Adam has just tested a woman who has brain damage, and he is having difficulty understanding the results. She can't remember any words from a list when she is tested immediately after hearing the words, but her memory gets better when she is tested after a delay. Interestingly enough, when the woman reads the list herself, she remembers well at first, so in that case the delay is not necessary. Can you explain these observations using the modal model? The working memory model? Can you think of a new model that might explain this result better than those two?

Answer:

In the given case, a woman who has brain damage is tested by Adam. When she was allowed to hear a list of words and asked to remember those words immediately, she could not remember any of the words. But when she was allowed to remember with some delay, she can remember better than before. In other test, she was allowed to read the words by herself and asked to remember them. She can remember the words immediately without any delay. Thus, Adam has difficulty in understanding her results.

Using the modal model of memory, the observations can be made as follows:

i. The woman may have damage in the prefrontal lobe of the brain as she could not remember the words immediately after hearing the list. Her sensory memory may not be working well.

ii. But with the delay, the neurons kept firing during the delay and those words move to the short-term memory easily without her knowledge and she can recall them better than before.

iii. Also, she pay attention more easily when she do the task by herself. Thus, the words easily start to hold in sensory memory, to short-term memory and even can reach the long-term memory for later recall.

Using the working model of memory, the observations can be made as follows:

i. The auditory information is stored in the phonological loop which stores only limited amount of information and the woman might have difficulty in phonological loop. Thus, with the delay, the woman can recall the words and could not recall without delay.

ii. When the woman reads the list by herself, the visual information gets hold in the visuospacial sketch pad and pulled to the long-term memory. Thus, at the final stage of central executive, the woman focuses attention and retrieves the information from the long-term memory by coordinating with visuospacial sketch pad.

The new model that can explain the result of the woman can be given as follows:

i. The part of the brain which is responsible for storing the incoming auditory information (auditory memory) might be damaged and the woman could not remember the word immediately after hearing the list of words.

ii. The part of the brain which is responsible for storing the little more information for some more time might not be damaged and the woman can recall after a delay.

iii. The part of the brain which is responsible for collecting the visual information (visual memory) is active and hence, the woman can recall the words which were read by her.