Memory

Question 1

What is memory?

Answer 1

The process of retaining information and retrieving it after the original material is no longer present / learning that has persisted overtime - information that has been stored and in many cases can be recalled.

Question 2

What are the three stages of memory?

Answer 2

-Encoding/coding
-Storage
-Retrieval/recall

Question 3

What is encoding?

Answer 3

-Creating a chemical trace in the brain
-Occurs during presentation of the stimulus
-Transforms sensory input into a form that can be registered and stored by the memory

Question 4

What are the three types of encoding?

Answer 4

-Visual
-Acoustic
-Semantic

Question 5

What is storage?

Answer 5

Holding/retaining information.

Question 6

What is retrieval?

Answer 6

Recovering stored information.

Question 7

What are the three types of long term memory?

Answer 7

Semantic long term memory - Memory for facts/knowledge
Episodic memory - Personal events e.g. first day at school
Procedural memory - muscle memory e.g. riding a bike

Question 8

How long does short term memory last for?

Answer 8

18-30 seconds

Question 9

What is the capacity of the short term memory?

Answer 9

7+or-2 items/chunks

Question 10

What is capacity?

Answer 10

A measure of how much can be held in a memory. It is represented in terms of bits of information, such as number of digits.

Question 11

What is duration?

Answer 11

A measure of how long a memory lasts before it is no longer available.

Question 12

What is long term memory?

Answer 12

Your memory for events that have happened in the past. This can last anywhere for 2 minutes to 100 years. LTM has potentially unlimited duration and capacity and tends to be coded semantically. Information may not be able to be retrieved due to not having the right cues, retrieval failure and interference (two similar memories competing).

Question 13

What is short term memory?

Answer 13

Your memory for immediate events. STMs are measured in seconds and minutes rather than hours and days. They disappear unless they are rehearsed. STM has a limited capacity of about four items or chunks and tend to be coded acoustically. Sometimes referred to as working memory.

Question 14

What is the Peterson & Peterson technique?

Answer 14

-Participants were made aware that they would be presented with a series of trials where they would be presented with a trigram (set of three letters) with three consonants which they would be asked to recall in order.
-The recall was delayed for 3, 6 ,9, 12, 15 and 18 seconds in a random order. During this period they had to count backwards in threes from a random three digit number so they couldn’t rehearse the trigram.
-The participants were tested repeatedly on the various time delays and the effects of the time delay was assessed by the number of correctly recalled trigrams.

Question 15

Which research method was used in the Peterson and Peterson study (1959)?

Answer 15

Laboratory experiment (as it was controlled).

Question 16

What was the aim of the Peterson and Peterson study?

Answer 16

To test the duration of STM.

Question 17

What were the independent and dependent variables in the Peterson and Peterson study?

Answer 17

Independent - manipulated by the researcher, changes, (duration of the time interval between presentation of stimulus and recall)
Dependent - The variable you measure e.g. recall, (number of trigrams accurately recalled)

Question 18

What is a hypothesis for the Peterson and Peterson study?

Answer 18

As the length of the time interval increases (in seconds) between the presentation of the nonsense trigrams and recall, the number of trigrams accurately recalled will decrease.

Question 19

What are memories accessed through?

Answer 19

-Recall
-Recognition
-Relearning

Question 20

What is recall?

Answer 20

A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier.

Question 21

What is recognition?

Answer 21

A measure of memory in which the person only needs to identify old information when they are presented with it.

Question 21

What is relearning?

Answer 21

A measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again (refreshing information).

Question 22

What is working memory?

Answer 22

Conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information and of information retrieved from long-term memory.

Question 23

What is explicit memory?

Answer 23

Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and ‘declare’.

Question 24

What is implicit memory?

Answer 24

Retention independent of conscious recollection.

Question 25

What is automatic processing?

Answer 25

Non-conscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time and frequency and of well-learned information such as word meanings.

Question 26

What is mnemonics?

Answer 26

Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organisation devices.

Question 27

What is chunking?

Answer 27

Organising items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs naturally.

Question 28

What is deep processing?

Answer 28

Encodes semantically, based on actual meaning associated with the word.

Question 29

What is shallow processing?

Answer 29

Encoding information on basic auditory or visual levels, based on the sound, structure or appearance of a word.

Question 30

What is digit span?

Answer 30

The amount of digits (numbers or letters) you can recall or hold.

Question 31

What is an experimental/alternative(non-experimental) hypothesis?

Answer 31

A testable, measurable statement of prediction.

Question 32

What is standerdisation?

Answer 32

All participants have the same experience e.g. same task.

Question 33

What is an extranious variable?

Answer 33

Uncontrolled variables e.g. distractions, alertness (tired).

Question 34

What is episodic memory?

Answer 34

-Personal memories of events, including contexual memory (time and place) and emotional tone.
-It is explicit/declarative (knowing that).
-It is autobiographical memory.
-Conscious.
-Doesn’t require rehearsal.
-Associated with the hippocampus, temporal lobe and the frontal lobe.

Question 35

What is semantic memory?

Answer 35

-Shared memory for facts and knowledge.
-Generally begin as episodic memories (the memory will slowly lose its association with the event however sometimes we will still remember where and when we learnt it).
-It is Explicit/Declarative (knowing that).
-Conscious.
-Relies on the temporal lobe.

Question 36

What is procedural memory?

Answer 36

-Memory for how to do things (automatic as a result of repeated practice).
-It is Implicit/Non Declarative (knowing how).
-Not conscious
-Associated with the cerebellum, motor cortex, basal ganglia and limbic system.

Question 37

What is there physiological evidence for?

Answer 37

That the different stores are associated with different areas of the brain (found using PET scanners and fMRI)
-Prefrontal cortex is active when using STM.
-Hippocampus is active when using LTM.

Question 38

What is the primacy effect?

Answer 38

Superior recall of the earlier items in the list due to rehearsal. (rehearsed forming LTM’s)

Question 39

What is the recency effect?

Answer 39

Superior recall for items at the end of the list due to being the most recent items. (limited capacity and duration of STM)

Question 40

How does the primacy and recency effect support the MSM?

Answer 40

It shows:
-the existence of seperate stores.
-the role of rehearsal in creating memories.
-the limited capacity and duration of STM (middle information is displaced due to the limited capacity of the STM.

Question 41

What evidence is there to suggest that rehearsal isn’t necessary?

Answer 41

-There are many things that we rehearse and can’t recall.
-There are many things that we can recall that we haven’t rehearsed.
-The idea of rehearsal being necessary for LTM is too simplistic.

Question 42

What is the iconic register?

Answer 42

It deals with visual information.

Question 43

What is the echoic register?

Answer 43

It deals with auditory information.

Question 44

What is the haptic register?

Answer 44

It is concerned with touch.

Question 45

What is the MSM (Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968)?

Answer 45

It is a structural model of memory with three separate stores, sensory, short-term and long-term memory. It says that these three separate stores has different characteristics including encoding, capacity and duration. It also says the the STM and LTM are unitary stores. Information passes between the stores in a linear way, through attention and rehearsal, the more information is rehearsed the more likely it will be retained. Has explanations for forgetting differ between stores.

Question 46

What is the sensory register?

Answer 46

It is where information first enters via the senses. It is called a passive store as we don’t control what enters. Information can only be held in the sensory register for about a fraction of a second before it decays or is transferred to the STM.

Question 47

What was the Bahrick et al (1975) study for very-long term memory)?

Answer 47

A sample of 392 American ex-high school students was taken aged 17-74. The participants memory was tested by:
-Free recall (names of as many of their former classmates as possible).
-Cued recall using photo recognition, identifying former classmates from 50 photos.
-Cued recall with a name recognition test.
-Cued recall with a name and photo matching test-

Question 48

What were the findings for the Bahrick et al study?

Answer 48

-90% accuracy in the name and face recognition tests for participants who had left school up to 34 years ago.
-80% accuracy in name recognition and 40% accuracy for face recognition for participants who had left up to 48 years ago.
-Free recall was 60% after 15 years and 30% accurate after 48 years.

Question 49

What was the conclusion and evaluation of the Bahrick et al study?

Answer 49

-It is more representative of natural behaviour than some other techniques used to test memory, as it tests real life memory.
-Has high mundane realism (i.e. the use of an articifial situation that closelt resembles a natural situation) and high level of external validity (i.e. can be generalised to other situations).
-However memories of classmates could have received considerable rehearsal due to daily contact, or emotional memories so findings may not be the same for other kinds of information.
-One limitation is that different individuals were used in each age group, the adults who were older on average would have received less eduaction, research suggests that an additional year in education enhances peoples memories.

Question 50

What was the case of HM?

Answer 50

HM underwent brain surgery to help prevent severe epileptic seizures , removing the hippocampus which reduced his seizures but also caused severe amnesia.
-He was able to form new short-term memories but his ability to form new long-term memories was impaired.
-He had difficulty forming new semantic and episodic memories but could create new long-term procedural memories but couldn’t remember learning the skill.

Question 51

What was the case of KF?

Answer 51

KF suffered brain damaged after a motorcycle accident.
-Hid long-term memory appeared unimpairedand he had no difficulty transferring information from the STM to LTM.
-However his digit span in STM was only 1 or 2 items.
-It was found that he was more likley to forget auditory stimuli (letters and digits read out loud) than visual stimuli (pictures and images).
-He was able to remember meaningful sounds (e.g. a cat meowing) but not verbal material (letters, words).
-Researchers concluded that KF’s problems centred on what they termed the “auditory-verbal short-term store”.

Question 52

What are the problems with using HM and KF case studies for brain damaged patients as evidence for the MSM?

Answer 52

-Could be ethical issues
-Unique

Question 53

In what ways do the HM and KF case studies Question the MSM?

Answer 53

They question whether the STM and LTM are unitary stores, and if there’s types within it.

Question 54

What is the Working Memory Model (Baddley and Hitch)?

Answer 54

-It is the area of th memory that is used while “working on things”.
-It has been described as the focus of consciousness (it holds the information you are consciously thinking about now).
-It is concerned with the active processing and short term storage of information.
-It can be seen as a more accurate represrentation of the STM, as rather than seeing the STM as a unitary store, it has several components which can operate independently of each other therefore meaning we can handle more than one task at a time providing the tasks require the use of different components and that neither task is overly demanding.
-However tge attention, processing and storage capacity is still limited so may struggle to complete two tasks of high demand on the limited attentional capacity.
-Baddley and Hitch saw the STM as a sort of workplace where a variety of operations could be carried out on both old and new memories.
-They saw the LTM as a more passive store

Question 55

How did Baddeley and Hitch test the idea of different components in the STM?

Answer 55

-They devised the dual task technique.
-This involves participants carrying out two separate tasks simultaneously.
-If the WMM is correct then it should be much easier to do two tasks at the same time if different components or slave systems (visual or verbal) are being used.
-There is evidence to suggest that this is the case and these findings question the MSM which would predict that participants struggle to complete dual tasks due to the limited capacity of the STM.
-However when carrying out dual tasks using separate components, whilst participants performance may be slower , their performance remains accurate. This is supportive suggesting there are separate components with their own storage capacity.