Memory

Question 1

research on coding

Answer 1

Baddeley
- he gave different lists of words to four groups of participants (acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar, semantically dissimilar)
- participants were shown the words and asked to recall them in the correct order
- he found that for the short term variation(immediately), the participants tended to do worse with acoustically similar words
- he found that for the long term variation(20 minutes), the participants did worse with semantically similar words
- therefore STM is coded acoustically and LTM is coded semantically

Question 2

research into capacity of STM

Answer 2

Miller
- he made observations of everyday things and determined it was 7+- 2 items, as five letters can remembered as easily as 5 words

Question 3

research on duration (STM)

Answer 3

peterson and peterson
- they tested 24 students and gave them each a trigram
- they then counted down from a three digit number in 2’s or 3’s until told to stop, to prevent mental rehearsal
- they found that after 3 seconds, average recall was 80% and after 18 seconds was 3%, suggesting that the duration of short term memory is 18 seconds unless verbally rehearsed

Question 4

research on duration (LTM)

Answer 4

Bahrick
- 392 american participants between ages 17 and 74
- had students freely recall the names of their classmates with the picture, or with a word bank to go along with
for recognition
- 15 years had 90% accuracy
- 48 years had 70% accuracy
for free recall
- 15 years had 60% accuracy
- 48 years had 30% accuracy
this shows that long term memory may last up to a lifetime

Question 5

coding, capacity and duration of the sensory register

Answer 5

coding : iconic, echoic, and other sensory stores
capacity : high
duration : milliseconds

Question 6

coding, capacity and duration of STM

Answer 6

coding : acoustically
capacity : 7+- 2 items
duration : 18 seconds

Question 7

coding capacity and duration of LTM

Answer 7

coding : semantically
capacity : unlimited
duration : lifetime

Question 8

who created the multi - store model?

Answer 8

atkinson and shiffrin

Question 9

evaluation of the MSM?

Answer 9

• shows that STM and LTM are separate stores
• may not be a valid model of how memory works in our everyday lives where we have to remember much more meaningful information
• KF shows that there are different processing stores in the STM and that its not unitary
• does not fully explain how long-term storage is achieved

Question 10

types of long term memory and who made them

Answer 10

episodic, semantic, and procedural
tulving

Question 11

episodic memory

Answer 11

time stamped, includes several elements, a conscious effort is required to recall

Question 12

semantic memory

Answer 12

encyclopedia knowledge, not time stamped, more facts

Question 13

procedural memory

Answer 13

unconsciously recalled, like riding a bike

Question 14

evaluation of types of long term memory

Answer 14

• a strength is clive wearing and HM, as episodic memory was impaired due to brain damage, but not their semantic or procedural
• however these studies lack control, as researchers are unable to know what the memory of HM and clive wearing were like before their incidents
• however, a limitation is that neuroimaging evidence is conflicting as there are many areas that are located for each type of memory
• another strength is that it has real world application, as it allows psychologists to help people with memory problems by developing treatments to prevent memory loss

Question 15

research into interference theory

Answer 15

Baddeley and hitch
- asked rugby players to recall the names of the teams they had played against during the rugby season
- found that those who played the most games had the poorest recall
- carried out in the real world so has external validity
McGeoch and McDonald
- studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between two sets of materials
- participants learned list of 10 words until they could remember them with 100% accuracy
- when participants were asked to recall the original list of words, the most similar material produced the worst recall
- therefore interference is strongest when the memories are similar

Question 16

research into context-dependent forgetting

Answer 16

Godden and Baddeley
- studied deep sea divers to see if training on land helped or hindered their work underwater
- the divers then learned a list of words underwater or on land and then recalled them underwater or on land
- recall was 40% lower in non-matching conditions
- therefore external cues were different at learning from recall and this led to retrieval failure

Question 17

research into state dependent forgetting

Answer 17

Carter and Cassaday
- gave antihistamine drugs to participants which made them slightly drowsy, creating a different internal physiological state
- the participants then learned lists of words either on the drug or off the drug, and then recalled the words either off the drug or on the drug
- they found that participants performed worse on a memory test if the states at learning and recall were different, as the cues were absent and there was more forgetting

Question 18

evaluation of interference theory

Answer 18

LIMITATIONS
- in order for interference to play a part, information has to be similar, however this is only happens rarely for learned information, so is unlikely to be a full explanation for all forgetting
- tulving and psoka had participants memorize lists of words and recall was 70% for the first list and decreased after. However, the participants were then given the category name of the category and recall rose again to 70%. This shows that interference causes a temporary loss, however the information is still available, which is not predicated by the theory
SUPPORT
- Coenen and Gilles gave participants a list of words and had them recall them the next week. The group given the drug diazepam had better recall than the placebo group, as the drug prevented new information from being processed by the brain and therefore preventing retroactive interfernce

Question 19

research into the negative effect of anxiety on recall

Answer 19

weapon effect
- Johnson and Scott
- participants believed that they were taking part in a lab study. While seated in a waiting rom participants in the low-anxiety condition heard a casual conversation in the next room and then saw a man walk past them carrying a pen and with grease on his hands. Other participants overheard a heated argument, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A man walked out of the room holding a knife covered in blood. This was the anxiety condition
- the participants later picked out the man from a set of 50 photos. 49% who had seen the man carrying the pen were able to identify him. 33% identified the man holding the bloody knife
- the tunnel theory of memory suggests that people have enhanced memory for central events. Weapon focus as a result of anxiety can have this effect

Question 20

research into the positive effect of anxiety on recall

Answer 20

• anxiety triggers the fight or flight response, increasing alertness
• Yuille and Cutshall conducted a study of an actual shooting in Vancouver, Canada, when a shop owner shot a thief dead. There were 21 witnesses and 13 agreed to take part in the study. They were interviewed four to five months after and the number of details were compared to the original police report. The witnesses were also asked to rate how stressed they were on a seven point scale and whether they had any emotional problems since the event.
• they found that the witnesses were very accurate in there accounts after 5 months, with only slight details decreasing in accuracy such as color of things or approximate weight. The participants who reported the highest levels had were most accurate with 88% compared to 75% with the less stressed group
• this suggests that anxiety does not have detrimental effect on eyewitness testimony and may even enhance it

Question 21

limitation of johnson and scott

Answer 21

• they may not have tested anxiety
• participants may have been surprised they saw a weapon instead of scared
• pickel conducted an experiment using scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as the hand held items in a hairdressing salon video. Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (handgun and chicken).
  this suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety and therefore tells us nothing about the effects of anxiety on EWT

Question 22

Support for negative effects of anxiety on the accuracy of recall

Answer 22

• valentine and mesout found that when participants went through the London Dungeon, the high anxiety group recalled the fewest correct details of the actor and made more mistakes
• also, 17% of the high-anxiety group correctly identified the actor in a line up compared to 75% correct identification in the low-anxiety group
• this study is good, as they wore wireless heart rate monitors to determine if they were in high or low anxiety

Question 23

Support for positive effects of anxiety on accuracy of recall

Answer 23

• Christianson and Hubinette interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden
• some were directly involved, other indirectly. they found that recall was more then 75% for all witnesses, the direct victims even more accurate
• these findings from actual crimes confirm that anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall for eyewitnesses and may even enhance it
• however, christianson and hubinnete interviewed their participants many months after the event, so the effect of anxiety is likely muddled with other effects, such as post event discussion, that the result don’t reflect the effect of anxiety.
• therefore a lack of control over confounding variables may be responsible for the findings, invalidating their support.

Question 24

what are the steps of the cognitive interview??

Answer 24

1. report everything
   - say everything you saw, even if it seems not important
2. reinstate the context
   - witness brings themselves mentally back to the scene of the crime
   - related to context dependent forgetting
3. reverse the order
   - prevents people from reporting their expectations of what happened rather than the actual events
   - also prevents dishonesty
4. change perspective
   - this is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and also the effect of schema on recall

Question 25

why and who created the cognitive interview?

Answer 25

• fisher and geiselman
• thought eye-witness testimony could be improved by applying how memory works

Question 26

support for the effectiveness of the CI

Answer 26

• a meta analysis by Kohnken combined data from 55 studies comparing the CI with the standard police interview. They found that the CI gave an average 41% increase in accurate information compared with the standard interview, with only four studies showing no difference.
• this shows that the CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that is stored but not immediately accessible
• however, there was also an increase in the amount of inaccurate information recalled, therefore the evidence should be treated with caution

Question 27

limitations of the CI

Answer 27

-Milne and Ray found that each of the four techniques alone produced more information than the standard interview, however the combination of report everything and reinstate the context produced better recall than any of the other elements or a combination f them.
- therefore, some parts of the CI are more useful than others, casting some doubt on the credibility of the overall cognitive interview
- the CI takes more time and training than the standard police interview
- more time is needed to establish a rapport with a witness and allow them to relax
- special training is needed, and many forces don’t have the resources to provide more than a few hours
- therefore the CI is not a realistic method for police officers to use and it might be better to focus on just a few key elements

Question 28

who created the working memory model and what are the four parts?

Answer 28

• baddeley and hitch
• central executive
• phonological loop
• visuo-spatial sketchpad
• episodic buffer

Question 29

what is the role of the central executive?

Answer 29

• monitors incoming data, focuses and divides our limited attention and allocates the subsystems to tasks
• a very limited processing capacity and does not store information

Question 30

what is the role of the phonological loop?

Answer 30

• deals with auditory information
• coding is acoustic
• preserves the order in which the information arrives
• the phonological store stores the words you hear
• the articulatory process allows maintenance rehearsal and can hold two seconds worth of what you can say

Question 31

what is the role of the visual spatial sketchpad

Answer 31

• stores visusal or spatial information when required
• has a capacity of three or four objects
• the visual cache stores visual data
• the inner scribe records the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Question 32

what is the role of the episodic buffer?

Answer 32

• is a temporary store of information from the other stores maintaining a sense of time sequencing
• has a limited capacity of four chunks
• links working memory to long term memory and wider cognitive processes such as perception

Question 33

support for the working memory model

Answer 33

• KF had a poor STM ability for auditory information, but could process visual information normally, ie, recall of written word was better then spoken word
• therefore his phonological loop was damaged, but the visuo-spatial sketchpad was intact, supporting the idea of separate visual and acoustic memory stores
• however, KF may have had other cognitive impairments, as his brain damage was due to a motorcycle, which may have effected systems other than just the working memory system of the short term memory
• dual task studies by baddeley
• he found that when participants carried out a visual and verbal task at the same time, the performance on each was similar to doing them individually. But, when both tasks were verbal or visual, performance on both declined substantially
• this is because both tasks required the same subsystem whereas there is no competition between different subsystems, and therefore there must be a least two separate subsystems within the STM

Question 34

limitation of the working memory model

Answer 34

• there is a lack of clarity over the nature of the central executive and episodic buffer
• it is not specifically known how each of these systems operate and if they are divided further
• therefore the CE and EB are unsatisfactory component and this challenges the integrity of the WMM

Question 35

Evaluation of retrieval failure as an explanation of forgetting

Answer 35

Strength
- retrieval cues can help overcome some forgetting in everyday situations, even if the cues don’t have a very strong effect
- when we have trouble remembering something, it is probably worth the effort to recall the environment in which you learnt it first
Strength
- Eysenck and Keane argue that retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from LTM
- retrieval failure happens in real life in addition to highly controlled lab settings
- however, contexts have to be very different before an effect is seen, as it is difficult to find two places as different s underwater and on land
- learning something in one room and recalling it in another room is unlikely to result in much forgetting because the environments are not different enough
- therefore, lack of contextual cues may not explain much of everyday forgetting
Limitation
- context effects may depend on the type of memory being tested
- godden and baddeley replicated their underwater experiment with recognition instead of recall, and found that performance was the same in all conditions
- therefore retrieval failure is a limited explanation for forgetting because it only applies when a person has to recall information rather than recognize it

Question 36

Research into leading questions as a factor effecting the accuracy of eye witness testimony

Answer 36

Loftus and Palmer arranged for 45 students to watch film clips of car accidents and then asked them questions about the accident. In the critical question, participants were asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” There were five groups of participants and each group was given a different verb in the critical question. One group had the verb hit, the others had contacted bumped collided smashed
- they found the estimated mean speed of contacted was 31.8, while the verb smashed was 40.5 mph
They then conducted a second experiment to see if the results were due to response bias or due to substitution of the memory.
- this was shown as the participants who had originally heard the verb smashed were more likely to then report seeing broken glass than those who herd hit. The critical verb altered their memory of the incident

Question 37

Research into post event discussion as a factor effecting the accuracy of eye witness testimony

Answer 37

• Gabbert studied participants in pairs. Each participant watched a video of the same crime but filmed from a different point of view. Both participants then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall
• the researchers found that 71% of the participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see, but had picked up in the discussion. The corresponding figure in a control group with no discussion was 0%. This was evidence of memory conformity

Question 38

what are the two explanations of post event discussion affecting EWT?

Answer 38

memory contamination - when two people witness a crime and discuss it together, they combine misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories
memory conformity - witnesses go along with each other to win social approval, or because they believe the other person is right and they are wrong. The actual memory is unchanged though`

Question 39

Strength of research into misleading information

Answer 39

• has important practical uses in the criminal justice system
• the consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious, and as a result police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses
• therefore the justice system can be improved by this research, and protect innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT
• however, the practical applications may be affected by issues with research
• watching film clips is less stressful than seeing the real thing
• participants are less motivated to be accurate, as there are no consequences and nothing depends on the answers
• this suggests researchers are too pessimistic about the effects of misleading information, and that EWT may be more dependable than research suggest

Question 40

limitations of research into misleading information

Answer 40

• a limitation is that EWT is more accurate in some aspects of an event than others
• Sutherland and Hayne found that when participants were asked a misleading question after watching a video clip, their recall of central details was more accurate than the recall of peripheral ones.
• the participants attention was more focused on central features of the event and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading information
• this suggests that the original memories for central details survived and were not distorted, an outcome that is not predicted by the substitution explanation
• another limitation of memory conformity is that post-event discussion actually alters EWT
• Skagerberg and Wright showed participatns two clips of a mugger.
• in one clip, hair was light brown, and in the other, hair was dark brown
• they found that they didn’t report what they had seen or what their partner had seen, instead blending the two together, for example medium brown hair
• this suggests that memory is distorted through contamination, rather than the result of memory conformity