Memory Flashcards
Explanations for forgetting what is retroactive interference?
Happens when a newer memory interferes with an older one. For example your teacher has learned so many names this year she has difficulty remembering last years
Explanations for forgetting what is proactive interference
This is where an older memory interferes with an older one for example your teacher learned so many names last year she struggles remembering this year.
Effects on similarity
Interference is worse when memories are similar discovered by mcgeoch and mc Donald studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between two sets of material . Participant had to learn a list of ten words until they remember with 100% accuracy .
When participants were asked to recall the original list
What is memory ?
Memory is a process in which information is retained about the past
What is the reasearch on coding ?
Baddelet 1966
The method : partcipants were given one of the following 4 sets of words - either
Group one : acoustically similar
Group two : acoustically dissimilar
Group three : semantically similar
Group four : semantically dissimilar
Partcipants were asked to recall words in order correctly immeadiately or following a 20 min task.
What were baddeley coding results ?
When recalling list immeadiately from stm partcipants had difficulty recalling acoustically similar words. If recalling after an interval from Ltm they had problems with semantically similar words.
What can we conclude from baddeleys coding research ?
Suggest that ltm is more likely to rely on semantic coding and stm on acoustic coding.
Weakness of baddeleys coding research ?
It included an artificial task as it was a list of words which isn’t how we use our memory in everyday life. This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to other types of memory tasks. For example people may use semantic coding when processing more meaningful words even for stm tasks . This suggests that the finding has limited application and low mundane realism.
What’s Jacob’s research’s on capacity?
Method : ps were presented with a string of digits or letters they had to repeat them in the same order. The number of digits or letters increased until the p failed to remember the correct order.
What were Jacob’s capacity results ?
Most of the time partcipants recalled 9.3 digits or 7.3 letters.
What were Jacob’s capacity conclusions ?
Jacob’s concluded that the stm storage is limited capacity of 5-9 items. Individual differences were found such as stm increasing with age, possibly due to memory techniques such as chunking .
What did miller find?
Miller reviewed research into the capacity of stm and made observations of everyday practice. He noticed that things come in sevens 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days 7 deadly sins. He argued that the capacity of stm is 7 + 2
He suggested that we use ‘ chunking ‘ to combine individual letters or numbers into larger more meaningful units. Because you can chunk it together and give it a meaning so it’s easier to remember.
Evaluation of Jacob’s 1887 research
Research would not have the controls we have now therefore there will be be extraneous variables that became confounding variables may affect the results . This is a problem as it could affect the validity of the experiment
Evaluation of millers
Cowan reviewed research and concluded stm capacity has 4 chunks which supports millers conclusion as he believed our stm stored chunks of information. However he suggested the capacity’s was 7 pieces of chunked information this suggest he overestimated the chunks of stm and how much it can hold . This suggest millers research may be flawed as it found it can not hold as much as it originally suggested.
What was Peter sons and Peter sons research on duration ?
Method : 24 undergraduate each took part in 8 trials. A ‘ trial ‘ is one test . On each trial the student was given a consonant syllable also known as a trigram. They were also given a 3 digit number to start counting backwards from . On each trial, they were told to stop after a different amount of time 3,6,9 ,12,15 or 18 seconds and then recall the trigram.
Why were they asked to count backwards from three digit number in petersons research ?
Interference task to prevent them from repeating the letters internally which could make it easier to remember. From maintenance rehearsal from the stm.
What were petersons and petersons results ?
After 3 seconds recall 80% of trigrams correctly after 18 secs recall 10% repeated correctly .
What were petersons and petersons conclusions ?
When rehearsal is prevented very little stays in the stm for longer than 18 seconds
Evaluation of petersons and petersons research
It was a lab experiment meaning variables can be highly controlled and less likely to have extraneous variable affecting the experiment and it’s easier to replicate and other researcher can repeat and make the research reliable by finding the same findings and also helps establish a cause and affect relationship.
Meaningless stimuli
There research is based on artificial task and meaningless stimuli like recalling trigrams. As this isn’t part everyday life it has limited application as we can’t. Apply to everyday life therefore has low ecological validity.
What was bahicks method?
Method : 392 aged 17-74 from state Ohio USA partcipants were asked to list the names of ex classmates free recall test they were also shown 50 photos from high school yearbook photo recognition test.
What were bahicks results ?
15 years after leaving school= recognise 90% names and faces. About 60% accurate on free recall. After 48 years = photo recognition was about 70% accurate and free recall 30% accurate
What were bahicks conclusions ?
Evidence of vltms in a real life setting. Recognition is better than recall, so there may be a huge store of information but it’s not always easy access to all of it.
Evaluation of bahicks research
He studied real life meaningful memories this is goods has it has high ecological validity this mean it can be applied to real life everyday memory and can generalise it to how much we recall in everyday life. However there partcipants were all Americans from Ohio therefore lacks population’s validity and can’t generalise his findings to other populations for example students from the uk. We are unable to conclude if other populations would recall the same better or worse after 47 years. There is also no way of knowing exactly why information is recalled well it just shows meaningful information is recalled better.
What is meant by coding
Converting information from one format to another .
What is the sensory store in the multi store model ?
- all information enters the system from the environment through the senses to the sensory memory store. So this part of memory is not one store but five
- two main stores iconic memory visual info coded visually and echoic memory sound/auditory is coded acoustically
- information stays here for a very brief period of time before either decaying or passing onto the stm store .
Capacity and duration of sensory store
0.25 seconds to 2 seconds and capacity is vast
What are the types of rehearsal
Maintenance
Elaborative rehearsal
What is maintenance rehearsal ?
Repeating material to ourselves
- helps keeps information in short term memory
- prolonged rehearsal can move information to ltm
What is elaborative rehearsal?
Craik and Watkins 1973 found that maintenance rehearsal doesn’t move information to ltm
- elaborative rehearsal is needed for ltm
- linking information to existing knowledge understanding what it means
Research support for multi store model
It has supporting research to show that the stm and ltm stores are qualiitvely different for example research by baddeley shows that remembering a word from a list via stm had difficulty rembering word that sounded acoustically similar. This shows that it’s harder to remember a word that sounded acoustically similar similar acoustically from short term memory . Overall it shows that short term memory relays on acoustic coding .
What was glanced and Curtis 1966 research to support?
They showed partcipants a list of 20 words presented one at a time and then asked them to recall
- this is called the serial position effect
When asking people to remember a list of words which is greater than the capacity of short term memory they have a tendency to remember words from the beginning known as primacy effect and the end of the list recency affect
Why does glanzer and cunitz research support msm?
Serial position effect the primacy effect occurs because the first word are best rehearsed and transferrred to ltm. The recency effect occurs because these are the last words presented. Therefore they are fresh and in stm at the start of recall . Therefore this supports the stm store and the important of rehearsal .
What was the case of HM?
He had his hippocampus removed in surgery he was affected by losing his memory of over a decade and his seizure stopped and IQ became higher. It supports msm maintenance rehearsal remember words. It’s a limitation of msm because procedural memory relays on cerebellum .
What did baddeley find about Clive wearing ?
A virus attacked and destroyed his hippocampus and also damaged other areas of Cortex. Lives in a snapshot of time, constantly believing he has just woken up from unconsciousness. Normal stm but unable to lay down new information in ltm, some ltm left unaffected as remover who his wife is and other skills like playing piano and conducting . Msm shows that stm is unable to transfer info without elaborative rehearsal .
What was hm reported by blakemore 1988?
Hm suffered very bad epilepsy from age 16. At 27 he had surgery to remove his hippocampus from both sides of his brain this cured the epilepsy but had terrible side effects. He had no problem recalling information stored prior to the surgery but severe memory deficits for events happening after surgery. Similar to Clive wearing normal STM, eg could hold verbal info for 15 seconds and longer if slowed to rehearse but could not transfers it to Ltm store and if he could he was unable to access and retrieve it his memory for new motor skills seems unaffected. Two separate store different long term memory types.
What was KF reported by shallice and Warrington 1970?
KF is one of the few cases of damage to stm . KF had a motor bike accident which damaged the left parieto- occipital region of the brain. Ltm recall was unaffected but stm badly affected e.g. could only recall 1-2 items in digit spam task instead of usual 7+ /-2 on recent effect tasks recall was as low one item . Some stm tasks performed better than others. STM was badly affected meaning stm and ltm are different store which support msm.
What did Engel tulving propose?
That there were three types of ltm
Episodic memory
Semantic memory
Procedural memory
And contained different types of information
What is implicit long term memory ?
Acquired and used unconsciously like procedural memory like riding a bike you learned it once and rembered since .
What is declarative long term memory?
Involves conscious recollection of particular facts and events. Like semantic which contains knowledge of the world and episodic events or episodes conscious effort to recall them like our memory of our first school day. Procedural is more resistant to forgetting
Clinical evidence evaluation
Several cases of patients who have suffered brain damage to their hippocampus and have memory deficits . Clive wearing and hm episodic memory in both these men was severely impaired a consequence of amnesia . They had great difficulty recalling events that had happened for their past. However, their semantic memory was relatively unaffected. For example, they still known the meaning of words. So , Hm would not be able to recall stroking a dog an hour earlier or having owned a dog in the past but he didn’t need the concept of a dog explained to him over and over. Their procedural memory’s were also intact. They could both tie there shoelaces walk and talk. In Clive wearing ‘s case he could still read music and play the piano . This is evidence for different types of long term memory because it showed he understood the concept of a dog but not that he owned one in the past. It suggest that episodic memories and semantic memories are kept in different ltm stores.
Neuro imaging evidence for different types of long term memory
There is also evidence from the brain scan studies that different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain. For example tulving 1994 got their partcipants to perform various tasks while their brains were scanned using pet scans. They found that episodic and semantic memories were recalled from, and area of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. This is divided into areas, one on each side hemisphere of the brain. The left was involved in recalling semantic memories. Episodic memories were recalled from the right prefrontal cortex. Procedural memories were recalled from the cerebellum and the basal ganglia . This is a strength as brain scans are scientifically credible as its provide objective evidence. The brain scan suggest that the types of long term memory are recalled from different areas in the brain and are stored differently.
Different types of long term memory has real life application Evaluation
Being able to identify different aspects of ltm allows psychologists to target certain kinds of memory to better people’s lives. Belleville 2006 demonstrated that episodic memories could be improved in older people who had a mild cognitive impairment. The trained participants performed better on a test of episodic memory after training than the control group . Episodic memory is the types of memory most often affected middle cognitive impairment , which highlights the benefit of distinguishing the different types of long term memory. Benefits are you can target and improve them differently and just focus on one type that is lacking
What did baddeley and hitch notice ?
They noticed when performing two visual tasks led to poorer performance but one visual one verbal led to better performance of those tasks. They focused on stm only and believed it was a unitary store like msm. They believed ltm as a more passive store that holds previously learned material for use by the stm when needed.
What is the central executive ?
All decision making and researching takes place to decide where it goes e.g phonological loop or visouspatial sketch pad. Can be coded any way as it’s processed not limited to one sense . It has limited capacity
What is the episodic buffer ?
It was added in 2000, it intergrates all information from the central executive, phonological loop, visual spatial sketch pad and temporary storage space for central executive. Coding is modality free can process anyway not just one sense and has limited capacity of four chunks .
What is the phonological loop?
It goes off sound and deals with auditory information and the order in which it arrives. Its capacity is two seconds of information and is coded acoustically.
What is visuo- spatial sketchpad ?
Hold visual information like what things look like and spatial where it is visual cache (data) and inner scribe arrangement of objects in the visual field. It’s coded visually and holds three to four objects.
Evaluation of working memory model is word length effect
- it seems that the phonological loop holds the amount of information that you can say in 1.5-2 seconds baddeley et al 1975
- this makes it hard to remember a list of long word such as association and representative compared to shorter words like harm and twice and therefore inhibits rehearsal for longer words.
- this effect disappears if an articulatory suppression task is given . These findings support wmm as remembering shorter words better supports wmm because it shows that on the phonological loops you. Can fit more shorter words than longer words.
What is dual task performance found by baddeley, grant , wight and Thompson evaluation?
Participants were given a visual tracking task : track a moving line with a pointer at the same the were given one of two tasks :
1 to describe the toangle of the letter f which system did this task involve
2
What’s the research support for working memory model by shallice and Warrington ?
Patient KF suffered brain damage after this damage , KFS impairment was mainly for verbal information - his memory for visual information was largely unaffected this suggest the phonological loop short term memory store is different too visual . However as this was found in a lab experiment it lacks ecological validity and mundane realism as participants may alter behaviour as they are aware that they are being observed due to demand characteristics and social desireability bias.
