2. memory [remake flashcards]

Question

duration | long term memory

Answer 1

Psychologists believe that is potentially unlimited. ➥ Recall of childhood events is normal even for the oldest people

Answer 2

One strength of the MSM is **support from studies** showing that STM and LTM are different ― For example, Alan Baddeley found that we **tend to mix up words that sound similar when using our STM**; and that **we mix up words that have similar meanings when we use our LTMs** ― These **studies clearly show that STM and LTM are separate and independent memory stores**, as claimed by the MSM

Answer 3

One limitation of the MSM is **evidence of more than one STM store.** ― **Tim Shallice and Elizabeth Warrington studied a client** they refered to as KF ➥ **KF had amnesia**, a clinical memory disorder. ― **KF's STM for digits was very poor when read out loud to him**, but his **recall was much better when he read the digits to himself**. ― Further studies of KF showed that there could even be another short-term store for non-verbal sounds ― This **evidence suggests that the MSM is wrong in claiming that there is just one STM store** processing different types of information Another limitation of the MSM is that **prolonged rehearsal is not needed for transfer to LTM** ― According to the STM, what matters about rehearsal is the amount of it ➥ the more you rehearse something, the more likely it is to transfer to LTM (prolonged rehearsal) ― Fergus Craik and Michael Watkins found that **the type of rehearsal is more important than the amount.** ― **Elaborative rehearsal is needed for long-term storage.** This occurs when you link the information to your existing knowledge, or you think about what it means. ➥ this means that information can be transferred to LTM without prolonged rehearsal ― This suggests that **the MSM does not fully explain how long-term storage is achieved**.

Answer 4

A long-term memory store for personal events ➥ includes memories of when the events occured and of the people, objects, places, and behaviours involved. ― Memories from this store have to be retrieved consciously and with effort ― Are usually timestamped with when and where we learned them

Answer 5

A long-term memory store for our knowledge of the world ➥ includes facts and our knowledge of what words and concepts mean. ― These memories usually also need to be recalled deliberately

Answer 6

A long-term memory store for our knowledge of how to do things ➥ this includes our memories of learned skills ― We usually recall these memories without making a conscious or deliberate effort

Answer 7

One strength is evidence from the famous case studies of Henry Molaison and Clive Wearing ― **Episodic memory in both men was severely impaired** due to brain damage; but their semantic memories were relatively unaffected. ➥ **they still understood the meanings of words** ― For example, HM could not recall stroking a dog 30 minutes earlier but he didn't need to have the concept of a dog explained to him. ― Their **procedural memories were also intact**. They both still knew how to twalk and speak, and Clive Wearing still knew how to read music, sing, and play the piano. ― This **evidence supports Tulving's view that there are different memory stores in LTM** – one store can be damaged but other stores are unaffected. Another strength is that **understanding types of LTM allows psychologists to help people with memory problems**. ― For example, as people age, they experience **memory loss**. But research has shown this **seems to be specific to episodic memory** – it becomes **harder to recall memories of personal events/experiences that occured relatively recently** though past episodic memories remain intact. ― Sylvie Belleville *et al.* devised an intervention to improve episodic memories in older people. The **trained participants performed better on a test of episodic memory after training** than a control group. ― This shows that **distinguishing between types of LTM enables specific treatments to be developed**.

Answer 8

Studying people with brain injuries can help researchers to understand how memory is supposed to work normally, but **clinical studies are not perfect**. ― A major limitation is that they **lack control of variables** ➥ brain injuries experienced by participants were usually unexpected. ― The researcher had no way of controlling what happened to the participant before or during the injury. The **researcher has no knowledge of the individual's memory before the damage**. ➥ Without this, it is **difficult to judge exactly how much worse it is afterwards**. ― This lack of control **limits what clinical studies can tell us about different types of LTM**. One limitation is that there are **conflicting research findings linking types of LTM to areas of the brain**. ― For example, Randy **Bucker** and Steven **Petersen concluded that semantic memory is located in the left side of the prefrontal cortex and episodic memory on the right**. ― However, **other research links the left prefrontal cortex with encoding of episodic memories and the right prefrontal cortex with episodic retrieval**. ― This **challenges any neurophysiological evidence to support types of memory** as there is poor agreement on where each type might be located.

Answer 9

An explanation of how one aspect of STM is organised and how it functions. The WMM is concerned with the 'mental space' that is active when we are temporarily storing and manipulating information.

Answer 10

It has a 'supervisory' role ➥ monitors incoming data ➥focuses and divides our limited attention ➥allocates subsystems to tasks. ― The CE has a very limited processing capacity and does not store information

Answer 11

It deals with auditory information and preserves the order in which the information arrives. ― It is divided into two units: ➥ phonological store: stores the words we hear ➥ articulatory process: allows maintenance rehearsal

Answer 12

The VSS stores visual and/or spatial information when required ➥ visualising our house when asked how many windows there are ― It also has a limited capacity, which Baddeley says is three or four objects ― Robert Logie subdivided the VSS into: ➥ visual cache: stores visual data ➥ inner scribe: records the arragement of objects in the visual field

Answer 13

It is a temporary store for information, integrating the visual, spatial, and verbal information processed by other stores ― It maintains a sense of time sequencing – recording events that are happening. — It can be seen as the storage component of the central executive; and it has a limited capacity of about four chunks ― The episodic buffer links working memory to long-term memory and wider cognitive processes such as perception.

Answer 14

One strength is **support from Tim Shallice and Elizabeth Warrington's case study of patient KF**. ― After his brain injury, **KF had poor STM ability for auditory information** but **could process visual information normally**. ― For instance, **his immediate recall of letters and digits was better when he read them himself** than when they were read to him. ➥ KF's phonological loop was damaged but his visuo-spatial sketchpad was intact. ― This **finding strongly supports the existence of separate visual and acoustic memory stores**. Another strength is that the **studies of dual-task performance support the separate existence of the visuo-spatial sketchpad** ― When Baddeley *et al.*'s **participants carried out a visual and verbal task at the same time**, their **performance on each was similar to when they carried out the tasks separately** ― But **when both tasks were visual, performance declined substantially**. This is because **both visual tasks compete for the same subsystem** whereas there is **no competition when performing a verbal and visual task together**. ― This shows that **there must be a separate subsystem that processes visual input**.

Answer 15

It is **unclear whether KF had other cognitive impairments which might have affected his performance** on memory tasks. ― For example, his injury was caused by a motorcycle accident. ― The **trauma involved may have affected his cognitive performance quite apart from any brain injury** ― This **challenges evidence that comes from clinical studies of people with brain injuries** that may have affected many different systems. Another limitation is that there is a **lack of clarity over the nature of the central executive**. ― Baddeley himself recognised this when he said, 'The central executive is the most important but the least understood component of working memory.' ― The **CE needs to be more clearly specified than just simply being attention** ➥ **some psychologists believe the CE may consist of separate subcomponents** This means that **the CE is an unsatisfactory component and this challenges the integrity of the WMM**

Answer 16

suggests we forget because our long term memories become confused (disrupted) by other information while it is coded

Answer 17

old information already stored interferes with recalling something new

Answer 18

new information being stored inteferes with recall of old info

Answer 19

In both proactive and retroactive interference, the inteference is worse when the memories are similar, as discovered by John McGeoch and William McDonald ― McGeoch and McDonald studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between two sets of materials. ― Participants had to learn a list of 10 words until they could remember them with 100% accuracy. ― Then they learned a new list. When participants were asked to recall the original list of words, the most similar material produced the worst recall. This shows that interference is the strongest when the memories are similar.

Answer 20

One strength is that there is **evidence of interference effects in more everyday situations** ― Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch **asked rugby players to recall the names of the teams they had played against** during a rugby season. ➥ The players all played for the same time interval but the number of games varied because some players missed amtches due to injury. ― **Players who played the most games had the poorest recall**. ― This study **shows that interference can operate in at least some real-world situations**, increasing the validity of the theory Another strength comes from evidence of retrograde facilitation. ― **Anton Coenen and Gilles van Luijtelaar gave participants a list of words and later asked them to recall the list**, assuming the intervening experiences would act as interference. ― They **found that when a list of words was learned under the influence of the drug diazepam, recall one week later was poor**. ➥ when a list was learned before the drug was taken, later recall was better than placebo ― **John Wixted suggests that the drug prevents new information reaching parts of the brain involved in processing memories**, so it cannot interfere retroactively with information already stored. ― This finding **shows that forgetting can be due to interference** – reduce the interference and you reduce the forgetting.

Answer 21

**Interference may cause some forgetting in everyday situations but it is unusual**. ― This is because the **conditions necessary for interference to occur are relatively rare**. ― This is unlike lab studies, where the **high degree of control means a researcher can create ideal conditions for interference** ― For instance, two **memories have to be fairly similar in order to interfere with each other**. ― This suggests that **forgetting may be better explained by other theories** such as retrieval failure due to a lack of cues Another limitation is that **interference is temporary and can be overcome by using cues** ― **Endel Tulving and Joseph Psotka gave participants lists of words organised into categories**, one list at a time. ― Recall **averaged about 70% for the first list**, but **became progressively worse** as participants learned about each additional list. ― **At the end of the procedure**, the participants were given a cued recall test – they were **told the names of the categories** ➥ **recall rose again to about 70%** ― This shows that **interference causes a temporary loss of accessibility to material that is still in LTM**, a finding not predicted by interference theory

Answer 22

a form of forgetting. it occurs when we don't have the necessary cues to access memory. the memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided

Answer 23

A trigger of information that allows us to access a memory. Such cues may be meaningful or may be indirectly linked by being encoded at the time of learning.

Answer 24

Duncan Godden and Alan Baddeley studied deep-sea divers who work underwater to see if training on land helped or hindered their work underwater. The divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land and then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land. In two of these conditions, the environmental contexts of learning and recall matched, whereas in the other two they did not. Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions. They concluded that the external cues available at learning were different from the ones available at recall and this led to retrieval failure.

Answer 25

Sara Carter and Helen Cassady gave antihistamine drugs to their participants. The antihistamines had a mild sedative effect making the participants slightly drowsy. This creates an internal physiological state different from the 'normal' state of being awake and alert. The participants had to learn lists of words and passages of prose and then recall the information. In the conditions where there was a mismatch betweel internal state at learning and recall, performance on the memory test was significantly worse. So when the cues are absent, then there is more forgetting.

Answer 26

One strength is that **retrieval cues can help to overcome some forgetting in everyday situations** ― Although cues may not have a very strong effect on forgetting, Baddeley **suggests that [cues] are still worth paying attention to**. ― For example, entering a room and forgetting what you wanted, then going back into the other room and remembering. ― When we have trouble remembering something, it is **probably worth making the effort to recall the environment in which you learned it first**. ― This shows how **research can remind us of strategies we use in the real world to improve our recall** Another strength is the **impressive range of research that supports the retrieval failure explanation**. ― The studies by **Godden and Baddeley** and **Carter and Cassady** are just two examples because they **show that a lack of relevant cues at recall can lead to context-dependent and state-dependent forgetting in everyday life**. ― Memory researchers Michael **Eyseneck** and Mark **Keane argue that retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from LTM** ― This evidence **shows that retrieval failure occurs in real-world situations as well as in the highly controlled conditions of the lab**

Answer 27

Baddeley argues that **context effects are actually not every strong, especially in everyday life**. ― Different contexts have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen. For example, **it would be hard to find an environment as different from land as underwater.** ― In contrast, l**earning something in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to result in much forgetting** because these environments are generally not different enough. ― This means that **retrieval failure due to lack of contextual cues may not actually explain much everyday forgetting**. Another limitation is that **context effects may depend substantially on the type of memory being tested**. ― **Godden and Baddeley replicated their underwater experiement but used a recognition test instead of recall** ➥ participants had to say whether they recognised a word read to them from a list, instead of retrieving it for themselves. ― When recognition was tested, there was **no context-dependent effect**, performance was the same in all four conditions ― This **suggests that retrieval failure is a limited explanation for forgetting because it only applies when a person has to recall information rather than recognise it**.

Answer 28

incorrect information given to an eyewitness usually after the event

Answer 29

a question which, because of the way it is phrased, suggests a certain answer

Answer 30

Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer arranged for 45 participants to watch film clips of car accidents and then asked them questions about the accident ― In the critical question (leading / misleading question), participants were asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling ― There were give groups of participants and each group was given a different verb in the critical question ➥ e.g. hit, contacted, bumped, collided, smashed Te mean estimated speed was calculated for each participant group. ― The verb contacted resulted in a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph; but 40.5mph for smashed

Answer 31

Fiona Gabbert studied participants in pairs. ― Each participant watched a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view. ➥ this meant that each participant could see elements in the event that the other could not ― For example, only one of the participants could see the title of a book being carried by a young woman ― Both participants then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall The researchers found that 71% of the participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up in the discussion. ➥ the corresponding figure in a control group, where there was no discussion was 0% ― This was evidence of memory conformity

Answer 32

One strength of research into misleading information is that **it has important practical uses in the criminal justice system** ― The consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious. **Loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory** that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses. ― **Pyschologists are sometimes asked to act as expert witnesses in court trials** and explain the limits of EWT to juries ― This **shows that psychologists can help to improve the way the legal system works**, especially by protecting innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT

Answer 33

One limitation of the substitution explanation is that EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event than for others ― For example, Rachel Sutherland and Harlene Hayne showed participants a video clip. ― When participants were later asked misleading questions, their recall was more accurate for central details of the event that for peripheral ones. ― Presumably, the participants' attention was focused on central features of the event and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading information ― This suggests that the original memories for central details survived and were not distorted, an outcome that is not predicted by the substitution explanation. Another limitation of the memory conformity explanation is evidence that post-event discussion actually alters EWT ― Elin Skagerberd and Daniel Wright showed their participants film clips. ➥ There were two versions, e.g. a mugger's hair was dark brown in one but light brown in another. ― Participants discussed the clips in pairs, each having seen different versions. ― They often did not report what they had seen in the clips or what they had heard from the co-witness, but a 'blend' of the two ― This suggests that the memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading post-event discussion, rather than the result of memory conformity.

Answer 34

Craig Johnson and William Scott did research on this ➥ participants believed they were taking part in a lab study ― While seated in a waiting room, participants in the low-anxiety condition heard a casual conversation in the next room and then say a man walk past them carrying a pen and grease on his hands ― Other participants overheard a heated argument, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A man walked out of the room, holding a knife covered in blood. This was the high-anxiety condition. The participants later picked out the man from a set of 50 photos ― 49% who had seen the man carrying the pen were able to identify him ― 33% of participants who had seen the man with a blood-covered knife were able to identify The tunnel theory of memory argues that people have enhanced memory for central events.

Answer 35

John Yuille and Judith Cutshall conducted a study of an actual shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver, Canada ➥ the shop owner shot a thief dead and 13 of 21 witnesses took part in the study ― They were interviewed four to five months after the incident and these interviews were compared with the original police interviews at the time of the shooting. ― Accuracy was determined by the number of details reported in each account and witnesses were asked to rate how stressed they had felt at the time of the incident and whether they had any emotional problems since the event The witnesses were very accurate in their accounts and there was little change in the amount recalled or accuracy after five months ― Those who reported the highest levels of stress were most accuarte ➥ 88% compared to 75% for the less-stressed group. This suggests that anxiety does not have a detrimental effect on the accuracy of eyewitness memory in a real-world context and may even enhance it

Answer 36

One strength is the evidence supporting the view that anxiety has a negative view on the accuracy of recall ― The study by Tim Valentine and Jan Mesout supporst the research on weapon focus, finding negative effects on recall ― The researchers used an objective measure (heart rate) to divide participants into high- and low-anxiety groups ― In this study, anxiety clearly disrupted the participants' ability to recall details about the actor in the London Dungeon's Labyrinth ― This suggests that a high level of anxiety does have a negative effect on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event. Another strength is evidence showing that anxiety can have positive effects on the accuracy of recall ― Sven-Ake Christianson and Birgitta Hubinette interveiwed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden. ➥ some of the witnesses were directly involved (bank workers) and some were indirectly involved (bystanders). ― It was was found that recall was more than 75% accurate across all witnesses. The direct victims were even more accurate ― These findings from actual crimes confirm that anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall for eyewitnesses and may even enhance

Answer 37

tha method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories

Answer 38

1. report everything 2. reinstate the context 3. reverse the order 4. change perspective

Answer 39

One strength of the cognitive interview is evidence that it works ― For example, a meta-analysis by Gunter Kohnken *et al.* combined data with 55 studies comparing the CI with the standard police interview ― The CI gave an average 41% increase in accurate information compared with the standard interview. ➥ only four studies in the analysis showed no difference between the types of interview ― This shows that the CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that is stored in memory but not immediately accessible

Answer 40

One limitation of the original CI is that not all of its elements are equally effective or useful ― Rebecca Mine and Ray Bull found that each of the four techniques used alone produced more information than the standard police interview. ― But they also found that using a combination of reporte verything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any of the other elements or combination of them. ➥ this confirmed the police officers' suspicions that some aspects of the CI are more useful than others ― This casts some doubt on the credibility of the overall cognitive interview Another limitation is that police officers may be relucatant to use the CI because it takes more time and training than the standard police interview ― For example, more time is needed to establish rapport with a witness and allow them to relax. ― The CI also requires special training and many forces do not have the resources to provide more than a few hours ― This suggests that the complete CI as it exists is not a realistic method for police officers to use and it might be better to focus on just a few elements.