Memory Flashcards
Lifted and Palmer
Aim- to see if asking leading questions affects the accuracy of recall.
Method: participants were shown films of car accidents some were asked “how fast was the car travelling when it hit the other car?”
Others were asked
“How fast was the car going when it smashed into the other car?”
Results: those who heard the word “smashed” gave a higher speed estimate than those who heard the word “hit” .
Conclusion: leading questions will affect the accuracy of recall. The word “smashed” led participants to believe the car was travelling faster
Bruce and young
Aim- to see if familiarity affects the accuracy of identifying faces.
Method: psychology lecturers were caught on security cameras at the entrance of a building. Participants were asked to identify the faces seen on the security camera tape from a series of high-quality photographers.
Results: the lecturers students made more correct identifications than other students and experienced police officers.
Conclusion: previous familiarity helps when identifying faces.
Underwood and postman
Aim:to see if learning interferes with previous learning.
Method:participant were divided into 2 groups:
Group a- were asked to learn a list of words (cat-tree) (candle-table) they were then asked to learn a second list of word pairs (cat-glass) (candle-whale).
Group b- were asked to only learn the first list of word pairs.
Results- group b’s recall of the first list was more accurate than that of group a.
Conclusion: new learning interfered with participants ability to recall the first list.
Geiselman et al
Aim- to see if reinstating the context of an event will affect the accuracy of witnesses accounts.
Method: participants were shown a police training film of a violent crime. Two days later they were interviewed about what they had seen. For half of the participants the context of the event was recreated during the interview. For the other half of the participants standard police interview techniques were used.
Results- the participants who had the context recreated more accurate facts about the crime than the other participants.
Conclusion- recreating context during interviews will increase the accuracy of recall. This method is known as the cognitive interviews.
Cohan
Aim- to see if stereotypes can affect memory.
Method-participants were shown a video of a man and a women eating in a restaurant. Half of the participants were were told that the women was a waitress. The other participants were told she was a librarian. Later all the participants were asked to describe the women’s behaviour and personality.
Results- two groups of participants have entirely different descriptions which matched the stereotypes of a waitress or a librarian.
Conclusion- stereotypes affect the accuracy of accounts of people.
Peterson and Peterson
Aim- to see if rehearsal was necessary to hold information in the short term store.
Method- participants were given sets of three letters to remember such as (Mtw) but were immediately asked to count backwards in three out loud for different lengths of time. This was done to prevent rehearsal participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
Results- the results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
Conclusion- it was concluded that we cannot hold information in the short term store unless we rehearse it.
Murdock
Aim-to provide evidence to support the multi-store explanation of memory.
Method- participants had to learn a list of words presented one at a time, for two seconds per word and then real the words in any order.
Results- the words at the end of the list were recalled first (known as the recency effect). Words from the beginning of the first list were also recalled quite well (known as the privacy effect). But the middle words were not recalled very well at all.
Conclusion- this provides evidence for separate short term and long-term stores.
