Memory Flashcards
What type of coding is STM
Mainly acoustic
What type of coding is LTM
Mainly semantic
How much capacity does STM have
7 ±2
How much capacity does LTM have
Unlimited
How long is STM duration
About 18 sec
How long is LTM
Lifetime
What is a sensory register
Iconic and echoing stores for stimuli from the environment
What is the capacity, input and duration of a sensory register
Capacity-large
Input- iconic (visual) and echoing (auditory)
Duration- 0.25 seconds
Who created the MSM model
Atkinson and Shriffin (1968)
What is the MSM model
The multi-store model of memory is a structural model which displays LTM and STM as separate stores and including rehearsal and retrieval
When was Miller’s experiment
1956
When was Baddeley’s experiment
1966
When was Peterson and Peterson’s study
1956
What was Miller researching
Capacity of STM
When was Jacob’s experiment
1887
What was Jacobs researching
Capacity of STM by testing digit span
What did Jacobs and Miller find
Together, their research suggests that STM capacity is 7±2
What was Baddeley researching
Coding of STM
How did Baddeley test coding in STM
He asked ppts to repeat back word lists of around 5 words. Some were acoustically similar while others were semantically similar
What were Baddeley’s results
Baddeley found that ppts found word lists that sounded acoustically similar (e.g. sit,sip,six,sis) were most difficult for them to recall.
What were Peterson and Peterson studying
The duration of STM
How did peterson and peterson study duration of STM
They used recall of nonsense trigrams with a retention interval between 3 and 18 seconds
What were the results of peterson and peterson
They found that less than 10% of ppts could remember the trigram after 18 seconds. This means that STM duration is most likely around 18 seconds
When was Bahrick’s study
1975
What was Bahrick investigating
The duration of LTM
How did Bahrick investigate the duration of LTM
He gathered 392 american ppts between 17 and 74 years of age and asked them to recall people from their high-school yearbook. He did it in two ways. The first was using photo recognition while the other was a free recall of names.
What were Bahrick’s results
After 15 years of leaving school, 90% of ppts could successfully photo recognise people from their year book. After 48 years of leaving school, the percentage for photo recognition dropped to 70%. With free recall, 60% remembered After 15 years which dropped to 30% after 48 years.
What did McGeoch and McDonald study?
They investigated retroactive interference and the affects of similarity
What is interference theory
It occurs when two pieces of information conflict with one another causing a person to forget.
What is retroactive interference
New information interacting with the old
What is proactive interference
Old information interacting with new
How did McGeoch and McDonald test retroactive interference
They got participants to remember a word list to 100% accuracy then split them into six groups at random. Five of the six groups learnt a new word list, the sixth group didn’t learn a new list for a control. Group 1- synonyms, group 2- antonyms, group 3- unrelated words, group 4- consonant syllables, group 5- three digit numbers. After that the groups would have to recall the original word list.
What were McGeoch and McDonald’s results
Group 1 (synonyms) were the worst at recall because of how similar the words meanings were.
What is retrieval failure theory
The idea that memory is avaliable but not accessible because of a lack of cues
What is context dependent forgetting
Recall in environment which is different from the learning environment
What was Godden and Baddeley’s study
They tested context dependent forgetting with deep sea divers. Participants were a part of one of four groups- two groups learnt and recalled in the same environment while the other two learnt in one environment and recalled in another (land/water or water/land)
What were the results of Godden and Baddeley’s study
Recall was better when learnt in the same environment (dry/dry or wet/wet)
What is state dependent forgetting
Physical or psychological state different from when learning took place
What was Carter and Cassaday’s experiment
They tested participants recall on a drug and not on a drug. The set up was similar to Godden and Baddeley’s deep sea diver experiment. The groups were (learning/recall) drug/drug, clean/drug, clean/clean, drug/clean
What is the working memory model
It is a model of memory focusing on STM
List the parts of the Working Memory Model
Visuo-spatial sketchpad, phonological loop (articulatory control system and phonological store), central executive, episodic buffer
What is semantic memory
It is a type of LTM which is responsible for understanding and conceptual facts about the world
What is procedural memory
It is a type of LTM which is responsible for knowing how to do things (its like muscle memory and natural instinct) e.g. how to drive, how to brush your teeth
What is episodic memory
It is a type of LTM which is responsible for storing and retrieving personal experiences in daily life
What is the Yerkes-Dodson law
The law suggests that performance and arousal are directly related. It suggests that an optimal amount of anxiety can better performance
Why may anxiety in a witness affect how accurate their testimony is
-weapon focus distracts them and means they can’t identify the perpetrator accurately
-Yerkes- Dodson law means that over optimal levels of anxiety may decrease performance in testimonies
Why may anxiety increase the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies
-High stress levels increased accuracy in Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
-Personal experiences (victims of violent crimes) increase accuracy, Christainson and Hubinette 1993
What did Johnson and Scott (1976) study
They studied the accuracy of eyewitness accounts when a violent weapon is involved. Participants in two groups were lead to waiting rooms (they believed they were waiting to go into a lab for the experiment). One group was high anxiety while the other was low anxiety. The low anxiety group overheard an argument and a man walked out with a pen and grease all over him. The high anxiety group also overheard an argument and then saw a man walk out with a paper knife and blood over him.
What were the results of Johnson and Scott (1976)
Participants in the high anxiety group found it difficult to identify the man who walked out in comparison to the low anxiety group. In the low anxiety group, 49% correctly identified him, whereas in the high anxiety group only 33% identified him
What did Yuille and Cutshall (1986) study
13 people from a shop shooting participated. They were asked about the event 4-5 months after their original police interview. Alongside that, they were asked to judge their anxiety level and if they had any emotional problems since the shooting.
What was the results of Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
They found that the participants remembered the event extremely accurately when compared to their original interviews. This shows that higher stress levels can provide a more accurate memory of events.
What did Christianson and Hubinette (1993) study
110 real life eyewitnesses of bank robberies participated. Some of the participants were bank clerks who got personally threatened while other participants were onlookers. They wanted to test if personal victims (bank clerks) remembered more than the onlookers.
What did Christainson and Hubinette (1993) find out
Victims/ bank clerks were more accurate with their recall of the event than the onlookers, even after 15 months.
Why can leading questions in interviews be damaging to a witness’s testimony
Leading questions can change how the witness saw the event and create false testimonies. For example participants in a study watched a video of a car crash and were asked a question about what they saw but with different verbs to describe how one car went into the other one (hit/crashed/collided/made contact,smashed etc). They were also asked if there was broken glass. The results showed that the different words made the testimony different. Also depending on the word used, depended on if the participant said there was broken glass or not.
What is the cognitive interview technique
It is a method of police technique used to make memory recall more accurate.
What are the four instructions that cognitive interviewers should follow
To recreate the context to the original incident, to report every detail, to recall the event in different orders, to change perspectives
What are strengths of the cognitive interview
-Increase in accurate information
-strong research to show that it is effective
-reduces schema
What are the weaknesses of the cognitive interview
-extensive police training needed
-takes a long time to get rapport with witness
-meta-analysis from Kohnken et.al (1999)
What does the episodic buffer do
It is a store in STM which temporarily stores information, it is modality free but has limited capacity
What is the central executive and what does it do
It monitors incoming data in STM and spreads the information to other subsystems, it is modality free but has limited capacity
What does the phonological loop do
It is a part of STM which deals with auditory information. It has two sub parts which are called the articulatory control system and the phonological store. It has acoustic coding and can hold around 2 seconds worth of information.
What does the visuo-spatial sketchpad do
It is a store in STM which stores visual and spatial information. It has a limited capacity and is visually coded
