Memory Flashcards
What is capacity
A measure of how much information can be stored in the LTM and STM
What is duration
Measure of how long information be held in the memory
What is encoding
The form in which information is stored in memory
How much information and capacity does the STM hold
Small ammount of information and has a limited capacity
How much information and capacity does the LTM hold
Unlimited ammount of information and has a large capacity
focused on cognitive overload
What did Miller (1956) come up with
Magic number 7 plus and minus 2
How can the capacity be extended in STM
- Chunking information
- combining small peice of information
How is STM and LTM encoded
- STM - Acoustic (sound)
- LTM - Semantic (meaning)
What did Baddeley (1996) experiment show
- STM is largely based on acoustic code
- Particiapnts remembered fewer acoustically simillar words then acousitcally disimillar
Leaving school
Bahrick (1975) what did he find in his study of LTM
Within 48 years of leaving school 75% of his particiapnts can still remember the faces nad names of their school friends
Who proposed the idea of the multi store memory model
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
Three stores in Multi store model
- Sensory memory store
- STM
- LTM
Explain the three stages of multi store model
- Sensory information is perceived (what we see or hear)
- sensory information is transferred to STM where it is maintaned by rehearsal (If not information is lost or replaced)
- Information from STM is transferred to the LTM by enough rehersal
What is a strength of the multi store model
Simple and can be tested
What is a weakness of the multi store model
- Artificial ‘free recall’ experiments dosen’t reflect real life situation of how memory is created
- Model suggest memory is a passive process where as the reconstructive memory suggest that memory is an active process
What is reconstructive memory
How we store and remember LTM in socal and cultural processes
What are the three types of long term memory
- Episodic
- Semantic
- Procedural
What is episodic memory
This is the memory of autobiographical events such as times, places etc that can be explicitiy stated
What can you use episodic memory for
- Remember events
- Use during recollection to retrive contexual information of a specific event
What is semantic memory and how can you use it
- Semantic memory refers to memory of meaning and understanding
- It is used to give meaning to otherwise meaningless words and sentences
What does the semantic and episodic memory make
- Declaritive memory (explicit memory)
What is procedural memory
- Part of the LTM that is resposible for knowing how to do things (motor skills)
- Stores information on how to performan certain actions such as walking, talking ect
- Implicit and does not require conscious thought
Who came up with the working memory model
- Baddely and Hitch (1974)
- Model of STM
What are the three parts of the working memory model
- Central executive
- Phonological loop (Articulatory control system, phonological store)
- Vissuospatial sketchpad
Explain the parts of the working memory model
- CE - processes information from all sensory routes (Limited capacity)
- Phonological loop - processes speech based information
- Phonological store - focuses on speech perception (incoming speech)
- articulatory process - focuses on speech production
- Visuospatial sketchpad - where spatal and visual information is processed
Who updated the working memory model and what is it called
- Baddeley (2000)
- Episodic buffer
How can the working memory model be tested
Interference task
How does an interference task technique work
- Assumes that the articulatory phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad both have limited capacity
- P’s are asked to perform two task using the same system at the same time and their performance is affected
What is the advantage of the working memory model
Suggest rehearsal is an optional process which is more realistic then the multi store model
what does the working memory explain
It exaplains how we can do two task at the same time if the task involve two different stores but why we have trouble performaning two task at the same time if it involves the same store
What is the weakeness of the working memory model
It suggest that there is a single CE is theoretical and may be inaccurate
Old and new
What are the two ways that memory can be disrupted
- Proactive interference
- Retroactive interference
Proactive and retroactive
Explain the two ways which memory can be disrupted
- Proactive - This is when old memories disrupt new memories
- Retroactive - This is when new memories we learn disrupt older memories
When are proactive and retroactive interference most likely to happen and give a real life example
- These two interference are most likely to occur when the memories are similar
- An real life example of this is when we confuse an old phone number with a new one
Who came up with a research into retroactive interference
Postman (1960)
Learning words - 2 groups
Explain postman research into retroactive interference
- Lab experiment
- P’s split into two groups both groups had to remember a list of paired words. Control group where they learn one pair, experimental where they have to learn two different pair of words
- Control group was not given the second list
- All P’s were ased to recall the words on the first list
State the findings of Postman (1960) research into retroactive reference
- Recall of the control group was more accurate then the experimental group
- A reason for this is because the learning items in the second list interfered with the P’s ability to recall the list
Evaluation point
Why is the interference theory not accurate
This is due to the fact it was carried out in a lab environment also the test were mundane and not really true to real life (ecological validity)
What is retrieval cue
When we store new memory we also store information about the situation and when we come across this same information it will trigger the retrieval cues to remember the situation
External and Internal
explain two things retrieval cues can be
- External - Cues in the environment (smell, place ect)
- Internal - Cuess insisde us (emotions, mood etc)
LTM
Explain retrieval failure
Information in the LTM cannot be accessed (remembered) this is because the retrieval cue is not present
Deep sea divers
Explain Baddely research on retrieval
- Asked deep sea divers to renmenber a list of words
- Two groups one underwater one on the beach
- Half of the underwater group had to recall on beach aswell and half of the beach group had to recall underwater
- The findnings where 40% more recalled words if it was in same environment (context)
Questions
How did Loftus and Palmer (1974) research the accuracy of EWT and give an example
- Leading questions
- Leading questions was based on a car accident situation and they tested if words can vary the outcome when they used verbs such as ‘smash’ the speed the P’s guessed the car was going was a lot higher then ‘contacted’
Car accident 150 students
Explain a experiment of EWT
- 150 students split into 3 groups
- All P’s viewed a video of a car accident
- After they were given a questionare the 1st group was asked a critical question containing the word ‘hit’, second group word ‘smashed’ and 3rd (control group) was not asked a leading question
- A week later they were asked more queston such as ‘Did see any broken glass’ but there was no broken glass in the video
Car accident 150 students (3 groups)
Explain a experiment of EWT
- 150 students split into 3 groups
- All P’s viewed a video of a car accident
- After they were given a questionare the 1st group was asked a critical question containing the word ‘hit’, second group word ‘smashed’ and 3rd (control group) was not asked a leading question
- A week later they were asked more queston such as ‘Did see any broken glass’ but there was no broken glass in the video
Gun shooting crime
Explain Yuile and Cutshall (1986) research into leading questions
- 21 witnesses of a gun shooting crime were interviewed by a police
- 4/5 months later 13 witnessed agreed to be re interviewed
- Found that misleading questions had no effect
Anxiety level, Duration ect
Explain factors that can effect EWT
- Duration - Longer the event is watched the more details are remembered
- Violence distraction - People have better memory for non violent crimes Clifford and Scott (1978)
- Anxiety level - High emotional events may be beneficial or bad for recall and memory according to Yerkes Dodson in his graph of how anxiety affects perfomance too much stress is bad but too little is bad aswell
Explain cognitive interview by Geiselman (1985)
- Used by the police to help eyewitnesses to recall information more accurately
- Found to improve recall by 35%
- The witness is encouraged to report every detail, recreate the context of the event, recall the event in different order and recall events in other persepctives
Cognitive interview
Explain the findings of Fisher et al (1989)
47% more recall then standard interview