Memory Flashcards
Murdock’s Serial Position Curve Study (Aim)
To explore how the position of an item in a list effects the likelihood of it being recalled.
Murdock’s Serial Position Curve Study (Method)
Words from the 4,000 most common words in English were chosen randomly.
Participants listened to 20 word lists with 10 to 40 words on them.
They recalled the words after each list.
Murdock’s Serial Position Curve Study (Results)
Recall was related to the position of the word in the list.
Murdock found higher recall for the first few words (primacy effect) and the last words (recency effect) in the list, compared to recall of the words in the middle of the list.
Murdock’s Serial Position Curve Study (Conclusion)
This shows the serial position effect, i.e. the position of a word determines the likelihood of recall. these results support the MSM as the first few words were rehearsed, so are in LTM, and the last few words are in STM.
Murdock’s Serial Position Curve Study (Evaluation)
- A strength of the study relates to it being carried out in laboratory conditions.
Things like familiarity of the words could be controlled.
Therefore, we can be more certain that it was the position of the words that affected recall. - A weakness of the study is that the task was artificial.
Lists of words were used which relates to just one type of memory.
Therefore, the results don’t relate to how we use our memories in other ways, such as for personal events.
Baddeley’s Study of Encoding (Aim)
To see if there was a difference in the type of encoding used in short-term (STM) and long-term memory (LTM).
Baddeley’s Study of Encoding (Method)
Four groups were given 12 sets of five words to remember.
Group A had similar sounding words, Group B had dissimilar sounding words, Group C had words with similar meanings, Group D had words with dissimilar meanings.
Groups A and B were asked to recall their words immediately (testing STM) whilst Groups C and D were asked to recall their words after 20 minutes (testing LTM).
Baddeley’s Study of Encoding (Results)
Group A recalled fewer words than Group B. Group C recalled fewer words than Group D.
Words with similar sounds were more poorly recalled than words with different sounds in STM.
Words with similar meanings were more poorly recalled than words with different meanings in LTM.
Baddeley’s Study of Encoding (Conclusion)
This shows STM is encoded by sound and LTM by meaning.
Baddeley’s Study of Encoding (Evaluation)
- A strength of this study is that extraneous variables were controlled well.
For example, hearing was controlled by giving participants a hearing test.
Therefore we can be more certain that the type of words used was the factor that affected participants’ recall. - A weakness is that LTM may not have been tested in the study.
Waiting 20 minutes before recall doesn’t mean the words are in the LTM.
This may mean that the conclusion that LTM encodes acoustically lacks validity.
Multi-Store Model of Memory
States that there are three memory stores and each has different encoding, capacity and duration. Information moves between these stores through either attention or rehearsal.
Multi-Store Model of Memory (Evaluation)
- A strength is that there is support for the existence of different memory stores.
Baddeley’s study of encoding shows that STM and LTM encode information differently.
This shows the two types of memory have qualitative differences. - A weakness is the model is too simple as it suggests we only have one STM and one LTM.
Research shows STM is divided into visual and acoustic stores, and LTM into episodic, semantic and procedural memory.
So, memory is more complex than the model proposes.
Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts (Aim)
To see how memory is reconstructed when people are asked to recall an unfamiliar story – in particular a story from a different culture.
Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts (Method)
Participants were shown the War of the Ghosts story.
They recalled it after 15 minutes, then after weeks, months and years.
Bartlett recorded the recall.
Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts (Results)
Participants changed the story.
They left out information that they were less familiar with. The story was shortened and phrases were changed to those used in the participants’ own culture.
Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts (Conclusion)
The study shows that we use our knowledge of social situations to reconstruct memory, as details of the story were invented to improve meaning.
Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts (Evaluation)
- A weakness relates to a lack of control.
For example, participants were not told that accurate recall was important. Other studies found recall was better when participants were told this.
This suggests that recall is more accurate than Bartlett concluded. - Another weakness is that Bartlett’s own beliefs may have affected the results.
He analysed the recollections himself. His belief that recall would be affected by cultural expectations may have biased the interpretation of the results.
Therefore, we cannot fully trust the conclusion.
Theory of Reconstructive Memory
The War of the Ghosts study demonstrated that memory is an active process. People remember overall meaning of events and, when retrieving information, they rebuild.
Memory is inaccurate
We do not have exact recall.
Elements are missing and memories are not an accurate representation of what happened.
Reconstruction
We record small pieces of information in long-term memory.
During recall we recombine them to tell the whole story. Each time, the elements are combined slightly differently.
Social and cultural influences
The way that information is stored and recalled is affected by social and cultural expectations, like ‘going fishing’ rather than ‘hunting seals’.
Effort after meaning
We focus on the meaning of events and make an effort to understand the meaning to make sense of the parts of the story.
Long-Term Memory (Evaluation)
- This research is supported by case studies of amnesic patients.
For example, Clive Wearing lost most of his episodic memory but not his procedural memory as he could still play the piano.
This again shows that there are different types of LTM. - A weakness is that distinctive types of LTM are difficult to separate.
There isn’t a clear difference between episodic and semantic memories because memories are usually a mixture of types.
Therefore having separate types of LTM may be an oversimplification.
Accuracy of memory (Interference)
If two memories compete with each other, one memory may prevent us from accessing the other memory.
McGeoch and McDonald study of Interference (Aim)
To see whether the accuracy of recalling a list of words would be affected by a competing set of words.
McGeoch and McDonald study of Interference (Method)
Participants learned a list of ten words and then were shown a new list.
There were five different new lists: words with the same meanings as the first list, words with opposite meanings, unrelated words, nonsense syllables, three-digit numbers, or no new list was given.
McGeoch and McDonald study of Interference (Results)
When participants recalled the initial list of words, their memory was affected by the new list.
The effect was strongest when the new list had words with similar meanings to those in the first list.
McGeoch and McDonald study of Interference (Conclusion)
This shows that interference from a second set of information reduces the accuracy of memory.
Interference is strongest when the two sets of information are similar.
McGeoch and McDonald study of Interference (Evaluation)
- A strength of the study was that there was high control.
Techniques like counterbalancing were used to reduce the impact that learning the lists in the same order would have on the results.
This means that the study was less biased. - A weakness of the study is that it does not reflect real-life memory activity.
We don’t often have to remember lists of words or very similar things.
This means that the conclusion about the effect of interference is limited because of its artificiality.
Accuracy of Memory (Context)
Other things that are present at the time of learning act as a cue for recall. This improves the accuracy of memory.
Godden and Baddeley’s study of Context (Aim)
Godden and Baddeley aimed to see if context improved recall. They used ‘underwater’ (wet) and ‘on the beach’ (dry) as the two contexts.
Godden and Baddeley’s study of Context (Method)
18 Participants who were deep-sea divers were recruited. They were divided into four groups. They were given 36 unrelated words either on a beach or under 10 feet of water.
All of the groups were given the same list of words to learn:
- Group 1 had to learn underwater and recall underwater
- Group 2: had to learn underwater and recall on the shore
- Group 3 had to learn on the shore and recall on the shore
- Group 4 had to learn on the shore and recall underwater
Godden and Baddeley’s study of Context (Results)
Groups 1 and 3 recalled 40% more words than groups 2 and 4. When a person is in the same environment for learning and recall, their memories were more accurate.
Godden and Baddeley’s study of Context (Conclusion)
Recall of information will be better if it happens in the same context that
learning takes place.
Godden and Baddeley’s study of Context (Evaluation)
- A weakness relates to the research using lists of words.
Research with more complex materials in real life produced better recall.
This suggests that context does not affect memory as much as Baddeley suggested. - A weakness is that the study was unrealistic as participants recalled the words almost immediately.
This does not relate to scenarios like exams where the gap between learning and recall is longer.
Therefore research only tells us about short-term recall.
Accuracy of Memory (False Memory)
A memory for something that did not happen but a person thinks it is a true memory.
Loftus and Pickrell’s study of False Memory (Aim)
to see if false memories could be created in participants through suggestion.
Loftus and Pickrell’s study of False Memory (Method)
Participants were given four stories about childhood events of which three were true and one false (getting lost in a shopping mall was the false one).
The story was created with the help of a relative so that it sounded realistic.
Participants read each story and wrote what they remembered.
Loftus and Pickrell’s study of False Memory (Results)
68% of the true episodes were remembered.
Six out of 24 (25%) of participants recalled the false story fully or partially. The rest had no memory of it.
Loftus and Pickrell’s study of False Memory (Conclusion)
The research suggests that the mere act of imagining the event has the
potential to create and implant a false memory in a person. This affects the accuracy of
memory.
Loftus and Pickrell’s study of False Memory (Evaluation)
- The research raises ethical concerns.
Even though participants were debriefed, they may be left with implanted false memories which lingered after the study was finished.
Therefore the study may have caused psychological harm, an ethical issue. - A strength is that this research has implications for eyewitness testimony (EWT).
The results suggest that police questioning could accidentally implant false memories.
Therefore this research has been beneficial in explaining why EWT might be unreliable.
