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Memory:Spread of Activation, Associative Priming, Implications, More Priming

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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
VU
Lesson 29
Memory
Atkinson & Shiffrin Model
This model is explaining the whole process of memory in short. How the information goes in
sensory register then in short term memory and in long term memory that is permanent store
information.
What do we study?
These all are the brief concepts in the study of long term memory.
Transfer from STM into LTM
Retrieval from LTM back into STM
Recall versus Recognition
Applications
Studying and testing
Role of rote learning
Eyewitness testimony
Long Term Memory
Cognitive psychology is about experiments. Psychologists do experiment to generate models,
and refine models.
Experiment
An important experiment was conducted by Anderson in 1976 to illustrate how speed of retrieval
varies with practice. In first phase they were given these sentences.
The Sailor is in the park.
The lawyer is in the church.
Subjects drilled over and over again until they know by heart.
Having these two sentences the subjects were tested on these sentences and asked whether
each was among the sentences they had studied.
The sailor is in the park.
The sailor is in the church.
Subjects knew the material enough to be correct almost all the time, experimenter was interested
only in the speed with which they made their correct recognition judgments.
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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
VU
Difference in study is because of the delay in presentation.
Results
The findings were:
Short Delay
Long Delay
Less Study
1.11
1.53
More Study
1.10
1.38
The time span of Less Study is .42 and More Study .28.
In less study and short delay condition subjects were fastest. And in more study condition with
short delay condition the rate was same. But in long delay condition and less study condition the
reaction time is 1.53.
Delay made difference. And more study also made difference.
The implication of this study was weaker memories take longer time to reactivate. If we want to
remember a thing we have to study it more.
Spread of Activation
Perlmutter & Anderson conducted an experiment that is unpublished, and cited in book of
Cognitive psychology.
In that experiment; subjects were presented with a sequence of words and asked togenerate
associates that began with specific letters. They had two conditions.
In priming condition there is pair of letters and words but these letters and words are associated.
Like Dog C for Cat, and bone- m for meat. In control condition the words and letters are
unrelated.
Control
Priming
Dog - C
Gambler ­ C
Bone ­ M
Bone ­ M
The reaction time of priming condition is 1.41 sec. and the reacton-time of
Control condition is1.53 sec.
Dog
Bone
Chase
part of
Cat
Eat
Meat
This network model is explaining the difference in both conditions. Through the word eat both dog
and bone is linked. There is relationship between these words. The results showed the priming
condition is easily recalled. Therefore the activating the network structure to answer the first
associate should help activate the structure needed to answer the second. This experiment
showed activation spreads through long term memory from active portions to other portions of the
memory and this spread takes time.
Associative Priming
Mayer & Schvaneveldt (1971) performed a classic demonstration of associative priming. They
had subjects judge whether or not pairs of items were words.
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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
VU
Positive Pairs Negative Pairs
Unrelated
Related
Non-word 1st
Non-word 2nd
Both non-words
Nurse
Bread
Plame
Wine
Plame
Butter
Butter
Wine
Plame
Reab
940
855
904
1087
884
If either item in a pair was a non-word, subjects were to respond no. where the top item was a
non-word, subjects were faster to reject the pair than when only the second item was a non-word.
Where the top item was not a word, subjects did not have to judge the second item and so could
respond sooner.
Subjects were fastest in the both non-words condition. Subjects were faster in the non-word first
condition than in the non-word second condition. In positive pairs subjects were much faster in
related pairs than in non-related pairs.
Implications
This result indicates that because subjects judged the first item to be a word, activation spread
from that word and primed information about the second, associatively related, item.
Judgment takes place in the working memory. The represenatation of the word has to be active in
short term memory.
We can read related material faster than non-related incoherent material where words might be
presented randomly.
The implication is that the associative spreading of activation through memory can facilitate the
rate at which words are read.
More Priming
Ratcliff & McKoon (1981) report a rather different priming demonstration of spreading activation.
They had subjects commit to memory sentences such as The doctor hated the book. Subjects
had to decide whether the noun "book" was in the studied sentence. Sometimes a prime word
such as "doctor" was presented just before "book".
Ratcliff & McKoon varied delay between Prime & Target from 50 to 300 ms. All of these intervals
were too short for subjects to develop any conscious expectations. The decrease in the reaction
time reflects the growth in the level of activation.
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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
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Implications
The implications of the experiment were
There is a strong effect of priming in the Long Term Memory that is strength of coding.
Activation spreads quickly up to 200 ms after which it slows down.
For recognition, information must first be activated and then inspected. Activation must spread to
info in LTM to be brought into STM. This takes time (200 ms).
We see the short term memory and long term memory are interacting. STM has less storage; at
one time it has 7 things. LTM keeps information all things. It has unlimited capacity for keeping
information. Another problem in STM is it has only 20 seconds duration of storage. But long term
memory has permanent storage.
For information to be used in a task as a recognition judgment, it must first be activated and then
inspected. When information is in long-term memory but not currently in working memory,
activation must spread to it, which takes some amount of time, as we saw in the McKoon and
Ratciliff study. Once activated, the time to inspect the information will depend on its level of
activation, as was illustrated in the Sternberg experiment.
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Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION:Historical Background
  2. THE INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH
  3. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY:Brains of Dead People, The Neuron
  4. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):The Eye, The visual pathway
  5. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):Hubel & Wiesel, Sensory Memory
  6. VISUAL SENSORY MEMORY EXPERIMENTS (CONTINUED):Psychological Time
  7. ATTENTION:Single-mindedness, In Shadowing Paradigm, Attention and meaning
  8. ATTENTION (continued):Implications, Treisman’s Model, Norman’s Model
  9. ATTENTION (continued):Capacity Models, Arousal, Multimode Theory
  10. ATTENTION:Subsidiary Task, Capacity Theory, Reaction Time & Accuracy, Implications
  11. RECAP OF LAST LESSONS:AUTOMATICITY, Automatic Processing
  12. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Experiment, Implications, Task interference
  13. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Predicting flight performance, Thought suppression
  14. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Template Matching Models, Human flexibility
  15. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Implications, Phonemes, Voicing, Place of articulation
  16. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Adaptation paradigm
  17. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Gestalt Theory of Perception
  18. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Queen Elizabeth’s vase, Palmer (1977)
  19. OBJECT PERCEPTION (continued):Segmentation, Recognition of object
  20. ATTENTION & PATTERN RECOGNITION:Word Superiority Effect
  21. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Neural Networks, Patterns of connections
  22. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Effects of Sentence Context
  23. MEMORY:Short Term Working Memory, Atkinson & Shiffrin Model
  24. MEMORY:Rate of forgetting, Size of memory set
  25. Memory:Activation in a network, Magic number 7, Chunking
  26. Memory:Chunking, Individual differences in chunking
  27. MEMORY:THE NATURE OF FORGETTING, Release from PI, Central Executive
  28. Memory:Atkinson & Shiffrin Model, Long Term Memory, Different kinds of LTM
  29. Memory:Spread of Activation, Associative Priming, Implications, More Priming
  30. Memory:Interference, The Critical Assumption, Limited capacity
  31. Memory:Interference, Historical Memories, Recall versus Recognition
  32. Memory:Are forgotten memories lost forever?
  33. Memory:Recognition of lost memories, Representation of knowledge
  34. Memory:Benefits of Categorization, Levels of Categories
  35. Memory:Prototype, Rosch and Colleagues, Experiments of Stephen Read
  36. Memory:Schema Theory, A European Solution, Generalization hierarchies
  37. Memory:Superset Schemas, Part hierarchy, Slots Have More Schemas
  38. MEMORY:Representation of knowledge (continued), Memory for stories
  39. Memory:Representation of knowledge, PQ4R Method, Elaboration
  40. Memory:Study Methods, Analyze Story Structure, Use Multiple Modalities
  41. Memory:Mental Imagery, More evidence, Kosslyn yet again, Image Comparison
  42. Mental Imagery:Eidetic Imagery, Eidetic Psychotherapy, Hot and cold imagery
  43. Language and thought:Productivity & Regularity, Linguistic Intuition
  44. Cognitive development:Assimilation, Accommodation, Stage Theory
  45. Cognitive Development:Gender Identity, Learning Mathematics, Sensory Memory