memory

Question 1

What is coding and how is our memory coded?

Answer 1

Coding is how our memories are processed.
STM is coded acoustically (sound)
LTM is coded semantically (meaning)

Question 2

Who studied memory coding and how?

Answer 2

Baddeley, ptps are shown a list or words and asked recall them immediately.
Participants struggled to recall acoustically simular words
when asked to recall them over time ptps struggled to recal the semantically simular words.

Question 3

What is capacity in memory and what is our memories capacity?

Answer 3

Capacity is how much we can hold.
STM: 7+/-2
LTM: unlimited?

Question 4

What research has been done into the capacity of memory?

Answer 4

Ptps are told 4 numbers and asked to recall it in order, if done they continute to 5 digits and so on untill they cant
for numbers the avg was 9.3 and letters, 7.3.

Question 5

What is chunking?

Answer 5

grouping sets of numbers/letters into chunks to help us remember them better

Question 6

What is duration what what is our duration of memory?

Answer 6

How long information lasts for in our memory.
STM: 18 seconds
LTM: lifetime?

Question 7

What research was done into memories duration?

Answer 7

STM: ptps given numbers to remember then asked to count down to stop rehursal. recall was 80% after 3s and 3% after 18s.
LTM: ptps age 17-74 completed photo recognition in their high school yearbooks and then a free recall, the accuracy of memories reduced with the longer since they graduated.

Question 8

Draw/describe the multi store model of memory and explain its features.

Answer 8

Sensory register: takes in stimuli from environment through our senses eg iconic: sight, echoic: sound.
STM: lasting 18 seconds, when we do maintenence rehursal and prolonged rehursal help pass this to LTM.
LTM: to remember info in LTM we retrieve it back into ur STM.

Question 9

What types of LTM do we have?

Answer 9

Episodic: an internal diary of events eg a wedding, your breakfast, these are personal, time stamped and you have to think about it
Semantic: our knowledge eg how to spell words and what they mean, these arent personal or time stamped
Procedural: how we do things like riding a bike, we make no effort to remember and even find it harder when you think about it

Question 10

What research (case study) supports the types of LTM?

Answer 10

Clive Wearing differed brain damage that affected his memory. his episodic memory was very damaged and couldnt remember more than a few minutes but his procedural memory was fine and was able to play the piano as perfectly as he could before.

Question 11

Draw/ describe the working memory model and explain the features.

Answer 11

Centeral executive: the ‘supervisor’ alocating tasks to other slave systems.
Episodic buffer: a temp store combining info rom other stores to create a single memory that makes sense.
Phonological loop: auditory information, the phonological store stores heard words and articulatory process allows for rehursal.
Visuo-spacial sketchpad: made of the visual cashe which stores visual data and the inner scribe which visualised the arrangement of objects in our imagination.

Question 12

What are the two explanations for forgetting?

Answer 12

Interference
Retreval failure

Question 13

What is interference?

Answer 13

When information disrupts eachother, theres:
Proactive interference - old memory affects new memory eg saying an ex’s name.
Retroactive interference - new memory affects old memory eg a new piano piece means forgetting the old one.

Question 14

How does simularity affect interference?

Answer 14

Interference worsens when information is simular, this is because of pro and retroactive interference.

Question 15

What is retreval failure?

Answer 15

When an absense of cues causes us to be unable to recall something.

Question 16

What is context dependent forgetting?

Answer 16

Forgetting due to a lack of cues in our environment.

Question 17

What is state dependent forgetting?

Answer 17

Forgetting due to a lack of internal cues eg feeling sick or upset.

Question 18

What research is there on context and state dependent forgetting?

Answer 18

Deep sea scuba divers learned things either on land or underwater. They then have to recall it either on land or underwater.
Divers with matching learning and recall conditions had much better recall than those in mismatching conditions.

Question 19

What two factors affect eye whitness testimony?

Answer 19

Misleading information and anxiety

Question 20

What two types of misleading information can affect memory?

Answer 20

Leading questions - questions that are worded in a way that insinuates a particular answer
Post event discussion - when eyewhitnesses discuss after a shared event and compare memories

Question 21

What research supports that leading questions affect memory?

Answer 21

Students watch clips of car accidents and then are asked questions about them.
in 5 different group conditions, the students were asked how fast the car was going using the words hit, colided, contacted, crashed, smashed.
when using the word contacted ptps estimated 31mph
compared to the word smashed, they estimated 40mph.

Question 22

How do leading questions affect our actual memories?

Answer 22

They dont, its proposed to be more of a nudge in the wrong direction as oposed to changing the actual memory itself.

Question 23

What research supports that post event discussion affects memory.

Answer 23

Ptps are paired up and watch a crime but each from different angles.
They then discuss the scene befire answering questions
71% of ptps missrecalled information theyd picked up from the discussion, compared to 0% in the control.

Question 24

How does post event discussion affect our actual memory?

Answer 24

Through contamination, the discussion leads to distorted memories.
Alternitivelly its conformity because they believe the other person to be right.

Question 25

What RWA does research into leading questions have?

Answer 25

This has hugely affected the way we interview whitness police officers have to be really careful with questioning. this helps protect innocent people and get accurate convictions.

Question 26

What is a problem with leading question research?

Answer 26

Studies are using film clips, which isnt real life. even knowing that its not real could have effects on attention and not having any stress or anxiety has effects too so we cant generalise to real life.

Question 27

What support is there for memory contamination?

Answer 27

Other discussion studies ask what hair colour the perp had. Participants are paired and shown different videos where they’re either blonde or brunette.
After discusssing ptps reach a compromise and report they saw light brown or dirty blonde.

Question 28

How does anxiety affect our recall?

Answer 28

Negitively: anxiety is state of high psychological arousal meaning we pay less attention to environmental cues, so recall tends to be worse
Positively: alternitivelly anxiety triggers fight/flight which hightens our alertness and improves our memory

Question 29

What is the weapon focus effect?

Answer 29

When the presence of a weapon hightens anxiety and subsiquently negitivelly impacts recall.

Question 30

What study has been done on the weapon focus effect?

Answer 30

Condition 1: ptps hear a casual conversation, a man walks out with grease on hands carrying a pen.
Condition 2: ptps hear a heated argument and glass breaking, a man walks out with bloody hands holding a knife.
Later ptps have to pick out the man they saw from 50 photos.
Almost 50% of the pen group were correct compared to only 33% of the knife group.

Question 31

What is tunnel memory?

Answer 31

Having enhanced memory for the central event, and not the peripheral details.

Question 32

What is one criticism of the weapon focus study?

Answer 32

That it was measuring unusualness rather than anxiety, upon seing something strange the ptps may have focused on that because its weird, not because its a weapon they fear.

Question 33

What 4 things are done in a cognitive interview.

Answer 33

Report everything - even insignificant details incase they act as a cue
Reinstate the context - return to the scene in your imagination, combats context dependent forgetting
Reverse the order - prevents expectations of how situations normally play out
Change perspective - prevents schema getting involved

Question 34

How should the interviewer act in a cognitive interview?

Answer 34

Maintain eye context, try to reduce anxiety, encourage them to speak slowly, minimalise any distractions and ask open questions.