Memory

Question 1

Describe Peterson and Peterson’s study on STM duration

Answer 1

P’s given a nonsense consonant triad and a three digit number e.g THX 478.
The P’s then had to count down in threes from their three digit number during a retention period of either 3,6,9,12,15 or 18 seconds, after which they had to recall the triad they were given.

Question 2

Describe Baddeley’s study on coding in LTM and STM

Answer 2

Gave P’s word lists to learn, one semantically similar and one acoustically similar

Question 3

Define ‘Proactive Interference’

Answer 3

When past learning interferes with attempts to learn something new

Question 4

Define ‘Retroactive Interference’

Answer 4

When current attempts at learning interfere with the recollection of past learning

Question 5

Describe Goodwin’s study on state-dependent forgetting

Answer 5

P’s had to learn a word list either drunk or sober. Recall of the words was best when they were encoding and recalling in the same physiological state

Question 6

Explain the case of HM

Answer 6

HM had severe epilepsy, he had his hippocampus removed to treat it. It worked however he was unable to form new LTM’s but could form STM’s

Question 7

List the components of a cognitive interview

Answer 7

Context reinstatement (contextual and emotional cues)
Report everything (trigger recall of relevant info)
Change the order (minimise schema’s)
Change perspective (minimise schema’s)

Question 8

Describe Johnson and Scott’s study on the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT

Answer 8

P’s heard an argument then saw a man run past holding a grease covered pen (low anxiety) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety)
In the low anxiety situation, identification of the man was 49% accurate. but only 33% in the high anxiety situation.

Question 9

Two types of declarative memory

Answer 9

Semantic
Episodic

Question 10

Define procedural memory

Answer 10

Memory concerned with how to do something (e.g. riding a bike) which has eventually, through repetition become automatic. Recalled unconsciously, associated with motor regions and cerebellum of the brain

Question 11

Who conducted research on the effects of misleading information on EWT

Answer 11

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Question 12

Describe research related to retrieval failure

Answer 12

Tulving and Pearlstone gave participants a list of 48 words from 12 different categories.
Recall was 40% accurate without retrieval cues
60% accurate when the category was given as a retrieval cue

Question 13

Define semantic memory

Answer 13

This is memory that is concerned with knowledge of facts. Don’t require context, making them objective. Require conscious recall

Question 14

Define episodic memory

Answer 14

Memory concerned with the knowledge of life events, time stamped. Requires context

Question 15

AO3 For types of LTM (Clive wearing)

Answer 15

• He had retrograde amnesia, he couldn’t remember events in his life (episodic) but remembers facts about his life (semantic)
• He can only encode new procedural memories memories

Question 16

Working memory model

Answer 16

Baddeley and Hitch
- Central executive (head of model which controls and filters info before passing to subsystems)
- Phonological loop (acoustically coded sound info with a capacity of 2 seconds, also articulatory processes such as inner voice)
- Visuospatial sketchpad codes visual and spatial info, contains a visual cache and inner scribe)
- Episodic buffer (added in 2000 as the model needed a more general store to hold info)

Question 17

WMM Strengths (KF and Baddeley’s research)

Answer 17

• After brain injury KF had selective impairment to his verbal STM but visual functioning was not effected
• Baddeley carried experiments including tasks using same processing and different processing

Question 18

WMM Weaknesses

Answer 18

Issues with external validity, research lacks mundane realism and may not generalised to everyday life
Central executive does not have a full explanation of its function.

Question 19

context/state dependent forgetting

Answer 19

When a person does not have sufficient contextual/physiological cues to trigger recall of a memory

Question 20

Explanations for forgetting (strengths)

Answer 20

Material learnt underwater or on land. Found recall was best if divers learned and recalled in the same context, suggesting environmental cues promote recall.

Question 21

Explanations for forgetting (weaknesses)

Answer 21

Interference only explains forgetting when two sets of info are similar and learned close together in time, struggles to explain many day to day examples.
Only explain a temporary loss of information, not a permanent one.

Question 22

Evaluate the MSM model

Answer 22

+ study of HM proved STM and LTM were unitary stores
+ Primary and recency effect. When recalling, info in LTM (primary) and in STM (recency) were more likely to be recalled
- Peterson and Peterson experiment for duration used techniques not representative to real life memory tasks, not generalised belong the lab setting. Lacks ecological validity
- Oversimplifies LTM (as a unitary store), no reference to episodic/procedural/semantic memory
- Oversimplifies STM, KF proved that verbal and visual STM can recall