Introduction to Memory (Memory)

Question 1

Memory

Answer 1

Memory: can most broadly be defined as the process by which we retain information about events that have happened in the past.

Our brains have the capacity to remember everything
A young child learns about 10 new words each day
The average adult is capable of developing a vocabulary of over 100,000 words

Question 2

Sensory Memory/Register

Answer 2

Initial contact for stimuli. SM is only capable of retaining information for a very short time.

Question 3

Short term memory

Answer 3

The information that we are currently aware of or thinking about. The information found in short term memory comes from paying attention to sensory memories.

Duration: lasts for a very short period of time unless they are rehearsed. It is limited in duration.

Question 4

Long term memory

Answer 4

Continual storage of information which is largely outside of our awareness but can be called into working memory to be used once needed.

Duration: Last anywhere from two minutes to one hundred years. Unlimited duration.

Question 5

Rehearsal

Answer 5

Transferring information into long term memory. Can be by repeating it over and over again or by attending to it.

Question 6

Peterson and Peterson (1959)

Answer 6

-Participants given a nonsense syllable and asked to count down in threes or fours for 3-18 seconds
-after 3 seconds, 80% recalled correctly
-after 18 seconds, less than 10% recalled correctly

Question 7

Coding

Answer 7

The process of converting information from one form to another.

Question 8

(Baddeley 1966) Method

Answer 8

gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember. These were either acoustically similar or dissimilar, semantically similar or dissimilar.

Question 9

(Jacobs 1887) Method

Answer 9

Participants presented with a string of letters or digits. They had to repeat them back in the same order, the number of items in the sequence increasing until the participant failed to recall the whole sequence.

Question 10

(Jacobs 1887) Results

Answer 10

Participants recalled a mean of 9.3 digits or 7.3 letters (aged 8 years).

Their capacity increased with age during childhood.

Question 11

(Jacobs 1887) Conclusion

Answer 11

STM has a limited storage capacity of 5-9 items.

Individual differences were found, such as STM increasing with age, possibly due to use of memory techniques such as chunking.

Digits may have been easier to recall as there were only 10 different digits to remember, compared to 26 letters.

Question 12

(Jacobs 1887) Evaluation

Answer 12

Lacks ecological validity.

Meaningful information may be recalled better, perhaps showing STM to have an even greater capacity.

Previous sequences might confuse participants on future trials.

Question 13

Miller (1956)

Answer 13

noted that things come in sevens: 7 notes, 7 days etc. This suggests that the capacity of STM is 7 items (plus or minus 2).
-chunking: our capacity for remembering information can be increased if we chunk items together. We are more likely to remember things if we group them together.

Question 14

Evaluation positives of Peterson and Peterson

Answer 14

-Forgetting in STM can occur if information is not rehearsed
-Identified that duration of STM is approximately 18 seconds
-Highly controlled, limited effect of extraneous variables

Question 15

Evaluation negatives of Peterson and Peterson

Answer 15

-Artificial stimuli lacked personal meaning creating mundane realism, meaning we cannot generalise findings to different memory tasks
-Lacks external validity
-Small sample size and all were students

Question 16

Bahrick et al (1975)

Answer 16

392 Ohio participants aged 17-74, using High School yearbooks, recalled names either from 50 photos or in free recall.
-after 15 years, 90% accurate in photo recognition
-after 48 years, 70%
-after 15 years, 60% accurate for free recall
-after 48 years, 30%

Evidence of Very Long Term Memories in a real-life setting. Recognition is better than recall, as there may be a huge store of memory but help is needed to get to it.

Question 17

Bahrick et al Evaluation

Answer 17

High external validity as real life meaningful memories were studied

Confounding variables were not controlled

Pictures could have been rehearsed over the years

Question 18

Evaluation on coding

Answer 18

Artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material
Results are generalised
For meaningful memory tasks people might use semantic coding for STM tasks

Question 19

Digit span lacking validity

Answer 19

Very old research
Lacked adequate control
confounding variables

However, other studies have found similar results, supporting its validity

Question 20

Evaluation of Chunking

Answer 20

Miller may have overestimated the capacity of the STM

Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about 4 chunks.

Question 21

(Baddeley 1966) Results

Answer 21

Participants had problems recalling acoustically similar words when recalling the word list immediately from STM.

If recalling after an interval (from LTM) they had problems with semantically similar words.

Question 22

(Baddeley 1966) Conclusion

Answer 22

The patterns of confusion between similar words suggest that LTM is more likely to rely on semantic coding and STM on acoustic coding.

Question 23

(Baddeley 1966) Evaluation

Answer 23

Lacks ecological validity

Other types of LTM and other methods of coding that aren’t considered

Independent groups design so there was not any control over participant variables