Memory

Question 1

Explanations of forgetting(A01)

Answer 1

-one explanation of forgetting is decay theory where memory is no longer in LTM storage
-another explanation is retrieval failure where you cannot retrieve memory from LTM
-another explanation of forgetting is interference theory which is when one memory interferes with another because the memories are similar, there are two types of inference which are proactive interference( when a old memory interferes with the retrieval of new memory) and retroactive interference which is when a new memory interferes with the retrieval of an old memory.

Question 2

evidence for interference theory(A03)

Answer 2

Evidence of the interference theory includes Underwood in 1957 where he looked at past studies into participants recall of word lists, he found that earlier learning of word lists pro actively interfered with later world lists.

furthermore, in 1960 Underwood and Potsman studied participants learning of word pairs and showed that learning a second list of word pairs using some of the same words retroactively interfered with recall of the first word pair list.

Question 3

limitation of evidence

Answer 3

however, laboratory studies supporting interference theories lack ecological validity, this therefore means we cant be sure that interference theory is a valid explanation of forgetting in everyday life.

additionally, interference theory can only explain forgetting which occurs when we have two or more similar memories

Question 4

memory definition

Answer 4

the process of retaining information over time, the information we retain is called a memory

Question 5

3 memory processes

Answer 5

1)encoding- the process of transforming information to put into a memory

2)storage-the process of maintaining information in our minds

3)retrieval-when we take information out of our minds

Question 6

memory recall is

Answer 6

when we consciously remember a whole memory without having to be reminded of the memory first

Question 7

memory recognition is

Answer 7

when a person retrieves a memory once they’re shown the memory again, because it feels similar to them

Question 8

memory stores

Answer 8

capacity-how much can be stored

duration-how long things can be stored

coding-what format things are stored

Question 9

sensory coding:

Answer 9

-when we store sensory information
-2 main types of sensory code are the acoustic code which we use to store information about sound, and the visual code which we use to store information about images

Question 10

semantic coding

Answer 10

storing information by its meaning

Question 11

the sensory register:

Answer 11

-holds sensory information while we process it
-stores information in a sensory code
-has a short duration of 1-2 seconds
-has a large capacity

Question 12

sensory register: evidence(Sperling)

Answer 12

Sperling:
-conducted a laboratory experiment to investigate the capacity of the sensory register

-he presented participants with a 4by3 grid of letters for 50millaseconds and immediately tested their recall of the letters

-pps were tested in two conditions, in the first they were asked to recall as many letters as possible and i the second condition, pps were asked to recall just one of the rows, but they were only told which row to recall after seeing the grid

-sperling showed that we have a very short term store(sensory register) that enables us to recall sensory information from the outside word, immediately after we process it

-he also found that although this sensory store has a large capacity, information is stored for such a brief period of time that we begin to lose all the information before we can finish recalling it

-so sperling found evidence that the sensory register has a large capacity but
a very short duration

Question 13

short term memory store

Answer 13

• a store used to store information for a short period of time while we need to complete an ongoing task

-duration is limited to around 18-30seconds

-capacity is limited to around 7+or-2

-the coding of short term memory is acoustic

Question 14

Jacobs study of short term memory:

Answer 14

-used digit/letter span test to show that when pps were asked to recall strings of letter or numbers, they could recall a maximum of 7+/-2 letter or numbers
-this provides evidence that the capacity of STM is limited

Question 15

Miller and STM capacity

Answer 15

-used letter/digit span test, found that the capacity of STM was actually 7+/-2 chunks of information, and we can hold more info in STM when we combine the info into 1 or more meaningful chunks

Question 16

long term memory store:

Answer 16

• a store that we use to keep information for longer periods of time, from hours to years

-LTM has a very large capacity and duration

-stores information in a semantic code

Question 17

Bahricks study of LTM

Answer 17

-investigated the duration of LTM by testing pps ability to remember names of their school classmates 15 years and 48 years after they finished school

-Bahrick tested both their recall and recognition memory

-bahrick found that 15 years after leaving school, pps recall as 60% accurate and their recognition was 90%, and 48 years after leaving school, pps recall was 30% accurate and their recognition was 80% accurate

-behrick study shows that info can be held in LTM for a vey long duration, but our ability to retrieve info from LTM is much better when we are asked to recognise information than when we have to recall it spontaneously

Question 18

Bahricks study: evaluation

Answer 18

strength:
-has high ecological validity, because the pps were tested on their ability to retrieve information from their own everyday lives

limitation:
-couldn’t control extraneous variables since bahrick was testing retrieval of events that occurred years before

Question 19

support for coding: Baddeley(1966)

Answer 19

-asked pps to recall 4 lists of words that either sounded similar, sounded different, had a similar meaning or a different meaning

-Baddeley found that the pps recalling acoustically similar words had more difficulty when tested immediately after learning, but 20 minutes after leaning pps recalling semantically similar words had more difficulty

-Baddeley concluded that information is encoded in an acoustic code in STM and in a semantic code in LTM

Question 20

Multi-store mode: Atkinson and Shiffrin

Answer 20

-Atkinsons and Shiffrin developed the MSM to explain how we transfer information across memory stores

-according to their model we have 3 memory stores

-they proposed that information is unidirectional and flows from the sensory register to the STM and LTM store

-for information to be transferred from the sensory register to the STM we need to pay attention to it, and for information to be transferred from STM to LTM we have to rehearse it

Question 21

predictions of MSM

Answer 21

-predicts each memory store can be damaged independently

-if someone damages their LTM store they can still hold information in their sensory register and STM

-however, if someone damages their STM store they could also stop being able to perform new long term memories

Question 22

support for MSM: case studies

Answer 22

-case studies of patients like HM provide support for the MSM of memory because they show that the LTM store can be damaged without affecting our ability to retain info in STM
-this supports the idea that we have separate stores for our LTM and STM

Question 23

neuroimaging techniques definition:

Answer 23

-are techniques that allow us to look inside the brain to see different activation patterns

Question 24

support for MSM: imaging studies

Answer 24

-brain imaging studies show that different parts of the brain are active when we hold information in our STM and LTM

-the STM store activates the frontal cortex

-the LTM store activates the hippocampus

-this suggests that we have separate memory stores for STM and LTM as predicted by MSM

Question 25

the working memory model:

Answer 25

-proposed by Baddeley and hitch in 1974

-there are two main features of WMM which are; first, STM is a active memory store, this means that it holds information while its being worked on and also enables us to manipulate information

second, the WMM says that there are multiple components to short term memory

-both of these points are a response to Atkinsons and Shiffrin’s MSM model which said STM was a single memory store

Question 26

components of WMM: phonological loop

Answer 26

-stores auditory and verbal information

Question 27

two subcomponents of the phonological loop:

Answer 27

primary acoustic store- holds verbal and auditory information for a duration of 1-2 seconds

-articulatory process- rehearses information from the primary acoustic store if the information is needed for an ongoing task, this type of rehearsal is called subvocal repetition

Question 28

visuo-spatial sketchpad:

Answer 28

stores visual and spatial information as mental pictures

Question 29

2 sub components of visuo-spatial sketchpad:

Answer 29

visual cache-stores visual information
inner scribe-stores spatial information

Question 30

episodic buffer:

Answer 30

-multi model store that combines all senses to create a whole scene of an event
-this information can be transferred to long term memory to create episodic memories

Question 31

central executive:

Answer 31

-manages activity of 3 other working memory stores

-it’s responsible for directing the relevant info to each store and dividing up our attention across stores

-has a limited attention capacity

Question 32

Tulvings long term memory model(1973):

Answer 32

-suggests we have 3 different long term memory stores which all store different types of memory

-first, episodic memory is the memory of events that you have experienced, contains information like what,when who

-second,semantic memory is the memory for facts , definitions and knowledge that you accumulate over your life time

-finally, procedural memory is the memory of how to perform actions and skills

Question 33

non-declarative memory:

Answer 33

-procedural memory is a type of non-declarative memory as you can’t consciously remember them like how to walk or swim

Question 34

support for tulvings long term memory model:

Answer 34

-case studies like clive wearing and henry molaison(HM) who each had damage to their episodic memory but not their procedural memory

-brain imaging studies show that different parts of the brain are active when we use the 3 different types of LTM, the hippocampus is active when we store episodic memories, the nearby temporal lobe id active when we store semantic memories and the cerebellum and motor cortex are active when we store procedural memories

-these support the idea that there are multiple independent long term memory stores

Question 35

limitations of tulvings long term memory model:

Answer 35

squire and zola found that people with damage in their temporal lobe have impairments in both their semantic and episodic memory
-this suggests that semantic and episodic memory may not be distinct memory stores
-squire and zola suggested that semantic memories might all start as episodic memories

Question 36

support for WMM: case studies

Answer 36

Patient KF:
-suffered brain injuries in a motorcycle crash, to the point where he could only retain a maximum of one word in his STM
-however, if he was asked to recall photographs his STM functioned just fine
-this supports the idea that their are multiple different STM stores and each one processes a different kind of information
-moreover, patient KF could still retain information in his LTM, even though a working memory store was damaged
-the MSM can’t explain this observation whilst the WMM can

Question 37

support for WMM: dual task study

Answer 37

Gathercole and Baddeley:
-found that pps performed better when doing one verbal and one visual task, compared to when they attempted 2 visual tasks
-this supports the idea that we have separate working memory stores for verbal and visual information
-therefore providing evidence for the existence of the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the phonological loop

Question 38

strength of WMM: brain imaging studies

Answer 38

-show that different parts of the brain are active during visual and verbal working memory tasks
-this suggests that there are separate verbal and visual information stores in working memory, providing further evidence for the visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop

Question 39

strengths of the WMM

Answer 39

role of rehearsal- one strength of the WMM is that it explains how we process and transfer visual and episodic information

Question 40

limitations of the WMM:

Answer 40

-existence of the central executive isn’t falsifiable

-central executive may be made up of multiple, independent cognitive processes, such as planning, attention

-lacks ecological validity as evidence for WMM relies on artificial laboratory studies, which may not generalise to everyday life

Question 41

cue-dependant forgetting theory:

Answer 41

-this theory suggests that we rely on retrieval cues(prompts that we associate with a particular memory) to trigger the original memory

Question 42

2 types of retrieval cues:

Answer 42

external cues- features of the environment that we experience at the time we encode the memory e.g.smell,weather,location

internal cues-features of our internal environment that we experience at the time we encode the memory e.g.mood, tiredness

Question 43

context dependant forgetting:

Answer 43

-occurs when a person is unable to retrieve a memory because the external environment that the memory was encoded in differs from the environment the memory needs to be retrieved in

Question 44

state dependant forgetting:

Answer 44

-occurs when a person is unable to retrieve a memory because their internal state at the time of encoding is different from their internal state when the memory needs to be retrieved

Question 45

cue overloading:

Answer 45

-if two memories are very similar, they are likely to be associated with the same retrieval cue
-so, we use a retrieval cue that is associated with both memories to retrieve one of the two memories
-however we can end up retrieving the other memory therefore cue-dependant forgetting theory can explain why we forget when we have two similar memories

Question 46

support for cue-dependant forgetting theory; Godden and Baddeley

Answer 46

Godden and Baddeley:
-tested the effect of external cues on retrieval
-they made participants learn word lists on land and under water
-then, the recall of the word lists were tested either in the same or opposite contexts in which they had initially learnt the list
-they found that pps recall was better when they were tested in the same context in which they learnt the information
-therefore the experiment provided evidence for the use of external cues to help retrieval

Question 47

support for the cue-dependant forgetting theory: Tulving and Psotka(1971)

Answer 47

-made pps learn lists of words

-pps we’re made to learn between 1-6 lists of words and were asked to recall the lists in either free recall of cued recall

-researchers found that in free recall, pps with more lists to learn recalled fewer words, suggesting that there was memory interference

-also found that the pps recalled more words during cued recall than in non cued recall, which supports cue dependant forgetting theory

-and in cued recall, the number of lists to learn didn’t effect pps success of recall so the effect of memory interference disappeared

-and tulving and psotka concluded that forgetting was due to the absence of retrieval cues, not memory interference

Question 48

limitation of cue dependant forgetting theory l:

Answer 48

-studies may lack ecological validity as we don’t often learn things under water

-cue dependant forgetting is less relevant to explaining how we recall and forget procedural memories

Question 49

memory accuracy

Answer 49

-when we retrieve memories, we reconstruct them, so there may be some tings we forget about or modify
-as a result, our memories are not always accurate

Question 50

what are false memories

Answer 50

memories of things that didn’t actually happen

Question 51

4 main factors making memories less accurate:

Answer 51

schema-when we retrieve our memories we use our pre existing schema to help fill in all missing gaps, this can cause us to incorrectly modify memories to be more consistent with our schema

leading questions-questions that suggest a particular answer is correct and can influence our memory recall and lead to false memories

post event discussion-can influence how we remember things because other people have their own expectations and interpretations of what happened

anxiety-anxiety can influence memory accuracy in 2 ways, if people feel a little bit anxious, their accuracy gets better but if people feel very anxious, their accuracy gets worse

Question 52

memory accuracy: loftus and palmer

Answer 52

-conducted a laboratory study where they investigated how accurately pps could recall a video of a car crash
-however, they asked the pps leading questions about the way the car had crashed
-when they used a more intense verb to describe the accident, like smashed, pps judged the cars as going more quickly
-so, the way the researchers asked the question influenced the pps memory of how quickly the cars were going
-and , a week later when pps were asked leading questions about broken glass, many pps had a false memory that there had been broken glass in the video
-this study provided evidence that the eye witness testimony could be influenced by leading questions

Question 53

loftus and palmer evaluation

Answer 53

-study may have suffered from demand characteristics, it’s possible the pps only gave the answers they did because they thought that’s what they were expected to say

-study might of lacked ecological validity as if it has been a real life event, the pps may have paid more attention and tried harder to give accurate answers

Question 54

effects of anxiety on memory accuracy: Loftus(1979)

Answer 54

-pps watched a man leave a room with either a pen or a knife and we’re then asked to recall the man’s face
-the idea was that the the pps in the knife condition would be more anxious than the pps in the pen condition
-and the pos in the pen condition performed better(49% accurate) than those who saw him leave with a knife(33%)
-this supports the idea that high anxiety has a negative effect on memory

Question 55

effect of anxiety on memory accuracy: Yuille and Cutshall(1986)

Answer 55

-Yuille and Cutshall studied the effect of anxiety on memory in a real life setting
-they investigated the memory accuracy of real life witnesses who had seen a gun shooting 5 months earlier
-their findings didn’t support the inverted U-curve effect of anxiety because witnesses had really good memory of the event
-so the effect of anxiety on memory accuracy might me more complicated than what is predicted by the inverted U-curve

Question 56

what is the cognitive interview:

Answer 56

-an interview technique developed by fisher and geiselman to improve the accuracy of witness memory recall

Question 57

4 components of the cognitive interview:

Answer 57

1) mental reinstatement-is when the witness is asked to describe their thoughts, feelings and experience at the time of the event
-this can help the witness to find external and internal cues that can help trigger their memory

2) change of perspective-when witnesses are asked to recall an event from someone else’s perspective
-this reduces their reliance on their own schema and can stop witnesses from misremembering memories

3) change of narrative order-when witnesses are asked to remember the event in a different chronological order
this can help to reduce the serial position effect which is when information presented towards the start or the end of a series is more likely to be remembered than info presented in the middle

4) report everything-this is when witnesses are asked to report everything, every tiny detail that they can remember from the event
-this helps to trigger internal and external cues and it helps make sure witnesses don’t miss out on potentially interesting information

Question 58

the cognitive interview study support:

Answer 58

Geiselman:
-created a stage situation in a lecture where an intruder with a blue rucksack entered the class room and stole a slide projector
-Geiselman then compared the effect of leading questions on pps recall using the cognitive interview and standard interview techniques
-students interviewed with the cognitive interview were less likely to be mislead into remembering the colour of the rucksack as green
-Geiselman concluded that the cognitive interview makes witnesses less susceptible to leading questions

Question 59

the cognitive interview: evaluation

Answer 59

-less effective when interviewing children, so in 1987, geiselman and fisher designed the enhanced cognitive interview which focused on building trusting relationships between the interviewer and the witness

-this modified technique is more effective when interviewing children. this is because interviewers are encouraged not to interrupt the witness and the witness is given more control over the flow of information to reduce their anxiety, and witnesses are encouraged not to guess and to say when they are unsure