Chapter 2: short-term memory

Chapter 2: Short-Term Memory
The term short memory it refers to remembering things over a few hours or days, we will use this term to performance on a particular type of task. The STM is a part ofthe working memory system, the term we use for a system that not only temporarily stores information but also manipulates it so as to allow people to perform such complex activities. Against to our useof STM simply to describe an experimental situation, the term working memory is based on a theoretical assumption but in fact a number of different theoretical approaches to this type of memorysystem have been developed. WM provides a temporary workspace that is necessary for performing complex cognitive activities.
The study of STM started with the digit span, a classical memory task whichinvolves holding small amount of material for a short period of time. It measures require two actions: remembering what the items are and remembering the order in which they were presented. According tothe order, if for example, numbers are associated or linked each for the next, the order of remembered by a process called chaining, and if one link of the chain breaks, because one item is forgotten,then the performance on all later items should collapse. In the case of letters, is easy to remember sequences that are consistent with long-term language habits, also with pauses by grouping theletters in threes, so the memory system takes advantage of cues from prosody. Sometimes we suffered interference between thoughts; in fact learning can be disrupted by subsequent activity too. Someresearches had shown that such interference depends on the similarity between the remembered and interfering material and for the LTM at least but it is true that interference depends on similarity, so forexample numbers do not interfere with letters. There are some paradigms about forgetting, the Peterson task is a short-term forgetting task in which a small amount of material is tested after a...