Darkthorn’s Blog

- Short term memory – a collection of mental processes that permits information to be held temporarily in an accessible state, in the service of some mental task.

- Short term store – interpret information selected for transfer into sensory store, maintain information, transfer and review information from long term memory – capacity of 7+/- 2 items, improved by chunking

- Serial position effect

o Primacy effect – improved recall for items at the start of the list (these items are sufficiently rehearsed for long term memory)

o Recency effect – improved recall for last items (eliminated if rehearsal is prohibited)

o Sternberg’s four stage process

§ Encode probe à compare with memory à binary decision à execute motor response

§ The more items required to recall, the more reaction time required

§ Method of search is self-terminating or serial exhaustive

o Duration of about 18 sec

- Working memory – maintains notion of a limited capacity store used to hold information needed for current problem solving

o Phonological loop – inner ear and inner voice – visuospatial sketchpad

- Control processes – attention, rehearsal, coding, retrieval, decision making