Magical Mystery of Four and lab notes

Magical Mystery Four: How is working memory capacity limited, and why? (Cowan)

·      George Miller says 7ish chunks, but Cowan says 3-5

·      Chunking: grouping smaller items into larger ones. Perhaps chunking in different ways effects the number of items you can get.

·      So, whats the significance or working memory for cognition?

o   We are relying on it whenever. We are thinking about something/processing it (like the beginning of a sentence should be remembered by the end of it).

o   Working memory may vary and be predictive of cognitive ability

·      What are the ways in which people hold things in working memory?

o   Remembering their voice, mentally, see the situation, running span procedure (don’t know where the end is going to be)

o   Its hard to answer because there are a variety of ways to remember things.

·      Distinguishing  between processing-related and storage-specific measures of wm capacity??

o   Raw info holding capacity- how much is there? Without rehearsing etc. no tricks – this is storage-specific.

·      Cowan regards storage-specific as more important because it’s the core of how the memory processes work, not a contaminated measure by tricks. Etc.

·      How can one ensure storage-specific measurement of capacity? We have to stop other various kinds of processing.

o   Brief simultaneous spatial array

o   Attention taking place after the sound has ended (dichotic listening – report unattended channel.

o   Overt repetitive saying of one word – “the the the the” while trying to remember something

o   Series with unpredictable ending – running span.

·      Why may this be more relevant/important for working memory?

o   Practical implications, maybe sometimes we don’t have time to use those tricks – much of the times, we can’t use tricks so we need to see what the most basic memory is.

·      Cowan sees working memory as needing to be tested without tricks or contaminants.

·      Central memory (working memory) is important because it underlies problem solving and abstract thoughts

·      HE thinks there are developmental trends in memory – it changes across the lifespan, and may predict intelligence. So, it is fundamental to figure out how to measure it.

·      What is the significance of the working memory storage? Is it a strength or a weakness?

o   How can it be a strength?

§  It is a strength in that we don’t have to be overwhelmed with to much info because we can’t store that.

§  Short lists can be organized effectively.

§  An average of 3.5  items seemed to work best

§  Simple means we can manipulate info better

o   How is it a weakness?

§  No more brain tissue to assign to this task, etc.

Lab Notes:

·      Degrees of Freedom – 2-values (f(df1,df2)=____P

·      The difference between _____  and __________ was significant (paired + (df) = ______, p=_______)

·      The standard error of the mean =SD/sqrt(n)

·      Larger sample size = smaller standard error

·      Bonferroni tests: dividing the p-value by the number of tests. A general strategy to control experiment wise error. (how likely that they’re producing false alarms)

·      A 2-way interaction is different at different levels of the 3^rd variable

·      There are special tests you can use if you don’t have normal data

o   1-way repeated measures (Friedman)

o   between subjects (Kruskal)

·      The one difficulty of t-tests after ANOVAS is that you can’t control the error overall.