Memory 3 Flashcards
Who is Ebbinghaus and what has he contributed to the understanding of memory?
- psychologist researching LTM
- studied his own memory for 2 years
- used nonsense syllables
- created list using nonsense syllables
- task was to master the list
- this meant to be able to recall list perfectly
how many times did Ebbinghaus read the nonsense word list?
until he could recall the list perfectly
what is Ebbinghaus measure of memory?
learning a list of non-words and then learning them again later to see how much he needed to repeat the list until he had learnt it perfectly
What is Ebbinghaus’ forgetting function?
- this is a graph that shows how learned information slips out of memories over time
- initially, forgetting is very fast
- overtime, rate of forgetting slows
- NEVER HITS 0
- idea that there is always some learning left
What did Wixted (1990,1997) do with Ebbinghaus data?
- analysed wide range of forgetting functions from Ebbinghaus onwards
- concluded they can be described as power functions
- memory performances reduces as a power function over time
- suggests that although initial forgetting is quite fast, memory is almost never completely degraded
what memory is being test? Implicit or Explicit?
Implicit
this is because Ebbinghaus is learning a new list, he does not have to relate it to previous learning.
It just happens that learning is faster if encountered list previously
Outline Bahrick (1984) study into remembering information from school
- tested 733 people’s memory for Spanish taught 50 years ago
- gave ppts spanish test
- compared original scores with scores done later
What did Bahrick (1974) find from his study?
- over first couple years = lots of forgetting
- after couple years, forgetting levelled off
- there is still lots of saving even 50 years later
How does duration from sensory and STM contrast with LTM?
- sensory and STM thought to last for seconds and then gone forever
- LTM duration = information is learnt for life, even though in principle you do forget
How did Standing (1973) test the capacity for STM?
- showed ppts pictures or words
- wanted to see how many items ppts could remember
- had ppts look at slide of word or picture for 5 seconds
- had ppts study between 20 - 10,000 items
- two days later ppts completed memory test
What was Standing’s (1973) findings and what does this show about memory?
- found that even with learning 10,000 items, performance still reached 83%
- as number of items to remember increases memory does get worse BUT not getting linearly worse
- LTM is capable of encoding everything you experience
- LTM is limitless
What does change blindness show us about visual memory?
- shows that the fact we cannot spot the difference between the two photos shows we do not have full representation of image in visual memory
What is meant by the paradox of visual memory?
we have studies showing LTM duration = forever, capacity = infinite
BUT
also have studies showing STM capacity = nonexistent and doesn’t last longer than 100ms
outline Horowitz & Wolfe (1998) visual search task
- visual search task
- ppts view an array of L’s and asked to search for T’s
- ppts got 83ms to look and then array is hidden
- stimuli would move around
- ppts had to spot T hidden amongst L
- the more L, the longer it took to spot
- this was regardless of whether stimuli stayed the same or moved around
What does Konkle et al. (2010) find with regards to the best memory for pictures when studied ?
found best memory for pictures when studied items were conceptually distinctive
