Memory

Question 1

Discuss the evaluation point ‘The capacity of STM may be even more limited’

Answer 1

Miller’s findings have not been able to be replicated
Cowan concluded that STM is likely to be limited to about four chunks.
Research on the capacity of STM for visual information found that 4 was the limit.
Means the lower end of Miller’s range is more appropriate

Question 2

Discuss the evaluation point ‘The size of the chunk matters’

Answer 2

Size of the chunks affects how many chunks you can remember
Simon (1974) found that people had a shorter memory span for larger chunks such as eight-word phrases than smaller chunks such as one-syllable words

Question 3

Discuss the evaluation point ‘Individual differences affect the capacity of the STM’

Answer 3

Jacobs found recall of digit span increases with age
8 year olds 6.6 digits
19 year olds 8.6
This age increase may be due to changes in brain capacity and the development of strategies such as chunking

Question 4

Discuss the evaluation point ‘Testing STM was artifical’

Answer 4

Trying to memorise consonant syllables doesn’t reflect most everyday memory activities- remembering meaningful information
Artificial task may have some relevance to real life

Question 5

Discuss the evaluation point ‘STM results may be due to displacement’

Answer 5

Petersons’ study did not measure what it aimed to measure.
Participants were counting the numbers in their STM and this may displace or overwrite the syllables to be remembered.

Reitman used auditory tones instead of numbers so that displacement wouldn’t occur and found STM duration was longer

Question 6

Discuss the evaluation point ‘STM may not be exclusively acoustic’

Answer 6

Brandimote found participants used visual coding in STM if given a visual task and prevented from doing verbal rehearsal in the retention interval before performing a visual recall task

Normally we translate visual images into verbal codes in the STM but as verbal rehearsal was prevented, participants used visual codes

Question 7

Discuss the evaluation point ‘LTM may not be exclusively semantic’

Answer 7

Frost 1972- showed that long-term recall was related to visual as well as semantic categories
Nelson and Rothbart 1972 found evidence of acoustic coding in LTM

Question 8

Discuss the evaluation point ‘Baddeley may have not tested LTM’

Answer 8

Baddeley tested STM was tested to recall a word list immediately after hearing it.
LTM was tested by waiting 20 min
Casts doubt on validity of this study because he wasn’t really testing LTM

Question 9

PEEL evaluation paragraph

Case studies support MSM

Answer 9

P- Clive Wearing contracted a virus that caused severe amnesia
E- Could only remember information for 20-30 seconds, could recall information from his past
E- Unable to transfer information from STM to LTM but could retrieve certain information successfully
L- Supports the idea that memories are formed by passing information from one store to the next in a linear way as the MSM suggests

Question 10

PEEL evaluation paragraph

Case studies that refute the MSM

Answer 10

P- Some case studies refute the MSM
E- Shallice and Warrington case study on KF
KF could not repeat back 2 digit numbers that had been said to him seconds before
E- Suggests STM has been affected therefore LTM should be affected but it is not
Also KF had poor STM recall for auditory stimuli, but increasingly accurate recall for visual stimuli
L- suggests that there may be multiple types of STM therefore disproving the idea that the STM is a single unitary store

Question 11

PEEL evaluation

MSM has support from controlled lab studies on capacity, duration and encoding which support the idea of separate stores

Answer 11

P- MSM has support from controlled lab studies on capacity, duration and encoding which support the idea of separate stores
E- Studies using brain scanning techniques hav demonstrated there is a difference between STM and LTM
Beardsley found the prefrontal cortex is active during STM but not LTM
E- This proves there is the existence of single, unitary stores
L- provides strong support for MSM

Question 12

PEEL evaluation

LTM involves more than maintenance rehearsal

Answer 12

P- The MSM suggests that the amount of maintenance rehearsal determines the likelihood that the information will pass into the LTM
E- Craik and Watkins (1973) suggest that it is the type of rehearsal which is more important.
Craik and Tulving gave participants lists of nouns and asked a question involving deep or shallow processing.
Deep processing > shallow
suggests that elaborative rehearsal, instead of prolonged rehearsal, is needed to transfer information from the STM into the LTM, by making links with existing knowledge.
L- suggests process of rehearsal doesn’t fully explain the process of creating LTM

Question 13

Peel

Dual task performance

Answer 13

P- WMM was to account for dual task performance
E- Hitch and Baddeley support the existence of the central executive
Task 1- occupied the CE
Task 2- articulatory loop and CE
E- Task 1 was slower then Task 2 involved both
L- Demonstrates dual task performance effect and shows the CE is one of the components of working memory

Question 14

PEEL

Brain damaged patient

Answer 14

P- Shallice and Warrington’s study of KF provides support for the WMM
E- KF short term forgetting of auditory information was greater then that of his visual stimuli
E- Auditory recall were limited to verbal material but not meaningful sounds
L-This suggests that the components of memory which process auditory and visual stimuli are separate

Question 15

PEEL

Problems with using case studies of patients with brain damage

Answer 15

P- Number of problems with using these case studies as generalised research
E- Brain injury is traumatic, which can change behavior/ individuals may have difficulty paying attention and therefore underperform
E- Unique cases and should not be generalised to the whole population
L- Issue for WMM as some of the key supporting research comes from these cases

Question 16

PEEL

The central executive has not been precisely defined.

Answer 16

P- The central executive has not been precisely defined.
E- For example, the term ‘process’ is vague, and the central
executive may be made up of several sub-components or even be part of a larger component itself in working memory.
E- This lack of a comprehensive explanation for each component of WMM draws doubts about the accuracy of its depiction of working memory.
L- Account offered of the CE is unsatisfactory as it is more complex than originally suggested

Question 17

PEEL

Evidence from case studies that support different types of LTM

Answer 17

P- Evidence from case studies that support different types of LTM
E- HM couldn’t form new LTM but retained pre existing LTMs.
E- He could form procedural memories but not episodic or semantic memories
L- Supports the distinction between procedural and declarative memories and hence the existence of multiples types of LTM

Question 18

PEEL link

Priming and fourth LTM

Answer 18

P- There may be evidence for Priming and fourth LTM
E- Priming describes how implicit memories influence the response a person makes to a stimulus, these are automatic and unconscious responses
E- Priming is controlled by a separate brain system (not by temporal system)
L- May be a PRS memory

Question 19

PEEL

Issues for using brain study cases

Answer 19

P- Difficult to reach a conclusion from studying brain damage patients
E- Difficult to be certain parts about which parts of the brain have been affected until a patient has dies
E- Most of the studies involve living patients- damage to a certain area do not mean that area is particularly responsible
L- Cannot establish a relation between brain region and LTM type

Question 20

PEEL

Neuroscanning

Answer 20

P- Evidence from Neuroscanning
E- demonstrated a positive correlation between an increasing cognitive load processed by the central executive (as marked by
increasing task difficulty) and increasing levels of activation in the prefrontal cortex
E- supports the idea that the central executive has the role of allocating tasks to slave systems and has a limited
processing capacity, as reflected by the increased brain activation levels
L- This suggest that the WMM is accurate in its mechanisms of the CE

Question 21

Limitations of interference as an explanation for forgetting

Answer 21

Artificial stimuli was used in the tasks

• learning tasks with no personal meaning to the participants
• in real life we learn lists of meaningful information, which have personal meaning to us
• lacks mundane realism

Studies lack reliability

• Conducted in very short spaces of time
• Participants recall their words 1-2 hours after they have learnt them
• Doesn’t have real life application and lacks validity as a result of this

Question 22

Strengths of of interference as an explanation for forgetting

Answer 22

Lab Studies so has consistent validity

• Highly controlled environment that has control over external factors
• Standardized instructions
• Increases validity

Research support

• Baddeley and Hitch
• Rugby players had to recall the names of the teams that they’d played against
• Those who played less games had better recall of teams
• Can be explained in terms of interference, with retroactive interference

Question 23

Strengths of interference as an explanation for forgetting

Answer 23

Lab Studies so has consistent validity

• Highly controlled environment that has control over external factors
• Standardized instructions
• Increases validity

Research support
- Baddeley and Hitch

Question 24

Strength of retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting

Answer 24

• Eysenck has suggested that retrieval failure may be one of the main reasons that we forget information from the LTM
• Lab controlled conditions which increases the validity of retrieval failure due to more confidence being placed in these conclusions on the basis of such experimental designs

Question 25

Limitations of retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting

Answer 25

Studies may lack ecological validity

• Baddeley argued that it is difficult to find conditions in real life which are as polar as water and land
• Questions real life application
• RF may be best suited to cues associated with encoding and retrieval are uncommonly distinct- lacks mundane realism

Godden and Baddeley repeated their experiment but tested for the recognition of learnt words as opposed to recall

• Found no significant difference in accuracy of recognition between matched and non matched conditions
• RF only applies to certain conditions- not able to generalize

Cynical reasoning
-Over reliance on assumptions
cynical nature of ESP suggests that differences between cues at encoding and recall times always causes retrieval failure- may not be the case

Question 26

What does eyewitness testimony refer to

Answer 26

the information recalled about a crime by an eyewitness
The accuracy of such accounts can be reduced through the influence of misleading information (leading qu and post event discussions)

Question 27

What does post event discussions demonstrate

Answer 27

memory conformity

more likely to pick up upon incorrect ideas or details because we believe we are wrong and the other person is right

Question 28

Limitations of EWT

Answer 28

Use same young target to identify

• Own age bias- tendency to recall others from your own age group with high degree of accuracy
• lower degree for those from other age groups
• 55-78 year old’s inaccurately represented as having low EWT accuracy due to use of young targets

Demand characteristics

• Reduce reliability
• Participants often want to be as helpful and attentive as possible
• Social desirability bias and the ‘please-u’ effect –> give helpful answer/ give expected answer
• Bias results/ reduce reliability

Artificial taks used by Loftus and Palmer

• Reduce ecological validity/ mundane realism
• No anxiety experienced when watching clip vs seeing it in real life
• Anxiety could have negative/positive effect on EWT