Chapter 2: Memory

Question 1

What is the memory model called?

Answer 1

The Multi Store Model- Atkinson & Shiffrin

Question 2

What is the first part of the memory model?

Answer 2

Sensory input

Question 3

What is the first box in the memory model and what is its function?

Answer 3

Sensory Register
-Filters out 95% of unimportant information.

Question 4

What is the second part of the memory model?

Answer 4

Attention

Question 5

What is the second box on the memory model and what is its function?

Answer 5

Short term memory.
- Actively processes information where most of it is dumped.

Question 6

What is the third part of the memory model and what is its function?

Answer 6

Maintenance rehearsal
-This repeats information so it can continue to stay in your short term memory for longer.

Question 7

What is the third box in the memory model and what is its function?

Answer 7

Long term memory.
-Stores information for rehearsal.
-Basically storage for your memory.

Question 8

What are the three essential things to know about the memory model?

Answer 8

-It’s based on computer models; assumes human memory works like a computer.
-It’s a sequential model; memories have to pass through each unit in order.
-Treats all information equally.

Question 9

What is capacity?

Answer 9

The amount of information that can be held in the memory store.

Question 10

What is duration?

Answer 10

How long information can be held in memory.

Question 11

What is coding?

Answer 11

The way in which information is changed and stored in memory.

Question 12

What is the capacity of sensory register?

Answer 12

Unlimited.

Question 13

What is the duration of sensory register?

Answer 13

500 milliseconds

Question 14

What is the coding of sensory register?

Answer 14

It’s modality based, meaning we use our senses to depict a certain item and store it in memory.
For example, if I smelt an orange and it smelt bad, if I picked up another orange lets say two days later then i would now associate that smell with that orange cause that’s now my memory of it.
-The main sense we use is iconic, echoic and haptic.
Iconic = sight
Echoic = sound
Haptic = touch

Question 15

What is the capacity for short term memory?

Answer 15

It’s limited.
Is said to hold 7+-2 items/things in our STM.
So a range from 5 to 9.

Question 16

What theory is behind the capacity of STM?

Answer 16

Information is lost via displacement, where when we take in information continuously, the initial information which was given has been pushed out by the ones that came after it; its been displaced.
This shows that the information we can hold is limited as we are unable to recover the information that has been displaced until it is repeated to us.

Question 17

What was used to prove the capacity of STM?

Answer 17

The Digit Span Technique- Jacobs (1887)
• Participants recall strings of digits in presentation order. The number of digits increase until the participants can no longer recall correctly.
Jacobs found that the average capacity for digits was 9.3 and for letters it was 7.3

Question 18

What is the duration for STM?

Answer 18

C.18 seconds
Very limited.

Question 19

Who was the duration of STM proved by and what was their procedure, results and conclusion?

Answer 19

Peterson and Peterson
Procedure:
• Participants were presented with trigrams (3 consonants presented in a triangle shape).
• The trigram was then removed, and participants were given a distracter task, lasting 3-18 seconds.
• Participants were then asked to repeat the trigram serially.
• Different trigrams were used each time.

Results:
• Participants could recall about 80% of trigrams after 3 seconds.
• Their recall became progressively worse as the time delays lengthened.
• By 18 seconds, only 2% of trigrams were correctly recalled.

Conclusion:
• Information disappears rapidly from STM when rehearsal is prevented.
• Therefore, STM has a very limited duration.

Question 20

In Peterson & Peterson’s procedure,
Why were different trigrams used each time?
Why weren’t vowels used?
Why were participants given a distracter task?

Answer 20

• Used to prevent maintenance rehearsal. If the same trigrams were used then it’d be much easier to recall each one.
• Vowels are easy recall letters as well as limited to only 5 letters. They can also make a word pretty easily and make it easier for participants to recall.
• To prevent maintenance rehearsal.

Question 21

What is the coding for STM?

Answer 21

Mainly acoustically.

Question 22

Who was the coding for STM proved by and what were their procedures, results and conclusions?

Answer 22

Baddeley.

Procedure:
• Gave participants 4 different lists of words to recall immediately in serial order after presentation.
List 1 = acoustically similar (mad, map, cap, cat, cad)
List 2 = acoustically dissimilar ( pen, dog, night, etc)
List 3 = semantically similar (tall, high, wide, big, broad)
List 4 = semantically dissimilar (foul, strong, safe, rough, late)

Results:
• Baddeley found that acoustically similar words weren’t recalled as well as others.

Conclusion:
• The STM encodes mainly acoustically.
• The fact that the STM got confused over words that sounded the same suggests that’s what the STM focuses on.
• The words were presented visually, yet the STM confused those which sounded similar — therefore it must have converted them to sound.

Question 23

What was the capacity for long term memory?

Answer 23

Unlimited.

Question 24

What was the duration for LTM?

Answer 24

Indefinite (vague/ not clearly expressed).

Question 25

Who was the duration of LTM proved by and what was their procedure and results?

Answer 25

Bahrick
Procedure:
• He used high school yearbooks to assess duration of LTM
• Groups of participants who left high school 15-48 years ago were shown class photos, given names to pair to the pictures or asked to recall their names.

Results:
• Recall after 48 years was 30%, therefore LTM duration is indefinite (vague/ not clearly expressed).

Question 26

What was the coding for LTM?

Answer 26

Mainly semantically.

Question 27

Who was the encoding for LTM proved by and what were their procedures, results and conclusions?

Answer 27

Baddeley

Procedure:
•Baddeley continued his work from STM and for LTM he doubled the length of the words in the lists to 10 words.
• He presented them to his participants four times, preventing rehearsal each time using a distracter task.
• After 20 minutes he had asked them to recall the words serially.

Results:
• Acoustic similarity no longer had any effect on recall.
• Instead, semantically similar words were the most poorly recalled.

Conclusions:
• The fact that the LTM confuses words that mean similar things suggest that it encodes words mainly semantically.

Question 28

What was something that could be questioned in Baddeleys’ study for LTM encoding?

Answer 28

The question is whether or not 20 minutes counts as long term for a variety of people.
1 month is long term but 20 mins may not be defined as such.

Question 29

What are the 5 areas of the Working Memory Model (WMM)?

Answer 29

Central Executive (CE)
Phonological Loop (PL)
Visuo-spatial Sketchpad (VSS)
Episodic Buffer (EB)
Long Term Memory (LTM)

Question 30

Who formulated the WMM and why?

Answer 30

• Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

• They believed that if you do two things at the same time (dual task performance) and they’re both visual tasks, you perform them less well than you would if you did them separately.
• And that if you do two things at the same time but one is visual and the other involves sound then there is no interference. You do them as well simultaneously as you would do them separately.

Question 31

Define central executive.

Answer 31

• This is to direct attention to particular tasks, determining at any time how the brain’s ‘resources’ are allocated to tasks.
• The CE has very limited capacity where it is unable to attend to too many things at once and has no capacity for storing data.

Question 32

What are the three ‘resources’ of the central executive?

Answer 32

• Phonological Loop
• Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad
• Episodic Buffer

Question 33

Explain the Phonological Loop in the WMM.

Answer 33

• It has limited capacity.
• It deals with auditory (sense of hearing) information and preserves the order of information.

• It is divided into 2 loops;
- The phonological store which holds the words you hear.
- The articulatory process which is used for words that are heard or seen. These words are silently repeated— a form of maintenance rehearsal.

Question 34

Explain the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad.

Answer 34

• This is used when you have to plan a spatial task. E.g brushing your hair, packing a suitcase, landing a flip, navigating etc.
• Visual and/or spatial information is temporarily stored here.

• VSS can be divided into 2 groups;
- A visual cache, which stores info on visual items e.g form or colour.
- An inner scribe, which stores the arrangement of objects in the visual field.

Question 35

Explain the Episodic Buffer.

Answer 35

• This was added by Baddely because he realised the model needed a general store.
• The episodic buffer integrates information from the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad.
• It maintains a sense of time sequencing— recording the events that are occurring.
• It sends information to the LTM.

Question 36

What are the 2 subtypes of long term memory?

Answer 36

• Explicit/declarative memory- ‘knowing that’ e.g ‘I know my birthday’
• Implicit memory- ‘knowing how’ e.g ‘already knowing how to write’

Question 37

What are the three main types of long term memory?

Answer 37

• Episodic
• Semantic
• Procedural

Question 38

Explain ‘episodic memory’ as a type of LTM.

Answer 38

• Explicit memory.
• Includes personal memories of events; entails contextual details (what happened, just before or after, why were you there, who else was there etc) and emotional details (how you felt at the time).

Question 39

Explain ‘semantic memory’ as a type of LTM.

Answer 39

• Explicit memory.
• Includes facts and knowledge that you have, this is knowledge shared by everyone (universal)— not personal experiences.
• May relate to the functions of objects, what behaviour is appropriate, abstract concepts.
• Links to episodic memories— all knowledge starts as personal experience, before losing association to particular events and turning into general semantic knowledge.

Question 40

Explain ‘procedural memory’ as a type of LTM.

Answer 40

• Implicit memory.
• This is the memory for how to do things.
• Automatic due to repetition and practice— the more we become used to them, the less we become aware of them.
• It is important that procedural memory is automatic so we can focus our attention on other tasks while performing these everyday skills.

Question 41

Define interference as an explanation for forgetting.

Answer 41

• When 2 or more similar memories prevent the recall of one another.

Question 42

What are the two types of interference?

Answer 42

• Proactive interference- past memories prevent the recall of newer memories. E.g a teacher changes their name but you keep on using their old name.
• Retroactive interference- where newer memories prevent the recall of older memories. E.g you get a new phone number and can no longer recall your old phone number.
The memories are blocked ; not erased— can still be recalled at a different time/ with a prompt.

Question 43

What is the AMRC for theory for retroactive interference?

Answer 43

• A= Müller and his students wanted to identify the RI effects and successfully did so.
• M= They gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes and then, after a retention interval, asked ppts to recall the lists.
• R= Performance was less good if ppts had been given an intervening task between initial learning and recall (they were shown three landscape paintings and asked to describe them).
• C= The intervening task produced RI because the later task (describing pictures) interfered with what had been previously learned.

Question 44

What theory was behind proactive interference? Outline the AMRC.

Answer 44

• A= Underwood believed that proactive interference (PI) could be equally significant in the cause of forgetting.
• M= He analysed the findings from a number of studies on forgetting.
• R= He concluded that when participants have to learn a series of word lists, they do not learn the list of words encountered later on in the sequence as well as the lists of words encountered earlier on.
• C= Overall, underwood found that if ppts memorised 10 or more lists then after 24 hours, they remembered about 20% of what they learned. If only one list then recall was 70%.

Question 45

Explain the theory on the similarity of test materials. Outline the AMRC.

Answer 45

• A= McGeoch & McDonald experimented with the effects of similarity of materials.
• M= Gave ppts a list of 10 adjectives. Once learned, a resting interval of 10 minutes occurred.
• R= If list B was a list of synonyms of List A, recall was poor (12%); if list B was nonsense syllables this had less effect (26% recall); if list B was numbers this had the least effect (37%)
• C= This shows that interference is strongest the more similar the items are.

Question 46

Define retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting.

Answer 46

• Occurs due to the absence of cues. It’s an explanation for forgetting based on the idea that the issue relates to being able to retrieve a memory that is there (available) but not accessible. Retrieval depends on using cues.

Question 47

Define cues.

Answer 47

• Cues are things that serve as a reminder. They may meaningfully link to the material to be remembered or may not be meaningfully linked, such as environmental cues or cues related to your mental state.

Question 48

Define the 3 types of cues.

Answer 48

• Explicit cues- when someone says ‘it begins with’ or ‘rhymes with’ or they are shown pictures.
• Contextual cues- the environment; where you are, who was there etc.
• State-based cues- your emotional/physical state at the time. E.g sad, happy, drunk, injured etc.

Question 49

What is the encoding specificity principle and who was it proposed by?

Answer 49

• It states that memory is most effective if information that was present at encoding is also available at the time of retrieval.
• Recall of information will be better when more cues from the point of learning are present at recall.
• Cues do not have to be identical; a similar cue will work.
• Tulving and Thomson proposed this principle.

Question 50

What study is an example of context-dependent forgetting?

Answer 50

• The study by Abernethy.
• She arranged for a group of students to be tested before a certain course began, then they were tested each week.
• Some were tested in their classroom by their usual teacher, some by a different teacher and others in a different classroom with either the same teacher or different.
• Those tested by the same teacher in the same room performed best.
• In conclusion, presumably familiar things acted as memory cues, also superior students were least affected by the changes.

Question 51

What study other than Abernethy is an example of context-dependent forgetting?

Answer 51

• A study by Godden and Baddeley.
• They investigated the effect of contextual cues.
• They recruited scuba divas as participants to learn a set of words, either on land or in water. They then tested them on either land or underwater.
• The highest recall occurred when the initial contact matched the recall environment.

Question 52

What study is an example of state-dependent forgetting?

Answer 52

• A study by Goodwin et al.
• He asked male volunteers to remember a list of words when either drunk or sober.
• Participants were asked to recall the list 24 hours later when some were sober, but others had to get drunk again (for experimental purposes).
• When they were sober at the recall and they were sober when learning the words, they had really high performances. But if they were drunk at the recall but sober at learning the words they had a bad performance.
• When drunk at recall as well as drunk in learning the words, they had a really high performance. But if they were sober at recall but then drunk when learning, they had a low performance.
• The results suggested that information learned when drunk is the more available in the same state later & learning when sober made recall better when sober.

Question 53

What is eyewitness testimony?

Answer 53

The evidence provided in court by a person who witnessed a crime, with a view to identifying the perpetrator of the crime.

Question 54

What 3 things impact a persons testimony when being interviewed?

Answer 54

Misleading information
Leading questions
Post-event discussion

Question 55

What key study showed the effects of leading questions in interviews?

Answer 55

Experiment 1: The Loftus and Palmer Study (1974)
Aim: to investigate how information is misleaded in eye witness testimony.
Method: After each film the participants were given a questionnaire which asked them to describe the accident and then answer a series of specific questions about it.
A critical question was ‘about how fast the cars were going when they hit each other?’
Another group was given this Q, however the verbs, ‘smashed, collided, bumped or contacted’ were in place instead of the word ‘hit’.
The critical question was a leading question because it suggested the answer that a participant might give.
Findings: A table of results which showed that leading questions affect the response given by participants. The difference in mean speed estimated when given the words smashed and contacted was 9, where smashed had a speed of 40.8 and contacted had a speed of 31.8.

Question 56

What key study showed the effects of leading questions in interviews?

Answer 56

Experiment 2: The Loftus and Palmer Study (1974)

Aim: to know whether the leading question may bias a participants response or may actually cause information to be altered before it is stored.

Method: a new set of participants was divided into 3 groups and shown a film of a car accident lasting a minute, and again asked questions about speed.
The participants were then asked to return one week later when they were asked a series of 10 questions about the incident including another critical question, ‘did you see any broken glass?’
There was no broken glass in the film but presumably those who thought the car was travelling faster might be more likely to think that there would be broken glass.

Findings: the results table shows that leading questions did change the actual memory a participant had for the event. Those who had said smashed in the previous experiment had the largest number of people say that there was broken glass.

Question 57

What key study showed the effects of post-event discussion in interviews?

Answer 57

Gabbert:
Participants were put in pairs where each partner watched a different video of the same event so that they each viewed unique items.
Pairs in one condition were encouraged to discuss the event before each partner individually recalled the event they watched.
A very high number of witnesses (71%) who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall items acquired during the discussion.

Question 58

What is anxiety?

Answer 58

The negative emotional and physiological state.

Question 59

What two studies were able to validate whether anxiety reduced or increased the accuracy of recall in eye witness testimony?

Answer 59

Christianson and Hubinette (1993): Anxiety increased the accuracy of recall.
Johnson and Scott (1976): Anxiety reduced the accuracy of recall.

Question 60

Explain the Christianson and Hubinette study on the impact of anxiety on E.W.T.

Answer 60

They questioned 58 real witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden.
Witnesses were either victims (bank teller) or bystanders (employee or customer); high and low anxiety.
The interviews were conducted 4-15 months after the robberies.
Researchers found that all witnesses showed generally good memories for details of the robberies itself. Those witnesses who were most anxious had the best recall of all.
Studies show that anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall. Christianson concluded that memory for negative emotional events is better than for neutral events.

Question 61

Explain the Johnson and Scott study on the impact of anxiety on E.W.T.

Answer 61

P: They asked ppts to sit in a waiting room where they heard an argument in an adjoining room and then saw a man run through the room either carrying a pen covered in grease (low anxiety) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety).
Ppts were then asked to identify the man from a set of photographs.

Findings: mean accuracy was 49% in identifying the man in the pen condition, compared with 33% accuracy in the knife condition. The findings supported the idea of the weapon focus effect.
This is the new view that a weapon in a criminal’s hand distracts attention from other features and therefore reduces the accuracy of identification.
Less people identified the man with the knife because they were physically drawn to that weapon rather than the person’s face.

Question 62

Why was the Cognitive Interview Technique created?

Answer 62

The police standard interview technique had several issues:
-leading questions
-own agenda, where they would re-question answers
-no chronology
-frequent interruptions
-closed questions
-noisy environment.

Therefore the C.I.T was devised and its aim is to gain maximum correct information and minimise false information.

Question 63

What are the 4 C.I.T?

Answer 63

Context Reinstatement
Report Everything
Reverse Order
Change Perspective

Question 64

What is Context Reinstatement?

Answer 64

Where the interviewer encourages the witness to mentally recreate both the physical and psychological environment of the original incident.
The aim is to make memories accessible. People often cannot access memories that are there. They need appropriate contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories.

Question 65

What is Report Everything?

Answer 65

Where the interviewer encourages the reporting of every single detail of the event without editing anything out, even though it may seem irrelevant. Witnesses should not leave anything out even if they deem it to be insignificant.
Memories are interconnected with one another so that the recollection of one memory is able to cue a whole lot of other memories.
In addition, the recollection of small details may eventually be pieced together from many different witnesses to form a clearer picture of the event.

Question 66

What is Reverse Order?

Answer 66

The interviewer may try to alternate ways through the timeline of the incident.
It’s said that our recollection are influenced by schemas (an expectation of what you should and shouldn’t do). If you have to recall events starting from the end to the beginning it prevents your schemas from potentially filling in the blanks you would have if you recalled from the beginning to the end.

Question 67

What is Change Perspective?

Answer 67

Where the witness is asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives.
This is done to disrupt the effect that schemas have on recall and to see how it would’ve looked to someone else.