Memory

Question 1

Memory

Answer 1

The process by which we retain information

Question 2

Name the 3 types of long term memory

Answer 2

Procedural, Semantic and Episodic

Question 3

How is information usually coded in long term memory?

Answer 3

Coded semantically

Question 4

Semantic Memory

Answer 4

Factual knowledge an individual has learned

Question 5

Episodic Memory

Answer 5

Personal experiences that are time stamped

Question 6

Procedural Memory

Answer 6

Memory store for our knowledge of how to do things, including our memories of learned skills

Question 7

Give one similarity between episodic and semantic memory

Answer 7

Both declarative - they can be consciously recalled

Question 8

3 types of memory

Answer 8

Sensory memory, Short term memory and Long term memory

Question 9

Sensory Memory

Answer 9

Initial contact for stimuli. STM is only capable of retraining information for a very short time

Question 10

Short term Memory

Answer 10

The information we are currently aware of, or thinking about. It comes from paying attention to sensory memories

Question 11

Long term Memory

Answer 11

Information transferred from short-term memory into long-term storage in order to create enduring memories

Question 12

Duration of STM vs LTM

Answer 12

Up to 30 seconds unless its rehearsed or paid attention to

Can last from 2 minutes to 100 years

Question 13

Rehearsal

Answer 13

Transferring information into long term memory

Question 14

Peterson and Peterson (1959)

Answer 14

-Participants given a nonsense syllable and asked to count down in threes or fours for 3-18 seconds
-after 3 seconds, 80% recalled correctly
-after 18 seconds, less than 10% recalled correctly

Question 15

Coding

Answer 15

The process of converting information from one form to another

Question 16

Baddeley (1966) Method

Answer 16

Gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember. These were either acoustically similar or dissimilar, semantically similar or dissimilar.

Question 17

Baddeley (1966) Results

Answer 17

Participants had problems recalling acoustically similar words when recalling immediately (from STM)

If recalling after an interval (from LTM) they had problems with semantically similar words

Question 18

Baddeley (1966) Conclusion

Answer 18

LTM more likely to rely on semantic coding and the STM on acoustic coding

Question 19

Baddeley Evaluation

Answer 19

Lacks ecological validity

Other types of LTM and other methods of coding that aren’t considered

Question 20

Peterson and Peterson (1959) Evaluations

Answer 20

-Forgetting in STM can occur if information is not rehearsed
-Identified that duration of STM is approximately 18 seconds

-Artificial stimuli lacked personal meaning creating mundane realism, meaning we cannot generalise findings to different memory tasks
-Small sample size

Question 21

Miller (1956)

Answer 21

noted that things come in sevens: 7 notes, 7 days etc. This suggests that the capacity of STM is 7 items (plus or minus 2).
-chunking: our capacity for remembering information can be increased if we chunk items together. We are more likely to remember things if we group them together.

Question 22

Evaluation of Millers Chunking

Answer 22

Miller may have overestimated the capacity of the STM

Question 23

(Sperling’s investigation of the sensory register) Method

Answer 23

Participants were shown a grid with three rows of four letters for 50 milliseconds.

They had to immediately recall either the whole grid or a randomly chosen row indicated by the pitch of a tone.

Question 24

(Sperling’s investigation of the sensory register) Results

Answer 24

When recalling the whole grid they only recalled an average of 4 or 5 letters.

When a particular row was indicated, an average of 3 items were recalled, no matter which row was selected.

Question 25

(Sperling’s investigation of the sensory register) Conclusion

Answer 25

They did not know which row was to be selected, so we can assume that 3 items from any row could be recalled. Therefore the entire grid was in their sensory register.

They could not recall the whole grid because the trace faded before they could finish recall.

Question 26

(Sperling’s investigation of the sensory register) Evaluation

Answer 26

Lab experiment was highly scientific but lacked ecological validity. People do not normally have to recall letters so it might not represent what would happen in the real world.

Question 27

Glanzer and Cuntiz

Answer 27

showed participants a list of 20 words, presented one at a time and then asked them to recall.

This is called the serial position effect: “When asking people to remember a list of words which is greater than the capacity of short term memory they have a tendency to remember words from the beginning and end of the list”

Question 27

Multistore Model of Memory

Answer 27

A theoretical framework that explains how information is processed and stored in our memory.

It consists of three different memory stores: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Question 28

Working Memory Model

Answer 28

Explains how we hold and manipulate information in the short term

Question 28

Central Executive’s function

Answer 28

-Functions: decides what working memory pays attention to
-manages the slave systems (phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketch pad, episodic buffer)

Question 29

Phonological Loop

Answer 29

-deals with auditory information and preserves order
-Limited capacity

Question 29

Visuo-spatial Sketch Pad

Answer 29

-Visual and/or spatial information stored here (inner eye)
-visual refers to what things look like and spatial refers to the relationships between things
-limited capacity

Question 30

Episodic Buffer

Answer 30

Slave system that adds extra storage room with a limited capacity. Integrates info from all other areas

Question 31

Baddeley and Hitch 1974

Answer 31

Believed memory is not just in one store, but in a number of different stores.

-only focused on STM
-LTM is a more passive store that holds previously learned material for use by the STM when needed

Question 32

(Evaluation of Working Memory Model) Clinical evidence

Answer 32

Shallice and Warrington 1970 supports the existence of a separate visual and acoustic store.

However, this was a case study so results cannot be generalised.

Question 33

(Evaluation of Working Memory Model) Evidence for the Episodic Buffer

Answer 33

Baddeley et al 1987
-Participants were shown words and then immediate recall
-Recall was much better for related words in sentences than unrelated words

Supports the idea of ‘general’ memory store that draws on LTM (semantics), for items that are neither visual nor phonological.

Question 34

(Evaluation of Working Memory Model) Studies of the word length effect support the phonological loop

Answer 34

Baddeley et al 1975 word length effect

-there is a finite space for rehearsal in the articulatory process
-Word Length Effect disappears if a person is given an articulatory suppression task

Question 35

Memory Decay

Answer 35

-memory traces decay over time
-during any delay a memory is subject to the effects of time and interference from other memories
-memories seem to be forgotten because we no longer have the appropriate reminders
-you are more likely to forget something that you did not pay attention to when it originally happened
-are more likely to forget or get mixed up with similar pieces of material

Question 36

Interference

Answer 36

One memory blocks another. This might result in forgetting one or the other or both.

Question 37

Proactive Interference

Answer 37

Forgetting occurs when older memories disrupt the recall of newer memories.

Question 38

Retroactive Interference

Answer 38

Forgetting occurs when newer memories disrupt the recall of older memories already stored.

Question 39

Method (Tulving and Psotka 1971 Forgetting in LTM)

Answer 39

Compared the theories of interference and cue-dependent forgetting.

Participants given either 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 lists of 24 words. Each list was divided into 6 categories of 4 words which were presented in category order.

FIRST CONDITION: participants had to recall all of the words in total free recall.

SECOND CONDITION: participants given all the category names and had to recall words from the list in free cued recall.

Question 40

Results (Tulving and Psotka 1971 Forgetting in LTM)

Answer 40

In total free recall condition, evidence of retroactive interference. Those with 1 or 2 lists had higher recall than those with more, suggesting that later lists interfered with the earlier lists.

In cued recall, the effects of retroactive interference disappeared. No matter how many lists, participants recalled about 70% of the words

Question 41

Conclusion (Tulving and Psotka 1971 Forgetting in LTM)

Answer 41

Suggests that interference had not caused forgetting because memories became available when a cue was used, showing that they were available, but inaccessible.

Forgetting shown in the total free recall was cue dependent forgetting.

Question 42

Evaluation (Tulving and Psotka 1971 Forgetting in LTM)

Answer 42

Lab experiment, low ecological validity.

Only tested memory of words, so results cannot be generalised to information of other types.

Highly controlled, lack of extraneous variables.

Question 43

Tulving 1983 (Retrieval Failure)

Answer 43

When we encode a new memory we also store info that occurred around it (cues).

If the cues are not present when we come to recall then we find it difficult to retrieve the memory. It is not necessarily because we have forgotten it, it’s that we don’t have the cues to help us to access the memory. It is available, but there is a problem with accessing the memory.

Question 44

Types of cue dependent forgetting

Answer 44

-context: External environmental cues
-state: Internal cues

Question 45

Eye Witness Testimony

Answer 45

The ability of people to remember the details of past events which they have observed.

Question 46

Misleading information

Answer 46

incorrect information given to the EW usually after the event

Question 47

Leading Question

Answer 47

A question that suggests a certain answer

Question 48

Post event discussion (PED)

Answer 48

occurs when there is more than one witness to an event. Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with other co-witnesses. This affects accuracy, as co-witness testimonies may contaminate each other’s testimonies. They may combine misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories. Research has demonstrated how this happens.

Question 49

The role of schema in memory (includes problem with this)

Answer 49

Schemas are generalised, simplified representations of things based on our experience. Memory capacity can prevent us from remembering precise details about our everyday lives, but schemas allow us to overcome these limitations because we can summarise the regularities in our lives.
A problem with this is that we may mistakenly recall events that never really happened, because they make sense within a particular schema.

Question 50

(Loftus and Palmer 1974) Experiment 1 Method and Results

Answer 50

Participants were shown a film of a car crash. They were then asked a series of questions on how fast the cars hit each other (first condition), but using a different verb in the second condition (either smashed, collided, bumped or contacted).

Participants given ‘smashed’ estimated the highest speed, those given contacted gave the lowest.

Question 51

(Loftus and Palmer 1974) Conclusion

Answer 51

Leading questions can affect the accuracy of people’s memories of events.

Question 52

(Loftus and Palmer 1974) Evaluation

Answer 52

Implications for police interviews

artificial, watching a video is not as emotionally arousing as a real-life event so this may affect recall

demand characteristics (cues in the questions) reduce the validity and reliability in this experiment

Question 53

Why do we remember trauma?

Answer 53

The Amygdala

-Responsible for encoding and storing associations.
-released cortisol stress hormone, vivid and memorable

Question 54

Anxiety

Answer 54

-an unpleasant emotional state of fearing that something bad will happen
-happens in stressful situations
-tends to be accompanied with physiological arousal (increased heart rate and slow breathing)

Question 55

The Tunnel theory

Answer 55

An explanation for the weapon-focus effect is that the weapon narrows the field of attention and thus reduced the information to be stored

Question 56

Yerkes-Dodson Law 1908

Answer 56

Suggests EWT is very good when the person had medium anxiety levels

Suggests EWT is very poor when the person had low or high anxiety levels

(Basically Inverted U)

Question 57

The Cognitive Interview

Answer 57

The cognitive interview technique is a questioning technique used by the police to enhance retrieval of information from the witnesses’ memory.

Importance: Improving effectiveness of questioning witnesses in police interviews, Apply findings of psychological findings to this area.

Created by Fisher and Geiselman

Question 58

Outline Fisher and Geiselman 1992

Answer 58

Reviewed memory literature- people remember things better if they are provided with retrieval cues. The technique they devised had 4 components: Report everything, context reinstatement, recall from changed perspective and recall in reverse order

Question 59

4 components of Fisher and Geiselman 1992

Answer 59

-Report everything- every single detail, even trivial ones.

-Context reinstatement- Mentally reinstate the context of the target event. Recall scene, weather, thoughts and feelings, preceding events.

-Recall from changed perspective- Try to describe the episode as it would have been seen from different viewpoints, not just your own. Disrupts schema.

-Recall events in reverse order- different temporal orders, moving backwards and forwards in time.

Question 60

The enhanced cognitive interview

Answer 60

An amended version of the CI that seeks to build a trusting relationship between interviewer and witness and improve the quality of the communication between the two.
-The interviewer won’t distract the witness with unnecessary interruptions or questions
-The witness controlling the flow of information
-Asking open ended questions
-Getting them to speak slowly
-Reminding them not to guess and to say “I don’t know” when necessary
-Reducing anxiety in witnesses
Modified versions of this and the cognitive interview have been made, for example, with children.

Question 61

What are the 3 slave systems?

Answer 61

Phonological loop, episodic buffer and physio-spatial sketch pad