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Memory Flashcards

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1
Q

Definition of coding

A

The format in which information is stored in the various memory stores

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2
Q

Definition of capacity

A

The amount of information that can be held in a memory store

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3
Q

Definition of duration

A

The length of time information can be held in memory

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4
Q

Coding of short term memory?

A

Mainly acoustic (sounds)

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5
Q

Capacity of short term memory?

A

Between 5 and 9 items (average)

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6
Q

Duration of short term memory?

A

Between 18 and 30 seconds

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7
Q

Coding of long term memory?

A

Mainly semantic (meaning)

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8
Q

Capacity of long term memory?

A

Unlimited

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9
Q

Duration of long term memory?

A

Up to a lifetime

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10
Q

When did Alan Baddeley conduct his research?

A

1966

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11
Q

What was Alan Baddeley’s research looking at?

A

Coding

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12
Q

Alan Baddeley Research Procedure:

A

Gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember:

  • Group 1 (acoustically similar): words sounded similar (e.g. cat, cab, can)
  • Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar): words sounded different (e.g. pit, few, cow)
  • Group 3 (semantically similar): words with similar meanings (e.g. great, large, big)
  • Group 4 (semantically dissimilar): words that all had different meanings (e.g. good, huge, hot)

Participants shown original words and asked to recall them in the correct order

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13
Q

Alan Baddeley Research Findings/conclusion?

A

When the participants did the recall task immediately after hearing the words (STM recall), they did worse with acoustically similar words

When the participants did the recall task after 20 mins (LTM recall), they did worse with semantically similar words

Suggests info is coded semantically in LTM

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14
Q

What piece of research looks at coding?

A

Alan Baddeley (recall of different groups of words)

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15
Q

What is a limitation of Baddeley’s study?

A
  • Artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material
  • Word list had no meaning to participants
  • Findings may have limited application (more meaningful info may use semantic coding even for STM tasks)
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16
Q

What pieces of research looks at capacity?

A

Joseph Jacobs (1887) - see how many digits one can remember

George Millie (1956) - things come in 7s

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17
Q

Joseph Jacobs Research Procedure:

A
  • Researcher gives (e.g.) 4 digits and participant asked to recall in correct order aloud
  • If correct, researcher reads out 5 digits and so on until participant cannot recall order correctly
  • Determines their digit span
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18
Q

When did Joseph Jacobs do his research?

A

1887

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19
Q

What was Joseph Jacobs research looking at?

A

Capacity/ digit span

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20
Q

Jacob Joseph Research Findings:

A

Mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items

Mean span for letters was 7.3

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21
Q

What is a limitation of Jacob Josephs study?

A

Lacks validity

  • conducted a long time ago (early research often lacked adequate control)
  • May be confounding variable that were not controlled

(although results have been confirmed in other research supporting validity)

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22
Q

What did George Miller research into?

A

Span of memory (capacity) of STM and chunking

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23
Q

What was George Miller’s observations and suggestions?

A
  • Observations of everyday practice
  • That things came in 7s (musical notes, days of week, 7 deadly sins…)
  • Suggests that the capacity of STM is 7 (+ or - 2)
  • People can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters due to chunking (grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks)
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24
Q

What is chunking (George Miller)?

A

Group sets of digits or letters into units or chunks

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25
Q

What is a limitation of George Miller’s research?

Research Support:

A
  • Overestimated the capacity of STM
  • Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about 4 chunks
  • Suggests that the lower end of Miller’s lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items
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26
Q

What was Margaret and Lloyd Peterson research looking at?

A

Duration of STM

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27
Q

What piece of research looks at duration of STM?

A

Margaret and Lloyd Peterson (remembering a consonant syllable/trigram - e.g. YCG)

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28
Q

What year did Margaret and Lloyd Peterson conduct research?

A

1959

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29
Q

Margaret and Lloyd Peterson Research Procedure:

A
  • 24 undergraduate students
  • 8 trials
  • Each trial, student given consonant syllable/trigram (e.g. YCG) to remember and also given three digit number
  • Asked to count backwards from the 3-digit number (prevents mental rehearsal of trigram)
  • Each trial, told to stop after different amount of time (3,6,9,12,15,18seconds - called retention interval)
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30
Q

Margaret and Lloyd Peterson Research Findings:

A
  • As the retention interval increases, % of correct responses decrease
  • Suggests STM has short duration unless repeated over and over again (verbal rehearsal)
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31
Q

What is a limitation of Margaret and Lloyd Peterson’s study?

A
  • Stimulus material was artificial
  • Memorising consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful
  • Low external validity
  • Although, do have to remember meaningless things e.g. phone numbers
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32
Q

What research looks at duration of LTM?

A

Harry Bahrick et al.

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33
Q

What does Harry Bahrick et al. research look at?

A

Duration of LTM

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34
Q

What year did Harry Bahrick et al. do his research?

A

1975

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35
Q

What participants took part in Harry Bahrick et al. research?

A
  • 392 participants from Ohio

- Aged between 17 and 74

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36
Q

Bahrick et al research procedure:

A
  • High school yearbooks obtained from participants or from some schools
  • Photo-recognition recall test of 50 photos
  • Free recall test where participants recalled all names of their graduating class
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37
Q

Bahrick et al. research findings:

A
  • After 15 years of graduation 90% accurate for photo recognition
  • After 48 years of graduation 70% accurate for photo recognition
  • After 15 years of graduation 60% accurate for free recall
  • After 48 years of graduation 30% accurate for free recall
  • LTM lasts very long time
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38
Q

Strength of Bahrick et al. study?

A
  • High external validity

- Real life meaningful memories

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39
Q

Limitation of Bahrick et al. study?

A
  • Due to being such real-life research, confounding variables not controlled
  • E.g. Bahrick’s participants may have looked at their yearbook photos and rehearsed their memory over the years
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40
Q

What is the sensory register?

A

Memory stores for each of our 5 senses

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41
Q

Who made multi-store model? When?

A

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968, 1971)

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42
Q

What are the three stores in the multi-store model?

A

Sensory register, STM and LTM

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43
Q

What are the two main stores in the sensory register? How are they coded?

A

Iconic memory (visual information is coded visually)

Echoic memory (sound/auditory information is coded acoustically)

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44
Q

What is the duration of the sensory register?

A

Less than half a second

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45
Q

What is the capacity of sensory register?

A

Very high

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46
Q

How does information get further than the sensory register?

A

Paying attention to it

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47
Q

Does much information make is past the sensory register?

A

No, very little

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48
Q

How is information in the STM coded? How long does it last?

A
  • Acoustically

- Lasts about 30 seconds unless rehearsed

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49
Q

What is maintenance rehearsal?

A

When we repeat and rehearse material to ourselves over and over again

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50
Q

How does info stay in the STM and go into LTM?

A

By rehearsing it, it stays in the STM

By rehearsing it long enough, it passes into LTM

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51
Q

How is LTM coded?

A

Semantically (in terms of meaning)

52
Q

How is information from the LTM recalled?

A

Has to be transferred back into STM by retrieval, not directly from LTM

53
Q

What is a strength of the Multi-store model?

A
  • Other research supports that STM and LTM are different and independent
  • E.g. Baddeley’s research support that LTM coded semantically and STM coded acoustic
  • Other research supports that the coding, capacity and duration for STM and LTM
54
Q

What are limitations of the multi-store model?

Include supporting studies

A
  • STM may not be unitary (only one type) as research shows that there must be one STM store to process visual info and another one to process auditory information (Shallice and Warrington, 1970) had patient with amnesia recall when digits read out loud to him were poor, however better when read himself)
  • Is another type of rehearsal. Craik and Watkins (1973) type of rehearsal is more important than the frequency of the rehearsal. Maintenance rehearsal does not transfer information into long term memory. Elaborative rehearsal needed to get the info into LTM and occurs when you link info to existing knowledge
  • Doesn’t show that there are different types of LTM, as LTM is not a unitary memory store
55
Q

Who proposed that there were 3 types of LTM?

A

Endel Tulving (1985)

56
Q

What are the three types of LTM?

A

Episodic memory

Semantic memory

Procedural memory

57
Q

What is episodic memory?

Include definition, examples and process

A
  • LTM store for personal events
  • The recall of events from our lives - like a diary/record of daily happenings
  • E.g. last dentist appointment, what you had for breakfast…
  • 1st timestamped, 2nd people/places/objects/behaviours…, 3rd, consciously recalled
58
Q

What is semantic memory?

Include definition and examples

A
  • LTM store for our knowledge of the world. Includes facts and our knowledge of what words and concepts mean
  • Examples: taste of food, meaning of words…
  • Not time-stamped
  • Contains an immense collection of material which is constantly being added to
  • Usually recalled deliberately
59
Q

What is procedural memory?

Include definition and examples

A
  • LTM store for our knowledge of how to do things. Includes our memories of learned skills
  • Memory for actions. skills, how to do things
  • Recalled WITHOUT conscious effort
  • E.g. driving a car, skills that are hard to explain to someone else
60
Q

Supporting research to Tulving’s idea of 3 types of LTM stores:

A

Case study of HM and Clive Wearing.

  • Episodic memory severely impaired due to amnesia (difficulty recalling events that had happened in their past)
  • Semantic memory relatively unaffected (still understood meaning of words)
  • Procedural memories intact (knew how to tie shoelaces, walk, speak, play piano…)

Therefore, one store can be damaged but others can be unaffected. Evidence to there being 3 types of memory in different parts of the brain

61
Q

What evidence is there that the different types of LTM stores are in different parts of the brain? What does this reinforce?

A

Tulving et al. (1994)

  • Got participants to perform different memory tasks while brains are scanned using PET scanner
  • Found episodic and semantic memories recalled from prefrontal cortex (in which is divided into two on each hemisphere). LEFT prefrontal cortex is semantic recall, RIGHT prefrontal cortex is episodic recall

Proves physically different memory stores within brain

Other studies support validity of this study

62
Q

What are limitations of the 3 LTM stores?

A

Clinical evidence lack of control

Cohen and Squire (1980) think episodic memory and semantic memories are stored together in declarative memory (consciously recalled) and procedural memories are non-declarative. Therefore only two types.

63
Q

What is the Working Memory Model?

A

Representation of the STM

64
Q

What is the central executive?

A

Co-ordinates the activities of the three subsystems in the memory. It allocated processing resources to those activities. Monitors incoming data, makes decisions and allocates slave systems to tasks. Has limited processing capacity.

65
Q

What is the coding of the phonological loop?

A

Acoustic

66
Q

What is the phonological loop subdivided into?

A

Phonological store

Articulatory Process

67
Q

What does the phonological loop do?

A

Processes information in terms of sounds (both written and spoken material)

Preserves the order in which the information arrives

68
Q

What does the phonological store do?

A

Stores the words you hear

69
Q

What does the articulatory process do?

Capacity of the ‘loop’?

A

Allows maintenance rehearsal (repeating sounds or words in a ‘loop’ to keep them ins working memory while needed). Loop capacity believed to be 2 seconds worth of what you can say

70
Q

What is the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

A

Stores and processes visual and/or spatial information when required, in a mental space often called our ‘inner eye’

71
Q

What did Baddeley (2003) believe to be the capacity of the Visuo-spatial sketchpad?

A

Limited capacity - about 3 or 4 objects

72
Q

What did Logie (1995) subdivide the visa-spatial sketchpad into?
What do they do?

A

The visual cache - stores visual data

The inner scribe - records arrangement of objects in the visual field

73
Q

What is the episodic buffer?

Who added by?

A

WMM - brings together material from the other subsystems into a single memory, rather than separate strands. Provides bridge between working memory and long-term memory. Temporary store for info.

Added by Baddeley (2000)

74
Q

What is interference?

A

Forgetting because one memory blocks another, causing one or both memories to be distorted or forgotten. Explanation for forgetting in LTM

75
Q

What are the two types of interference?

Explain them:

A

Proactive Interference - When an older memory interferes with a newer one

Retroactive Interference - When a newer memory interferes with an older one

76
Q

Research into the ‘effect of similarity’ in regards to interference performed by … , discovered …

A

John McGeoch and William McDonald (1931)

Interference is worse when he memories are similar

77
Q

Procedure of John McGeoch and William McDonald (1931) ‘effects of similarity’ (interference)

A

Studied retroactive interference, by changing the amount of similarity between two sets of materials. Participants has to learn a list of 10 words until they could remember them with 100% accuracy. They then learned a new list. There were 6 groups of participants who had to learn different types of lists.

Group 1 - synonyms 
Group 2 - antonyms 
Group 3 - words unrelated to original ones 
Group 4 - consonant syllables 
Group 5 - 3 digit numbers 
Group 6 - no new list, just rested
78
Q

Findings of John McGeoch and William McDonald (1931) ‘effects of similarity’ (interference)

A

When the participants then recalled the original list of words, their performance depended on the nature of the second list.

The most similar materials (synonyms) produced the worse recall

Interference is strongest when the memories are similar

79
Q

What is retrieval failure?

A

A form of forgetting. It occurs when we don’t have the necessary cues to access memory. The memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided

80
Q

What is a cue?

A

A ‘trigger’ of information that allows us to access a memory. Such cues may be meaningful or may be indirectly linked by being encoded at the same time of learning

81
Q

What does the ‘encoding specificity principle’ state?

Who made it?

A

If a cue is to help us recall information, it has to be present at encoding when we learn the material and at retrieval. If the cues available at encoding and retrieval are different, there will be some forgetting.

Tulving (1983)

82
Q

‘Context-dependent forgetting’ research procedure:

Researcher names?

A

Duncan Godden and Alan Baddeley (1975)

Divers learnt a list of words, either underwater or on land, and then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land

4 conditions:

  • learn on land/recall on land
  • learn on land/recall underwater
  • learn underwater/recall underwater
  • learn underwater/recall on land
83
Q

‘Context-dependent forgetting’ research findings:

A

In 2 of these conditions the environmental contexts of learning and recall matched, other 2 didn’t.

40% lower accuracy in non-matching conditions

The external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall, and this led to retrieval failure

84
Q

‘State-dependent forgetting’ research procedure:

Researcher names?

A

Sara Carter and Helen Cassaday (1998)

Gave anti-histamine drugs to their participants. The drugs had a mild sedative effect making the participants slightly drowsy. This creates an internal physiological state different from the ‘normal’ state of being awake and alert

The participants had to learn lists of words and passages of prose and then recall the information, again creating four conditions:

  • learn on drug/recall on drug
  • learn on drug/recall normal
  • learn normal/recall on drug
  • learn normal/recall normal
85
Q

‘State-dependent forgetting’ research findings:

A

When there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, recall was worse

86
Q

What is the ‘eyewitness testimony’ (EWT)

A

The ability of people to remember the details of events such as accidents and crimes, which they themselves have observed

87
Q

‘Leading questions’ research procedure:

Researcher names?

A

Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer (1974)

Got participants (students) to watch film clips of car accidents and then have them questions about the accident. In the critical question (a leading question), participants were asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”

‘Hit” suggests the speed of the car. There were 5 groups of participants, each given a different verb in the critical question. Hit, contacted, bumped, collided, smashed

88
Q

‘Leading questions’ research findings:

A

The mean estimated speed was calculated for each participant group.

‘contacted’ mean estimated speed of 31.8mph

‘smashed’ mean estimated speed of 40..5mph

89
Q

What is a leading question?

A

A question, because of the phrasing, suggests a certain answer

90
Q

What is post-event discussion?

A

Occurs when there is more than one witness to an event. Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses or which other people. This may influence the accuracy of each witness’s recall of the event

91
Q

What is misleading information?

A

Incorrect information given to the eyewitness after the event. Many forms - leading questions, post event discussion…

92
Q

Post-event discussion research procedure:

A
  • Studied participants in pairs
  • Each participant watched a video of the same crime, filmed from different points of view (each participant could see elements in the event that others could not)
  • Both participants then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall
93
Q

Who did research on post-event discussion?

When?

A

Fiona Gabbert et al. (2003)

94
Q

Post-event discussion research findings:

A

71% participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video, but gathered from discussion

In the control group (no discussion) was 0%

Witnesses often go along with each other, either to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong (memory conformity)

95
Q

What is memory conformity?

A

When they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong, or they go along with each other to win social approval

96
Q

‘Anxiety has a negative effect on recall (EWT)’ research procedure:

Who did the study?

When?

A

Johnson and Scott (1976)

  • Led participants to believe they were going to take part in a lab study
  • Whilst seated in the waiting room, participants heard an argument in the next room
  • ‘Low anxiety condition’, man then walked through the waiting area carrying a pen with grease on his hands
  • ‘High anxiety condition’, broken glass heard, then man walked out of room holding paper knife covered in blood
97
Q

‘Anxiety has a negative effect on recall (EWT)’ research findings:

A

Low anxiety condition - 49% of participants could correctly identify man from 50 photos

High anxiety condition - 33% of participants could correctly identify man from 50 photos

98
Q

‘Anxiety has a positive effect on recall (EWT)’ research procedure:

Who did the study?

When?

A

John Yuille and Judith Cutshall (1986)

  • Real life shooting in a gun shop, Vancouver, Canada
  • Shop owner shot a thief dead
  • 21 witnesses, 13 agreed to take part in the study
  • Interviews held 4-5 months after incident, these were compared with the original police interviews made at the time of the shooting
  • Accuracy determined by the number of details reported in each account
  • Witnesses asked to rate how stressed they had felt at the time of the incident (using 7 point scale)
  • Asked if they had any emotional problems since the event (e.g. sleeplessness)
99
Q

‘Anxiety has a positive effect on recall (EWT)’ research findings:

A
  • Witnesses were very accurate in their accounts and there was little change in the amount or accuracy after 5 months (some details were less accurate, such a recollection of the colour of items, age/hight/weight estimates…)
  • Participants who reported highest levels of stress were most accurate (88%), 75% for less stressed group
100
Q

What research explains the contradictory findings between the positive and negative effects on EWT due to anxiety?

A

Robert Yerkes and John Dodson (1908) - The relationship between emotional arousal and performance looks like an ‘inverted U’

Kenneth Deffenbacher (1983) then applied Yerkes-Dodson Law to EWT

  • Lower levels of anxiety produce lower levels of recall accuracy
  • Memory becomes more accurate as the level of anxiety experienced increases
  • However, there comes a point where the optimal level of anxiety is reached. This is the point of maximum accuracy. If an eye witness experiences any more stress than this, then their recall of the event suffers a drastic decline
101
Q

What is cognitive interview?

A

A method of inter viewing eye witnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories

102
Q

Who came up with cognitive interview?

When?

A

Ronald Fisher and Edward Geiselman (1992)

103
Q

What are the 4 main techniques used in cognitive interview?

A

REPORT EVERYTHING - include every detail of the event, event if seems irrelevant of witness doesn’t feel confident about it. Trivial information may be important, and they may trigger other important memories

REINSTATE THE CONTEXT - witness should return to the original crime scene ‘in their mind’ and imagine the environment (weather, what they could see…) and their emotions. Relates to context-dependent forgetting

REVERSE THE ORDER - events should be recalled in a different chronological order to original sequences. Done to prevent people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events. Prevents dishonesty

CHANGE PERSPECTIVE - recall the incident from other people’s perspectives. This is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall. The schema you have for a particular setting generate expectations of what would have happened and it is the schema that is recalled rather than what actually happened

104
Q

What is the enhanced cognitive interview?

Who?

A

Fisher et al. (1987) developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction. (E.g. when to establish eye contact and when relinquish it.) Enhanced CI also includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distraction, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions

105
Q

Evaluation WMM - supporting evidence:

A

Shallice and Warrington’s (1970) case study of patient of KF

  • KF suffered brain damage
  • Poor STM ability for verbal information, but could process visual information normally presented visually
  • E.g. he had difficulty with sounds, could recall letters and digits
  • Suggests phonological loop had been damaged leaving other areas of memory intact
  • Supports existence of separate visual and acoustic store
  • However, evidence from brain-damaged patients may not be reliable because it concerns unique cases with patients who have had traumatic experiences
106
Q

Evaluation WMM - limitation (central executive):

A

Congitive psychologists suggest that central executive is unsatisfactory and doesn’t really explain anything.

Baddeley (2003) recognised this when he said ‘The central executive is the most important but the least understood component of working memory’

  • Needs to be more clearly specified that just being simply ‘attention’
  • Some psychologists believe it may consist of separate components, therefore WMM hasn’t been fully explained
107
Q

Evaluation WMM - supporting brain scanning

A

Braver et al (1997) gave their participants tasks that involved the central executive while they were having a brain scan

Researchers found a greater activity in left prefrontal cortex

Activity in this area became increased as the task got hared

As the demands on the central executive increase, it has to work harder to fulfil its function

108
Q

Interference Evaluation - support from lab studies

A

Thousands of lab experiments have been carried out into the explanation for forgetting (e.g., McGeoch and McDonald. Most of these studies show that both types of interference are very likely to be common ways we forget information from LTM.

Strength as lab experiments control the effects of irrelevant influences and thus give us confidence that interference is a valid explanation for at least some forgetting

109
Q

Interference Evaluation: limitation (artificial)

A

Much greater chance that interference will be demonstrated in the lab than in real-life situations. Stimulus materials used in most studies are lists of words, Learning words more realistic that learning consonant syllables, but still too far from the things we learn and try to remember in everyday life (faces, birthdays, ingredients..)

Limitation as artificial tasks makes interference much more likely in the lab. Interference may not be as likely an explanation for forgetting in everyday life as it is the lab

110
Q

Interference Evaluation: support (real life studies)

A

Baddeley and Hitch (1977) - wanted to find out of interference was a better explanation for forgetting than time

  • Asked rugby player to try to remember the names of the teams they had played so far in that season, week by week
  • Most of players had missed games, therefore the last team they played might have been 2+ weeks ago
  • Results show that accurate recall did not depend on how long ago the matches took place, but depended on the number of games they played in the meantime
  • So a players recall of a team from 3 weeks ago was better if they had played no matches since them

Shows interference explanations can apply to at least some everyday situations.

111
Q

Interference Evaluation: Cues

A

Tulving and Psotka (1971) gave participants 5 lists of 24 words, each list organised into categories. Categories were not explicit but was presumed they would be obvious to participant.

Recall 70% for first word but fell as participants given each additional list to learn (presumably due to interference).

However at the end, they were given a cued recalled test (they were told the names of the categories as a clue). Recall rose to 70%

Tells us interference may not be a valid explanation for forgetting. If interference theory is correct, the words should disappear from memory altogether and no longer be available to recall. Therefore even if the participants are given a cued recall test, they should perform poorly because the words are no longer stored in LTM.

Tulving and Psotka found that recall returned to high levels, showing that the words were still stored in LTM and had not disappeared.

112
Q

Retrieval Failure Evaluation: Supporting Evidence

A

Michael Esyenck (2010) goes as far as to argue that retrieval failure is main reason for forgetting from LTM.

Strength as supporting evidence increases validity of an explanation. This is especially true when the evidence shows the retrieval failure occurs real life situations as well as in the highly controlled conditions of the lab.

113
Q

Retrieval Failure Evaluation: Questioning context effects

A

Baddeley (1997) agrees that the context effects are not very strong, especially in real life. Different contexts have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen

E.g. it would be hard to find an environment as different from land as underwater

In contrast, learning something in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to result in much forgetting because these environment are generally not different enough

Limitation as the real-life applications of retrieval failure due to contextual cues don’t actually explain much forgetting

114
Q

Retrieval Failure Evaluation: Recall vs Recognition

A

Godden and Baddlely (1980) replicated their underwater experiment but used a recognition test instead of recall. Participants had to say whether they recognised a word read to them from the list, instead of retrieving it for themselves. When recognition was tester there was no context-dependent effect - performance was the same in all four conditions.

Limitation of context effects as it means that. the presence or absence of cues only affects memory when you test it in a certain way.

115
Q

Retrieval Failure Evaluation: Negatives of encoding specificity principle

A

Cannot be tested and leads to a form of circular reasoning. In experiments where a cue produces the successful recall of words, we assume that the cue must have been encoded at the time of learning. If a cue does not result in successful recall of a word, then we assume that the cue was not encoded at the time of learning - no way to whether this is fact

116
Q

Retrieval Failure Evaluation: real-life applications

A

Baddeley still suggests that context-related cues are worth paying attention to. When having trouble remembering something, it is worth making the effort to try and recall the environment in which you learned it first.

Strength

117
Q

EWT misleading information: Artificial Tasks

A

Limitation

Participants only watched videos of the car accidents - lacks stress of real accident (anxiety)

Tells us very little about how leading questions affect EWT in cases of real accidents or crimes

118
Q

EWT misleading information: Individual differences

A

Evidence that older people are less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports

Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) found that people in age groups 18-25 and 35-45 were more accurate than people in the group 55-78

However, all age groups were more accurate when identifying people of their own age group (own age bias)

Research studies often use younger people as the target to identify and this may mean that some age groups appear less accurate but in fact this is not true.

119
Q

EWT misleading information: Demand Characteristics

A

Zaragosa and McCloskey (1989) argue that many answers participants give in lab studies of EWT are the result of demand characteristics. Participants usually do not want to let the researcher down, and want to appear helpful and attentive. Tend to guess

Decreases validity

120
Q

EWT Anxiety: Control

A

Field studies sometimes lack control

Cannot control things such as whether they had discussed with other people or accounts they had read or seen in the media.

Limitation as extraneous variables may be responsible for the accuracy of the recall. Affects of anxiety may be overwhelmed by these other factors and impossible to assess by the time the participants are interviews

121
Q

EWT Anxiety: Ethics

A

Creating anxiety in participants is risk. Potentially unethical as is may subject people to psychological harm purely for the purposes of research. This is why real-life studies are so beneficial (no need to create an event)

122
Q

EWT Anxiety: Demand Characteristics

A

Participants aware they are watching a filmed crime and will be able to figure out that they will asked questions about what they’ve seen. Therefore try and remember more things that went on. Their response will be more accurate as they’ve paid more attention.

Although could make them less accurate as they decide to undermine the procedure by deliberately giving a different response to the one they think the researcher wants. Either way, these responses decrease the validity of the study because it is not truly measuring accuracy of EWT

123
Q

Cognitive Interview: Time

A

Police may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes much more time than the standard police interview. E.g. more time to establish rapport with the witness and allow them to relax.

CI also requires special training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours (Kebbell and Wagstaff 1996)

This means it is unlikely that the proper version of the CI is actually used, which may explain why police have not been that impressed by it

124
Q

Cognitive Interview: Elements more valuable than others

A

Milne and Bull (2002) found that each individual element was equally valuable. Each technique used singly produced more information than the standard police interview

Milne and Bull found that a combination of REPORT EVERYTHING and CONTEXT REINSTATEMENT produced better recall than any of the other conditions. This confirmed police officers suspicions that some aspects of the CI are more useful than others.

Strength as it suggests that at least these two elements should be used to improve police interviewing of eye witnesses even if the full CI isn’t used. Increases credibility of the CI amongst those who use it (police officers)

125
Q

Cognitive Interview: Effectiveness

A

Research suggests that the enhanced cognitive interview (ECI) may offer special benefits.

E.g. a meta-analysis by Köhnken et al. (1999) combined data from 50 studied. ECI consistently provided more correct information than the standard interview used by police.

Strength as indicate that there are real practical benefits to the police of using the ECI. Gives police a greater chance of catching and charging criminals which is beneficial to society as a whole

126
Q

Cognitive Interview: Inaccurate Interview

A

Inaccurate information recalled may be increased.

Köhnken et al. (1999) found an 81% increase of correct information but also a 61% increase of incorrect information.

Psychology AS (5 decks)

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