AO3: Memory Flashcards
1
Q
MSM: Research to Support MSM
A
- Baddeley research with the lists
- Acoustically similar - harder to remember after short period of time
- Semantically similar - harder to remember after long period of time
- Provides evidence there are different stores of memory that are coded for differently as different types of errors were made after different lengths of time
- Supports the main idea of the MSM (multiple memory stores)
2
Q
MSM: Research Lacks Ecological Validity
A
- E: Baddeley’s researching into coding of the MSM had the participants memorise lists
- E: Task is artificial
- Setting (lab) is artificial and conditioned were controlled
- Findings can’t be generalised to real life examples of the MSM
- E: Lacks EV due to tasks and settings
3
Q
MSM: Amnesia Patient Case Study provides a challenge to MSM depiction of LTM
A
- E: HM has retrograde amnesia (can’t form new memories but remembers old ones)
- Shows improvement in completing a maze puzzle even though he doesn’t remember doing it
- The fact that he has no memory of doing the maze puzzle shows his episodic memeory is damaged but the fact that he made improvemnets in completing the maze puzzle shows his procedural memory is still in tact
- MSM fails to mention more than 1 type of LTM suggesting its explanation of LTM is limited
- Study has bad population validity as the sample was 1 special case person
- Challenges MSM but weakly due to lack of population validity
e
4
Q
LTM: Tulving’s LTM Theory challenges the MSM
A
- E: Tulving suggested 3 types of memory (episodic, semantic, and procedural) whereas the MSM only says there is 1
- E: No mention of different types of LTM in the MSM suggested the MSM explanation is limited
- Tulving’s theory can be seen as a development to the MSM rather than a challenge
- L: Tulving’s LTM theory can be seen as either a challenge or an extension to the MSM
5
Q
LTM: Amnesia Patient Case Study provides support to the divisions between Episodic and Procedural Memory
A
- E: HM has retrograde amnesia (can’t form new memories but remembers old ones)
- Shows improvement in completing a maze puzzle even though he doesn’t remember doing it
- E: The fact that he has no memory of doing the maze puzzle shows his episodic memory is damaged but the fact that he made improvements in completing the maze puzzle shows his procedural memory is still in tact
- MSM fails to mention more than 1 type of LTM suggesting its explanation of LTM is limited
- Study has bad population validity as the sample was 1 special case person
- L: Challenges MSM but weakly due to lack of population validity
6
Q
LTM: Tulving’s account of Semantic and Episodic Memory might be incorrect
A
- E: Cohen and Squires suggested the LTM has 2 divisions (declarative and non-declarative) rather than Tulving’s 3)
- E: Challenges Tulving’s theory where they were 2 separate types of LTM but both are declarative so they could be right
- Patients with anterograde amnesia suffer damage to their semantic and episodic memory
- Cohen and Squires agree with Tulving that procedural memory is its own division
- Patient C.L suffered damage to their semantic but not episodic memory (supports Tulving’s theory)
- L: Whether semantic and episodic memory are separate is still a debate in cognitive psychology
7
Q
WMM: Limitation of WMM is that it falls victim to the homunculus argument
A
- E: Homunculus argument uses a new concept to explain another concept without explaining the new concept
- E: The central executive is a a homunculus and Baddeley himself says this
- CE controls the slave systems but there isn’t an explanation to how it does
- This could lead to infinite regression (explanation for the CE isn’t explained and so on)
- L: The CE, the central component of the working memory model is a mystery
8
Q
WMM: Case Study provides evidence that WMM depiction of STM is superior to MSM depiction
A
- E: Patient KF suffered brain damage meaning his recall of acoustic information was damaged but his STM for visual info was fine
- E: MSM only talks about a single STM store whereas WMM talks about acoustic and visual stores
- The fact that one store was damaged and the other wasn’t is more in line with the WMM depiction
- Issue: Support of WMM relies on a case study so population validity is weak and findings can’t be generalised
- L: Case study provides support but weakly due to lack of population validity
9
Q
WMM: Dual-Task Research supports the WMM
A
- E: Baddeley found participants found it harder doing 2 verbal tasks compared to one verbal and one visual task
- E: Can be explained by the WMM as the limited capacity of the slave systems isn’t overwhelmed by the 2 different tasks
- 2 verbal tasks would overwhelm the visuo-spatial sketchpad
- Task is highly artificial so findings can’t be generalised to real applications of WM
- E: Dual-task research supports WMM but weakly due to lack of ecological validity
10
Q
Interference Theory: Research Support for Retroactive Interference as an explanation for Forgetting
A
- E: MacDonald made 2 conditions learn a list but one condition did nothing before and the other learnt another list before
- The condition that learnt 2 lists found it harder to remember the first list, especially if the first list was similar to the 2nd (words rather than numbers)
- E: Supports retroactive interference results from the study were consistent with predictions made based on interference theory
- Participants with no 2nd list recalled the words better
- Study doesn’t provide support for proactive interference
11
Q
Interference Theory: Research lacks Ecological Validity
A
- E: MacDonald’s research had participants recalling lists
- E: Task (recalling list) and setting (lab with controlled conditions) is artificial
- In reality people have to learn information with meaning such as recalling names and events
- Baddeley also recognised that tasks given to participants are too close together in time as in reality, information is more spaced out
- Generalising research to real situations of forgetting is difficult
12
Q
Interference Theory: Only explains some situations of forgetting
A
- E: Although it happens in everyday life it requires special conditions (when 2 pieces of info are similar)
- E: Interference theory only explains some types of forgetting as people still forget info that is in no way similar
- This means interference theory provides a limited explanation of forgetting although it doesn’t mean it’s completely wrong
- Explanations such as retrieval failure are also needed to fully explain forgetting
13
Q
Retrieval Failure: Research to support Retrieval Failure as an explanation for Forgetting
A
- E: Baddeley found divers were 40% less accurate in their recall of words on a list if the place they learnt them (underwater/on land) in a different place to where they recalled them
- E: Can be explained by encoding-specificity principle as if context-dependent cues present at encoding aren’t present at retrieval then it’s more likely forgetting will happen
- Task is artificial so findings can’t be generalised to real life forgetting
14
Q
Retrieval Failure: May not apply to all types of forgetting
A
- E: Baddeley did the same experiment but instead of recall it was recognition of words on the list and all the participants got the same score regardless of condition
- E: Context-dependent cues have no benefit in performance when it comes to forgetting in the context of recognition even if they do in a recall context
- This doesn’t mean that retrieval failure is wrong but the explanation is incomplete
15
Q
Retrieval Failure: Real Life Applications
A
- E: Retrieval Failure has led to the development of the cognitive interview (a police interview) where methods (e.g. report everything) are used to generate retrieval cues and this provides more info than the standard police interview
- E: Retrieval failure has value beyond academic explanation and can actually benefit society
- Indirectly supports retrieval failure as if CIs work then the principle behind them must also be valid
- Retrieval Failure is an effective explanation for forgetting
16
Q
Misleading Info: Lack of Ecological Validity
A
- E: Researchers investigating EWT use videos of staged events rather than actual EWs (e.g. Loftus and Palmer experiment)
- Doesn’t reflect real incidents of EWT as an actual EW is more likely to be feeling intense emotions and this feeling can’t be recreated in a lab
- This has led to some states in the US banning expert witnesses because of the lack of ecological validity
- Findings can’t be generalised to real-life implications on the accuracy of EWT
17
Q
Misleading Info: Real-Life Implications and Applications
A
- A non-profit organisation called the Innocence Project has found that 75% of overturned convictions have to happen because of how impactful EW misidentification is in the US
- Implications of misleading info impacting EWT are so important as they can prevent EW misidentification and therefore prevent wrongful convictions in the justice system
- Important applications that can improve the justice system (e.g. educating jurors on the impact of misleading info, educating lawyers on how to avoid giving misleading info during interviews)
- Research into the effects of misleading info could have benefits in society, specifically economically and legally
18
Q
Misleading Info: Research shows Negative impact of Post-Event Discussion
A
- Gabbert showed participants a video of a robbery but each participant saw the robbery from a different angle so they had details only they saw
- After they discussed the robbery, 71% of participants gave EWTs on details they couldn’t have seen in their video compared to 0% in the control condition
- Many of the participants recalled info they they didn’t witness, showing the negative impact PED has on EWT accuracy
- Gabbert concluded this was because of memory conformity but it’s unsure whether this was due to ISI or NSI
19
Q
EWT Anxiety: Anxiety impairs the accuracy of EWT
A
- Johnson did an experiment and found that participants gave a more accurate EWT when a confederate left the stage with a pen rather than a bloody knife
- Support impact of anxiety on EWT as the participants felt a greater sense of anxiety when the knife was present and this caused an impairment in memory
- This follows the Yerkes-Dodson law that highly arousing states have an impact on performance in memory tasks
- Also support the weapons focus effect as the decrease in performance when the knife was present suggests the participants would have been fixated on the knife due to anxiety and would have missed other details
20
Q
EWT Anxiety: Lack of Ecological Validity
A
- Studying anxiety is difficult as the ethics pf the study have to be kept in mind
- The studies are done in the setting of a lab and the footage of a video or a staged crime is artificial
- This ruins ecological validity as the true nature of anxiety can’t be properly studied as these strong emotions can’t truly be replicated
- Findings aren’t generalisable to real-life situations of the impact of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT
21
Q
EWT Anxiety: Challenge to the Weapons Focus Effect being linked to Anxiety
A
- Some researchers say that the WFE is more due to the shock of an unusual item so the EW focuses on the item rather than the person’s face
- This would mean that the WFE isn’t cased by anxiety and this challenges the arousal/threat hypothesis that anxiety impacts EWT accuracy
- Participants were shown a video of someone walking into a salon with either scissors (low anxiety/normal), a handgun (high anxiety/unusual) or a raw chicken (low anxiety/unusual) and the participants were equally bad at identifying the confederate in the chicken and the handgun condition
- This shows the strangeness of the item impacted memory performance, rather than anxiety
22
Q
Cognitive Interviews: Research supports Cognitive Interviews as a way of improving EWTs
A
- Meta Analysis complied 53 studies on cognitive interviews and found 34% increase in correct info compared to SPIs
- Supports cognitive interviews as a way of improving EWT
- Meta analysis increases support due to larger and more representative sample size (because of complied data) so findings can be generalised
- Study is undermined by the inconsistency of SPIs as there is no official method to an SPI
- This introduces lots of confounding variables so we don’t know if the 34% was actually due to cognitive interviews
23
Q
Cognitive Interviews: Difficult to Implement into the Legal System
A
- The cognitive interview requires lots of time as officers need to be trained and it takes longer to carry out than an SPI because of all the techniques
- This means that in theory the cognitive interview is better but it’s hard to implement it into real life EWTs as the time puts a strain on police resources
- Theoretically it’s a good tool but it’s difficult to implement into the system so it can’t help investigations
- Good theoretical tool to improve EWT but difficult to implement
24
Q
Cognitive Interview: Mixed Success with Different Age Groups
A
- Research found CIs are slightly less effective with you children (up to 6 years old) due to the complex interview method and especially effective with the elderly
- Pre-existing and individual differences impact how effective the CI is
- This means the CI needs to be used in a targeted way rather than police assume it works the same for everyone
- CIs are limited as they only work for a specific demographic - aren’t effective in improving EWT for everyone
