Memory Flashcards

Question

what is proactive interference?

Answer 1

when old information disrupts new information

Answer 2

when new information disrupts old information

Answer 3

when information is in the LTM but forgetting happens due to an absence of appropriate cues or prompts encoded at the same time

Answer 4

context and state dependent cues

Answer 5

when we lack environmental/external cues which inhibit our memory

Answer 6

when our internal environment is different such as our emotional state and so we forget the memory

Answer 7

- questionnaire to 211 11-79 year olds, which included a map of the area around their old school without the street names - found more times an individual moved home, the fewer street names could be recalled - suggesting adding new street names to memory makes recalling old street names harder

Answer 8

- participants were given a list of 1-word pairs to learn - every 48 hours they were given a new list and found the number of correctly recalled word pairs decreased the more word pairs that had been previously learnt, suggesting that previously learnt information caused confusion in the coding of the later word lists

Answer 9

- godden and baddeley asked 18 deep-sea divers to memorise a list of 36 unrelated words of two or 3 syllables - one group did this on the beach and other underwater. half were asked from each group to recall their words in the opposite environment to where they learnt the information. - more words were recalled when participants recalled them in the same environment as they learnt them - suggests environmental cues promote recall

Answer 10

- 48 male medical students to remember a list of words when they were drunk or sober and asked to recall after 24 hours again when some were sober and some were drunk again - participants had to perform 4 tests, including word association and picture recognition tasks - found that information learnt whilst drunk is more available when in same state later. participants who were sober on both days performed the best in all tasks and still better in those intoxicated on both days

Answer 11

- leading questions (imply a particular answer and influence how a memory is recalled) - post event discussion (alters the accuracy of another witness' recollection of memory - anxiety (witness may be focus attention on weapon rather than criminals face and recalling memory the witness may be less anxious)

Answer 12

- participants watched a clip of a car crash and asked 'how fast were the cars going when they _ into each other', the verb being either, smashed, collided, bumped, hit or contacted - found the more extreme the verb, the faster the estimation of MPH - contacted 31.9 mph vs. smashed = 40.8 mph - suggests leading questions influence recall

Answer 13

- high control over confounding variables - practical implications for police - low ecological validity (video not real) - biased sample of students only + demand characteristics

Answer 14

- pairs of participants watched different videos of the same crime - it was found when pairs discussed what they had seen, 71% included information that was not in their video in their EWT - suggests that witnesses will change their accounts of crime to match other witnesses' testimony

Answer 15

- ecological validity + demand characteristic - good pop. validity as 60 ppts were old, and 60 were students, and found little difference - unable to conclude why the distortion occurs - poor memory or conformity

Answer 16

a hypothesis for the relationship between anxiety and the accuracy of EWT - a moderate amount of anxiety produces the most accurate and detailed EWT. However, too much or too little anxiety reduces accuracy.

Answer 17

ppts. overheard a heated argument, then the sound of smashing glass and a man walking through the waiting room with a bloody paper knife and not a greasy pen in the low anxiety condition.

Answer 18

- ppts. in high-anxiety condition showed 16% lower accurate recall compared to low-anxiety condition - explained by theory of weapon focus, where our attention is drawn onto the weapon as a source of anxiety

Answer 19

followed up 13 EW, 5 months after a real shooting in a shop. Researchers found that EW accuracy was still high, with 11% higher accuracy of recall for eyewitnesses who ranked their anxiety as high compared to low at the time of the shooting. - supports idea that heightened anxiety draws attention to external cues by 'fight or flight' response - evolutionary advantage for escape and survival

Answer 20

- ethical issues w/ protection from harm - weapon focus effect may be testing for effects of surprise rather than anxiety - Yuille and Cutshall did not control post-event discussion (susceptible to bias)

Answer 21

- Police can avoid using leading questions - Eyewitnesses should be interviewed as soon as possible after the event - Eyewitnesses should be warned about the dangers of misinformation and be discouraged from talking to other eyewitnesses about the event before they have been interviewed by the police.

Answer 22

1. report everything 2. reinstate the context 3. report everything backwards 4. report from a different perspective