AO3: Memory Flashcards
MSM: Research to Support MSM
- 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
- Supports the main idea of the MSM (multiple memory stores)
MSM: Research Lacks Ecological Validity
- Baddeley made the participants memorise lists
- Task is artificial
- Setting (lab) is artificial and conditioned were controlled
- Findings can’t be generalised to real life examples of the MSM
- Lacks EV due to tasks and settings
MSM: Amnesia Patient Case Study provides a challenge to MSM depiction of LTM
- HM has retrograde amnesia (can’t form new memories but remembers old ones)
- Shows improvement in completing a puzzle even though he doesn’t remember doing it
- If LTM was 1 store he’d still be bad at it but he isn’t so it’s not
- Study has bad population validity as the sample was 1 special case person
- Challenges MSM but weakly due to lack of population validity
LTM: Tulving’s LTM Theory challenges the MSM
- Tulving suggested 3 types of memory (episodic, semantic, and procedural) whereas the MSM only says there is 1
- 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
- Tulving’s LTM theory can be seen as either a challenge or an extension to the MSM
LTM: Amnesia Patient Case Study provides support to the divisions between Episodic and Procedural Memory
- HM has retrograde amnesia (can’t form new memories but remembers old ones)
- Shows improvement in completing a puzzle even though he doesn’t remember doing it
- HM couldn’t remember doing the puzzles (episodic memory damaged) but he got better at doing them (procedural memory is fine)
- Study has bad population validity as the sample was 1 special case person
- Provides support for 2 different LTM divisions but weakly due to lack of population validity
LTM: Tulving’s account of Semantic and Episodic Memory might be incorrect
- Cohen and Squires suggested the LTM has 2 divisions (declarative and non-declarative) rather than Tulving’s 3)
- 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)
- Whether semantic and episodic memory are separate is a huge debate in cognitive psychology
WMM: Limitation of WMM is that it falls victim to the homunculus argument
- Homunculus argument uses a new concept to explain another concept without explaining the new concept
- 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)
- CE is a mystery
WMM: Case Study provides evidence that WMM depiction of STM is superior to MSM depiction
- Patient KF suffered brain damage meaning his recall of acoustic information was damaged but his STM for visual info was fine
- 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
- Case study provides support but weakly due to lack of population validity
WMM: Dual-Task Research supports the WMM
- Baddeley found participants found it harder doing 2 verbal tasks compared to one verbal and one visual task
- This is because 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
- Dual-task research supports WMM but weakly due to lack of ecological validity
Interference Theory: Research Support for Retroactive Interference as an explanation for Forgetting
- McDonald 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)
- 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
Interference Theory: Research lacks Ecological Validity
- McDonald’s research had participants recalling lists
- Task (recalling list) and setting (lab with controlled conditions) is artificial
- Irl, participants would have to recall names and events
- Baddeley also recognised that tasks given to participants are too close together in time as irl, info is more spaced out
- Generalising research to real situations of forgetting is difficult
Interference Theory: Only explains some situations of forgetting
- Although it happens in everyday life it requires special conditions (when 2 pieces of info are similar)
- 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 also it doesn’t mean it’s completely wrong
- Explanations such as retrieval failure are also needed to fully explain forgetting
Retrieval Failure: Research to support Retrieval Failure as an explanation for Forgetting
- Baddeley found divers were 40% less likely to recall words on a list if the place they learnt them (underwater/on land) in a different place to where they recalled them
- If context-dependent cues present at encoding aren’t present at retrieval then forgetting will probably happen
- Task is artificial so findings can’t be generalised to real life forgetting
Retrieval Failure: May not apply to all types of forgetting
- 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
- 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
Retrieval Failure: Real Life Applications
- 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
- 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