Lecture 16 Flashcards
What is the main difference between short term memory being stored and the working memory model?
The working memory model believes short term memory is an active process whereas the store idea believes it’s passive.
What are the two types of long term memory?
Declarative memory: This is also known as explicit memory. It involves the conscious recollection of facts and figures. It’s impaired in amnesiacs.
Non-declarative memory: This is also known as implicit or procedural memory. It doesn’t involve conscious recollection and is usually involved with learning new behaviour/skills.
How big is long term memory?
It isn’t fully known, although some people have tried to estimate.
Hoe do we know there’s a difference between short term and long term memory?
Some people have neurological impairments that doesn’t effect their long term memory but they have severe impairments in their short term memory, making them forget the conversation midway through.
Serial position effects like the recency and primary effect, most items in the middle are forgotten.
Discuss amnesia
There are two types: Retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. Both are caused by trauma.
Anterograde amnesia is when you have an inability to learn new information.
Retrograde amnesia is when you have trouble recalling events before the trauma.
Short term is only slightly affected and there is some preserved learning ability.
Traumas that cause amnesia include bilateral stroke, closed head injury, Korsakoff’s syndrome (caused by deficiency in thiamine due to alcohol abuse) and bilateral damage to the hippocampus/temporal zones.
How does information get into the long term store?
There’s a wide variety of factors like how the information is encoded, what is trying to be remembered and how you try and retrieve the information. Spacing out learning is better than cramming. Making things meaningful makes it easier to remember due to a deeper level of processing, making the information distinctive and elaborative. This is the level of processing framework. Additionally, the information should be meaningful to you directly and should have semantic characteristics. Context is also important, you recall things better when in the same environment you learnt the information. Retrieval based learning also puts memory into long term stores, for example testing your knowledge over and over, and these effects last over time. Additionally, information goes into the long term store more if you’re expected to teach the information rather than just learn it. So overall, active processes of learning help information to go into the long term store.
How does the general public think memory works?
Most viewed it as a video camera that records events that you can play back and almost half believed that memory doesn’t change. However, some memories aren’t reliable, for example if they occurred decades ago or if the memory suddenly ‘came back’ to you.
Discuss the permastore
This is analogy that references to long term stable memories. It’s the idea that some memories can last decades and some details may be missing but the basics are still there. However, not all information is stored this accurately.
Discuss types of distortions of memory
Conventionalisation; changing details so that it’s easier to remember, e.g. changing the word canoe to boat.
Transformation; changing details that don’t make sense.
Omission; missing out details
Commission; making up new details.
So you reconstruct details in memories according to pre-existing schemata. We try to make the memory have meaning to us to aid recollection.
What are schema?
What is their function?
How do they affect recall?
Using past experience to understand new experiences, aka a stored framework of knowledge.
Their function is to help you understand new information. It categorises new instances, infers additional attributes and guides interpretation. Schema aren’t always accurate as stereotypes are a type of schema.
There is evidence that people remember more details when it’s relevant to their schema. However, schema can also distort memory.
What is the weapons focus effect?
It’s when an eye-witness fails to record details about the suspect due to them focusing on the weapon present. Also, it would heighten anxiety/stress which has been found to reduce eyewitness identification accuracy and reduce the eyewitness’s ability to remember suspect details, crime scene details and actions of central characters. However, some studies have also found that stress enhance memory. This all shows that long term memory is not a passive store but an active process.
Discuss leading questions and long term memory
Leading questions can influence long term memory, for example, one study found that when asked to describe a car accident, if the word smashed was used in the question, then the car was predicted to have been going faster. Also, if you are given inconsistent information after viewing an event, then it can distort the memory itself. This therefore shows that witnesses should not discuss what they saw with other witnesses.
Discuss memory conformity
There is evidence of participants having distorted memory. For example, different participants saw different aspects of a robbery and then discussed it with each other. Almost all the participants then reported their eye witness information including facts they learnt in the discussion. The relationship between the people discuss affects the amount of conformity; friends are more susceptible to the conformity effect. Also, if officers are still allowed to confer with each other before writing their statement, then this increases their confidence in their statement.
The accuracy of memory recall can be influenced by…
…unfamiliar material, expectations/schema, emotionally arousing stimuli, discussion and post-event misinformation.
