Memory

Question 1

Johnson & Scott 1976 (Anxiety)

Answer 1

Method : Group 1 heard heated argument and a crash sound from room and see man come out with a knife
Group 2 heard disagreement about lab equipment then saw man leave with a pen
Pp’s had to identify man from 50 photos
G1 were correct 33% of the time
G2 were correct 49% of the time
Conclusion : anxiety decreased effectiveness of EWT, pp’s were focused on knife rather than face

Question 2

Gabbert et al 2003 (Post Event Discussion)

Answer 2

Method: 60 students from Aberdeen 60 older adults
Watched girl stealing money but from different angles giving some a clearer view than others
Results : 71% recalled information they did not see
60% said they saw the girl steal when they hadn’t
Conclusion: participants memories can be altered significantly by PED

Question 3

Loftus and Palmer 1974 (Misleading Questions)

Answer 3

Method: 45 participants split into 5 groups
Each participant watched 7 videos of car accidents
Results: verb ‘smashed’ generated average speed of 41 mph
Verb ‘contacted’ generated average speed of 32 mph
Conclusion: perceived strength of verb had effect on estimate given

Question 4

Godden and Baddeley 1975 (Forgetting retrieval failure)

Answer 4

Method: 18 scuba divers
Either learned words on land or underwater then recalled words either on land or underwater (4 conditions)
Results: words learnt in same conditions as recalled were better learnt
Conclusion: retrieval failure when in a different environment from that in which the words were learned

Question 5

Baddeley and Hitch 1977 (Forgetting - Interference theory)

Answer 5

Method: rugby union players who had played every match and some who had missed games due to injury
Asked to recall the names of the teams they had played
Results: those who played most games forgot proportionately more games than those who played fewer games
Conclusion: this was as a result of retroactive interference, learning new info (new team names) interfered with memory of old information (earlier team names)

Question 6

Patient Kf 1975

Answer 6

Injured in a motorcycle accident
Following the accident, able to recall stored information from LTM however had issues with STM
Able to remember visual images but unable to remember sounds
Supports WMM

Question 7

Baddeley and Hitch 1976 (Dual task studies)

Answer 7

Method: Condition 1 two acoustic based tasks
Condition 2 one acoustic an done visual task
Results: two acoustic tasks showed performance was impaired, condition 2 performance was not impaired
Conclusion: evidence that auditory memory and visual spatial memory are stored separately

Question 8

Bahrick 1975 (duration of LTM)

Answer 8

Method: duration of LTM using 392 American university graduates
Pp’s asked to match the names of former classmates with photographs from their high school yearbook
Results: 60% correct recall after 47 years
Conclusions : can remember names and faces for a lifetime

Question 9

Miller (1956) capacity of STM

Answer 9

Method: examined Jacobs research about the magical number 7
Results: Millers review led him to a state we could hold 7 spite staff of information in the STM
Conclusion: STM has a limited capacity of 7+-2

Question 10

Peterson and Peterson 1959 ( duration of STM)

Answer 10

Method: sample of 24 students
Students had to recall three letter trigrams at different times
To prevent rehearsal they had to count backwards in threes or fours from a specific number
Results: after 3 seconds, around 80% of trigrams were correctly recalled, whereas 18 seconds only 10% recalled