Memory Flashcards
Types of LTM
tulving (1985) one of the first cognitive psychologists
suggested that there’s not one type of LTM but there are 3
3 Types of LTM
episodic
semantic
procedural
episodic
our ability to recall events from our lives
semantic
the store that contains our factual knowledge of the world
procedural
memory of our skills and actions
tulving theory
he presented that each of these LTM stores contained very different types of information, which were accessible in different ways
Episodic memory
- this memory is like a diary where we record our daily happenings e.g. what you had for breakfast this morning
- these memories are times shaped- you remember roughly when they happened
- episodic memories have several elements: people, places, objects and behaviours interwoven into just one memory
- you must make a conscious effort to recall these memories-this can happen quickly or take some time
Semantic memories
- this store resembles an encyclopaedia or Dictionary
- it contains info on what foods we like, capitals of countries, meanings of words
- these memories are not time stamped- we done tend to remember exactly when we learn semantic knowledge
- this store has less personal info but it’s more than just fact - it’s a collection of material that constantly increases
Procedural memories
- our ability to do things depends on our procedural memory e.g. driving a bike, writing, mental maths
- we can recall these memories without conscious awareness ( don’t say unconsciously) our great effort
- these sorts of skills are usually difficult to explain to someone else e.g holding a pen
episodic examples
- friend wedding
- first date
- watching tv last night
- row with friends last week
semantic examples
- where eiffel towers is
- the purpose of piggy bank
- your address
- words of a song
procedural
- juggling
- how to ride a bike
- singing a song
- booking table
- check bill
- bake a cake
Evaluating LTM
- clinical evidence ( CW )
- neuro-imaging evidence (tulving)
- real life application
clinical evidence (case study)
case study: an in depth investigation on an individual personal or small group
clive has no short term memory, procedural memories aren’t affected as he can play piano, walk and talk
The case of clive wearing (cw)
- cw had a severe case of amnesia due to a viral infection in this brain fanning his hippocampus
- clive was a famous musician and can still play piano and conduct a choir but has no recollection of learning of learning how
- hee remembers some aspects of his life knows he has children but didn’t remember their names
- the only person he recognises is his wife
- he’s always excited to see her and can’t recall the last time he did even if it was seconds before
procedural Memories intact, a political memory, damaged, some semantic memories as he remembers his wife
Supports tulvings theory is shows differentiation between memory storage as there must be distinct types of LTM, if one can be affected if one can be affected without affecting the other
however : a case study is uslalu based on just one person we cannotgeneralise findings form one person to whole population - lacks population validity
Duration
the length of time information can be held in the memory store
research support
peterson and peterson (1959) STM duration
- they tested 24 undergrads accord trails
- on each trail ppts were given constant syllable to remember e.g. SML and a 3 digit number
they took the bowls out ( controlling variables) to make the constant syllables random and different to remember and recall
ppts had to recall the constant syllable after an interval of either 3,6,9,12,15/18 seconds
during the intervals ppts were instructed to count backward from the 3 digit number they were given to prevent rehearsal - preventing practice effect
control of practice effects
results:
90% correct after 3 seconds
20% correct after 9 seconds
2% correct after 18 seconds
conclusion: STM duration is between 18-30 secs
however most people’s duration of STM stopped before 18 seconds
types of memory
short term (STM)
long term (LTM)
STM
your memory for events in the present or immediate past
LTM
your memory for events that have happened in the distance
each type of memory is assesed via three features
- coding
- capacity
- duration
Baddley coding
- he split ppts into 4 groups each group was given a different word list of words to remember
- he looked at words that were either acoustically or semantically similar
4 groups - acustically similar, cat, cab, car
- acustically dissimilar, pit, few, cow
- semantically similar, great, large, big
- semantically dissimilar, good, hot, huge
groups either has to recall straight away or after 20 mins, seperating short term and long term memoery
coding
the format of which information is stored (coded) in the various memory stores
- reseach by baddley (1966) found that info is coded different, depending on the store it was going to
baddley coding
findings
- when recalling straight away, acustically similar had the worst recall
- when recalling after 20 mins semantically similar had the worst recall
e.g. tounge twisters are easier to resite after a while, synonyms after a while may be forgetten and brain wont focus on one
this suggests
- info is coded acoustically in the STM
- info is coded semantically in the LTM
baddley coding
evaluation
+ control group used
- individual differences, independant groups design
- may guess semantically similar words, low validity
+ standerdised word list
- artificial stimuli, badley used word lists that mean nothing to the ppts, low ecological validity, could coding work differently when we process meaningful information?, replace formulas with names, birthdays
Capacity
the amount of information that can be held in the memoery store
capacity
Digit span test
Jacobs 1887 - STM
- developed a technique to see how mucj information someone wold hold in thier STM at one time
- the number of digits would increase until the ppts could not recall the sequence correctly
- found that the avarage across ppts for numbers was 9.3 and letters was 7.3
- more digits than letters, people are more sed to remembering numbers, ‘nine’ is a word rather than ‘A’, more used to revising numbers on their own
how has capacity changed over time?
tech has allowed us to have a smaller capacity e.g. satchel
the magic number
Miller, 1956
7 + - 2 (5-9)
cheating capacity
chuncking
CARDOGLITPENBUY
CAR,DOG,LIT,PEN,BUY
- milller found that we can remember 5 words in the same way we can remember 5 letters
- to maximise the capacity of STM, we can chunk digits and letters to make meaningful sequences (words and phone numbers)
capacity
evaluation
- overestimated chunking capacity
Cowan 2001- we can only hold around 4 chunks; simon 1974, we have less capacity for longer words (8 letters) better for one syllable words - low historical validity: Jacobs 1887 was long ago so reslts may be invalid
LTM capacity, potentially infinite/unlimited
Duration
the length of time information can be held in the memory store
duration
research support
peterson and peterson 1959 STM duration
- they tested 24 undergrads
- on each trail ppts were given constant syllable to remember e.g. SMY and a 3 digit number
- they took vowels out (controlling variables) to make the constant syllables random and different to remember and recall
- ppts had to recall the constant syllable afetr an interval of either 3,6,9,12,15 or 18 seconds
during the intervals, ppts were instructed to count backward from the 3 digits they were given to prevent reherseal- preventing oractice effect, control of practive effect
results:
90% correct afetr 3 seconds
20% correct after 9 seconds
2% correct after 18 seconds
duration
conclusion
STM duration between 18-30 seconds
- however most peoples duration of STM stopped before 18 seconds
duration
evaluation
+ controlled variables e.g. givig constant syllables without vowels and 3 digit numbers - controlled lab experiment
- low ecological validity, artificial task, not reflective of memory, irrelenat to ppts
- low poopulation validity, small and limited sample size as only 24 undergrd students, similar education levels, not generelaisable, low population validty
Explanations for forgetting
Interference theory
Retrieval failure
Interference theroy
forgetting because one memory BLOCKED another, causing one or both memories to be DISTORTED or FORGOTTEN
- two or more conflicting memories can result in forgetting one or both of them
- interference is mostly used for explaining why LTMs are forgotten they arent avaliable, we just can’t access them
- e.g. maths formulas, memory case studies, ukranian/russian, birthdays
intereference memory
Types of interference
Proactive/retreoactive
Proactive interference
forgetting occurs when older memories (already stored) disrupt the recall of newer memories disrupt the recall of older memories
Retroactive interference
forgetting occurs when newer memories disrupt the recall of older memories already stored
forgretting is greater when
memories are similar
Eye witness testimony
the ability of people to remember the details of events, suh as accidents and crimes, which tey themselves have observed
risk:procecuting the wrong person, letting a criminal go
ewt
focus:
- misleading information: leading questions, post-event dicussion
- anxiety
3 potential essay
Misleading Information
incorrect information given to the eyewitness usually after the event (post-event information)
two types:
- leading questions
- post-event discussion (PED)
Leading questions
a question which because of the way it’s phrased suggests a certain answer e.g. ‘ was there a knife in his left’ -> creates a memory, should have asked ‘was he holding a wepon’
police shouldnt be planiting stimuli withot witness bringing it up
Leading questions
Key researcher
- got students to watc film clips of car accidents and then gave them questions about the car accidents
- they tested the effects of a critical question (leadig question) “how fast were the cars going when they hit each other”
- planting into the memory that there was a crash
5 groups
the verb ‘hit’ was changed to a different verb for the otehr groups: contacted, bumped, collided, smashed
- the answer they gave about the sped will be higher with more agressive verbs
1. contacted
2. bumped
3. collided
4. smashed
Findinds:
verb ‘contacted in avarage estimated speed of 31.8mph
verb ‘smashed’ results in an avarage estimated speed of 40.8mph
this shows inaccuryacy of eye winess testimony
Loftus and palmer 1974
lleading questions car crash
Findings
verb ‘contacted’ in avarage estimated speed of 31.8mph
verb ‘smashed’ results in an avarage estimated speed of 40.8mph
shows that leading questions will decrease accuracy of EWT
leading questions car crash
Counter
Students, not generalisable
- dont have experience driving so may be adifficult question to answer, innacurate, innapropriate question for the sample
- testimony could have been innacurate ithout leading quesions
- no control group, no proof that leadig questions caged answeres that would have been accurate
Post event discussion
occours when there is more than one witness to an event witness may discuss what they have seen with a co-witness or with other people
this may affect the accuracey of each witnesse’s recall of the event
Post event discussion
Study
- asked pairs of ppts to watch a video about crime, although they watched the same crime, they each watched it from different camera angles
- tis meant they saw elements that thier pair couldnt see
- e..g one ppt could see the title of the book the woman was holding in the video
- some pairs would discuss what theyd seen and then completed a recall test individuallity (control group did not discuss before recal)
Gabbert et al 2003
Post event discussion study
Findinds
-71% of ppts mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video
- they picked up the details in thier discussion (hear-say)
- in the control group, no ppts made mistakes
therefore, gabbert et al concluded taht witnesses go along with each other, either to win social approval or because other inesses are more accurate (memory conformity)
Post event discussion study
Evaluation
points to consider:
- metholog: samples, desgin, materials
- ethics
- real life application
- dont refer to ‘theory’ / ‘ research suppourt’
Post event discussion study
Real Life Application
misleading essay
research into misleading info can be really useful in the real world
- consequences for inaccurcy in EWTs can be serious, misuse of court time, false procecusions, letting criminal go accidentially
Consequences for innacurate ETs are serious
- avoiding leading questions
-keep eye-witnesses seperate from each other
loftus (1975) argued that her research suggests that police officers need to very careful about how they phrase their questions during interviews, dont allow PED
doing this could potentially save the legal system lots of money- less people falsley accused of crimes- good for the economy
Anxiety
a state of emotional and physical arousal, including having worrying thoughts and feelings of tension
physical changes include:
- sweating
- incresed heart rate
normal reaction to stressful situations, bt can affect accurey and detail of EWT
negative effects on recall
anxiety creates phsicological arousal in the body which can prevent us from paying attention to important cues in the enviroemnt, making reacll less acurate
factords that are likely to cause anxiety:
- weapon
- blood/graphic scenery
- loud noise bangs
Tunnel theory
there is a focus of ettention on the weapon as this is the source of anxiety
Fight or flight
adrenalline, body’s natural responce to stress to increase alertness, blood vessles widen, pupils diallate
can improve memory of an event because we become more aware of the cues in the situation
components of anxiety
behavioual,cognitive,emoyional,physical
Cognitive interview
a method of interviewing eye witness to help them retrieve more accurate memories. It uses 4 main techniques, all based on well-established psychological knowledge of human memory
METHOD not a study/ thoeory
tenchies of cognitive interview
- report everything
- reinstate context
- reverse order
- changing perspectives
report everything
witnesses are encouraged to include evey deatil of teh event even if it seems irrelevant, anythig that could trigger important memoires
Reinstate context
witness should return to the original crime scene or ‘in their mind’ and imagine the enviroment/context e.g. weather, objects, emotions,
photos/cctv used (retrival faliure)
Reverse order
events should be recalled in a different order to the original sequence
- this prevents lies, people tend to orchestrate lies in the form of a story, more likely to get confused telling their false one
- prevents them from reporting their expactaions of how an event must have happened rather than actal events
- e.g. filing in gaps, glash smashed->blood
change perspective
witness should recall the incident from other people’s perspectives
this is to prevent effect of expectaions on memories, and get more info
enhanced CI
fisher developed some additional elements of the CI to focus of social dynamics of the interactions
- eye contact
- open ended questions
- friendly lagnuage
- minimising stimuli
cognitive inetrview controls for
demand characteristics, increasing internal validity
components of working memeory model
- centeral executive
- phonological loop
- viso-spatial sketchpad
- episodic buffer
named on spec can ask up tp 4 marks
The centeral executive
the component of the WMM that co-ordinates the acivity of the three subsystems in memory. It also allocates processing resources to those activities
- the CE is essentially an attentional process that monitors incoming data
- it makes decisions and allocates the subsystems (AKA slave systems) to task
- despite this responsibility the CE has a very limited processing capacity
Phonological loop
the component of the WMM that processes auditory information
- this includes both written and spoken material (voice in your head while reading) so reading is an auditory process
extra:
- the order of which information arrives is also preserved
- the PL is subdivided into 2 parts:
- the phonological store: stores the words you hear
- the articulatory process: this allows for maintenencerehersal (the loop)
- the loop is suggested to hold around 2 seconds worth of what can be said at a time
The visuo-spatial sketchpad
the component of the WMM that processes visual and spatial information
- slave system is often refered to as the inner eye
- the VSS has been subdivided into 2 parts
- this system has a limited capacity of around 3-4 objects according to Baddley
- the VSS has been subdivided into two parts
the visual cache: stores visual info
the inner scribe: records the arrangment of objects in the vusual field
The episodic buffer
the monponent of the WMM that brings together materials from the other systems into a single memory rather than seperate strands
- it was added to the moden by baddley in 2000 following critismsm of the model being incomplete
- Badley 2012 descirbed the EB as the limited storage component for the centeral executive (around 4 chunks)
- also this system bridges the gap between the working memeory (STM) and the LTM
- the temporary store integrates the visual, spatial and verbal info processed by other stores9
who
WMM
Shallice and Warrington
who
WMM brain scans
Braver et al
where
centeral executive
left pfc
who
does wepon focs really test anxiety
johnson and scott
Models of memory
- multi-store model
- the working memory model
MSM
Attkinson
Created a model based on features of the STM and LTM and SENSORY REGISER
Model describes how information is transferred from one store to another/ remembered / forgotten
Sensory register
Memory store for each of the 5 senses
Takes stimuli from the environment and stores our senses
E.g. tastes stored separate to smells
Two main stores:
iconic memory - visual information coded visually
Echoic memory - auditory information of coded acoustically
Duration of the sensory register is less than half a second however the capacity for each store is large e.g. 100 million cells in each eye store data
Short duration large capacity
Not all info stored in sensory register, some memories transferred into STM or LTM
Only if you pay attention to the stimuli will it be transferred into the STM
STM store
Capacity : 7+-2
Duration : 30s unless it’s rehearsed
Maintenance rehearsal: when we repeat material to ourselves over and over agin, we can keep info in the STM as long as we rehearse it, if we rehearse long enough it goes to the LTM
LTM store
Potentially a permanent memory store for info that’s been rehearsed for a long period of time
Psychologists believe that the capacity is unlimited and can last many years
When we want to recall information from the LTM it has to be transferred back into the STM - this process is called retrieval
According go the MSM no memory van be recalled directly from the LTM
The primary recency effect
Free recall tests show that when given a long list of words to remember people tend to remember the start and end best
The primary effect occurs because First words are best rehearsed and transferred into LTM
The recency effect occurs because the last few words to be presented are fresh and are still one STM at the start of the recall
Supports the msm; validates the role of rehearsal and the fact that short term and long term memory are different
Role of rehearsal
MSM say that the more u rehearse info the more likely it’s transferred into your LTM
Craik states it’s the type of rehersal that matters they found 2 types:
- maintenance : type described in the MSM however doesn’t transfer into the LTM, it’s maintained in the STM
-elaborative : needed for LT storage this occurs when you link the info you’re getting to your existing knowledge, or you think about what it means, suggesting the ideas of msm to simplistic
But how important is rehearsal irl?
E..g learning a language, script
Things we remember without rehearsal
Shocking/exciting
Emotional, semantic link
MSM too simplistic, low explanatory power
Flashbacks that are traumatic or emotional are needed without rehersal
explanations for forgetting
retrieval failure
cue
a ‘trigger’ of information that allows s to access a memory - either extrnal/ internal
encoding specificity principle
tulving reviewed reseach and discovered that if a cue is to help us recall information needs to be present at encoding and retrival, he called this the ESP
example of cue
mnemonics, some cues are linked to materiaks we need to remember in meaningful ways - a small cue can be used to access a wide range of stored information e.g. PEEL, NESW, real life application
types of cues
context-dependant cues (external )
state-dependant cues (internal)
context dependant cues
an external cue in the environment that triggers a particular memory
e.g. photographs can allow memories to flood back, like a class photo: names from y6 prom
people have these memories but may not be able to access them
godden and baddley
state-dependant cues
an internal cue that triggers a particular memory e.g. mood, drugs, alcohol
carter & cassaday
can we really measure anxiety?
difficult t o define and measure (opperatationalise)
can include cognitive, behavioural (observable) physical (adrenaline)- which type are we measuring?
J&S - cognitive + emotional
Y&C - behavioural (nightmares)
low reliability, low explanatory power
extraneous variables:
most studies done on anxiety are either field or natural events
- time between event and interview
- ped, storytelling, rehearsing
low internal validity
ethical issues
creating/ manipulation of anxiety has many ethical concerns, causing psychological harm in ppts just for research purposes has been questioned … is it really necessary?
- don’t write about bps guidelines
is testing anxiety really necessary?
No, anxiety is complex with various components so may be necessary for bad inaccurate results,
yuille and cutshall’s study took advantage of existing events - this is more ethical than creating your own
ppts were willing to step forward, no deception
do the benefits outweigh the issues?
hard to opperentialise, unreliable results so may not be worth it
improving EWT: cognitive interview techniques cue
3rs and c
