Memory

Question 1

What is the multi-store model of memory?

Answer 1

This was created by Atkinson and Shiffrin to explain the complexities of our memory. It is made of 3 stores, the Sensory Memory, the short term memory and the long term memory.

Question 2

Ao1: What is our sensory memory?

Answer 2

This is the store that holds information from our senses e.g sound and sight.

Question 3

Ao1: How long does our sensory memory hold information for?

Answer 3

NO more than half second.

Question 4

Ao1: How do we move information from our sensory memory to our short term memory store?

Answer 4

By paying attention to the information.

Question 5

Ao1: What is our short term memory?

Answer 5

Information held temporarily. The duration is around 20 seconds. Its capacity is 7 +/- 2 which was discovered by Miller. Codes information phonologically and acoustically. Maintenance rehearsal is used to keep information in the short term memory.

Question 6

Ao1: How is information moved from our short term memory to our long term memory?

Answer 6

This is done through elaborative rehearsal.

Question 7

Ao1: What is the long term memory?

Answer 7

This is a store which codes information semantically. It has an unlimited duration and capacity compared to the STM.

Question 8

Ao2: What did Peterson and Peterson’s study involve?

Answer 8

They gave participants trigrams to remember and then gave them distraction tasks where they had to count back in 3’s for a different amounts of time.

Question 9

Ao2: What did Peterson and Peterson find?

Answer 9

They found that counting back for 20 seconds or more reduced ability to recall the trigrams.

Question 10

Ao2: How does Peterson and Peterson’s study support the Multi-store model of memory?

Answer 10

The fact that they struggled to recall after being distracted for 20 seconds or more shows that the duration of the Short term memory is 20 seconds as they are unable to keep the trigrams in the short term memory for longer than that.

Question 11

Ao2: How can you evaluate Peterson and Peterson’s study?

Answer 11

It has high control of extraneous variables meaning internal validity is good, this means we can be sure that the IV is causing the change in the DV. HOWEVER it is highly lacking in mundane realism as it is an artificial task and setting therefore making ecological validity low and making findings hard to generalise to real world phenomena.

Question 12

Ao2: What happened to HM?

Answer 12

HM had is hippocampus removed to relieve epileptic symptoms. His STM and LTM was fine but he could not make new long term memories suggesting the pathway between the two had been affected.

Question 13

Ao2: How does the case of HM support the multi-store model of memory?

Answer 13

It supports the idea of functional separation as the two stores on their own were fine but they could no longer interact with each other.

Question 14

Ao2: What is a problem with the case of HM?

Answer 14

It is only a case study meaning it is ungeneralisable to the general population as we do not know they would react in the same way and this would be unethical to repeat. He could also make new procedural memories which suggests that maybe the LTM, or the pathway is much more complicated than the MSM makes out.

Question 15

Ao2: What happened to Clive Wearing?

Answer 15

Clive Wearing had a cold sore virus which spread to his brain. This caused brain damaged and now Clive Wearing lives in a snapshot of time, and the only person he recognises is his wife. He could not form new memories or remember things from the past.

Question 16

Ao2: How does Clive Wearing support the multi-store model of memory?

Answer 16

This shows that once again there is functional separation as his STM is fine but his LTM is not showing how they are separated.

Question 17

Ao2: What is a problem with the case of Clive Wearing?

Answer 17

Clive Wearing had procedural memory of playing the piano. This seems to suggest that maybe the LTM isn’t one single store but made of many as only parts of his LTM were effected.

Question 18

Ao2: What happened to patient KF?

Answer 18

KF had brain damage to his STM and they found that his STM for visual information was fine but his STM for verbal information was very poor.

Question 19

Ao2: What does patient KF suggest about the MSM?

Answer 19

It suggests that actually the STM is not one single store but made of many stores as not all of it was damaged. Baddeley and Hitch’s working memory model supports this.

Question 20

Ao2: Does the multi-store model accurately explain the complexities of our memory?

Answer 20

No, it does not. It fails to recognise that our stores could be made of lots of other stores, therefore it is highly oversimplified. It could be combined with the working memory model which would seem to solve this problem.

Question 21

Ao1: What is the working memory model?

Answer 21

Created by Baddeley and Hitch. It believes that the STM is not one store but many. It is made of the central executive, the phonological loop, the episodic buffer and the visuo-spatial sketchpad.

Question 22

Ao1: What is the central executive?

Answer 22

This directs our attention towards the other components and has a limited capacity. It is like the driver of the STM.

Question 23

Ao1: What is the episodic buffer?

Answer 23

This integrates information from all components to make them into one episode. For example, we see a film as one episode, not sound and video separately.

Question 24

Ao1: What is the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 24

This is where we store all visual and spatial information. This is known as our inner eye. It has a limited capacity.

Question 25

Ao1: What is the phonological loop?

Answer 25

This is were all acoustic information is stored. It is split into two parts, the phonological store known as our inner ear and the articulatory process which is known as our inner voice. The phonological store listens to the articulatory loop. This also has a limited capacity.

Question 26

Ao2: What did Baddeley et al’s study comprise of?

Answer 26

Participants had to person a visual tracking task while either describing the angles on the letter F or performing another verbal task.

Question 27

Ao2: What did Baddeley et al find?

Answer 27

Found that people performed worse when describing the angles on the letter F. This is because both of these activities involve using the Visuo-spatial sketchpad which is one single store, it has limited capacity so cannot function properly.

Question 28

Ao2: What is a problem with Baddeley et al’s study?

Answer 28

This is an artificial task in an artificial environment meaning that they could have just got tired of what they were doing: order effects.

Question 29

Ao2: What are common criticisms of the working memory model?

Answer 29

It fails to address long term memory, which the MSM explains well, meaning it probably isn’t better in this. There is also a problem with the Visuo-spatial sketchpad as blind people from birth do seem to have very good spatial awareness, but the store doesn’t seem to explain why this is as its known as the inner eye.

Question 30

Ao2: What did Logie do in 2000?

Answer 30

Logie addressed the problem with the Visuo-spatial sketchpad by splitting it into two separate stores. He named these the inner scribe and the visual cache.

Question 31

Ao2: How did Baddeley respond to the Visuo-spatial sketchpad problem?

Answer 31

He said himself that the WMM is not finished yet, this means that further adjustments will probably be made in the future to get around this problem.

Question 32

Ao1: What is Levels of Processing?

Answer 32

This was created by Craik and Lockhart to better explain how rehearsal works in the MSM. It focuses more on how we process rather than the process of rehearsal itself.

Question 33

Ao1: What is structural processing?

Answer 33

This is known as shallow processing and uses maintenance rehearsal. This is the processing of things visually.

Question 34

Ao1: What is phonemic processing?

Answer 34

This is known as shallow processing and uses maintenance rehearsal. This is processing things acoustically.

Question 35

Ao1: What is semantic processing?

Answer 35

This is known as deep processing and involves elaborative rehearsal, this is processing things by linking information together.

Question 36

Ao2: What did Craik and Tulving’s experiment comprise of?

Answer 36

They gave participants a list of words and got them to perform different types of processing on each one by asking questions about each word. For example, a question which involved semantic processing was was ‘what would you use this for?’.

Question 37

Ao2: What did Craik and Tulving’s experiment find?

Answer 37

When asked to recall words which involved semantic processing, recall was much higher.

Question 38

Ao2: What does Craik and Tulving’s experiment suggest?

Answer 38

This suggests semantically processing things is a much deeper way of processing information. This is a much better way of explaining processing than the MSM. Also helps to explain how we have flashbulb memories.

Question 39

Ao2: What is wrong with levels of processing?

Answer 39

Many of the research on this is done in artificial settings. This makes results low in ecological validity and makes it hard to generalise to real world phenomena like flashbulb memories. It is also difficult to physically test depth of processing.

Question 40

Ao2: Are the alternatives to the Multi-store model any better?

Answer 40

They are able to explain certain aspects and research which the MSM can’t but both of these do not seem to work on their own as sufficiently explaining the complexities of our memory. Therefore maybe they should be combined with the MSM.

Question 41

Ao1: What is decay theory?

Answer 41

This is when information learnt leaves a trace/engram in our brain. This is then strengthened through rehearsal and moved to our LTM. If engrams are not rehearsed they will fade after 20 seconds and become no longer available.

Question 42

Ao2: How does Peterson and Peterson’s study support decay theory?

Answer 42

Participants were unable to rehearse the trigram, and recall was bad when distraction task lasted longer than 20 seconds, supporting decay theory as the engram has faded.

Question 43

Ao2: Why is decay theory problematic?

Answer 43

This is because we cannot empirically test it, as we cannot physically see the engram fading. This means that it could have been forgotten for another reason like displacement.

Question 44

Ao1: What is displacement theory?

Answer 44

This work on the belief that the STM has a capacity of 7+/-2 items. If the STM memory is full and new information is learnt, it will push out the things last learnt, like placing a book on a full bookshelf.

Question 45

Ao2: What did Waugh and Norman’s study consist of?

Answer 45

They got participants to do a serial probe task.

Question 46

Ao2: What did Waugh and Norman find?

Answer 46

They found that if the probe was near the beginning of the series of numbers then recall was very poor but if it was near the end recall was good.

Question 47

Ao2: How does Waugh and Norman’s study support displacement?

Answer 47

Would expect this to happen if we did forget because of displacement. Couldn’t recall numbers near the beginning as they had been pushed out and were no longer available.

Question 48

Ao2: What did Shallice do and find?

Answer 48

They changed the speed of how the numbers were presented in Waugh and Norman’s study and found that recall was much higher.

Question 49

Ao2: What does Shallice’s variation of Waugh and Norman’s study suggest?

Answer 49

It suggests that it is decay which is making people forget and not displacement as the quicker the numbers are presented the easier they are to recall as the engram has not had time to fade yet.

Question 50

Ao2: What is a problem with Shallice’s variation of Waugh and Norman’s study?

Answer 50

It could just be that because the numbers were being presented so quickly that the participants started chunking the numbers to make them easier to remember which would mean any forgetting would be due to displacement.

Question 51

Ao1: What is interference theory?

Answer 51

This is the theory that we forget things because of information interfering with other information. There are two types of interference. Proactive (forgetting new information because of old information) and retroactive (forgetting old information because of new information.)

Question 52

Ao2: What did Jenkins and Dallenbach do?

Answer 52

They gave participants a list of words to remember. Half the participants then slept for eight ours and the other half went about their daily activities for eight hours.

Question 53

Ao2: What did Jenkins and Dallenbach find?

Answer 53

They found that the people who had gone to sleep had a higher recall.

Question 54

Ao2: What does Jenkins and Dallenbach’s research suggest about interference?

Answer 54

Suggests that retroactive interference was occurring for participants who went about their daily activities as these activities have caused participants to forget the words they learnt.

Question 55

Ao2: What is a strength of Jenkins and Dallenbach’s research?

Answer 55

It has high ecological validity as things completed by the participants are what they would do on a daily basis so there is no way about being able to generalise the results, as it accurately represents how we use our memory.

Question 56

Ao2: What is a weakness of Jenkins and Dallenbach’s research?

Answer 56

It could quite easily be said that the forgetting was just due to a lack of consolidation. We already know that going to sleep will give us time to consolidate any information known, but obviously for the people who did not sleep, they would not have got this time. This would mean forgetting is due to a lack of availability.

Question 57

Ao1: What is cue dependent forgetting?

Answer 57

This is when we forget something because we do not have the correct cues present. These cues can be context dependent, so we would need to be in a similar environment to when we learnt the information. They can also be state dependent, meaning we would need to have similar emotions to when we learnt the information.

Question 58

Ao2: What did Tulving and Psotka do?

Answer 58

They originally tried to support interference by giving participants lists of words in categories to remember and recall.

Question 59

Ao2: What did Tulving and Psotka find?

Answer 59

They found that the more categories there were, the lower the recall which supports interference. However when given cues, recall was high despite the number of categories.

Question 60

Ao2: What does Tulving and Psotka’s research suggest about forgetting in LTM?

Answer 60

It suggests that cue dependent forgetting is far superior to interference as even though interference can occur, if we are given cues we are much more likely to remember, meaning most of our forgetting is just due to not having the correct cues present.

Question 61

Ao2: Does displacement or decay have a bigger impact on forgetting?

Answer 61

Even though Shalxlice’s variation of Waugh and Norman’s study did support decay theory over displacement, it has been found that displacement has a much larger presence than decay and happens much more often showing that it has the bigger impact.

Question 62

Ao2: Which theory for forgetting in the LTM is superior?

Answer 62

Cue dependent forgetting is far superior as interference only involves the forgetting of similar information and cue dependent forgetting is seen much more often.

Question 63

Ao1: What is a flashbulb memory?

Answer 63

A flashbulb memory is like the brain has taken a picture. They are supposed to last a lifetime and be immune to decaying. They are also highly detailed.

Question 64

Ao1: What was Cahill and McGaugh’s theory about flashbulb memories?

Answer 64

They believed that these were down to an experience of high emotion at the time of the memory, which caused hormones to fluctuate. This is evolutionary as for example if I was bitten by a bear high emotions would cause a fluctuation in hormones which would make the memory stick in my head so I do not go near bears again.

Question 65

Ao2: What did Cahill and McGaugh do to rats to investigate flashbulb memories?

Answer 65

They injected rats with adrenaline and placed them in a maze. They then let the adrenaline wear off and placed them in a maze again to test their recall.

Question 66

Ao2: What did Cahill and McGaugh find in their investigation?

Answer 66

They found that rats who had been injected with adrenaline had a much better recall of the maze than rats who had not been injected.

Question 67

Ao2: What does Cahill and McGaugh’s research suggest about flashbulb memories?

Answer 67

It suggests that they are different to normal memories as they are caused by a high amount of hormones.

Question 68

Ao2: What is wrong with Cahill and McGaugh’s research?

Answer 68

The high emotion is caused by something artificial, it is not a real emotion caused by the brain, making the research seem quite meaningless. Having the injection could also have been quite traumatic for the rat which is what caused high emotion rather than the adrenaline. It is also ungeneralisable to humans as the study is done on rats. They cannot apply findings to humans as we do not know that our minds would react the same.

Question 69

Ao2: What did Conway et al do?

Answer 69

Investigated flashbulb memories by focusing on Margaret Thatcher’s resignation, which was a highly emotional time for many in the UK. They interviewed people straight after and then 11 months later.

Question 70

Ao2: What did Conway et al find?

Answer 70

They found that there was an 86% recall of the event compared to 29% for people in other countries.

Question 71

Ao2: What does Conway et al’s investigation suggest about flashbulb memories?

Answer 71

That they are a result of high emotion as obviously people in other countries wouldn’t have cared as much hence why recall was worse.

Question 72

Ao2: Why is Conway et al’s study good?

Answer 72

It has high ecological validity as it is based on real life events. This means that we can generalise it to real life phenomena meaning it has useful applications.

Question 73

Ao2: What is a problem with Conway et al’s study?

Answer 73

It uses interviews which unfortunately is an unreliable method of investigation. Because were just taking someones word for something, they could just be making it up meaning it is a false memory and not a flashbulb memory at all. If this was the case it would suggest flashbulb memories are no different to normal memories.

Question 74

Ao1: What is repression?

Answer 74

This is an ego defence mechanism which was theorised by Freud. Freud stated that when something happens which is unusually painful, full of anxiety or happiness, we try and push this event to our unconscious. This means we no longer have to feel these emotions. However doing so causes us to have major psychological problems because we have not dealt with these emotions.

Question 75

Ao2: What did Williams et al do?

Answer 75

They found women who had been in hospital as children from sexual abuse. They interviewed the woman 20 years after the sexual abuse.

Question 76

Ao2: What did Williams et al find?

Answer 76

38% of the women could not recall ever being sexually abused. 16% of them couldn’t recall at first but eventually did.

Question 77

Ao2: What does Williams et al’s suggest about repression?

Answer 77

That repression is real as even though there is evidence of the 38% being sexually abused they had no recollection of it. It definitely did happen so it seems like they pushed it to their unconscious so get rid of the pain/

Question 78

Ao2: What is a good thing about Williams et al’s study?

Answer 78

It has high ecological validity as it has been based on a real life event which we know happened. It has used something that has actually happened to someone and is therefore able to generalise to real life phenomena. It has used lots of women to meaning it is also reliable, unlike a case study.

Question 79

Ao2: What is bad about Williams et al’s study?

Answer 79

We do not know if they actually couldn’t remember it. We cannot actually know what the women were thinking so it is very possible that they could have just not wanted to speak about it with the researchers as it was too painful and private to them. This would suggests repression is not real.

Question 80

Ao2: What did Karon and Widener do?

Answer 80

They investigated WW2 veterans who had major psychological problems and could not recall their time in war. They gave the extensive psychotherapy to try and get them to remember.

Question 81

Ao2: What did Karon and Widener find?

Answer 81

They found that after extensive psychotherapy, the WW2 veterans eventually remembered the war and all their psychological problems disappeared.

Question 82

Ao2: What does Karon and Widener’s research suggest about repression?

Answer 82

That repression is real because they had psychological problems when they could not recall the war as the memory was pushed into their subconscious because it was too traumatic for them. But once they came to terms with it their problems disappeared.

Question 83

Ao2: What is good about Karon and Widener’s study on repression?

Answer 83

It seems that there could be no other reason for why the veterans problems disappeared after remembering. There are no real other variables that could have caused this to happen which provides good evidence for repression.

Question 84

Ao2: What is bad about Karon and Widener’s study on repression?

Answer 84

Unfortunately it is ungeneralisable to the general population because it has been based on such extreme events. We cannot compare someone being in a car crash to fighting in WW2 as it is just not proportional. This could mean repression is only valid for things as bad as WW2.

Question 85

Ao2: Are flashbulb memories any different to normal memories?

Answer 85

It is hard to say as it is hard to gain valid research on flashbulb memories as you cannot actually empirically see the memory in someones mind. Most methods used mean that people could just be making it up. Neisser believes that flashbulb memories are just a product of extensive rehearsal. However, how do so many have flashbulb memories about things in their childhood that no one else experienced?

Question 86

Ao2: Is repression real?

Answer 86

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that repression is real and a lot of people have experienced it themselves. However it is not very common as people usually have flashbulb memories of painful events rather than repress them. Maybe it is just for extremely traumatic events.

Question 87

Ao1: What is Amnesia?

Answer 87

This is the partial or total loss of memory for a temporary or permanent amount of time. This can be retrograde when you cannot recall past memories, or anterograde which is when you are unable to form new memories.

Question 88

Ao1: What is the main explanation for Amnesia?

Answer 88

This is called lack of consolidation. This theorises that a change in the structure of the brain can cause interrupted memories. For anterograde amnesiacs this change will be to the part of the brain that consolidates new memories and for retrograde amnesiacs it will be a change to parts of the brain containing already made memories.

Question 89

Ao2: What did Reed and Squire do and find?

Answer 89

They conducted MRI scans on retrograde amnesiacs and found that they all had damage to their hippocampus and those with the worst symptoms also had damage to the basal forebrain.

Question 90

Ao2: What does Reed and Squire’s research tell us?

Answer 90

It tells us that lack of consolidation is probably very accurate and this would explain the damage to parts of the brain. If lack of consolidation is correct this damage will have interrupted the consolidation process preventing from remembering things. This is known as temporal gradient.

Question 91

Ao2: What is a good thing about Reed and Squires research?

Answer 91

It uses a scientific method which is controlled meaning we can be fairly sure that the damage is what is causing the amnesia. This makes it easier for us to conclude that lack of consolidation is causing the amnesia.

Question 92

Ao2: What is a problem with Reed and Squires research?

Answer 92

We do not know what has actually caused this brain damage and whether this was a result of the amnesia or if it caused the amnesia. Unfortunately this research is only correlational so however much it is controlled, we cannot see a direct cause.

Question 93

Ao2: How does Case HM support lack of consolidation explanation of amnesia?

Answer 93

HM had anterograde amnesia so he was unable to form new memories because of the removal of his hippocampus. This suggests that the removal of the hippocampus has interrupted the consolidation process for new memories.

Question 94

Ao2: What is a problem with Case HM being evidence for lack of consolidation?

Answer 94

It is a case study so we cannot generalise it everyone else as we do not know that those people would have reacted in the same way. He could also make new procedural memories which cannot be explained by lack of consolidation.

Question 95

Ao2: What theory could be used to explain HM’s ability to make new procedural memories?

Answer 95

Some people try to explain this by saying that HM has a lack of explicit memory. However this theory is only descriptive and does not give us an explanation of why this has happened. You could always say that the part of the brain used to form new procedural memories was still in tact.

Question 96

Ao1: What is Alzheimers disease?

Answer 96

This is a progressive form of dementia which causes an impairment in memory, thought and speech. This can eventually lead to total helplessness.

Question 97

Ao1: What is the most common explanation for Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 97

In people with Alzheimer’s, there amyloid precursor protein is broken down into beta amyloid protein 42. This then builds up between neurons causing plaques. These plaques cause problems with communication and damage the cerebral cortex, hippocampus and the basal forebrain.

Question 98

Ao2: What did Cleary et al do and find?

Answer 98

Cleary injected rats with beta amyloid 42 and found that this disrupted already formed memories.

Question 99

Ao2: What does Cleary et al’s research suggest about Alzheimer’s?

Answer 99

That it is to do with the plaques as there seems like there could be no other reason for the disruption of memory as this is highly controlled. However, it could be due to the trauma of having an injection.

Question 100

Ao2: How did Snyder et al counter Cleary et al?

Answer 100

He said that the plaques caused a problem with forming new memories which suggests something very different to what Cleary is saying. However it could just be that different parts of the brain that is affected causes different things to happen.

Question 101

Ao2: What is a problem with research for Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 101

It generally involves animals which is ungeneralisable to humans as we are qualitatively different therefore we do not know that we would act in the same was as animals do.

Question 102

Ao1: What is another explanation used for Alzheimers disease?

Answer 102

Many think that Alzheimers is genetic. Evidence has shown the gene associated with Alzheimers on the extra chromosome 21 that people with downs syndrome have, and they tend to get early onset. It has also been found on chromosomes 1, 10 and 14.

Question 103

Ao2: What is a problem with the genetic explanation for Alzheimer’s?

Answer 103

Evidence has shown that half the people with Alzheimers have no known relatives with Alzheimers which would suggest that it is not genetic after all as we would expect to see it in other relatives if it was genetic. There has also been lots of evidence to say that Alzheimers is caused by the environment.

Question 104

Ao2: What is a problem with saying that Alzheimers cannot be genetic because many don’t have relatives with it?

Answer 104

Their relatives could have died before they developed Alzheimer’s or they may just not have developed yet. If this is the case then obviously there would be a strong link between Alzheimers and genes.

Question 105

Ao2: Are the explanations for Amnesia any good?

Answer 105

Lack of consolidation is a good explanation for Amnesia as it seems to explain well why most if not all have some sort of brain damage and explains well why this causes a loss of memory. Loss of explicit memory cannot be an explanation as it does not actually explain anything.

Question 106

Ao2: Are the explanations for Alzheimer’s disease any good?

Answer 106

There is a lot of conflicting evidence here as to whether it is caused by genes or the environment. It is quite clear that it must be something to do with beta amyloid and plaques. However maybe it has a diathesis stress cause. So you have a genetic predisposition for the disease but something in the environment sets of the production of beta amyloid 42 at a certain age.