Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

238 CHAPTER 6 MemoryFigure 6.3 Baddeley’s Model ofWorking Memory: How Do I Getto Marty’s House? Suppose youare trying to figure out the fastestway to get to a friend’s house. InBaddeley’s model of workingmemory, you would use thephonological loop to verballyrecite the directions. Maintenancerehearsal helps keep the informationactive in the phonologicalloop. You would use the visuospatialsketchpad to imagine yourroute and any landmarks along theway. The central executive is theconscious part of your mind, which activelyprocesses and integrates information fromthe phonological loop, the visuospatialsketchpad, and long-term memory.VisuospatialSketchpadNSXCentral Executive?What's the quickest wayto Marty's house??Long–Term MemoryPhonologicalLoop“…South to KingDrive, left at 1ststoplight, 2 blockseast, turn righton Aurora, 3rdhouse on left…”working memory that is often tested by standard memory tasks (Mueller & others,2003). The second component, called the visuospatial sketchpad, is specialized forspatial or visual material, such as remembering the layout of a room or city.The third component is what Baddeley calls the central executive, which controlsattention, integrates information, and manages the activities of the phonologicalloop and the visuospatial sketchpad. The central executive also initiates retrieval anddecision processes as necessary and integrates information coming into the system.LR E H E A R S AM A I N T E N A N C ELong-Term MemoryKey Theme• Once encoded, an unlimited amount of information can be stored in longtermmemory, which has different memory systems.Key Questions• What are ways to improve the effectiveness of encoding?• How do procedural, episodic, and semantic memories differ, and what areimplicit and explicit memory?• How does the semantic network model explain the organization of longtermmemory?Long-term memory refers to the storage of information over extended periods oftime. Technically, any information stored longer than the roughly 20-second durationof short-term memory is considered to be stored in long-term memory. Interms of maximum duration, some long-term memories last a lifetime.In contrast to the limited capacities of sensory and short-term memory, theamount of information that can be held in long-term memory is limitless. Granted,it doesn’t always feel limitless, but consider this: Every day, you remember thedirections to your college; the names of hundreds of friends, relatives, and acquaintances;and how to start your car. Retrieving information from long-term memoryhappens quickly and with little effort—most of the time.elaborative rehearsalRehearsal that involves focusing on themeaning of information to help encode andtransfer it to long-term memory.Encoding Long-Term MemoriesHow does information get “into” long-term memory? One very important functionthat takes place in short-term memory is encoding, or transforming the new informationinto a form that can be retrieved later (see Figure 6.4). As a student, you mayhave tried to memorize dates, facts, or definitions by simply repeating them to yourselfover and over. This strategy reflects an attempt to use maintenance rehearsal toencode material into long-term memory. However, maintenance rehearsal is not a veryeffective strategy for encoding information into long-term memory.