Memory

Question 1

What did Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) proposed?

Answer 1

That memory is made up of 3 stores.

Question 2

Explain Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) Multi Store Memory Model.

Answer 2

Environmental Elaborative
stimuli Attention Rehearsal
➞ Sensory Memory ➞ STM ➞ LTM

Also remember retrieval: LTM ➞ STM
Maintenance rehearsal: STM ➞STM
Information retrieval: STM ➞

Question 3

What are the main features of the Multi Store Memory Model.

Answer 3

1. Capacity.
2. Duration.
3. Codes/Coding.

Question 4

Explain the main features of the Multi Store Memory Model. Capacity

Answer 4

Capacity of the store, the quantity of information stored.

Question 5

Explain the main features of the Multi Store Memory Model. Duration

Answer 5

Duration of the store, length of time information is held for.

Question 6

Explain the main features of the Multi Store Memory Model. Codes

Answer 6

Way of coding information, way in which information is being stored.

Question 7

What are the sensory registers?

Answer 7

They store information from each of our 5 senses.

Question 8

What are the 2 main sensory registers stores for Coding?

Answer 8

Iconic → Memory of a visual stimuli (images).

Echoic → Memory of auditory information (sounds).

Question 9

What is the Duration of the sensory registers?

Answer 9

Less than half a second.

Question 10

What is the Capacity of the sensory registers?

Answer 10

High capacity.

Question 11

Which information is passed to STM?

Answer 11

Only information we pay attention to

Question 12

Which information is passed to LTM?

Answer 12

Only information that is rehearsed.

Question 13

STM - Explain research on Capacity.

Jacobs’ (1887) “Digit Span” investigation.

Answer 13

Digit Span Technique: The researcher reads 4 digits aloud and ask participants to recall these digits in the correct order- serial recall. Then 5 digits were read out, then 6 and so on to measure how much the STM could hold.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits was 9.3 and for letters the mean span was 7.3.

Question 14

According to Miller (1956), how much can the STM hold?

Answer 14

Between 5-9 pieces of information at one time. Miller talks of the “magic number” -7 plus or minus two.

Question 15

How can the capacity of STM be increased?

Answer 15

By chunking.

Question 16

STM - Explain research on Coding.

Baddeley’s (1966) Coding investigation.

Answer 16

Alan Baddeley gave lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:

• Group 1- acoustically similar.
• Group 2- acoustically dissimilar.
• Group 3-semantically similar.
• Group 4- semantically dissimilar.

Participants were asked to recall the words in the correct order straight away after hearing them or after a time interval of 20 minutes.

Recalling the words straight away - STM - participants remembered fewer of the acoustically similar words.

Question 17

STM - Explain research on Duration.

Peterson and Peterson’s (1959)’Duration’ investigation.

Answer 17

Participants were tested over 8 trials. On each trial a participant was given a trigram to remember and then asked to count backwards from a 3 digit number until told to stop. This was to prevent rehearsal so the information did not move to the LTM but stayed in the STM.
On each trial they were told to stop after a different interval of time.
Participants, were 90% correct after 3 seconds, 20% correct after 9 seconds and 2% correct after 18 seconds.
STM has a very short duration-18 seconds or less.

Question 18

Which is the process used to keep information in the STM for longer?

Answer 18

Maintenance rehearsal.

Question 19

In the STM, what form/code is the information kept in?

Answer 19

Acoustically.

Question 20

What is the approximate capacity of the STM?

Answer 20

7+/2->5-9 chunks of information.

Question 21

What has to happen to information for it to be transferred through the long term memory?

Answer 21

Elaborative Rehearsal.

Question 22

How do we rehearse something?

Answer 22

Keep repeating it.

Question 23

How much capacity does LTM have?

Answer 23

Unlimited

Question 24

LTM - Explain research on Duration.

Bahrick (1975)

Answer 24

Bahrick tested 400 people of various ages (17-74) on their memory of classmates.
A photo recognition test consisted of 50 photos, some from the participant’s high school year book. In a free recall test participants were asked to list the names they could remember of their graduating class.

Within 15 years of graduation, participants were about 97% accurate in identifying faces. Free recall was about 60%

After 48 years this declined to about 70 % for photo recognition. Free recall dropped to 30% after 48 years.

Question 25

LTM - Explain research on Coding.

Baddeley’s (1966) Coding investigation.

Answer 25

Alan Baddeley gave different lists of words to four groups of participants…

When LTM recall was tested-recalling the words after 20 minutes- participants remembered fewer of the semantically similar words.

Question 26

What form is information held in the LTM?

Answer 26

Semantic

Question 27

What does semantic mean?

Answer 27

This refers to the meaning of information.

Question 28

Give 1 strength of the Multi-Store Model.

Answer 28

There is evidence to support the multi store model from case studies of brain damaged individuals.

HM was male patient who suffered from severe epilepsy. At the age of 27 underwent major surgery to relieve epileptic fits. The temporal lobes on both sides of his brain were subsequently removed.

Since the day of surgery HM was unable to form new long-term memories. His STM was relatively normal but he could not extend his STM through rehearsal and was therefore unable to transfer information from the STM to the LTM.

This adds to the validity because it demonstrates that the MSM has separate unitary stores for different parts of the memory.

Question 29

1. Give 2 weaknesses of the MSM.

Answer 29

• The multi-store model is too simple. It suggests that both STM and LTM are single unitary stores.

However, research does not support this. The WMM suggests that STM is actually divided into a number of different stores, explaining that there is a difference in the kind of memories stored there.

This questions the validity as it suggests that there isn’t just 1 store for STM and LTM, meaning the unitary concept of this memory model is oversimplified.

• LTM involves more than maintenance rehearsal. Craik and Lockhart (1972) suggested that enduring memories are created by the processing that you do rather than through maintenance rehearsal.
  We process information deeper by attaching meaning to it.
  This questions the validity as it provides evidence to contradict, suggesting that maintenance rehearsal alone is too simplistic to transfer information into LTM.

Question 30

2. Give 2 weaknesses of the MSM.

Answer 30

• There is evidence to contradict the multi store model from case studies of brain damaged individuals.
  Clive Wearing contracted a virus that destroyed his hippocampus. The viral infection completely destroyed his LTM. His condition is so severe that he constantly believes that he’s just awoken from unconsciousness.

Clive could not remember events from before his accident. However, he could remember how to play the piano, walk, talk, read, and write.

This questions the validity as it suggests there’s just one unitary store for all LTM. He lost memory but he still had some procedural memories. There must be +1 type of LTM.

• There is evidence to contradict the MSM of memory from case studies of brain damaged individuals.
  The MSM states that STM is a unitary store. However, in the case of KF his short-term memory for verbal information was much worse than that of visual information. He had difficulty with sounds but not letters or digits.
  This questions the validity because it demonstrates there must be multiple stores for different types of information in the STM.

Question 31

Give 2 weaknesses of features of each store.

Answer 31

• Research into capacity, duration and coding of each store is artificial.
• A weakness of Baddeley’s study is that participants may have been influenced by demand characteristics.

Question 32

What did Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch proposed?

Answer 32

A WMM as an alternative to the short-term store in Atkinson & Shiffrin’s ‘multi-store’ memory model.

Part of memory used when working on a complex task, which requires to store information as you are going along.

Question 33

What does the WMM consist of?

Answer 33

Input ➞ Central Executive ➞Phonological loop:
Phonological store + Articulatory process
➞Episodic Buffer ➞ LTM
➞Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad:
Visual Cache + Inner Scribe

Question 34

Explain the features of the Phonological Loop.

Answer 34

Function: This slave system is an acoustic store. It deals with auditory information and the order of information.

Capacity: Limited. It’s determined by the amount of information spoken out loud in 2 seconds.

Coding: It has 2 parts:

· The Phonological Store: ‘Inner Ear’. This stores words that have been heard.

· The Articulatory Process: ‘Inner Voice’. This stores words that have been heard or seen. These words are silently repeated to keep them in working memory while they are needed.

Question 35

Explain the features of the Central Executive.

Answer 35

Function: This is the controller of the model. It determines which information is and is not attended to. It directs information to other ‘slave systems’.

Coding: It processes information in all sensory forms,

Capacity: Limited. It can only cope effectively with one strand of information at one time.

Question 36

Explain the features of the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad.

Answer 36

Function: This is a temporary store for visual and spatial items and the relationships between them. It’s a store for what items are and where they are.

Coding: This slave system has two parts:

· Visual Cache: This stores information about form and colour.

· Inner Scribe: This handles spatial relationships and transfers information from the Visual Cache to the Central Executive.

Capacity: Limited- about three or four objects.

Question 37

Explain the features of the Episodic Buffer.

Answer 37

Function: Temporary store for information, integrating the visual, spatial and verbal information. It maintains a sense of time sequencing recording events that are happening. It can be seen as the storage component of the central executive and also links ST working memory to LTM.

Coding: Both auditory and visual information.

Capacity: Limited- about four chunks of information.

Question 38

1. Give 2 strengths the WMM.

Answer 38

• There is evidence to support the WMM from case studies of brain damaged individuals.

In the case of KF his short-term memory for verbal information was much worse than that of visual information. He had difficulty with sounds but not letters or digits.

This adds to the internal validity as KF only has impairments with verbal information whereas his visual memory was fine. This demonstrates that there must be multiple stores for different types of information in the STM.

• There is supporting experimental evidence.

Baddeley et al (1975a) demonstrated the existence of separate components in the model. Participants were given a visual tracking task (they had to track a moving light with a pointer). At the same time, they were given one of two other tasks: task 1 was to describe all the angles on the letter F, task 2 was to perform a verbal task. Participants found task 1 very difficult, but not task 2. We presume this is because the second task involved two different components of the WMM.

This adds to the internal validity as it demonstrates that when completing 2 similar tasks, our WM is competing for the attention of the same slave system.

Question 39

2. Give 2 strengths of the WMM.

Answer 39

• There is further supporting experimental evidence.

The phonological loop explains why the word length effect occurs- the fact that people cope better with short words than long words in working memory. It seems that the phonological loop hold the information that you can say in 2 seconds (Baddeley et al 1975b). This makes it difficult to remember long words such as ‘association’ compared to shorter words like ‘harm’.

This adds to the internal validity as research into capacity of phonological loop has allowed us to understand how we are able to remember shorter sounding words, more easily than longer words.

• There is evidence to support the idea of the central executive.
  Braver (1997) gave participants tasks that involved the central executive while they were having a brain scan. The researchers found greater activity in an area known as the prefrontal cortex. The activity in this area increased as the task became harder.

This adds to the validity because it shows that as demands on the CE increase the prefrontal cortex has to work harder to fulfil its function. This supports the idea that this is the controller of the WMM which delegates information to each slave system.

Question 40

Give 1 weakness of the WMM.

Answer 40

The idea of the central executive is abstract and over simplified.

The central executive is essentially the same as attention. This is too vague and does not really explain anything. Critics also feel that the idea of one single central executive is inaccurate and that there are probably several components.

This questions the internal validity because it suggest that the model is too simplistic, it doesn’t accurately explain all if the components of the model.

Question 41

What is EWT?

Answer 41

It’s a legal term. It refers to evidence given in a court room, or in a police investigation by someone who has witnessed/heard a crime or an accident.

Question 42

Explain Research on Leading Questions by Loftus and Palmer (1974).

Answer 42

They used 45 student participants who were shown seven short video clips of cars colliding. They were split into five groups, with nine participants in each one. All of the participants were asked:

‘About how fast were the cars going when they ________ each other’

· Each group was given a different verb to fill in the blank. These verbs were:
smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted.

How the question was phrased influenced the participants’ speed estimates.

When the verb ‘smashed’ was used, participants estimated that the cars were travelling much faster than when the verb ‘contacted’ was used.

Question 43

Explain Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) second experiment to demonstrate that the wording of a leading question actually changes the participant’s memory.

Answer 43

Participants were shown a short film that showed a multi-vehicle car accident and then they were asked questions about it. The participants were split into three groups (with 50 in each group).

One group was asked: ‘How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’

The second was asked: ‘How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?’

The third group was not asked about the speed of the vehicles.

One week later, all participants returned and were asked:

‘Did you see any broken glass?’ There was no broken glass in the film.

Participants who had originally heard the word ‘smashed’ were more likely to report seeing broken glass.

Using a leading question influenced participants’ answer, misleading them to give incorrect estimates of the recalled event.

Question 44

Explain Research on Post-event Discussion by Gabbert (2003).

Answer 44

asked pairs of participants to watch a different video of the same event so that they each viewed unique items. Pairs in one condition were encouraged to discuss the event before each partner individually recalled the event they watched.

71% of participants who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall items acquired during the discussion.

60% said that the girl was guilty, despite the fact they had not seen her commit a crime.

Question 45

Explain 2 strengths Misleading Information.

Answer 45

• There is evidence to support the belief that misleading information is a factor affecting EWT.

Loftus asked participants to participate in an advertising evaluation program. All of the participants had visited either Disneyland or Disney World. The participants were divided into four groups, and asked to read a printed ad for Disneyland.

· The first group read an ad about the theme park that made no mention of cartoon characters. The second group read the same ad, but a 4-foot-tall cardboard cut-out of Bugs Bunny was placed in the room. The third group, which the researchers refer to as the “Bugs Group,” read a fake Disneyland advertisement featuring Bugs Bunny.

The fourth group read both the Bugs advertisement in a room with the cardboard cut-out. Bugs Bunny has never been in Disneyland.

After reading through the advert, the participants were asked whether they had met Bugs while on a visit to the theme park, and whether they had shaken his hand. 40% of participants in group 4 said they either remembered, or at least knew, they had indeed met Bugs at Disneyland and shaken his hand.

• Research into factors affecting EWT has important practical uses in the real world.
  Loftus (1975) believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses.

Indeed, The Devlin Report (1976) recommended that juries should not convict on the evidence of a single eyewitness testimony alone.

Question 46

What are 3 weaknesses of Misleading Information?

Answer 46

• Research into misleading information and its affect on EWT is artificial.
  Participants in Loftus and Palmer’s study watched film clips of car accidents. This is a very different experience from witnessing a real accident cause…
  This questions the validity as the effect of leading questions may not generalise to real life situations.
• There is evidence that older people are less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports.

In Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) investigation, individuals from three different age groups were shown photographs and asked to rate them for attractiveness. When participants in the three age groups- 18-25, 35-45 and 55-78 years old - were later given a photo recognition task and asked to identify faces that they had already seen and rated earlier on, all age groups were more accurate in identifying faces from their own age group.

• There is evidence to suggest that EWT may be influenced by demand characteristics.

Zaragosa and McCloskey (1989) argue that many answer participants give in lab studies of EWT are the result of demand characteristics. Participants do not usually want to let the researcher down and want to appear helpful and attentive – the ‘Please you’ effect. When they are asked a question they don’t know the answer to they may guess- especially if it is a yes/ no question.

Question 47

How does Anxiety affect EWT?

Answer 47

Anxiety has strong physical and emotional effects. However, it is not clear whether these effects make eyewitness recall better or worse.

Question 48

Explain Johnson and Scott’s (1976) research on Anxiety- Negative Effect on Recall.

Answer 48

He led participants to believe that they were going to be taking part in a lab experiment. While seated in a waiting room, participants heard an argument in an adjoining room.

1. In the ‘low anxiety’ condition, more of a discussion was heard followed by a man leaving the room with a pen with grease on his hands.
2. In the ‘high anxiety’ condition, a heated discussion was heard accompanied by the sound of breaking of glass followed by a man leaving the room holding a pen knife covered in blood.

Participants were then asked to identify the man from 50 photos.

Those in condition 1 having experienced low anxiety were accurate 49% of the time.

Those in condition 2 having experienced high anxiety were accurate 33% of the time.

This shows that when participants in condition 2 saw the knife, the presence of the weapon caused them to be more anxious.

Question 49

Explain the weapon focus by Loftus et al (1987).

Answer 49

During violent crimes, arousal may focus the witness more on central details of the attack (e.g. a weapon) rather than the peripheral details - leading to poor and inaccurate recall of details in violent crimes.

Question 50

Explain the research on Anxiety- Positive Effect on Recall by Yuille and Cutshall (1986).

Answer 50

They conducted a study of a real life shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver, Canada. The shop owner shot a thief dead. There were 21 witnesses. 13 agreed to take part in the study. Interviews were held 4-5 months after the incident and these were compared with the original police interviews at the time of the shooting.

Using a 7 point scale the witnesses were also asked how stressed they felt at the time of the incident and if they had had any emotional problems since then, i.e. sleeplessness.

Witnesses were very accurate in their accounts and there was little change 5 months on from the shooting.

Participants who had reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (88%) compared to the less stressed group (75%).

Question 51

Explain the Yerkes-Dodson law.

Learn diagram

Answer 51

An increase in anxiety improves performances but only up to a certain point. Once arousal has passed a critical point called the optimum level, accuracy tends to decline.

Question 52

1. What are 2 weaknesses of anxiety?

Answer 52

• There is evidence to contradict the weapon focus effect.
  Pickel (1998) conducted an experiment where a thief entered a hairdressing salon carrying scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as the hand held items. (where scissors would be low anxiety, low unusualness.) Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorly in the high unusualness conditions- chicken and handgun.
• There are ethical issues surrounding research into the affect anxiety can have on EWT.
  The ethical issues of protection from psychological harm may be broken as research is creating anxiety in participants purely for the purpose of research.

Question 53

2. What are 2 weaknesses of anxiety?

Answer 53

-Research into anxiety and its affect on EWT may be influenced by individual differences.
Bothwell et al’s (1987) participants were assessed for neuroticism- a personality characteristic where individuals tend to become anxious quite quickly. Participants were tested and labelled as ‘neurotic’ or ‘stable’.

Bothwell et al found that the stable participants showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased whereas the opposite was true for neurotics- their accuracy levels decreased as stress increased.

• There is evidence to suggest that EWT may be influenced by demand characteristics.

Most lab studies show participants a filmed (and usually staged) crime. Most of these participants will be aware they are watching a filmed crime for a reason to do with the study.

Question 54

3. Explain 1 weakness of anxiety.

Answer 54

The inverted –U explanation and Yerkes-Dodson law is too simplistic.
Anxiety is very difficult to define and measure accurately. Anxiety has many elements- cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physical. The inverted-U explanation assumes only one of these is linked to poor performance- physical arousal.

Question 55

Explain Fisher and Geiselman’s (1992) study on Improving the Accuracy of EWT (The cognitive interview)

Answer 55

They argued that eyewitness testimony could be improved if the police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses. They recommended that such techniques should be based on psychological insights into how memory works and called these techniques collectively the Cognitive Interview.

Question 56

What are the 4 techniques of the cognitive interview?

Explain them.

Answer 56

1. Report everything - report everything that they remember regardless of whether or not they think it’s relevant.
2. Context reinstatement - recall details of the scene.
3. Change in recall order - recall the event from the end, or from the middle.
4. Change in perspective - recall what other people may have seen.

Question 57

Explain the research of Fisher et al (1987) on Improving the Accuracy of EWT- The Enhanced Cognitive Interview.

Answer 57

He developed some additional elements of the Cognitive Interview to focus on the social dynamics of the situation.
The enhanced CI includes:
1. Interviewer establishing eye contact.
2. Reduce anxiety.
3. Minimising distraction.
4. Asking the witness to speak slowly.
5. Asking open questions.

Question 58

1. What are 2 weaknesses of the Cognitive interview?

Answer 58

• Research has shown that two of the four components are very useful.
  Milne and Bull (2002) found that each techniques was equally valuable, however using a combination of
  1) Report everything and 2) Context reinstatement produced better recall than any of the other conditions.
  This confirmed police officer’s suspicions that some aspects of the CI are actually more useful than others.
• Using a Cognitive Interview can be time consuming.
  Compared to the standard interview more time is needed to establish rapport with the witness and allow them to relax. The CI also requires special training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours.

Question 59

2. What are 2 weaknesses of the Cognitive interview?

Answer 59

• There is evidence to suggest that the Enhanced Cognitive Interview increases the amount of correct recall AND the amount of incorrect recall.
  Kohnken et al (1999) found an 81% increase of correct information but also a 61% increase of incorrect information when the enhanced CI was compared to a standard interview.
• There is evidence to suggest that studies of the effectiveness of the CI inevitably use slightly different CI techniques or use the enhanced CI.
  The Thames Valley police, for example, use a version that does not include the ‘changing perspective’ component.

Question 60

Explain 1 strength of the Cognitive interview.

Answer 60

There is support for the effectiveness of the Enhanced Cognitive Interview.
A meta analysis of 50 studies by Kohnken et al (1999) showed that the enhanced cognitive interview provided more correct information than the standard interview.

Question 61

Which 3 questions should you know to explain the economic implications of memory research.

(Learn in terms of… from booklet)

Answer 61

1. What has research shown us?
2. Why it is helpful in the real world? What can we change in the real world because of the research?
3. How does this impact the economy (resources/money within the country)?