Lesson 5-9

Question 1

Strengths of Interference

Answer 1

• Supported by lab studies like McGeoch and McDonald (1931)
• Baddeley and Hitch (1977)

Question 2

McGeoch and McDonald (1931)

Answer 2

• 6 Groups learnt a list of words
• 5 of those learnt a second list
• Synonyms, Antonyms, Unrelated words, Nonsense syllables, 3-digit numbers
• Those who learnt the synonyms struggled most as the words were similar and caused interference.
• Those who learnt the numbers struggled the least as they were dissimilar.

Question 3

Baddeley and Hitch (1977)

Answer 3

• Rugby player experiment
• Sample of rugby players, some who missed games through injury and some who played every game
• They were asked to recall the names of the teams they had played
• Those who played every game forgot proportionately more than those who didnt

Supports retroactive interference

Question 4

Weaknesses of interference

Answer 4

• Some experiments like McGeoch and McDonalds is unrealistic as a lab study and uses meaningless material such as lists of words which we are not required to remember in every day life. Lacks ecological validity
• In these experiments, there is a short period of time between learning and recall of lists, such as 20s, and in real life there tends to be longer gaps, therefore this lacks validity
• May not be a strong explanation, Tulving and Psotka (1971) shows that cues can overcome interference. Participants were given 5 lists of 24 words organised into categories. Recall decreased from 70% gradually due to interference, however when cues were introduced, recal reached around 70% again.

Question 5

Encoding Specificity Principle

Answer 5

Tulving (1983)

• Cues can aid recall
• Can be subject relevant cues
• Can be trivial/mundane, such as your surroundings, or the weather, or the psychological state you were in

Question 6

Tulving and Pearlstone (1966)

Answer 6

• Supports ESP
• participants recalled 48 words that belonged to 12 categories.
• The cue was the category it belonged o
• If the category was present recall was at 60%, if not it dropped to 40%

Question 7

Abernethy (1940)

Answer 7

• Supports Context dependent forgetting
• Students were asked to take a weekly test and they were arranged in 4 different conditions:
• Same teacher and Same room
• Same teacher and different room
• Different teacher and different room
• Different teacher and same room
• Those who were in the same room with the same teacher performed better as they had context cues that were present at learning. However, ‘able’ students were least affected by the changes in context

Question 8

Godden and Baddeley (1975)

Answer 8

• Supports context dependent forgetting
• 8 divers had to learn a list of 36 unrelated words of 2-3 syllables. They were put in 4 conditions
• Learn underwater, recall underwater
• Learn underwater, recall on beach
• Learn on beach, recall underwater
• Learn on beach and recall on beach
• Those who learned and recalled on the beach performed significantly better with 13.5 mean recall score
• Those who learned and recalled underwater performed significantly better with 11.4 mean recall

Question 9

Weaknesses of CDF

Answer 9

• It can be argued that contexts need to be quite different for context effect to be seen, like underwater/on land but this rarely happens in real life. Therefore context clues may not be a valid explanation of everyday forgetting
• CDF also depends on the type of memory being tested. In Godden and Baddeley’s experiment they varied it as pps did not need to recall the words but only if they recognised the words. Performance was the same for all 4 conditions, therefore CDF only applies when you have to recall information

Question 10

Carter and Cassaday (1998)

Answer 10

• support state dependent forgetting
• participants were given anti-histamines to make them feel drowsy
• they were asked to learn and recall a list of words or passages of information while on or off the drug
• those who’s internal state matched learning and recall performed better
• Therefore internal cues can aid memory and when they are absent forgetting can occur

Question 11

Strengths of retrieval failure

Answer 11

• Godden and Baddeley
• Abernethy
• Tulving and Pearlstone
• Carter and Cassaday
• Real life applications, such as the cognitive interview, as these concepts are used in it

Question 12

Weaknesses of retrieval failure

Answer 12

• focussing on word lists or passages do not reflect every day life, lack ecological validity
• ‘Meaningful’ cues can vary from person to person, so encoding specificity principle is had to test.

Question 13

Misleading information in EWT

Answer 13

• Leading questions
• Post event discussion

Question 14

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Answer 14

• 45 students were shown a video of a car accident
• They were asked ‘How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’
• The verb ‘hit’ was subbed with either ‘smashed’, ‘bumped’, ‘collided’, or ‘contacted’
• ‘contacted’ had the lowest estimate speed of 31.8 mph and ‘smashed’ had the highest of 40.5 mph
• a later experiment showed that changing the verb can also changed participants memories of the clip. They reported seeing broken glass more when asked with the verb ‘smashed’

Question 15

Loftus and Zanni (1975)

Answer 15

• participants were shown a video of a car accident
• when asked if they saw ‘a’ broken headlight, 7% said yes, but when asked did the see ‘THE’ broken headlight, 17% said yes

Question 16

Gabbert et al (2003)

Answer 16

• supports post event discussion
• 60 students and 60 older people were shown a video of a theft.
• some were tested on their own (control group) and some were tested in pairs.
• They were told that they had seen the same video but had actually seen different angles of the same crime.
• 71% of pps recalled information they had not seen compared to 0% in the control group.
• 60% said the girl was guilty despite not seeing her commit the crime

Question 17

Strengths of misleading information

Answer 17

• lab studies control extraneous variables well and they are standardised and repeatable, therefore reliable.
• has real life applications as misleading information can affect memory, and shows how police must be careful with how they phrase questions. It has real implications on the legal system

Question 18

Weaknesses of misleading information

Answer 18

• watching a video of a crime/accident is very different to watching it happen in real life.
• anxiety is not induced when watching a video, and anxiety has been shown to have an effect on the accuracy of recall.
• participants are less motivated to be accurate as there are not any serious consequences in a lab study compared to real life
• There is a risk of demand characteristics as it is a lab study and pps can give a desired answer
• students may have better memories, therefore we cannot generalise the findings to a larger population. Lacks population validity

Question 19

Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

Answer 19

• weakness of misleading information in real life
• 13 witnesses of a real armed robbery were interviewed 5 months after the crime took place. Interviewers asked two leading questions to see if this would effect memory
• Recall was still accurate and the leading questions had limited effect on memory
• This shows that the leading questions have less of an effect on EWT in real life situations. This also shows that lab studies into this may not be valid or accurate

Question 20

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Answer 20

Performance/recall will improve with stress, if it at around a mid point. Too little or too high stress can weaken recall.

Deffenbacher (1983) applied this theory to memory.

Question 21

Weapon focus effect

Answer 21

Johnson and Scott (1976)

• Pps sat outside a lab and saw a man come out either after having a friendly convo with grease on his hands and holding a pen (low anxiety) or after an argument with smashing glass and a blood stained paper knife (high anxiety)
• witnesses were 49% accurate identifying the man with the pen, and 33% accurate with the man with the knife

Question 22

Christianson and Hubinette (1993)

Answer 22

• Says that high anxiety causes more enduring and accurate memories
• used 58 real witnesses to a Swedish bank robbery
• They were either victims or bystanders
• The study was conducted 4-15 months after the robberies.
• All witnesses showed good memory of details (75+% accurate) and those with highest anxiety had most accurate recall

Question 23

Weaknesses of anxiety as a factor in EWT

Answer 23

• Weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety. Pickel (1998) said that surprise was the cause of reduced accuracy of identification. She arranged for pps to watch a thief enter a salon w/ scissors (high threat, low surprise), handgun (high threat, high surprise), wallet (low threat, low surprise) and a whole raw chicken (low threat, high surprise). ID was least accurate in the high surprise conditions. Supports that surprise affects accuracy more than anxiety.
• Field studies like Yuille and Cutshall (1986) and Christianson and Hubinette (1993) cannot effectively eliminate extraneous variables like post event discussion
• lab studies are possibly unethical, such as inducing anxiety
• Yerkes Dodson Law does not take into account all of the elements involved in anxiety, and it not takes into account the physiological aspects of it.

Question 24

The Cognitive Interview

Answer 24

• Devised by Geiselman et al (1984)
• criticises the traditional questioning by the police.

Uses:

• Context reinstatement
• Report everything
• Recall with changed order
• Recall with changed perspective.

Question 25

Enhanced Cognitive Interview

Answer 25

• Fisher (1987)

Uses:

• Should actively listen
• Use open ended questions
• Should adapt language for the interviewee
• Should not interrupt
• Encourage imagery
• Pause after each response
• Minimise judgmental comments
• Minimise distractions

Question 26

Strength of the Cognitive Interview

Answer 26

• Gieselman et al (1985) showed pps a video of a staged crime and tested their recall with the CI against the traditional interview and an interview under hypnosis. The CI generated more accurate information

Question 27

Weaknesses of the CI

Answer 27

• Very time consuming
• Requires a lot of training
• Cannot generalise lab studies to real life.
• Less successful with children as they are egocentric. They may find instructions hard to understand. Investigated by Gieselman (1999)