as any interval longer than that necessary to establish original learning; with multit-rial learning, the retention interval must be longer than the intertriai interval. In the study of simple retention, no attempt is made to modify the events that ordinarily would occur during that interval in the organism’s life cycle, except that measures are taken to prevent additional practice on the episode to be remembered: Humans should be treated in a manner that would prevent rehearsal during the retention interval, and animals should be housed away from the circumstances of learning.

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  The Psychology of Ageing

  From Mind to Society

  • Gary Christopher(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  58 C HAPTER 4 Short-Term Memory A great deal of research focuses on problems with long-term memory – our ability, in other words, to access a lifetime’s acquired knowledge, to recall important events in our lives, and so on. Before tackling this, however, it is important to explore how short-term memory is affected. For the purpose of this chapter the models of working memory will be used primarily to explore the type of problems associated with normal ageing. Working memory may be conceptualized as dealing with the manipulation, integration, and short-term storage of information. The previous chapter on basic cognitive pro-cesses is important here. Without such mechanisms active working memory operations would suffer greatly. We need effective sensory systems and intact attentional control mechanisms for working memory to operate effectively. At the end of this chapter I shall focus a little more on the frontal lobes. This region of the brain is intimately involved in many working memory activities and is central to all higher-order executive functions. It is key also in terms of our ability to function successfully in everyday life (see Chapter 7). The final section will focus on some recent research that has examined executive func-tion in older adults using neuroimaging technology. Working memory To begin with, then, it is important to consider what we mean by short-term memory. When talking about short-term memory we are referring to discrete cognitive systems that have limited storage capacity – limited both in terms of how much is stored and how long it is stored for. Early pioneers of cogni-tive research demonstrated that the capacity of short-term memory is finite. The most elegantly simple demonstration of this was presented in the classic paper by Miller (1956) ‘The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information’. It was clear also that there is a time limitation to storing such material. Unless appropriate

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  Essentials of Psychology

  • John P. Houston, Helen Bee, David C. Rimm(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  This new approach con-ceives of the human being as an information*processing system. Accord-ing to this way of thinking, memory involves the flow of information through the organism, beginning with encoding and storage and ending with the retrieval of stored information. The number of specific models of memory that have developed within this new tradition is quite astounding (see Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1971; Broadbent, 1971; Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Hilgard & Bower, 1975; Lind-say & Norman, 1977; Ratcliff, 1978; Wickelgren, 1979). We will con-sider a model of memory that represents a distillation of several different models, because many of the available models agree with one another in important ways. These areas of agreement are summarized by the flow diagram in Figure 5. Notice that the model in Figure 5 contains three distinct types of memory—sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Most recent information-processing models define three types of memory, while the older interference theory specifies only one memory process. In Figure 5 information is presumed to move through these three memory systems from left to right. Perceived information first FIGURE 5 The three human memory systems. Stimulus Sensory memory Rehearsal Short-term memory Long-term memory Retrieval o / 7 V 174 Chapter 5 Memory enters sensory memory; it may then be transferred to short-term memory, and finally to long-term memory. In essence, the argument for having three memories, or stores, is that the ways in which we remember items for very short periods of time differ from the ways in which we remember the same items for long periods of time, For example, if you wanted to remember 193-2040 for a very short time (say, 30 seconds), you might do it by remembering the sounds of the numbers and by arranging these sounds into some easily remembered pattern or rhythm such as one-nine-three-twenty-forty.

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  Learning and Memory

  • David A. Lieberman(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  306 Memory What processes would have occurred in your brain to allow you to store this word when you first saw it and then subsequently retrieve it? Cognitive psychologists wanted to understand these processes. If you stop to think about it, the goal is an audacious one. We could measure the light from the page that reached your eye, and we can observe whether you respond correctly when asked to repeat the word, but how can we say anything about the invisible processes that went on in your brain during the period in between? Existing tech-nology does not allow us to trace the transmission of activity from one neuron to another in a living person’s brain; how, then, can we say what processes occurred? Two clues to a model of memory As it happens, at just about the same time that research on organization was con-vincing psychologists that they needed to understand cognitive processes better, important clues were emerging about the nature of these processes. We will look at two of the key pieces of the jigsaw that was to eventually lead to a model of how memory works. Rapid forgetting One critical clue came from experiments reported by Brown ( 1958 ) at Birkbeck College in England and by Peterson and Peterson ( 1959 ) at Indiana University in America. The two experiments were very similar; we will focus on the one reported by the Petersons. Previous research, from Ebbinghaus onward, had shown that people can remem-ber verbal material (arrangements of words) for long periods – hours, days, or even years. In virtually all these studies, however, participants were allowed to continue thinking about the material during the retention interval, so that the observed recall was, potentially, the fruit of extended practice. The Petersons wondered how long material would be remembered if participants were not given an opportunity to practice it.

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  Studying at University

  How to be a Successful Student

  • David McIlroy(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  8 KEY CONCEPTS l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l Your memory may be better than you think Short term and long term memory It appears that some of the information evaporates at the short-term stage and other aspects are transferred to more abiding storage (long-term memory). Although this is an oversimplification of memory structure and function (Baddeley, 1999), it illustrates the point that some memories are readily retrieved and some appear to go AWOL. Many people underestimate the power of their own memory, perhaps partly because they chiefly access their short-term memory (now more commonly referred to as ‘working memory’), or have not used good memory techniques or have not suffi-ciently focused on the large volume of information that they do remember. The human brain has an enormous capacity for remembering, and some understanding of storage and retrieval procedures will help improve memory use. There are some memories that we do not have to try to retrieve because they just spring into our conscious mind without solicitation. It is possible that these memories were important to us or we were especially interested in their content or that they were just catchy and humorous such as the following limerick: There once was a man from Trinity, who thought he’d cracked the square root for infinity; but there were so many digits, it gave him the fidgets, so he dropped it and studied divinity. Many years ago a speaker used this to illustrate the point that perhaps some people study theology because they would fail at everything else! Because there is rhyme, humour, a moral and a context, this limerick is remembered effortlessly. You should be encouraged to know that some of the things you study at college/university will stay with you and you will be able to recall them for use whenever you need them. Some years ago a mature first year student went to his tutor for advice about whether he should sit his exams.

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  Human Memory

  The Processing of Information

  • G. R. Loftus, E. F. Loftus, Geoffrey R. Loftus, Elizabeth F. Loftus(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Notice that with this method, the computer can store seven chunks “in short-term store” no matter how complex the chunks are. To take matters to extremes, Figure 3.12b assumes that our computer is a Shakespeare buff and has memorized Shakespeare soliloquies. Each soliloquy is then stored in long-term store as a single chunk, and the computer, by using the pointer technique, is able to store seven soliloquies “in short-term store” in exactly the same fashion as it stored seven words “in short-term store.” FIGURE 3.12 Computer analogy of short-term store: (a) remembering words; (b) remembering Shakespeare soliloquies. FORM OF INFORMATION STORED IN SHORT-TERM STORE We have noted in Chapter 2 that the physical representation of information in sensory store takes the form of a faithful reflection of the original stimulus. Information in echoic store is auditory, whereas information in iconic store is visual. In this section, we shall present evidence that when raw, sensory information is pattern recognized and placed into short-term store, its representation there is basically auditory. Like many other hypotheses we have discussed, the hypothesis of auditory information storage in short-term store makes sense from an intuitive or introspective point of view. Consider, for example, a letter string, such as LEJF. Look away from this page and hold this letter string in your short-term store—that is, rehearse it to yourself and introspect about what is happening. If you are like most people, your rehearsal consists of successively repeating the letters to yourself with your “mind’s voice” and hearing the resulting spoken representation in your “mind’s ear.” This is equivalent to saying that you are maintaining an auditory representation of the letters in short-term store. Later, we shall present a more formal model of what this process involves in order to lend some scientific respectability to these intuitive speculations

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  The Psychology of Human Memory

  • Arthur Wingfield, Dennis L. Byrnes(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  The result was surprising because experimental work up to that point had considered such brief retention intervals of little interest. Prior work on verbal learning concentrated on the gradual build-up of associations through practice and emphasized the role of associative interference in forgetting. The Petersons' work described short-term loss in terms of time decay. B. The duplex hypothesis claimed that short- and long-term memory differed in duration, capacity, and content. Short-term memory was a transient storage structure with a relatively limited capacity, while long-term memory held an unlimited amount of information in a relatively permanent form. Coding in long-term memory was thought to represent semantic relationships among items, while short-term memory was thought to hold acoustic representations of the items' names. The rapid forgetting found by Peterson and Peterson was attributed to decay from short-term memory before this information could be transferred to long-term storage. 3. The Capacity of Short-Term Memory A. The term chunk was coined by George Miller to describe the subjective unit in short-term memory. He pointed out that when short-term memory was calibrated in chunks, the length of the memory span was relatively constant across a wide variety of materials. The use of the chunk as a metric, then, suggested that STM has a fixed capacity of 7 ± 2 items. B. Experimental work following Miller's famous paper found the memory span to be the result of more than one mechanism. Recall of early list items represented retrieval from long-term memory, while recall of final items reflected short-term storage. C. The distinction between short- and long-term components of the memory span was supported by studies which indicated that recall of final items in a list was relatively unaffected by variables such as age and retardation. These same variables had sizable effects on the efficiency of recalling earlier list items.

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