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Memory Flashcards

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1
Q

Memory

A

The storage system in the brain that holds information about stimuli, events, images etc. after the original stimuli are no longer present.

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2
Q

Primacy effect

A

An individual’s tendency to remember the first piece of information they encounter due to it being processed and put in a long term memory.

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3
Q

Recency effect

A

Information that came last is remembered more clearly than those that came first. This information is held in a short term memory.

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4
Q

The multi-store model of memory

A

Information - sensory register - attention -rehearsal - short term memory - rehearsal - long term memory - retrieval

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5
Q

Capacity

A

The amount of information that can be stored in the memory store.

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6
Q

Duration

A

The length of time that information can be held in the memory store.

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7
Q

Coding

A

The way in which information is represented in the memory store.

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8
Q

Short term memory (STM)

A

Capacity: 7+/-2 items
Duration: 18-30 seconds (without rehearsal)
Coding: acoustic (by sound)

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9
Q

Long term memory (LTM)

A

Capacity: unlimited
Duration: up to a lifetime
Coding: semantic (by meaning)

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10
Q

Sensory register

A

Capacity: very large
Duration: milli seconds
Coding: modality specific

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11
Q

Sperling - Duration of the sensory register

A
  • Flashed grids of letters then played a high, medium or low tone.
  • Letters flashed for 1/20th of a second
  • Participant had to report the top, middle or bottom row depending on the sound they heard
  • They could only do this if the tone was within 1/3 of a second (very short duration)
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12
Q

Miller - Capacity of short term memory

A
  • Digit span test
  • Participants had to recall increasingly longer strings of digits
  • Most people get 5-9 digits correct
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13
Q

Peterson + Peterson - Duration of short term memory

A
  • Trigrams to learn
  • Participants had to learn these trigrams and then recall back after counting backwards
  • After 3 seconds 80% recalled
  • After 18 seconds 10% recalled
  • Artificial stimuli means study lacked ecological validity
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14
Q

Bahrick - Duration of long term memory

A
  • Yearbook test
  • 392 graduates were shown photos from their high school yearbook
  • 60% could accurately match names to faces 47 years later
  • High external validity because it investigated meaningful memories so would reflect a more ‘real’ estimate of LTM duration
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15
Q

Baddeley - Coding of STM and LTM

A
  • Participants had to learn words that sounded the same (e.g bee, knee) or words that meant the same (e.g loud, noisy)
  • Participants made mistakes on the sound words when STM was tested and meaning words when LTM was tested
  • A strength is that it identified a clear difference between the two memory stores
  • A limitation is that the findings could have limited application as word lists are artificial stimuli
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16
Q

Episodic memory

A

LTM store for personal events, including where, when, people, places. Must be consciously retrieved and it is time stamped.

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17
Q

Semantic memory

A

LTM store for knowledge of the world. Facts, concepts and meanings. Not time stamped and must be consciously retrieved.

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18
Q

Procedural memory

A

LTM store for knowledge of how to do things, including learned skills. Recalled without conscious effort and not time stamped.

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19
Q

Case study: HM

A
  • HM had brain surgery to relieve his epilepsy
  • The surgeons removed his hippocampus without realising that this would permanently damage HM’s LTM
  • His episodic and semantic but not his procedural
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20
Q

Case study: Clive Wearing

A
  • Episodic memory damaged
  • Still had some semantic knowledge (e.g. that he is married to his wife)
  • Kept most of his procedural memories
  • Worst case of amnesia
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21
Q

Working memory model

A

Focuses on short term memory. It is the explanation of the memory used when working on a task. Concerned with the “mental space” active when we are temporarily storing and manipulating information.

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22
Q

Stores in working memory

A

Central executive, phonological loop, visuo spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer.

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23
Q

Central executive

A

Monitors and coordinates all other mental functions in working memory. Controls attention and determines which sub-systems take on different tasks.
- Supervisory role
- Monitors incoming data
- Does not store information
- Limited processing capacity

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24
Q

Phonological loop

A

Codes speech sounds in working memory, typically involving maintenance rehearsal.
Phonological store: stores words you hear
Articulatory process: maintenance rehearsal and capacity is 2 seconds worth of what you can say

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25
Q

Visuo - spatial sketchpad

A
  • Has a capacity of 3-4 items (limited capacity)
  • Temporary store for visual and spatial information
  • Visual cache stores visual information
  • Inner scribe records arrangement of objects in the visual field
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26
Q

Episodic buffer

A

Receives input from many sources, temporarily stores this information and then integrates it in order to construct a mental episode of what is being experienced. Send information to LTM and maintains a sense of time sequencing.
- Added by Baddeley in 2000
- Limited capacity of about 4 chunks

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27
Q

Dual task studies

A

Doing two things at once.
Examples:
- Tracking a moving light while problem solving (different stores used)
- Saying a random number whilst solving problems (hard to do as both require CE)

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28
Q

Evidence to support the WMM

A
  • A psychologist (in 1993) used a PET scan to record brain activity when participants were performing verbal tasks (using phonological loop) or visual tasks (using the visuo-spatial sketchpad) and found that very different areas of the brain were active during each task.
  • KF case study supports the existence of separate visual and acoustic memory stores
  • Dual task studies
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29
Q

Limitation of the WMM

A

We don’t know a lot about the central executive. It is hard to research because we cannot isolate it in the same way as the other stores.

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30
Q

Interference

A

One memory disrupts the ability to recall another memory.

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31
Q

Proactive interference

A

Older memories from previous learning disrupt the recall of newer memories.

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32
Q

Retroactive interference

A

Newer memories disrupt the recall of previously stored memories.

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33
Q

What are the effects of similarity in interference?

A

In both proactive and retroactive interference, the interference is worse when the memories are similar.

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34
Q

Retrieval failure

A

Information is in LTM but cannot be accessed. It cannot be accessed because the retrieval cues are not present.

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35
Q

Encoding specificity

A

Memory is most effective when information available at coding is also present during retrieval . This information acts as cues that trigger our memories. We forget in the absence of these cues.

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36
Q

External cues

A

In the environment e.g. location or smells

37
Q

Internal cues

A

Inside of us e.g. emotional state

38
Q

Abernathy

A
  • Students tested 4 different ways with different surroundings and 2 different teachers
  • Students familiar with surroundings learned best
  • The cue was the surroundings
39
Q

Godden and Baddeley

A
  • Lists of words learnt on land and underwater
  • If learnt underwater, recalled better underwater
  • Context-dependent forgetting
40
Q

Carter and Cassaday

A
  • Participants given anti-histamine
  • Learnt words drowsy or alert
  • If learnt drowsy recalled better drowsy
  • Internal cues
  • State-dependent forgetting
41
Q

Goodwin

A
  • Asked people to learn lists of words drunk or sober
  • If they learnt the words drunk then they were more likely to remember them drunk.
42
Q

Eyewitness testimony

A

The evidence given in a court or in police investigations by someone who has witnessed a crime or accident.

43
Q

Schemas

A

Allow us to make sense of what we encounter so we can predict what is going to happen and what we should do.

44
Q

Reconstructive memory

A

When people don’t remember events exactly, they remember fragments and then fill in the gaps using common sense and personal experiences

45
Q

Leading question

A

A question that, either by its form or content, suggests to the witness what answer is desired or leads him or her to the desired answer.

46
Q

Misleading information

A

Supplying information that may lead a witness’ memory of a crime to be altered.

47
Q

Post-event discussion

A

A conversation between co witnesses or an interviewer and an eyewitness after a crime has taken place which may contaminate a witness’ memory for the event.

48
Q

Source monitoring theory

A

When you integrate information from others into your own memories and forget whether the information was from someone else or your own memory. You don’t know the source of the information.

49
Q

Conformity theory

A

People may go along with others for social approval or just think that the other person is a better witness.

50
Q

Loftus and Palmer (Experiment 1)

A
  • Participants shown a film of a car crash
  • They were then asked a series of questions including “How fast do you think the cars were going when they were hit?”
  • The word hit was replaced by smashed, collided, bumped or contacted.
  • Participants given the word smashed estimated the highest speed estimate (average of 41mph) and the word contacted gave the lowest estimate (average of 32mph)
51
Q

Loftus and Zanni

A
  • A study into leading questions
  • Participants shown a film of a car crashed and asked ‘Did you see the broken headlight?’ Or ‘Did you see a broken headlight?’
  • 17% of those asked with ‘the’ claimed they saw one but only 7% of those asked with ‘a’ did.
  • A lab study so lacks ecological validity
52
Q

Yuille and Cutshall

A
  • Study of a shooting that occurred outside a gun shop in Canada
  • Asked 2 leading questions using the a/the technique
  • Leading questions had little effect in recall
53
Q

Christianson and Hubinette

A
  • Conducted interviews of bystanders and victims of a bank robbery 4-15 months after the event
  • Witnesses who were most anxious (victims) had the best recall
  • Suggests anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall
54
Q

Drawbacks to Loftus’ experiments

A
  • Lab experiment so lacked ecological validity
  • Participants were her students so they may have realised what the experiment was about and changed their behaviour accordingly
55
Q

Gabbert

A
  • Investigated post-event discussion on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
  • 60 students and 60 older adults
  • Watched a video of a girl stealing money from a wallet
  • Tested individually (control group) or in pairs (co-witness group)
  • Participants in co-witness group watched different perspectives but told they watched the same video
  • After completing a questionnaire, 71% of witnesses in the co-witness group recalled information they had not seen
56
Q

Effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony

A
  • Christianson and Hubinette bank robbery study - people with most anxiety (the victims) showed more accurate recall.
  • In real life, the more anxiety the better the recall
  • In lab studies, the more anxiety, the less accurate the memory
57
Q

What type of memory does the WMM represent?

A

Short term memory

58
Q

Cognitive interview (CI)

A

A method of interviewing eyewitnesses and victims about what they remember from a crime scene. It has 4 techniques and aims to improve eyewitness testimony.

59
Q

The four techniques used in cognitive interviews

A

Context reinstatement (CR)
Report everything (RE)
Change perspective (CP)
Reverse order (RO)

60
Q

Context reinstatement

A
  • Recall the scene, weather, what you were thinking and feeling (the context surrounding the event no the event itself)
  • Links to retrieval failure
  • Can act as cues for remembering information and enhances recall
61
Q

Report everything

A
  • Report very detail you can even if they seem irrelevant or trivial
  • Small details can be crucial and they can act as triggers for other memories (retrieval cues)
  • Witnesses might not realise that some details are important and details might help them recall significant information
62
Q

Change perspective

A
  • Describe the event as it would have been seen from different viewpoints
  • Encourages many different retrieval paths
63
Q

Reverse order

A
  • Describe the event in reverse order
  • This stops people telling the event as a story and filling in gaps using their schemas
64
Q

Limitations of the cognitive interview

A
  • Costs government money
  • Training takes time
  • It is a lengthy process
65
Q

Independent groups

A

Split your participants into 2 separate groups and each group does one condition.

66
Q

Repeated measures

A

All participants do both conditions.

67
Q

Baddeley and Hitch (1977)

A
  • Interference
  • Rugby players recalling the names of the teams they had played against over a rugby season
  • The players who played the most games forgot proportionately more because of interference than those players who played less games
  • Demonstrates the effect of interference on daily life
68
Q

Benton Underwood (1957)

A
  • Proactive interference
  • Analysed the findings from a number of studies
  • Concluded that when participants have to learn a series of word lists, they do not learn the lists of words encountered later on in the sequence as well as lists of words encountered earlier on.
  • If participants memorised 10 or more lists then after 24 hours they remembered about 20% of what they learned. If they only learned one list recall was over 70%
69
Q

Muller and Pilzeder (1900)

A
  • Retroactive interference
  • Gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes and then after a retention interval (shown 3 landscape paintings and asked to describe them) asked them to recall the lists.
  • Performance was worse if the participants had been given an intervening task between initial learning and recall
70
Q

Evaluation for interference

A
  • Research is quite artificial and doesn’t replicate real life. lots of supporting evidence but most of it is lab-based which may not relate to everyday uses of memory.
  • Interference only occurs when 2 memories are similar. Interference effects do not occur in everyday life but not that often
  • Researchers have questioned whether interference effects are temporary or if a memory is actually lost.
  • Evidence that some people are less affected by PI than others. Kane and Engle - ppts with low working memory spans showed greater proactive interference.
71
Q

Context-dependent forgetting

A

Recall depends on external cue e.g. weather or place

72
Q

State-dependent forgetting

A

Recall depends on internal cue e.g. feeling upset or being drunk

73
Q

Strengths of retrieval failure

A
  • Retrieval cues can help to overcome some forgetting in everyday situations so it has real-world applications (research can remind us of strategies we use in the real world to improve our recall)
  • Supported by research - Godden and Baddeley and Carter and Cassaday. Retrieval failure occurs in real-world and lab situations
74
Q

Weaknesses of retrieval failure

A
  • Baddeley argues that context effects are not very strong in everyday life and contexts have to be very different in order to see an effect. Therefore retrieval failure due to lack of contextual cues may not actually explain much everyday forgetting
  • Context effects may depend on the type of memory being tested. Godden and Baddeley replicated their underwater experiment with a recognition test instead a retrieval test and performance was the same in all 4 conditions. So maybe it only applies when recalling information yourself.
75
Q

Dual task studies - Evaluation of WMM

A
  • Baddeley (1975) asked participants to carry out a visual and verbal task at the same time their performance on each was similar to when they carried out the tasks separately
  • When both tasks were visual (or both verbal) performance on both tasks declined substantially as the same store was being used.
  • This suggests there must be separate systems for verbal and visual information
  • However dual task studies are unlike the tasks we perform in everyday life.
76
Q

Case study for WMM: KF

A
  • Case study carried out by Tim Shallice and Elizabeth Warrington
  • KF had poor STM ability for auditory information but could process visual information normally
  • This suggests there are separate stores for visual and verbal memory
    BUT…
  • It is unclear whether KF had other cognitive impairments which may have affected his performance on memory tasks - the trauma of his accident may have impacted his cognitive performance
77
Q

Nature of the Central Executive - Limitation of WMM

A
  • Baddeley said “the central executive is the most important but least understood component of working memory”
  • Some psychologists believe that the central executive may consist of separate sub-components
  • This means that the central executive is an unsatisfactory component and this challenges the integrity of the WMM.
78
Q

Korsakoff’s syndrome

A
  • Chronic alcoholics sometimes develop Korsakoff’s syndrome, which causes brain damage.
  • However, it has little effect on STM, but severely impairs LTM. This suggests that STM and LTM are stored in different areas of the brain. This provides further evidence to support the multistore model of memory.
79
Q

Loftus (1979)/ Johnson and Scott Method

A
  • Two conditions were created in this independent design study.
  • In both conditions, participants heard a discussion in a room nearby.
    Group 1: participants witnessed a man come out of the room with his hands covered in grease and holding a pen.
    Group 2: participants witnessed a man come out of the room carrying a knife covered in blood.
  • Participants were then asked to identify the man from 50 photographs.
  • The participants were unaware that this was staged
80
Q

Loftus (1979) Results

A
  • The participants in Group 1 (pen/grease) had 49% accuracy in identifying the man.
  • In Group 2 (knife covered in blood), the participants only had a 33% accuracy rate in identification.
81
Q

Loftus (1979) Conclusion

A
  • When witnesses were more anxious, they tended to focus on the weapon rather than the criminal.
  • Overall, Group 2 participants were more likely to focus on the weapon itself, rather than other details of the crime scene (such as the man).
  • So when witnessing violent crimes, witnesses tend to focus on central details and ignore other details.
  • High levels of anxiety caused Group 2 to be less accurate in identifying the man
82
Q

Loftus (1979) Evaluation

A
  • Because the participants were unaware that the scenario was staged, the study has high ecological validity.
  • But there are ethical issues because of the potential trauma of witnessing a man carrying a knife covered in blood.
  • Psychological participants have a right to be informed and debriefed of the nature of the deception of the study
83
Q

Strengths of Gabbert (2004) post-event discussion

A
  • Reliable – easy to replicate.
  • Practical applications – demonstrates unreliability of eyewitness testimony.
84
Q

Limitations of Gabbert (2004) post event discussion

A
  • Lacks ecological validity – the participants were aware it was not a real crime.
  • Demand characteristics.
  • Social desirability.
85
Q

Strengths of MSM

A

Supported by research e.g. Baddeley’s coding study which supports the claim from the MSM that the STM and LTM are separate stores

86
Q

Limitations for the MSM

A
  • Research studies the memory of numbers and words which reduces the validity of the models as research does not represent the more meaningful memories we form in everyday life
  • KF case study - could process visual information but could not process verbal information which suggests there are separate STM stores
  • Prolonged rehearsal is not needed for transfer to LTM, elaborative rehearsal is needed for long term storage which suggests that the MSM does not fully explain how long-term storage is achieved
87
Q

Rebecca Milne and Ray Bull (2002) CI

A
  • Each of the four techniques used alone produced more information than the standard police interview
  • Found that a combination of report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any of the other elements or a combination between them
  • Some aspects of the CI are more useful than others which casts doubt on the credibility of the overall CI
88
Q

In Günter Köhnken’s meta analysis (1999) of 55 studies what was the average increase in accurate information compared with the standard interview?

A

41%

89
Q

Enhanced cognitive interview

A
  • Fisher et al (1987)
  • Developed additional elements to the cognitive interview to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction
  • E.g. eye contact
  • Also includes ideas about reducing eyewitness anxiety, asking open ended questions and minimising distractions

Psychology (17 decks)

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