Memory

Question 1

What is meant by cognitive psychology?

Answer 1

Cognitive psychology is the study of how people learn, structure, store and use knowledge.

Question 2

What do cognitive psychologists believe?

Answer 2

That human behaviour can best be explained if we first understand the mental processes that underlie behaviour.

Question 3

What is human memory?

Answer 3

Human memory is the process by which we retain information about events that have happened in the past.

Question 4

What is coding?

Answer 4

Coding is the format in which information is stored in various memory stores - it is the process of converting information between different forms/memory stores.

Question 5

What were Alan Badeley’s findings?

Answer 5

Alan Badeley found that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

Question 6

What is meant by rehearsal in terms of memory?

Answer 6

Rehearsal is attending to information so that it stays in our memory.

Question 7

What is retrieval?

Answer 7

Retrieval is the process of locating and extracting stored memories.

Question 8

What is capacity?

Answer 8

Capacity is the amount of information that can be held in a memory store.

Question 9

What is duration?

Answer 9

Duration is the length of time information can be held in memory.

Question 10

What are the differences between short term and long term memory?

Answer 10

STM:
- the limited capacity memory store
- coding is mainly acoustic
- capacity of between 5-9 items
- duration of around 18 secs

LTM
- the permanent memory store
- coding is mainly semantic
- unlimited capacity
- can store memories for up to a lifetime

Question 11

Outline an experiment and the findings used to research capacity.

Answer 11

• Joseph Jacobs
• read out 4 digits
• for the participant to recall in the correct order
• if they could recall it correctly, the researcher read out 5 digits and so on
• until the participant could no longer recall them correctly
• this indicates their digit span
• Jacob’s found that the mean digit span was 9.3 items

or

• George Miller
• made observations of everyday practice and noticed that things often come in 7s
• therefore he concluded that the STM span/capacity was around 7
• he also noticed that people could recall five words just as easily as 5 letters due to chunking which is where sets of digits/letters are grouped together into chunks

Question 12

Outline the experiment and the findings used to research duration in STM.

Answer 12

• Margaret and Lloyd Peterson
• tested 24 students in 8 trials
• and each student was given a consonant syllable as well as a 3 digit number
• the student would count backwards from this number until told to stop after varying periods of time
• the findings showed that after 18 secs, the average recall was about 3%
• this suggests that the STM duration may be about 18 secs

Question 13

Outline the experiment and the findings used to research duration in LTM.

Answer 13

• Henry Bahrick
• studied 392 American participants aged 17-74
• he gathered high school year books from each participant
• and each participant needed to recall either by a photo recognition test or a free recall test in which the participants had to recall names after a number of years
• after 48 years accuracy was around 30%
• this shows how the duration of LTM can last for up to a lifetime for some material

Question 14

Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Baddeley’s experiment and findings surrounding the coding in the STM and LTM

Answer 14

Strength:
- Baddeley’s study identified a clear difference between two memory stores, the STM and the LTM, - a discovery which is still relevant now and also helped with the creation of the multi-store model.
Limitation:
- Baddeley’s study used artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material (eg the word lists had no personal meaning to participants) therefore his findings don’t tell us much about the different kind of memory tasks used in everyday life: his findings have limited application.

Question 15

Evaluate Joseph Jacob’s experiment and findings used to research capacity.

Answer 15

Strength:
- Jacob’s study has been proven to be a valid test of digit span in the STM as it has been replicated and his findings confirmed by other, better controlled studies since.
Limitation:
- Since Jacob’s study was conducted such a long time ago, research would not have been as well controlled as it is now, so some participants may have just been distracted during the test, which may have affected the findings.

Question 16

Evaluate George Miller’s research on capacity.

Answer 16

Limitation:
- Miller could have overestimated STM capacity as by placing things in so many chunks would make it easier to recall letters/digits. This could mean that it was not an accurate representation of the capacity which can actually be held in memory stores in everyday life.

Question 17

Evaluate the research on the duration of STM conducted by Margaret and Lloyd Peterson.

Answer 17

Limitation:
- the stimulus material was artificial and held no meaning towards any of the participants so the study doesn’t say much about memory tasks used in everyday life - the study lacked external validity.

Question 18

Evaluate the research on the duration of LTM conducted by Bahrick.

Answer 18

Strength:
- Bahrick’s study had high external validity as the participants real life memories were studied
Limitation:
- Confounding variables were not controlled - for example, some of the participants may have looked at their yearbook photos and rehearsed there memory over the years outside of the test.

Question 19

What is the multi-store model of memory?

Answer 19

The MSM of memory is a model created by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shriffin which represents how information flows through the three memory stores: the sensory register, STM and LTM.

Question 20

What is maintenance rehearsal?

Answer 20

Maintenance rehearsal occurs when we repeat material over and over. If we rehearse information for long enough, it passes into the LTM.

Question 21

What is the sensory register?

Answer 21

Stimulus from the environment passes into the sensory register which consists of one store for each sense. Coding in the sensory register is modality-specific (it depends on the sense) - for example, the coding for visual information is iconic memory and for sounds is echoic memory. Duration of material in the SR is less than 1/2 a second and the capacity is very high. Information only passes further into the memory system if you pay attention to it.

Question 22

What happens to information when we want to recall it from the LTM store?

Answer 22

Information needs to be transferred back to the STM store by retrieval if we want to recall it.

Question 23

Describe the HM case study.

Answer 23

HM (Henry Molaison) underwent brain surgery to relieve his epilepsy. However at the time the procedure was not fully understood and a part of his brain called the hippocampus (which we now know is crucial for memory function) was removed on both sides of his brain. When his memory was assessed, it was found that he could no longer form new long term memories but his STM still worked well.

Question 24

Outline the strengths of the MSM.

Answer 24

• There are many studies which support the MSM and agree with the way it shows how memory functions. For example, Alan Baddeley found that we mix up words that sound similar when we use our STMs whereas we mix up words that have similar meanings when we use our LTMs. This study shows that the STM and the LTM are separate memory stores as shown in the MSM.

Question 25

Outline the limitations of the MSM.

Answer 25

• Despite the support from various studies, in everyday life we tend to only form memories which hold meaning to us. However many of the studies in support of the MSM only used digits, letters (Jacobs) and sometimes words (Baddeley), all of which held no meaning to any of the participants. This means that the MSM may not be a valid model of how we form memories in everyday life.
• There is also evidence of more than one STM store which is not shown on the MSM. Tim Shallice and Elizabeth Warrington studied a client referred to as KF who sufferered from amnesia. KF’s STM for digits was very poor when they were read out to him but much better when he read them out to himself. This suggests that there could be more than one STM store for processing information in different ways, in which case the MSM would be incorrect.
• There is also research to suggest that prolonged rehearsal is not the only way to transfer information to LTM, which is not shown in the MSM. Fergus Craik and Michael Watkins found that the type of rehearsal is more important than the amount - elaborative rehearsal occurs when you link the information to your existing knowledge. This means that information can be transferred to the LTM without prolonged rehearsal which suggests that the MSM doesn’t fully explain how LTM is achieved.