Memory Flashcards

Question

What is a limitation of George Miller's research? | Research Support:

Answer 1

- 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

Answer 2

Duration of STM

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

- 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)

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

- 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

Answer 7

Harry Bahrick et al.

Answer 8

Duration of LTM

Answer 9

- 392 participants from Ohio | - Aged between 17 and 74

Answer 10

- 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

Answer 11

- 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

Answer 12

- High external validity | - Real life meaningful memories

Answer 13

- 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

Answer 14

Memory stores for each of our 5 senses

Answer 15

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968, 1971)

Answer 16

Sensory register, STM and LTM

Answer 17

Iconic memory (visual information is coded visually) Echoic memory (sound/auditory information is coded acoustically)

Answer 18

Less than half a second

Answer 19

Paying attention to it

Answer 20

No, very little

Answer 21

- Acoustically | - Lasts about 30 seconds unless rehearsed

Answer 22

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

Answer 23

By rehearsing it, it stays in the STM By rehearsing it long enough, it passes into LTM

Answer 24

Semantically (in terms of meaning)

Answer 25

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

Answer 26

- 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

Answer 27

- 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

Answer 28

Endel Tulving (1985)

Answer 29

Episodic memory Semantic memory Procedural memory

Answer 30

- 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

Answer 31

- 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

Answer 32

- 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

Answer 33

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

Answer 34

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

Answer 35

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.

Answer 36

Representation of the STM

Answer 37

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.

Answer 38

Phonological store Articulatory Process

Answer 39

Processes information in terms of sounds (both written and spoken material) Preserves the order in which the information arrives

Answer 40

Stores the words you hear

Answer 41

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

Answer 42

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

Answer 43

Limited capacity - about 3 or 4 objects

Answer 44

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

Answer 45

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)

Answer 46

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

Answer 47

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

Answer 48

John McGeoch and William McDonald (1931) Interference is worse when he memories are similar

Answer 49

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 ```

Answer 50

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

Answer 51

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

Answer 52

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

Answer 53

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)

Answer 54

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

Answer 55

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

Answer 56

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

Answer 57

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

Answer 58

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

Answer 59

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

Answer 60

The mean estimated speed was calculated for each participant group. 'contacted' mean estimated speed of 31.8mph 'smashed' mean estimated speed of 40..5mph

Answer 61

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

Answer 62

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

Answer 63

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

Answer 64

- 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

Answer 65

Fiona Gabbert et al. (2003)

Answer 66

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)

Answer 67

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

Answer 68

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

Answer 69

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

Answer 70

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)

Answer 71

- 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

Answer 72

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

Answer 73

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

Answer 74

Ronald Fisher and Edward Geiselman (1992)

Answer 75

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

Answer 76

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

Answer 77

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

Answer 78

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

Answer 79

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

Answer 80

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

Answer 81

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

Answer 82

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.

Answer 83

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.

Answer 84

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.

Answer 85

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

Answer 86

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.

Answer 87

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

Answer 88

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

Answer 89

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

Answer 90

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.

Answer 91

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

Answer 92

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

Answer 93

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)

Answer 94

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

Answer 95

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

Answer 96

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)

Answer 97

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

Answer 98

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.

Memory Flashcards

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