What the exam asks
- Section I (Multiple Choice): Expect scenario-based questions where a character loses memory after an accident (distinguishing retrograde from anterograde amnesia) or study scenarios testing which memory store holds information at a given moment based on duration and capacity.
- Section II (Free Response): Storage principles—especially elaborative rehearsal, working memory capacity, and the self-reference effect—are top-tier psychological concepts to bring into Evidence-Based Question (EBQ) parts B(ii) and C(ii) to explain why a study’s memory intervention worked.
Core ideas
Comparing memory stores
Different memory systems vary along three testable dimensions: capacity (how much they hold), duration (how long they hold it without rehearsal), and content (what form the information takes).
| Memory System | Capacity | Storage Duration | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sensory memory | Very large (captures the immediate sensory field) | Fraction of a second to a few seconds (iconic visual ; echoic auditory ) | Raw, unanalyzed sensory impressions |
| Short-term memory (STM) | Limited: about items (or chunks of information) | Brief: about without rehearsal | Passively held acoustic, visual, or semantic information currently in conscious awareness |
| Working memory (WM) | Limited (shares STM limits and attention bottlenecks) | Brief: while actively attended to and manipulated | Actively processed phonological (verbal/auditory) and visuospatial data coordinated with long-term memory |
| Long-term memory (LTM) | Essentially unlimited | Potentially permanent (lifetime) | Consolidated explicit (episodic, semantic) and implicit (procedural, conditioned) knowledge |
Rehearsal: keeping and consolidating memories
To prevent information in short-term or working memory from decaying within , we use rehearsal:
- Maintenance rehearsal: Simple, rote repetition of information (such as repeating a phone number over and over). It keeps information active in short-term memory, but is inefficient for transferring information into durable long-term storage.
- Elaborative rehearsal: Linking new information to existing knowledge already in long-term memory by focusing on deep meaning (semantic encoding), creating examples, or organizing concepts. It dramatically improves long-term retention because it builds a rich web of retrieval cues and neural connections.