Memory Flashcards
What is coding in terms of memory?
The process of converting information between different forms in memory.
What is capacity in terms of memory?
The amount of information that can be held in a memory store.
What is duration in terms of memory?
The length of time information can be held in memory
Outline Baddeley’s research on coding.
4 groups given different lists of words (semantically similar, semantically dissimilar, acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar), they had to recall the list in the correct order, when recalling immediately after (STM) they did worse with acoustically similar words, when recalling after 20 mins (LTM) they did worse with semantically similar words.
How did Jacobs measure the digit span of participants?
Read out 4 numbers and asked them to repeat them, if they got it right he added a number, etc until they got it wrong.
What was the mean digit span across Jacobs’s participants?
9.3 items
What is a strength of Jacobs’s capacity study?
It has been replicated. Jacobs’s study is very old, and old studies sometimes lack control over some variables. Despite this, Jacobs’s findings have been replicated by more recent studies. This suggests Jacobs’ study is a valid test of digit span in STM.
Outline Peterson and Peterson’s study on STM duration.
24 students were tested 8 times. Each student was given a consonant syllable and a 3-digit number to remember. The students counted backwards from this number until they were told to stop (this was to prevent mental rehearsal). In each test, they were told to stop after a different amount of time (the retention interval).
What do the findings of Peterson and Peterson’s study on STM duration suggest?
STM has a very short duration unless we repeat something over and over.
What is the limitation of Peterson & Peterson’s study on STM duration? (artificial stimuli)
Recalling consonant syllables doesn’t reflect most everyday memory activities as these aren’t meaningful, whereas what we try to remember daily is meaningful information.
Who created the working memory model (WMM)?
Baddeley& Hitch
What are the 4 components of the Working Memory Model?
Central Executive
Phonological loop
Visuo-spatial sketchpad
Episodic buffer
What does the Central executive do in the Working Memory Model?
Monitors data, divides our attention and allocates subsystems to tasks, has a very limited processing capacity and doesn’t store information
What are the 2 sub-systems the central executive allocates tasks to?
The phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad
What type of information does the phonological loop deal with?
auditory information
What are the 2 parts of the phonological loop?
Phonological store (stores the words you hear), Articulatory process (allows maintenance rehearsal by repeating sounds in a loop)
What type of information does the visuo-spatial sketchpad store?
visual and spatial information
What are the two parts of the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
The visual cache, the inner scribe
What does the episodic buffer do?
Stores information temporarily, it combines all the visual, spatial and auditory information from the other stores and sequences the events.
What is the capacity of the episodic buffer?
Approx 4 chunks.
What are the 2 explanations for forgetting?
Interference and Retrieval failure.
When does interference occur in memory?
When 2 pieces of information disrupt one another.
What type of memory is interference responsible for forgetting?
Long-term memory.
What are the two types of interference?
proactive interference and retroactive interference.
What is proactive interference?
Where an old memory interferes with a new one.
What is retroactive interference?
When a new memory interferes with an old one.
Outline the procedure and findings of McGeoch & McDonald’s research on the effects of similarity on interference.
Had participants learn a list of words until they 100% knew it. Participants were given another list of words that were either similar or not to the original list of words. When the participants were asked to recall the original list, the group who had the most similar new list produced the worst recall. This suggests that interference is strongest when memories are similar.
What is a strength of interference? (real-world interference)
There is evidence for interference in daily life. Baddeley & Hitch asked rugby players to recall all the teams they had played against that season. All players had played the same amount of time, but some missed some games due to injury. Players that had played the most games had the worst recall. This shows that interference can operate in real-world situations. This also increases the validity of the interference theory.
What is a limitation of interference? (can be overcome with cues)
Tulving & Psotka- gave ppts a list of words that were organised into categories (ppts were not told what the categories were). Recall was approx 70% for the first list. It decreased as more lists were learnt. When ppts were told the names of the categories, recall rose again to 70%. This suggests interference causes a temporary loss of access to items in the LTM.
What is retrieval failure?
When we don’t have the necessary cues to access memory
What is a cue?
a trigger of information that enables us to access a memory
What does the Encoding Specificity Principle say?
Cues have to be present at the time of encoding and present at retrieval.
What are 2 non-meaningful cues?
Context-dependent forgetting, state-dependent forgetting.
Outline the procedure and findings of Baddeley’s research on context-dependent forgetting. (deep-sea divers)
Divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land and then recalled them either on land or underwater. There were 4 conditions.
Findings- in 2 conditions, the environmental context of learning matched (in the other 2 it didn’t). Active recall was 40% lower in non-matching conditions. Because external cues were different at learning and retrieval.
Outline the procedure and findings of Carter & Cassaday’s research on state-dependent forgetting.
Gave ppts antihistamines (makes you drowsy). This created an internal state different from the ‘normal’ state of being awake. Ppts had to learn a list of words and a section of prose and then recall the information. There were 4 conditions.
Findings- In conditions where there was a mismatch between learning and recall on and off the drug, recall was significantly worse. So when cues are absent there is more forgetting.
What are the 4 stages of the cognitive interview?
Report everything
Reinstate the context
Reverse the order
Change the perspective
How does ‘Report everything’ improve an eyewitness testimony?
Witnesses are encouraged to say everything that happened even if it seems insignificant. Tiny, seemingly insignificant details may be important or trigger more memories.
