memory

Question 1

what is coding?

Answer 1

the format in which
information is stored in various
memory stores

Question 2

what is capacity?

Answer 2

the amount of information that can be held in a memory store at a given time

Question 3

what is duration?

Answer 3

the lengths of time information can be held in a memory store

Question 4

what is short term memory?

Answer 4

the limited capacity memory store. Coding is mainly acoustic, capacity is between 5 and 9 items on average, duration is between 18-30 seconds

Question 5

what is long term memory?

Answer 5

the permanent memory store. Coding is mainly semantic, it has unlimited capacity and can store memories for up to a lifetime

Question 6

what was the aim of Baddeley’s research (1966)?

Answer 6

research coding in LTM and STM

Question 7

What was Baddeley’s procedure?

Answer 7

used word lists 4 sets of word lists-acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar, semantically dissimilar participants had to recall the word lists done immediately to assess STM and after 20 minutes to assess LTM

Question 8

What was Baddeley’s findings?

Answer 8

participants given the list of acoustically similar words had the worst recall participants given the list of semantically similar words had the worst recall

Question 9

What was Baddeley’s conclusions?

Answer 9

the lists that had poor recall showed that the words had become confused.
For the immediate recall, acoustically sounding words were not remembered well. This
suggests STM is acoustically coded
For the delayed recall, semantically sounding words were not remembered well. This suggests STM is acoustically coded
For the delayed recall, semantically sounding words were not remembered well. This suggests LTM is semantically coded

Question 10

What was the aims of lacob’s
research (1887)?

Answer 10

research capacity of STM

Question 11

What was Jacob’s procedure?

Answer 11

developed a technique to measure digit span- how many items an individual can remember, in sequence and repeat back in order

Question 12

What was Jacob’s findings?

Answer 12

found the mean span for digits across participants was 9.3 items found that the mean span for letters across participants was 7.3

Question 13

What was Jacob’s conclusion?

Answer 13

memory can hold 7-9 items

Question 14

What was Miller’s aim (1956)?

Answer 14

research capacity of STM

Question 15

What was Miller’s procedure?

Answer 15

observed that things come in sevens
also used the digit span technique, but “chunked” items into groups

Question 16

What were Miller’s findings?

Answer 16

found people could recall 5 words, as well as they can recall 5 letters (via chunking)

Question 17

What was Miller’s conclusion?

Answer 17

used the term ‘the magical number 7’ to describe the capacity of STM

Question 18

What was Peterson and Peterson’s aims (1956)?

Answer 18

Research duration of STM

Question 19

What was Peterson and Peterson’s procedure?

Answer 19

24 students took part in 8 trials and were given a
trigram such as BNT and a three digit number and asked to count backwards to prevent rehearsal. They were stopped after either
3,6,9,12,15 or 18 seconds.
This was the retention interval

Question 20

What were the findings of Peterson and Peterson’s?

Answer 20

found that STM lasts about 18 seconds after this very few people correctly recall the consonant syllable

Question 21

What was the conclusion of Peterson and Peterson’s experiment?

Answer 21

suggests STM may have a very short duration, unless it is rehearsed

Question 22

what is a limitation of baddeley’s study?

Answer 22

•did not use meaningful material
•words had no personal meaning to participants
•when information is meaningful people will use semantic coding even in STM

Question 23

what’s a limitation of jacob’s study?

Answer 23

•it was conducted a long time ago and early research such as this, often lack control of extraneous variables. For example, some participants may have been distracted

Question 24

What’s a limitation of Miller’s study?

Answer 24

•may have oversimplified capacity in STM
•Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the
capacity of STM was only
4 chunks which is lower than Miller’s estimate of 5-9 seconds. This means the accepted capacity of STM may be accurate.

Question 25

what is a limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study?

Answer 25

•used artificial stimuli
•consonant syllables/ trigrams do not reflect real life memory activities
•study lacks external validity

Question 26

Strength and limitation of Bahrick et al’s study?

Answer 26

•high external validity
•using real-life meaningful remories means that the findings are more likely to accurately represent memory in the real world
•confounding variables were not controlled such as the fact some of the participants may have recently overlooked their yearbook photos

Question 27

what is the multi store model of memory?

Answer 27

a representation of how memory works in terms of three stores called sensory register, short term memory and long term memory. It describes how memory is transferred from one store to another, how it is remembered and forgotten.

Question 28

what is the sensory register?

Answer 28

the memory stores for each of our five senses, such as vision (iconic) and hearing (echoic). The capacity of the sensory register is huge and information lasts for a very short time- less than half a second.

Question 29

who developed the multi store model of memory?

Answer 29

Atkinson and
Shiffrin (1960)

Question 30

what is episodic memory?

Answer 30

a long term memory store for personal events. It includes memories of when the events occurred and of the people, objects, places and behaviours involved. Memories from this store have to be received consciously and with effort.

Question 31

what is semantic memory?

Answer 31

a long term memory store for our knowledge of the world. This includes facts and what words and concepts mean. These memories usually also need to be recalled deliberately.

Question 32

What is procedural memory?

Answer 32

a long term memory store for our knowledge of how to do things. This includes out memories of learned skills. We usually recall these memories without making a conscious or deliberate effort.

Question 33

what are explicit memories?

Answer 33

can be inspected and recalled consciously

Question 34

what are implicit memories?

Answer 34

unable to be consciously recalled

Question 35

what are strengths of the different types of LTM?

Answer 35

• neuroimaging evidence - there is evidence from brain scans to show that different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain.

•clinical evidence- HM
could learn new procedural memories but not episodic or semantic memories
•real life application-allows treatments to be developed. Belleville showed that episodic memories could be improved in individuals who had mild cognitive impairment.

Question 36

what is a limitation of different types of LTM?

Answer 36

•argument about whether episodic and semantic memory should be separate.
•Cohen and Squire disagree with Tulving’s division of LTM into three types, instead arguing there should be 2.
•very difficult to separate episodic and semantic memory as they are both stored in the prefrontal cortex suggesting some similarity.

Question 37

what are strengths of the WMM?

Answer 37

•Shallice and Warrington’s study of patient KF who had suffered brain
damage. KF had poor STM ability for verbal information but could
process visual information normally. This suggests just his phonological loop had been damaged leaving other areas of memory intact.
• Studies of dual-task performance support the separate existence of the visio-spatial sketchpad.
Baddeley et al showed that participants had more difficulty doing two visual tasks than doing both a visual and verbal task at the same time.
•Brain scanning studies support the WMM. Braver et al (1997) gave their participants tasks that involved the central executive while they were having a brain scan and found greater activity in an area known as the left prefrontal cortex. As difficulty of the task increased, the activity in an area known as the left prefrontal cortex. As difficulty of the task increased, the activity in the left prefrontal cortex also increased. This suggests that there is a biological basis to the central executive
component of the WMM, increasing the validity of the model.

Question 38

what are limitations of WMM?

Answer 38

•evidence from case studies of patients with brain damage need to be treated with caution. May not be reliable as it concerns unique cases with patients who have had traumatic experiences. Baseline measurements are not taken so there is no control to compare the performance after the injury

•Cognitive psychologists suggest there is a lack of clarity over the central executive. Needs to be more clearly specified than just being an
attentional process. WMM could be viewed as incomplete.

Question 39

who developed the WMM?

Answer 39

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Question 40

what is the central executive?

Answer 40

manages attention, and controls information from the the two “slave” stores.
It processes information in all sensory forms but it is only able to deal with one strand of information at a time

Question 41

what is the phonological loop?

Answer 41

temporarily retains language-based
information in auditory form and holds the amount of information that can be spoken out loud in two seconds