Memory

Question 1

What is capacity?

Answer 1

How much data can be held in a memory store

The capacity of STM can be assessed using digit span. Joseph Jacobs used this technique to assess STM capacity.

Question 2

What did jacob’s find when using digit span?

Answer 2

He found that the average span for digits was 9.3 items and 7.3 letters.
Jacobs suggested that it was easier to recall numbers than letters because there are only 9 numbers but 26 letters.

Question 3

What did George Miller say about capacity?

Answer 3

George Miller concluded that the span of immediate memory is around 7 items.
He noted that people can count 7 dots flashed on a screen. The same is true for musical notes, letters and even words.
Miller also found that people can recall five words as well as five letter - we chunk things together so we can remember more.

Question 4

How did Cowan evaluate capacity?

Answer 4

Cowan (2001) reviewed a variety of studies on the capacity of STM and concluded that STM is likely to be limited to about 4 chunks.

This suggests that STM isn’t as extensive as we first thought as research on the capacity of STM for visual information found that 4 items were the limit.

This means that the lower end of Miller’s range is more appropriate which is five.

Question 5

How did Simon evaluate capacity?

Answer 5

It seems that the size of the chunk effects how many chunks you can remember.

Simon (1974 ) found that certain people had shorter memory span for larger chunks such as eight word phrases and smaller chunks such as one syllable words.

Question 6

What is duration?

Answer 6

Duration is a measure of how long a memory lasts before it is no longer available

Question 7

Long- term memory duration research:

Answer 7

Harry Bahrick tested 400 people from 17-74 on their memory.
They did a photo-recognition tests on 50 students using their high school yearbooks. They were asked to recall the people in the book.

Those tested within 15 years of graduation got 90% right, at 48 years it dropped to 70%. Free recall was 60% after 15 years and 30% after 48 years.

So as time goes on people began to forget the people in their yearbook which shows long term memory deteriorates over time.

Question 8

Short- term memory duration research:

Answer 8

Lloyd and Margaret Peterson (1959) carried out an experiment on 24 students, over 8 trials.
They gave each participant 3 constants and 3 numbers to remember.
They then asked the participant to recall these after period of 3,6,9 12,15, 18 seconds
On average participants were 90% were correct after 3 seconds, 20% after 9 seconds, and 2% correct after 18 seconds.
This suggests that STM is incredibly short as it can only really last 18 seconds without forms of rehearsal

Question 9

Evaluate duration testing being artificial:

Answer 9

Testing STM was artificial:
Trying to memorise consonant syllables does not truly reflect most everyday memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.

However, we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless things, such as groups of numbers (phone numbers) or letters (postcodes). This means that the study does have some relevance to everyday life.

Question 10

What is coding?

Answer 10

Coding is the way information is changed so that it can be stored in memory.

Information enters the brain via the senses.
It is then stored in various forms such as visual codes (picture) acoustic codes (sound) or semantic codes (the meaning of an experience).

Question 11

Research into coding:

Answer 11

Words are acoustically similar but semantically different; cat, mat
Semantically similar but acoustically different: large, big

Baddeley used word lists like those above to test the effects of acoustic and semantic similarity on STM and LTM.
He found that participants had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in STM but not in LTM, whereas semantically similar words posed little problem for STMs but not led to muddled LTMs.

This suggests that STM is largely encoded acoustically whereas LTM is largely encoded semantically.

Question 12

Evaluate Baddeley’s research into coding

Answer 12

Baddeley may not have tested LTM

In Baddeley’s study, STM was tested by asking participants to recall a word list immediately after hearing it. LTM was tested by waiting 20 minutes.
It is questionable as to whether this is really testing LTM.

Question 13

Evaluate how LTM may not be exclusively semantic in coding

Answer 13

LTM seems to be semantic but is not always. Frost (1972) illustrated that long-term recall was also related to visual categories.

Nelson and Rothbart (1972) found evidence of acoustic coding in LTM. This means coding in STM or LTM is not simply acoustic or semantic, it can vary according to circumstances.

Question 14

Describe the Multistore Model

Answer 14

1) Environmental stimuli creates a sensory memory
2) Sensory memory has limited capacity and duration
3) Attention moves a memory from sensory memory to STM
4) STM has limited capacity and duration
5) Maintenance rehearsal keeps a memory short term
6) Elaborative rehearsal causes a STM to become a LTM
7) LTM has potentially unlimited capacity and duration
8) To retrieve a LTM it must go through STM

Question 15

What are the strengths of the Multistore Model?

Answer 15

• Controlled lab studies support the existence of separate long - and short-term storage, which is the basis of the MSM
• Studies using brain-scanning techniques have also demonstrated a difference in STM and LTM:
• Beardsley (1997 ) found that the prefrontal cortex is active during STM but not LTM. But Squire (1992 ) found the hippocampus is active during LTM but not STM

Question 16

What are the limitations of the Multistore Model?

Answer 16

The MSM suggests that both STM and LTM are single ‘unitary’ stores. However research does not support this.

Working memory (STM) actually is divided into  number of qualitatively different stores, i.e. it isn't just a difference in terms of how much the memories hold or how long they last but a difference in terms of the kind of memory that is stored there.
The same is true for LTM. Research shows there are a number of qualitatively different kinds of LTM, and each behaves differently.

For example, maintenance rehearsal can explain long-term storage in semantic memory (memory for knowledge about the world) but doesn’t explain long-term episodic memories (memories for things that you experienced).

Question 17

Name different parts of The working model of memory

Answer 17

• Central executive
• Phonological loop
• Episodic buffer
• Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Question 18

Describe the central executive

Answer 18

The central executives focuses our memory on the most important tasks.
The function of the CE is to direct attention to particular tasks, determining at any time how the brain’s ‘resources’ are allocated to tasks.
The ‘resources’ are the three slave systems: Phonological loop, Visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer.

Question 19

Describe the phonological loop

Answer 19

This has a limited capacity and deals with auditory information. It also maintains the order of information.

Baddeley (1986) subdivided this loop into:

• The phonological store- holds the words you hear, like an inner ear
• An articulatory process- used for words that are heard or seen. These words are repeated silently. This is a form of maintenance rehearsal.

Question 20

Describe the visuo-spatial sketchpad

Answer 20

The visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSS) is used when you have to plan a spatial task (like getting from one room to another).
Visual and/or spatial information is temporarily stored here.
Visual information is what things look like. Spatial information is physical relationship between things.

Visuo sketchpad can be divided into;

• A visual cache which stores information about visual items, e.g. form and colour.
• And an inner scribe which stores the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Question 21

Describe the episodic buffer

Answer 21

Baddeley added this because he realised the model needed a general store.

The central executive has no storage capacity therefore there was no space to hold information that relates to both visual and acoustic information.
The episodic buffer is an extra storage system that has limited capacity, just like all other working memory units.

The episodic buffer integrates information from the other working memory units and maintains a sense of time sequencing. It sends information to LTM.

Question 22

What are the strengths of the Working model of memory?

Answer 22

Studies of individuals with brain damage support the working memory model.
Shallice and Warrington (1970) studied a man KF whose short-term forgetting of auditory information was much greater than that of visual stimuli.
In addition his auditory problems were limited to verbal material such as letters and digits but not meaningful sounds.
This suggests separate slave systems.

Question 23

What are the limitations of The working model of memory?

Answer 23

Psychologists think that the central executive is too vague because they ask what it actually is.

Some critics say that the notion of single central executive is not correct and that it is probably built up of lots of different components.

Eslinger and Damsaio (1985) studied EVR - They found he performed well on tests of reasoning suggesting his central executive was intact.
However he had poor decision making which denotes that his central executive was not wholly intact.

The account offered is unsatisfactory because it doesn’t explain anything

Question 24

What are the three types of LTM?

Answer 24

1) Episodic memories
2) Semantic memories
3) Procedural memories

Question 25

What is an episodic memory?

Answer 25

Personal memories of events - This kind of memory includes contextual details plus emotional tone.

This kind of memory is concerned with personal experience such as a family holiday.
It is remembering things as if they were an actual episodes in your life.

Question 26

What is a semantic memory?

Answer 26

Shared memories for facts and knowledge.
Knowledge about the world instead of personal memories - grass is green
Memories may begin as episodic memories but over time gradually lose association to events.

Question 27

What is a procedural memory?

Answer 27

• Memory for how to do things, for example riding a bike or learning how to read.
• Such memories are automatic as a result of repeated practise
• Often if you think too much about such procedural memories it prevents them from acting it out

Question 28

Strengths of different types of LTM

Answer 28

Research using brain scanning techniques, shows that different parts of the brain are active when the different kinds of LTM are active.

Episodic memory is associated with the Hippocampus and other parts of the Temporal Lobe as well as the Frontal Lobe.
This is the same as Semantic Memory.

Procedural memory is associated with the cerebellum which is involved in fine motor skills and is part of the motor cortex.

Question 29

Limitations of different types of LTM

Answer 29

The relationship between episodic and semantic memories raises the question of whether episodic memories are a gateway to forming semantic memories or whether it is sometimes possible to form semantic memories independently.

Question 30

What does interference mean?

Answer 30

An explanation for forgetting in terms of one memory disrupting the ability to recall another. This is most likely to occur when the two memories have similarity.

Question 31

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 31

Retroactive interference is when more recent information gets in the way of trying to recall older information.

An example would be calling your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend by your new boyfriend/girlfriend’s name.

Question 32

What is proactive interference?

Answer 32

Proactive interference is when old information prevents the recall of newer information.

An example of this is telephone numbers.
When trying to recall a new phone number, the old phone number you have previously had for years could proactively interfere with the recall,

Question 33

Limitations of interference

Answer 33

There is considerable evidence that supports both retroactive and proactive interference.

However, most of the research has been lab-based and often use nonsense words.

The use of nonsense words means that it may not relate to everyday memory. People aren’t as motivated to remember these nonsense words.
Low ecological validity.

Question 34

Strengths of interference

Answer 34

McGeoch and McDonald (1931) gave participants a list of subjects (List A) to remember for 10 mins, they then had a resting interval of 10 mins in which they learnt list B.

If list B was synonyms of List A then recall was 12%. If List B was nonsense then recall was 26%. If list B was a list numbers then recall was 37%

This shows that interference is strongest when the lists are most similar.
Only inference, not decay can explain these things.

Question 35

What is retrieval failure?

Answer 35

Forgetting a LTM is mainly due to retrieval failure (lack of accessibility rather than availability).

This is the failure to find an item of information because you have insufficient cues.

Question 36

How does State-dependent Forgetting cause retrieval failure?

Answer 36

The mental state you are in at the time of learning can also act as a cue - state depending forgetting.
Goodwin asked male volunteers to remember lists of words. Some of them were drunk and some were sober.

These participants were asked to recall these words after 24 hours when some were sober but others had to get drunk again.
The recall scores suggests that information learned when drunk is more available when in the same state later.

Question 37

Evaluate retrieval failure

Answer 37

James Naime claims that the relationship between encoding cues and later retrieval is a correlation rather than a cause. This means that the cues do not cause retrieval but are just associated with it.

Smith (1979) demonstrated that just thinking about the room where you did your original learning (mental reinstatement) was as effective as actually being in the same room at the time of retrieval.

Question 38

What is misleading information?

Answer 38

Supplying information that may lead a witness’ memory for a crime to be altered.

Question 39

Outline Loftus and Palmer experiment 1 procedure:

Answer 39

Procedure:
- 45 students were shown seven films of different traffic accidents.

• After each film the participants were given a questionnaire which asked them to describe the accident and then answer a series of specific questions about it.
• There was one critical question: ‘how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’
• One group of participants was given this question. The other four groups were given the verbs smashed, collided, bumped or contracted in place of the word hit.
• This critical question was a leading question because it suggested the answers a participant might give.

Question 40

What were the findings from Loftus and Palmer experiment?

Answer 40

The mean speed estimate increased as each verb became more serious, i.e contacted - 31.8, bumped - 38.1 and smashed - 40.8.

This demonstrates that leading questions affect the response given by participants.

Question 41

Outline the Loftus and Palmer experiment 2 procedure:

Answer 41

The leading question could bias participants’ responses or cause information to be altered before it is stored.

For this test, a new set of participants were divided into three groups and shown a film of a car accident lasting one minute. They then again asked questions about speed.

A week later, the participants were asked 10 questions about the accident including “Did you see any broken glass?”
There was no broken glass in the film, but those who thought the car was driving faster may be more likely to think there was broken glass.

Question 42

What were the findings from the Loftus and Palmer experiment 2?

Answer 42

When asked if there was broken glass, 16 of the participants who were given the verb smashed said yes whilst 34 said no. With those who were given the verb hit, 7 of them said yes and 43 said no. And those who were given the verb control, 6 said yes and 44 said no.

The findings show that the leading question did change the actual memory a participant had for the event.

Question 43

Evaluate misleading information - response bias:

Answer 43

Loftus and Palmer found that leading questions changed the original memory; however, a study by Bekerian and Bowers suggested that it might be a response bias after all. They compared participant performance in two conditions.

In condition one, participants were given a set of questions each matched with data that was either consistent or inconsistent, and later asked the same question in a different order. Participants were less accurate on the later questions if they were given inconsistent data.

In the second condition, participants were given the same task, but this time the set of questions was presented in the same order and now there are no difference between having been given consistent or inconsistent data.

This suggests that the order of the questions had a significant effect and therefore memory change was due to response bias not storage.

Question 44

What is anxiety?

Answer 44

An unpleasant emotional state that is often accompanied by increased heart rate and rapid breathing i.e physiological arousal.

Question 45

What are the positive Effects of Anxiety on Eyewitness Testimonies?

Answer 45

There is an argument that says high anxiety creates more enduring and accurate memories.
- For example, there is an argument that suggests it would be adaptive to remember events that are emotionally important so that you could identify similar situations in the future and recall how to respond.

• Christianson and Hubinette (1993) found evidence of enhanced recall when they questioned 58 real witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden.
  Those witnesses who were most anxious had the best recall of all. This study generally shows that anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall.
• Christianson concluded that memory for negative emotional events is better than for neutral events, at least for the central detail

Question 46

What are the negative Effects of Anxiety on Eyewitness Testimonies?

Answer 46

Johnson and Scott tested how the effect of weapon focus on witness accounts. The weapon focus effect is that the weapon in the criminal’s hand distracts from other features reducing accuracy.

They asked participants to sit in a waiting room where they overheard an argument in an adjoining room and then saw a man run through carrying either a pen covered in grease or a knife covered in blood. Participants were then asked to identify the man from a line-up.
Accuracy was 49% in the pen condition and 33% in the knife condition. So the experiment supported the idea of the weapon focus effect as the more serious weapon reduced accuracy

Question 47

Evaluate anxiety:

Answer 47

Pickel (1998) proposed that the reduced accuracy of identification from the weapon focus effect could be due to surprise rather than anxiety.

To test this she arranged for participants to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying scissors (high threat, low surprise), handgun (high threat, high surprise), wallet (low threat low surprise) and a raw chicken (low threat high surprise).

Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions rather than high threat. This supports the view that the weapon focus effect is related to surprise rather than anxiety.

Question 48

What are the 4 stages in a cognitive interview?

Answer 48

1) Mental reinstatement
2) Report everything
3) Change the order
4) Change the perspective

Question 49

Outline ‘mental reinstatement’:

Answer 49

One of the principle techniques of the CI is where the interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate both the physical and psychological environment of the original incident.
The interviewer might say: what have you been doing, how was your day?, what was the weather like.

The aim is to make memory successful. People often can not access memories that are there. They need appropriate contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories

Question 50

Outline ‘report everything’:

Answer 50

The interviewer encourages the reporting of every single detail of the event without editing anything out. Witnesses should not leave anything out even if they believe it is insignificant.

For example, the interviewer may say : ‘You may think that I already know this information’, ‘Please do not leave anything out’,

Memories are interconnected with one another so that recollection of one item may then cue a whole lot of other memories. And the recollection of small details can be pieced together from different witnesses to form a clearer picture of an event.

Question 51

Outline ‘change order’:

Answer 51

The interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident. For example, by reversing the order in which events occurred.

The logic behind this is this is that our recollections are influenced by schemas. For example, if you think about when you went to a restaurant a few weeks ago your recollection will be influenced by your general expectations.

If you have to recall the events starting from the end of the event backwards this prevents your pre-existing schema influencing what you recall.

Question 52

Outline ‘change perspective’:

Answer 52

The interviewee is asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives. This is again done to disrupt the effect that schemes have on recall.

Question 53

What are the strengths of the cognitive interview?

Answer 53

• Effectiveness
  A meta-analysis of 53 studies found that on average an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information generated generated in the cognitive interview, compared with standard interviewing techniques.
• Individual differences.
  The CI is particularly useful when interviewing older eyewitness.
  Negative stereotypes of older people’s memory can make them overly cautious about giving information.
  However, because CI stresses the importance of all information regardless of its perceived relevance can combat this.

Question 54

What are the weaknesses of the cognitive interview?

Answer 54

• Problems with using the CI in practice:
  Kebbell and Wagstaff found problems with using CI in practice.
  The technique takes more time than is often available and police officers prefer to use deliberate strategies to get the specific information that is needed.
  The CI approach takes training and often they do not have the time to train up the officers, as a result CI is not a widespread interview technique.