Memory Flashcards
What does the sensory register do?
Temporarily stores information from our senses
What happens to the information in the sensory register if we don’t pay attention to it?
Spontaneous decay
Name 3 characteristics of the sensory register.
Limited capacity. very limited duration and coded depending on the sense it has picked up
Name 3 characteristics of STM.
Limited capacity, limited duration and coded acoustically
Name 3 characteristics of LTM.
Unlimited capacity, permanent and coded semantically
Name the 3 types of LTM.
Episodic, semantic and procedural
What is meant by episodic memory?
Stores info about events that you have actually experienced, they are declarative
What is meant by semantic memory?
Stores facts and knowledge that we have learnt and can consciously recall
What is meant by procedural memory?
Info about how to do things such as walking and they can’t be recalled
What the capacity of STM?
7 plus or minus 2
What did Miller suggest we use to remember information (1956)?
Chunking
What is meant by coding?
The way information is stored in memory
What is meant by duration?
How long the information can be stored for
What is meant by capacity?
How much memory can be stored
Who came up with the multi-store model?
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
What does the multi-stores memory model propose?
That memory consists of 3 stores and move through these to create a memory
Name the 3 stores in the MSM?
Sensory register, STM and LTM
What is the primary effect?
When the first few items of a list are recalled better than the rest
What is the recency effect?
Last few items remembered better than those from the middle
Name 2 limitations of the MSM.
In real life we don’t spend time rehearsing in real life and the model is oversimplified
Who came up with the working memory model?
Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
Name the 5 components to the WMM.
Central executive, phonological loop, episodic buffer, visuo-spatical sketchpad and LTM
What does the central executive do?
A component that can be described as attention it has a limited capacity that controls ‘slave’ systems that also have a limited capacity
What does the phonological loop do?
Holds speech-based info
Assesses LTM to store info about long sounds and allow us to develop vocabulary as children and foreign languages as adults
What is the phonological loop made up of?
Phonological store: holds info you hear
articulatory process: allows maintenance rehearsal (repeating words and sounds in a loop) 2 seconds worth of what u say
What does the visuo-spatial sketchpad do?
Deals with temporary storage of visual and spatial information
What does the episodic buffer do?
Briefly stores info from the other sub-systems and integrates it together, along with info from LTM
Links LTM to wider cognitive processes
When was the episodic buffer added?
2000
What did baddeley and Hitch base their model on the results of?
Interference tasks
Name 2 strengths of WMM.
Does not over emphasise the importance of rehearsal and supported by dual-task studies
Name weaknesses of WMM.
There is little direct evidence for how the central executive works and the model is simplistic and vauge
Explains how info is dealt with in STM but not transferred into LTM, lots of the research has been lab studies lacking EV
What is forgetting?
When learnt information can’t be retrieved
In STM what can forgetting be down to?
Availability problem
In LTM what can forgetting be down to?
Decay/accessibility problem
What is proactive interference?
Is where older information interferes with an ability to recall new information
What is retro active interference?
GIs where new information interferes with an ability to recall old information
What can recall depend on?
Cues
What is most forgetting seen to be caused by?
retrieval failure
What are the problem about forgetting studies?
Evidence is artificial and might not explain all types of memory
What is a problem with eye witness testimony?
Can be inaccurate and distorted
What is an eyewitness testimony?
Evidence provided from someone who witnessed a particular event or crime
Who investigated misleading information affecting EWT?
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Who investigated leading questions affecting EWT?
Loftus and Zanni (1975)
Who investigated the effect of anxiety in EWT?
Loftus (1979)
Who came up with the cognitive interview?
Geiselman et al (1984)
Name the 6 steps of the cognitive interview.
1) Interviewer makes the witness relaxed
2) Witness mentally recreated environmental context
3) Witness reports everything they can remember
4) Asked to recall details in different orders
5) Asked to recall details from different perspectives
6) Interviewer avoids judgmental and personal details
What do psychologists believe about anxiety in EWT?
That small increases in anxiety and arousal may increase the accuracy of memory, but high levels might have a negative effect
What did Logie do to the visual-spatial sketch pad
Sub divided it into
Visual cache: visual data
Inner scribe: records the arrangements of an object
What’s the case of KF?
Patient KF who suffered brain damage
STM ability for verbal but could process visual normally
When presented visually he was not good at sounds but good at letters and digits
Suggesting PL damages but other areas intact
Give a study that provides evidence for dual task performance in WMM
provides evidence that VSS and PL are separate
Baddeley (1975) RPS had more difficulty doing 2 visual tasks than a visual and a verbal task
As both visual tasks happen in the same slave system
Meaning must be separate system for visual input
What’s the brain scanning evidence to support WMM (central executive)
Braver (1997) gave RPS tasks that involve the CE while having a brain scan
Greater activity in the prefrontal cortex
Activity in this area increases as task becomes more difficult
In WMM demands on the CE increase it has to work harder to fulfil functions
What is encoding specificity principle
Tulving (1983) ESP if a clue is to help it must be presented at encoding and retrieval
Cues used in mnemonic techniques
Evidence for context-depended forgetting
Golden and Baddeley (1975) sea drivers
Drivers learned a list of words underwater/ land and had to recall then on land/underwater
40% lower recall in non-matching conditions = retrieval failure
Evidence for state dependent forgetting
Carter and Cassidy (1998) Antihistamines given to RPS in a different psychological state they were given a list of words (drugs/none) then asked to recall then other on drugs or not
Mismatching produced the worse results, when cues are absent there is more forgetting
What are the 3 ways leading questions affect EWT
Response bias
Substitution explanation
Post-event discussion
In terms of effects of leading questions what’s response bias
When wording of the questions has no effect on memories but influences how they decide to answer the question
In terms of effects of leading questions what’s substitution explanation
Wording leading questions changes the RPS memory of a film clip
E.g those who heard smashed said there was broken glass (loftus and Palmer 1974)
In terms of effects of leading questions what’s post event discussion
When co-witnesses to a crime discuss their testimonies they can become contaminated as they combine misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories
What is anxiety
A state of emotional and physiological arousal including having thoughts and feelings of tension
Resulting in physical changes such as increased HR
What did Yerkes and Dobson say about anxiety in EWT
Suggested the inverted U theory suggesting that a level of arousal was required
What did shallice and Warrington study in 1974
Case of KF showing support for WMM
KF was a brain damages patient who had impaired STM, struggled with immediate recall of words presented verbally but not with visual info
Suggesting he had an impaired articulatory loop but intact VSS
Showing they are in different store
In terms of retroactive interference what did Underwood and Postman 1960 study
Carried out a lab study participants were split into two groups
Both groups given a word list of paired words (cat-tree)
Experimental group given a seconds list of words to learn, but the first word of each pair was the same (cat-dirt) control wasn’t given a second list
Both groups were tested on their recall of the first list by being given the first word from each pair recall was better in the control
In terms of proactive interference what did Underwood 1957 study
Looked at results i to forgetting over a 24 hour period
He found if people had if people had previously learnt 15 words during the same experiment a day later their recall of the last word list was 20% If they hadn’t learnt any earlier list recall was 80%
What are the pos and neg of interference theory for forgetting
+ supported by a lot of studies, many highly controlled lab experiments
+ as well as in a lab there’s lots of evidence in real life
- artificial in lab so may not be as strong as we once thought
-theory saw why we forgetting not any cog or bio processes involved
How did tulving and psotka in 1971 study forgetting in LTM
Compared interference and cue-depended forgetting
Each participant was given either 1,2,3,4,5,6 lists of 24 words each divided into 6 categories of 4 words. Words were presented in order (all animals then all trees ect)
After the lists were presented in one condition participants were given all the categories and had to recall (free cued recall) or no cue total free recall
In total free recall they found evidence of retroactive interference
In cued recall retroactive interference had disappeared every person around 70% recall
Suggests interference hasn’t caused forgetting just inaccessible
lab experiments
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the theory recall depends on cues
+cue depended forgetting seen to be the best explanation for forgetting in LTM as it has the strongest evidence most forgetting is seen to be down to retrieval failure meaning it there but need right cue to access it
- evidence is artificial
-very hard to test if the info in LTM is accessible and available and just needs right cue
- theory might not explain all types of memory
