Memory Flashcards
What is misleading information?
Is incorrect information given by an eyewitness following an event
What is a leading question?
A question which from its content suggests a desired response
Who carried out study for leading question?
Loftus and Palmer
Loftus and Palmer EWT AIM
Their aim was to see if leading questions would affect eyewitness testimony
Loftus and Palmer EWT procedure
45 American Students, opportunity sample, Lab experiment, Randomly allocated into groups of 9, 5 conditions. Each group watched the same clip of a Car crash and each asked also how fast they thought the car was going. Only each group had a different verb in their question.
What were the 5 verbs used in EWT
Smashed, hit, contacted, collided, bumped
EWT findings
Loftus and Palmer found the condition who were asked the question containing the verb “smashed” estimated that the car was travelling around 10mph more than the verb “collided” 40.5 compared to 31.8
A03 Loftus and Palmer EWT
-Students meaning little to no driving experience, are the results reliable? Also means lacks population validity and means less representative
-Lab experiment, it is easily replicated, meaning also reliability of findings can be tested. Less extraneous variables likely as the setting is controlled, however lacks ecological validity.
-Experimental design was independent groups meaning individual differences may occur.
-mundane realism of task-watching TV clip
-ethical issues of watching TV clip
What did Loftus and Zannis research show
ppts shown car clip asked if they saw a “broken headlight” and the ppts who were asked “smashed” were more likely to have seen broken glass that was not actually there. Also,
“the” broken headlight-17%
“a” broken headlight 7%
What is Anxiety?
State of arousal, uneasiness or tension normally caused by a fear
Loftus weapon effect AIM
To investigate the effect of anxiety state on if memory is affected (accuracy)
Loftus weapon effect procedure
Two groups, Anxiety and Non anxiety group. Ppts were asked to sit in a waiting room believing they were taking part in a study. Independent group design. High anxiety group were exposed to a heated argument, shouting and a man walking out with bloody hands and a knife. In the low anxiety group, ppts overheard an amicable conversation and a man walk out with greasy hands and a pen
Loftus Weapon effect findings
That when shown 50 photos low anxiety group recall was 49% whereas high anxiety recall was just 33%
Loftus weapon effext A03
-Lab experiment
-Christianne and Hubienne- RL bank robberies, questioned 55 real (high and low respectively) witnesses, conducted 4-15 months after robberies, those directly involvec were most accurate (could be evaluated also) Findings were opposite
-Pickel- Suprise or anxiety? Carried out study in hairdressers, scissors(high threat low Suprise) gun HT,HS, wallet LT, LS, and a raw chicken HS, LT.Identification least accurate in HS conditions. Unusual more relevant than anxiety in Loftus
What are four aspects of cognitive interview
Reverse Order
Report Everything
Context Reinstatement
Changed perspective
What is a cognitive Interview
Unlike a standard interview, Cognitive interview is used to help witnesses improve accuracy of an event by memory retrieval
Cognitive Interview A01
The cognitive interview was devised by psychologists in order to improve eyewitness testimony. The 4 aspects are as followed, reinstating the context involves reliving the place, the smells and the emotions you were feeling at the time of the event. This is based off of state context cues of forgetting. Reporting everything is reporting everything you can remember about the event. Changing perspective is when the person tries to see and assimilate their schema to another perspective. Report backwards is recalling the events in backwards order
Cognitive interview A03
-There are questions over the overall credibility of the model, because Milne and Bull found in their study that the Report everything and reinstate the context were the most effective, they did find that each aspect alone increased cognitive interview but some aspects more useful.
-Kohnen found a 41% increase compared to standard interview, although also an increase in inaccurate information.
-CI is time consuming
-Cannot do on children
-Variations-pick and mix approach is more flexible bacuse of independent differences
Multi Store Model of memory
Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed the MSM, attention- leads to sensory register, this then into STM and then into long. Cognitive approach, processing model.
Research into Capacity
Joseph Jacobs investigated Capacity of STM, via the digit spam test. Read out digits and had to remember as many as possible, found an average of 9.3. Miller estimated the capacity to be around 7 plus or minus 2. He found that the most efficient way to remember was a method called chunking
Research into Capacity A03
-One strength of capacity is that although Joseph Jacobs study is old and less likely to be controlled and more exposed to extraneous variables, siupporting evidence such as Boppit, proves findings more reliable
-Cowen found contradictory research 4 plus or minus 1, muller may have over predicted capacity
Research into Duration
Peterson and Peterson- tested 24 students in each trial, constant syllables to remember, 3 seconds increased each time. Remember at 3 seconds 80% and after 18 seconds, 3%.
Research into Duration A03
Peterson and Petersons study is that the stimulus is artificial. The study is not completely irrelevant because we sometimes do use material that is meaningless such as phone numbers, even so the syllable did not mean anything
Research into coding
Baddeley done a study on how we encode information. He split his participants into 4 groups, acoustically similar, acoustically different, semantically similar and semantically different, Baddeley found that the acoustically similar words were worst for recall in STM and semantically similar for LTM.
Research into coding A03
-Artificial stimulus means that the material is meaningless, if the words in STM for example had meaning to the participant’s, would have been encoded semantically. This means has limited application
-key to the multi sore model of memory
Multi Store Model A03
- STM and LTM stores are different, research support from Baddeley and from Jacobs, however, counterpoints to the fact that they have no meaning
-KF as a weakness, KF proves more than one STM store
-HM, could form STM but could not form new STM, this suggests that STM and LTM are different
-Flash bulb memory, maintenance rehearsal - Serial position effect- The primacy and the recency effect
The Working Memory Model A01
The working memory model was composed by Baddeley and Hitch in order to understand STM stores, how it is organised and how it function. The WMM is concerned with mental space, how it is stored and manipulates information, for example working out a mathematic equation or playing chess.
Central executive- Supervisory role of allocating information to sub-stores
Phonological loop-deals with auditory information (acoustic)
- inner voice- allows maintenance rehearsal, 2 second capacity
-inner ear- words you hear
Visuo-spatial sketchpad- deals with visual information
-visual cache- stores visual data
-inner scribe- records arrangement of objects in visual field
The working memory model A03
- Strength of KF, different STM stores, poor auditory, good visual
- it is unclear whether KF had other cognitive impairments, motorbike accident, cannot reduce down when could have affected different systems
-Lack of evidence for the central executive, one of the most important parts of the model arguably.
-A study carried out by Baddeley, proved that there is more than two stores- the capacity of the sub stores. When participants were given both visual or both auditory tasks, their performance declined
What are the explanations for forgetting?
-Absence of cues
-Interference theory
What is interference?
The idea of when one piece of information blocks the retrieval of another piece of information, similarity, and time sensitivity both affect interference
Proactive Interference
When new information is disrupted by old information
Retroactive interference
When old information is disrupted by new information
Research into interference
McDonald and McGeoch studied both retroactive and proactive interference.
-Constant syllables
-synonyms
-antonyms
-Unrelated
-No new list
-3 digit numbers
-The worst recall was synonyms, suggests that similar material, less remembered
Real Life Application
-A study by Baddeley and Hitch on rugby players, it found that players who played more matches struggled to remember the opposition team names, but the players who played less games had a better recall- increases the validity of findings.
HOWEVER, interference is hard to replicate in other real life scenarios, it is highly unlikely, for example, if the material for an exam is similar at same time
Interference is temporary
-Cues are temporary, Baddeley done an lab experiment, word recall for lists progressively got worse, however, when cues for list, recall increased to 70%
