Memory

Question 1

What is long term memory ?

Answer 1

• Memory for events that happened in the past
• Lasts from anywhere from 2 mins - forever
• Potentially unlimited capacity
• Tends to be coded sematically( meaning/linking)

Question 2

What is short-term memory ?

Answer 2

• Memory for events
• Measured in seconds/minutes
• Disappears unless rehearsed
• Only a certain amount can be held
• Tends to be coded acoustically (based on sound)

Question 3

What is the Multi-store Model of Memory ?

Answer 3

• A representation of how memory worksin terms of three stores called sensory register, STM,LTM of how information is transferred from one store to another , what makes some memories last and disappear.

Question 4

Capacity of STM

Answer 4

• Capacity- Jacobs (1887) 7±2 , Magic number Miller (1956)
• Chunking - an increase in STM
• Evaluation of research into capacity
• Jacobs - lacks historical validity
• Replications - show similar findings - high reliabilty/validity

Question 5

pp

Duration of STM

Answer 5

Peterson and Peterson - how long it is held for (18 seconds)
- tested 24 students in 8 trials each
- was given a constant syllable YCG was told to remember
- then had to count backwards to prevent mental rehearsal
- Results
- After 3 seconds 80% could recall but only 3% could recall after 18 seconds
- Evalution of STM
- random bits of information isnt realistic - artficial task

Question 6

Coding of STM

Answer 6

Baddeley (1966)
- Coded acoustically

Question 7

What did Baddeley (1966) do according to coding ?

Answer 7

• Baddeley (1966) gave participants one of four word lists to learn. The lists contained words that were either acoustically similar (sounded the same, e.g. hat, cat, bat); acoustically dissimilar (sounded different, e.g. hat, stage, ball); semantically similar (had the same meaning, e.g. big, large); or semantically dissimilar (had different meanings, e.g. gate, big).
• Participants either recalled the list immediately, testing the coding of short-term memory (STM) or after 20 minutes, testing the coding of long-term memory (LTM).
• Participants did worse with acoustically similar words in STM, suggesting that information in STM is coded according to sound, as similar-sounding information conflicted with each other.
• For LTM, they did worse with semantically similar words, suggesting that information in LTM is coded according to meaning, as information with similar meanings conflicted with each other.

Question 8

Evaluation of Baddeley (1966)

Answer 8

• Atrificial Stimuli rather meaningful
• Doesnt reflect real memories
• 20 mins wasnt enough
• Didnt take into account visual coding

Question 9

What is LTM coded in ?

Answer 9

Semantically

Question 10

Capacity of LTM - Harry Bahrick et al (1975)

Answer 10

• Potentially limitless
  * Bahrick (1975) investigate the duration of long-term memory using 392 American university graduates. The graduates were shown photographs from their high-school yearbook and for each photograph participants were given a group of names and asked to select the name that matched the photographs.
• Bahrick found that 90% of the participants were able to correctly match the names and faces, 14 years after graduating and 60% of the participants were able to correctly match the names and faces 47 years after graduation. Bahrick concluded that people could remember certain types of information, such as names and faces for almost a lifetime. These results support the multi-store model and the idea that our long-term memory has a lifetime duration (at least 47 years) and is semantically encoded.

Question 11

Evaluation of Bahrick

Answer 11

• High levels of ecological validity as the study used real life memories. In this study participants recalled real life information by matching pictures of classmates with their names. Therefore, these results reflect our memory for real-life events and can be applied to everyday human memory.
• **Historical Validity **
• ** Psychologists are unable to generalise the results of Bahrick’s research** to other populations, for example students from the UK or Europe.
• Confounding variables not controlled

Question 12

What is the sensory register ?

Answer 12

• The sensory register is the memory store where information first comes in through the senses. There are separate sensory registers for each sense: the iconic store codes visual information and the echoic store codes auditory information. Information only lasts for a brief moment unless attention is directed to that register, which then transfers the information to STM.

Question 13

**Duration of sensory register **

Answer 13

• According to Atkinson and Shiffrin’s multi-store model of memory, the duration of the Sensory Register (holding information taken directly from the senses) has a brief duration of just half a second.

Question 14

What are the types of LTM ?

Answer 14

• Eposodic
• Semantic
• Procedural

Question 15

What is Eposodic memory ?

Answer 15

• Declaritive
• Personal recollections
• Excplicit
• ‘Timestamped’

Question 16

What is a Semantic memory?

Answer 16

• Declarative
• Explicit
• General Knowledge

Question 17

What is a procedural memory ?

Answer 17

• Knowing how to do something
• *Non- declartive ( dont need to recall)

Question 18

Who came up with the three types of LTM ?

Answer 18

TYPES OF LONG TERM MEMORY
* This theory was proposed by Endel Tulving, (1983)one of the leading figures in memory research. It is based on the Multi-Store Model idea of LTM, but it suggests there is a difference between episodic memory (eg remembering a family holiday in Disneyland) and more general memory (eg knowing that Disneyland is in Florida).

Question 19

Charlie Puth

How does info pass form sensory memory to STM according to MSM ?

Answer 19

Attention !

Question 20

Who came up with the MSM ?

Answer 20

• Richard Atkinson / Shiffrin (1968)

Question 21

How do we know their are different types of LTM ?

Answer 21

• Tulving et al (1994) using pet scans
• Eposodic - right pre-frontal cortex
• Semantic - Left pre - frontal cortex
• Procedural - cerebellum and basal ganglia

Question 22

Why are brain scans a strength ?

Answer 22

• Valid - reliable information
• Objective
• No bias

Question 23

Who was Clive Wearing ?

Answer 23

• The case of Clive Wearing supports that there are different types of LTM. Following a brain infection, Wearing’s procedural memory seemed intact (e.g. being able to dress himself and even play the piano), but his episodic memory was severely damaged. When his wife left the room and returned, even after only a few minutes, he would greet her as if they had not seen each other for years. He kept a diary in which he constantly wrote that he was just regaining consciousness every few minutes. This supports that there are different stores for different types of LTM.

Question 24

What was the Working memory model ?

Answer 24

• Baddeley and Hitch (1974) developed the Working Memory Model (WMM), which focuses specifically on the workings of short-term memory (STM).
• Atkinson and Shiffrin’s Multi-Store Model of memory (MSM) was criticized for over-simplifying STM (as well as LTM) as a single storage system, so the WMM alternative proposed that STM is composed of three, limited capacity stores:
  * Central Executive – this manages attention, and controls information from the two ‘slave stores’
• **Articulatory-Phonological Loop **– this temporarily retains language-based information, consisting of:
• An articulatory rehearsal process (‘inner voice’) of language, including any language presented visually to convert to a phonological state, for storage in the:
• Phonological store (‘inner ear’), which holds auditory speech information and the order in which it was heard (or any visually-presented language converted by the articulatory process)
• **Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad **– this temporarily retains visual and spatial information
  *

Question 25

Explanation of WMM:

Answer 25

• The three-store STM stemmed from research using a ‘dual-task technique’ (or ‘interference tasks’), whereby performance is measured as participants perform two tasks simultaneously. The following observations provided evidence to suggest different, limited-capacity STM stores process different types of memory:
• If one store is utilised for both tasks, then task performance is poorer than when they are completed separately, due to the store’s limited capacity
  E.g. repeating “the the the” aloud and reading some text silently would use the articulatory-phonological loop for both tasks, slowing performance.

Question 26

Evaluation of the Working Memory Model (strengths)

Answer 26

Strengths:

• The WMM provides an explanation for parallel processing (i.e. where processes involved in a cognitive task occur at once), unlike Atkinson and Shiffrin’s MSM.
• A Shallice and Warrington (1974) case study reported that brain-damaged patient KF could recall verbal but not visual information immediately after its presentation, which supports the WMM’s claim that separate short-term stores manage short-term phonological and visual memories.
• The model was developed based on evidence from laboratory experiments, so confounding variables could be carefully controlled to produce reliable results (that can be replicated).

Question 27

Evaluation of the Working Memory Model (weaknesses)

Answer 27

Weaknesses:

• Despite providing more detail of STM than the multi-store model, the WMM has been criticized for being too simplistic and vague, e.g. it is unclear what the central executive is, or its exact role in attention.
• Results from laboratory experiments researching the WMM will often have low ecological validity (i.e. may not relate to real life), as tasks such as repeating ‘the the the’ are arguably not representative of our everyday activities.

Question 28

What is dual task performance ?

Answer 28

• Baddeley/Hitch (1974) state that people can peform two tasks at the same time as long as the tasks use different components of the working memory system. However, if they are using the same parts of the same components processing will slow down.

Question 29

The Case of KF

Answer 29

KF suffered brain damage from a motorcycle accident that damaged his short-term memory. KF struggled to process verbal information but his visual memory was unaffected. This shows that visual information (VSSP) is processed separately from verbal information (phonological loop).

Question 30

What is the word-length effect ?

Answer 30

• Badeley et al found that participants could indeed remember more single syllable words than multi-syllablic ones, and they called this the word length effect.

Question 31

What is interference ?

Answer 31

• Interference is an explanation for forgetting in long-term memory, which states that forgetting occurs because memories interfere with and disrupt one another; in other words, forgetting occurs because of interference from other memories (Baddeley, 1999).
• This idea suggests that information in long-term memory may become confused or combined with other information during encoding thus distorting or disrupting memories.

Question 32

What is Proactive interference ?

Answer 32

(pro=forward) occurs when you cannot learn a new task because of an old task that had been learnt. When what we already know interferes with what we are currently learning – where old memories disrupt new memories.

Question 33

What is Retroactive interference ?

Answer 33

Retroactive interference (retro=backward) occurs when you forget a previously learnt task due to the learning of a new task. In other words, later learning interferes with earlier learning – where new memories disrupt old memories.

Question 34

What does it mean by effects of similarity ?

Answer 34

• In both cases of retroactive/proactive interference is worse when the memories are similar

Question 35

Who made the effects of similarity ?

Answer 35

McGeoch and McDonald (1931)

Question 36

What did McGeoch and McDonald (1931) do ?

Answer 36

They studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between 2 sets of materials.Participants had to learn a list of 10 words until they could remember all of them.Then they learned a new list.The six groups learnt different types of lists.They found that the most similar material produced the worst recall meaning that interference is strongest when memories are similar.

Question 37

Evaluation of forgetting interference (strengths)

Answer 37

• Evidence of interference in everday lifes - Baddeley and Hitch (1977) examined rugby union players** who had played every match in the season and players who had missed some games due to injury. The players were asked to recall the names of the teams they had played against earlier in the season. Baddeley and Hitch found that players who had played the most games forgot proportionately more games than those who had played fewer games due to injury. These results support the idea of retroactive inference, as the learning of new information (new team names) interfered with the memory of old information (earlier team names).
• Shows high validity
  * Coenen and Gilles Van Luijtelaar (1997)
• Participants were given a list of words and later asked to record a list, assuming that intervening experiences would act as interference
• They found that when a list of words was learned under the Influence of the drug diazepam, record one week later was poor.
• When a list of words was learned before the drug was taken, later recall was better than placebo.
• The drug actually improved recall of material learned beforehand.

Question 38

Evaluation of forgetting interference (weaknesses)

Answer 38

• First, interference theory tells us little about the cognitive processes involved in forgetting.
• Secondly, the majority of research into the role of interference in forgetting has been carried out in a laboratory using lists of words, a situation which is likely to occur fairly infrequently in everyday life (i.e. low ecological validity). As a result, it may not be possible to generalize from the findings.
• Forgetting may be better explained by other theories such as retrieval failure due to lack of cues.
• Tulving/ Ptoska - gave participants a list of word, then interefered and then given cues recall rate rose to 70%

Question 39

What were the six groups assigned ?
McGoech/Mcdonald

Answer 39

• Group 1: synonyms.
• Group 2: antonyms.
• Group 3: words unrelated to the original ones.
• Group 4: consonant syllables.
• Group 3: three-digit numbers.
• Group 6: no new list.