Long Term Memory Flashcards
What are the 2 things that constitute Long Term Memory?
- Involves memories longer than 30 seconds
- Info in this store has gone through the other 2 stores first and will be remembered better/worse depending on its processing
What did Bahrick et al. (1975) do that tested the duration of Long Term Memory (Duration LTM) ?
They conducted a natural experiment where people of various ages were asked to put names to faces from their high school yearbook.
What was the result from Bahrick et al.’s (1975) study testing the duration of LTM and what does this show?
Even 48 years on, people were around 70% accurate.
Shows that when material that is being remembered is meaningful to ppts, the duration of LTM can be very long.
What is the weakness and what is the strength to Bahrick et al.’s (1975) test? (Duration of LTM)
- Difficult to control extraneous variables, i.e if the ppts had even seen their classmates over the years
- Using real-life memorises influences ecological validity.
Define Interference in regards to LTM coding
-Memorises can get confusing and hard to remember when long term memories are encoded.
What did Baddeley (1966) do with the knowledge of interference and who did he do it with?
He used this knowledge to test coding of STM and LTM, with 72 ppts (males + females) which were split into 4 groups.
What were the 4 groups Baddeley used and what are some of the sound examples that are for each?
- Acoustically similar words, i.e man cab can max
- Acoustically dissimilar words, i.e pit few cow pen
- Semantically similar words, i.e great large big huge
- Semantically dissimilar words, i.e good huge hot safe
What was the method to Baddeley’s (1975) test? (Coding for STM/LTM)
The four groups were given lists of words that were either acoustically similar (rhymed), semantically similar (synonyms) or neither.
What was Baddeley’s (1975) idea of what he could find with the two groups of acoustically/ semantically similar words? (Coding for STM/LTM)
( 2 points )
He thought that if encoding was acoustic then the acoustically similar words could then interfere with each other and be harder to remember.
He also thought that if encoding was semantic then the semantic similar words would interfere with each other/ be harder to remember.
What were the 2 results from Baddeley’s (1975) test that regards the short tests and the long tests? (Coding for STM/LTM)
- Found that for short tests (STM), ppts struggled to recall acoustically similar words, suggesting STM is encoded acoustically
-On longer tests (LTM), ppts struggled with semantically similar words, suggesting LTM is encoded semantically.
Although evidence suggesting STM is semantically encoded and LTM is acoustically encoded, what did Rothbert (1972) find?
He found evidence of acoustic coding in the LTM, rather than semantic coding.
How does Henry Molaison’s case (Scoville, 1957) study suggest STM and LTM have different stores?
After his brain surgery that removed his hippocampus, he was unable to create new memorises in his LTM.
The Hippocampus is where storing of new long term memories take place, but STM worked fine.
Therefore, suggests STM / LTM have different stores.
What is the main strength to MSM research?
There have been lots of controlled lab studies on capacity, duration and coding, supporting the two stores of memory.
What did Beardsley (1977) do and how is this is a strength to MSM research?
He used brain scans to find prefrontal cortex to be active during STM but not LTM tasks.
This is a strength as it supports the MSM has a biological basis.
What are the two main limitations to MSM research?
- The model is too simple, e.g concept that STM/LTM are single stores isn’t supported by any evidence.
-Working Memory Model expands STM into several ‘active’ stores that perform different jobs, so is too simple with little evidence to support this.
What did Craik + Lockheart (1972) suggest about enduring memories?
They suggested that enduring memories are created by the way that something is processed and used.
What did Craik + Lockheart (1972) demonstrate with enduring memories?
What did they propose about rehearsal?
They demonstrates that when we use a deeper level of understanding to process information, we are more likely to be able to accurately recall this info compared to a shallow level of processing.
They suggested that rehearsal might not be the most crucial factor in transferring info from STM to LTM
What did Tulving (1985) first propose?
(3 types of LTM)
He was the first to propose there are multiple types of LTM.
-Procedural, Episodic, Semantic.
What are the 3 types of LTM? Provide an example for each.
Procedural e.g learning to bike ride
Episodic e.g remembering birthday events
Semantic e.g remembering facts about psychology studies
What is the difference between Implicit and Explicit memory and what are they both also known as?
Implicit / Non-declarative - This is memory that isn’t available for conscious recall, and can be hard to think/ explain to others.
Explicit / Declarative - This is memory that is available for conscious recall, which means you can think/ explain it to others.
Which of the two, Implicit (Non-declarative) / Explicit (Declarative) are the 3 types of LTM?
Implicit - Procedural
Explicit - Episodic/ Semantic
What are the 3 things that define Episodic Memory?
(E.g, Analogy, etc)
- E.g life events
- It’s like having a diary in your head recording all the notable events, like birthdays, or something embarrassing/ something that made you happy.
- Tend to be complex as they have multiple connections.
