Memory

Question 1

What can STM be tested by ( Short and Long term memory)

Answer 1

• Can be assessed using a digit span – cover all the numbers except the first and then say them all back

Question 2

What did Joseph Jacobs find when testing short term memory (STM) ( Short and Long term memory)

Answer 2

• Joseph Jacobs in 1897 used this techniques to assess STM capacity, found that the average span for digits were 9.3 items and 7.3 for letters – easier to recall digits as there are only 9 whereas there are 26 letters

Question 3

Describe the George Miller Magic number experiment? (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 3

• George Miller in 1956 wrote the article called The Magic Number seven plus or minus two, he reviewed psychological research about the span of memory and concluded that the span of immediate memory is about 7 sometimes a bit more or less
• He noted that people can count 7 dots flashing on screen but no more
• This same is if you are asked to recall musical notes, letters and words
• Miller also found that people can recall 5 words if they can recall 5 letters as we chunk things together and can remember more

Question 4

Evaluation of STM: The STM capacity may be even more limited (Short and Long Term Memory)

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 may not be as extensive as first thought
• Research on the STM for visual information found that 4 items was the limit therefore the lower end of millers range is more appropriate

Question 5

Evaluation of STM: The size of the chunk matters (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 5

• Simone 1974 found that people had shorter memory span for larger chunks such as 8 word phases then smaller chunks such as one-syllable words

Question 6

Evaluation of STM: Individual differences (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 6

• STM capacity is not the same for everyone
• Jacobs found that recall increased with age – eight year olds could remember 6.6 digits whereas 19 year olds could remember 8.6 digits
• The STM increase may be due to a gradual increase in brain capacity or the idea that people develop strategies to improve their digit span as they get older

Question 7

What is the duration of STM compared with LTM (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 7

• LTM potential last forever but STM does not last very long

Question 8

Describe the study to show duration of short term memory (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 8

• Lloyd and Margaret Peterson 1959 – studied the duration of STM using 24 students
• Each participant was tested over 8 trials
• On each trial the participant was given a consonant syllable and a three digit number they are wasked to recall the consonant syllable after an rentention interval of 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds during the retention interval they had to count backwards from their three digit number
• Participants were 90% accurate over 3 seconds, 20% accurate after 9 seconds, and only 2% accurate after 18 seconds this suggests that STM has a short duration less than 18 seconds

Question 9

Describe the study to show duration of long term memory (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 9

• Harry Bahrick et al 1975 tested 400 people of various ages (17-74) on their memory of their classmates
• A photo recognition test considered of 50 photos from the participants high-school year book in a free-recall test they were asked to list the names from their graduation class
• Participants who were tested within 15 years of graduation were 90% accurate, after 48 years this dropped to 70% accurate for photo recognition. For free recall after about 15 years it was about 60% accurate and after 48 years it was 30% accurate

Question 10

Evaluation of STM: Testing was artificial

(Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 10

• Trying to memorise constant syllables does not truly reflect most every day memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful
• However we do try to remember groups of numbers and letters e.g. phone number and postcodes so does have some relevance

Question 11

Evaluation of STM: STM results may be due to displacement (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 11

• In the Peterson’s study participants were counting numbers in their STM and may displace or overwrite the syllables to be measured
• Reitman 1974 used auditory tones instead of numbers so displacement tones would not occur he found that STM duration was longer suggesting that displacement in the Peterson’s study was due to displacement than decay and was not measuring the duration of STM
• Nairne et al 1999 – found that items could be recalled after 96 seconds

Question 12

What is Coding? (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 12

• Information that we store has to be written in memory in some form it is described as in the forms of sounds, images, or meaning

Question 13

Effects of testing on acoustic and semantic coding on LTM and STM (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 13

• Alan Baddeley 1966a and 1966b used lister words that were acoustically similar but semantically different or semantically similar but acoustically different
• Did this to test the effects of acoustic and semantic similarity of STM and LTM
• He found that participants had difficulty remembering the acoustically similar words in STM but not in LTM whereas semantically words were the opposite way round
• Suggested that the STM is largely encoded and acoustically whereas LTM is largely encoded semantically

Question 14

Evaluation of coding: Baddeley may not have tested LTM (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 14

• STM was tested by asking participants to recall a word from a list immediately after hearing it whereas LTM was tested by waiting 20 minutes which is questionable whether this was LTM or not

Question 15

Evaluation of coding: STM may not be exclusively acoustic (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 15

• Some experiments have shown that visual codes are used in STM
• Brandimote et al 1992 – found that participants used visual coding in STM if they were given a visual task and prevented to do an verbal rehearsing in the retention interval they had to say la la la before performing a visual recall task therefore they only used visual codes
• Other research has shown that STM sometimes uses a semantic code such as Wickens et al 1976

Question 16

Evaluation of coding: LTM may not be exclusively semantic (Short and Long Term Memory)

Answer 16

• Frost 1972 – showed that long term memory recall was related to visual as well as semantic categories and Nelson as Rothbart 1972 found evidence of acoustic coding in LTM
• Varies according to circumstance

Question 17

Describe the Multi-Store memory model (The Multi-Store Memory Model)

Answer 17

• The MSM was first described by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968, It is called the modal model because it was the most usually used model of memory

Question 18

what are the parts of the multi-store memory model (Multi-Store Memory Model)

Answer 18

Sensory register - Attention
Short term memory - Maintenance rehearsal
Long term memory - Retrieval

Question 19

Describe the role that the sensory register plays in the multi store memory model (Multi-Store Memory Model)

Answer 19

• Is the place where the information is held at each of the senses – the eyes, ears, nose , fingers and tongue and the corresponding areas of the brain
• The capacity of the registers is very larger – they are constantly receiving information, but most receives no attention and remains in the sensory register for a brief period

Question 20

How does attention influence the sensory register (Multi-Store Memory Model)

Answer 20

• If a persons attention is focuses on sensory stores then data is transferred to STM, attention is the first step in remembering something

Question 21

Describe the role that short term memory plays in the multi-store memory model (Multi-Store Memory Model)

Answer 21

• Information is held in STM so it can be sued for immediate tasks such as remembering directions to a friends house
• STM has a limited duration and will disappear quickly if it is not rehearsed
• Largely verbal and repeating things over and over again is called maintenance rehearsal
• Information disappear from STM if new information enters the STM pushing out original information as STM has limited capacity

Question 22

How does maintenance rehearsal influence short term memory (Multi-Store Memory Model)

Answer 22

• Repetition keeps information in STM eventually repetition will create a long term memory LTM
• Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed a direction relationship between rehearsal in STM and the strength of LTM – the more information is rehearsed the better it is remembered

Question 23

Describe the role that long term memory plays in the multi-store memory model (Multi-Store Memory Model)

Answer 23

• LTM is potentially unlimited in duration and capacity
• You may feel like there are things that you have forgotten but the evidence suggests that that either you actually never made it permanent or you just cannot find it

Question 24

How does retrieval influence long term memory (Multi-Store Memory Model)

Answer 24

• Process of getting information from LTM involves the information passing back through STM it is then available for use

Question 25

Evaluation of Multi-Store Memory Model Strengths: Supporting Evidence

Answer 25

• Controlled lab studies on capacity duration and coding support the existence of a separate short term and long term store which is the basis of the MSM
• Studies using brain techniques have also demonstrated that there is a difference between STM and LTM
• Beardsley 1997 – found that the prefrontal cortex is active during STM but not LTM tasks
• Squire et al 1992 – also used brain scanning and found the hippocampus is active when LTM is engaged

Question 26

Evaluation of Multi-Store Memory Model Strengths: Case Studies

Answer 26

• Different parts of the brain are involved in STM and LTM – from case studies with brain damage
• Scoville and Milner 1957 – brain damaged patient, his brain damage was caused by an operation to remove the hippocampus from both sides of his brain to reduce the serve epilepsy he suffered, HM personality and intellect remained intact but he could not form new LTM’s although he could remember things before the surgery

Question 27

Evaluation of Multi-Store Memory Model Limitations: The Multi-Store model is too simple

Answer 27

• MSM suggests that both STM and LTM are single unitary stores – research does not support this
• Research shows that STM is actually divided into a number of qualitatively different stores – it isn’t just a difference in terms of the kind of memory that is stored there
• The same is true for LTM – number of qualitatively different kinds of LTM each behave differently for example maintenance rehearsal can be explained by long term storage in semantic memory but doesn’t explain long term episodic memories

Question 28

Evaluation of Multi-Store Memory Model Limitations: Long Term memory involves more than maintenance rehearsal

Answer 28

• Craik and Lockhart 1972 – suggested that enduring memories are created by processing that you do rather than through maintenance rehearsal, things that are processed more deeply are more memorable because of the way that they are processed
• Craik and Tulving 1975 – give participants a list of nouns and asked a question that involved shallowed or deep processing – asked whether a word was printed in capital letters or asked whether the word fitted in a sentence, the participants remembered more words in the task involving deep processing rather than shallow processing, this deep elaborative processes is a key process in creating long term memories

Question 29

Describe the working memory model and how it came about?

Answer 29

• Baddeley and Hitch 1974, though that the STM was not one store but many stores
• They thought this because: if you are doing two things at the same time and they are visual tasks then you perform less well than if you do them separately, if you do two things at the same time but one is visual and one is acoustic then there is no interference, you do them as well as you would separately
• This suggests that there is one store for visual processing and a separate store for sounds, forms the basis of the working memory model where systems are organised by a central executive

Question 30

Describe the role of the Central Executive in the working memory model

Answer 30

• The function of the CE is to direct attention to particular tasks and determine how the brains “resources” are allocated to tasks.
• Resources are the three slave systems
• Data arrives from the sense or long term memory
• The CE has a limited capacity

Question 31

Describe the role of the phonological loop in the working memory model

Answer 31

• This deals with auditory information and preserves the order of information, Baddeley subdivided the group loop into: the phonological store which holds words that your hear, an articulatory process which is used for words that are heard or seen, they are silently repeated like an inner voice and is a form of maintenance rehearsal

Question 32

Describe the role of the Visuo-spatial Sketchpad in the working memory model

Answer 32

• This is used when you have to plan a spatial task such as getting from one room to another or counting the number of windows in the house
• Visual or spatial information is held temporarily stored here
• Logie 1995 - suggested that the visuo – spatial sketchpad could be divided into, a visual cache which stores information about visual items e.g. from colour, an inner scribe which stores the arrangement of object in the visual field

Question 33

Why did Baddeley add the episodic buffer in 2000 into the working memory model

Answer 33

• Baddeley 2000 – added the episodic buffer as he realised the model needed a general store, this was because the phonological group and visuo-spatial sketchpad deal with processing and temporary storage of specific kinds of information, and the CE has no storage capacity therefore there is no place to hold information that relates to both visual and acoustic information – therefore it has a limited capacity

Question 34

What role did the episodic buffer in the working memory model

Answer 34

• The episodic buffer intergrates information from the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad, also maintains time sequencing and send information to the LTM

Question 35

Evaluation of the working memory model strengths: Dual task performance

Answer 35

• Hitch and Baddeley 1976 supported the existence for CE in a study
• Task 1 occupied the CE, participants were given a statement “A is followed by B” and shown two letters “BA” and asked to say true or false
• Task 2 involved the articulatory loop e.g. say “the the the” repeatedly or involved both the central executive and the articulatory for example saying random digits
• Task 1 was slower when task 2 involved both the central executive and the articulatory loop, this demonstrates the dual task performance effect and shows that the CE is one of the component of the working memory model

Question 36

Evaluation of the working memory model strengths: evidence from brain-damaged patients

Answer 36

• Shallice and Warrington 1970 – studied a man called KF, his short term forgetting of auditory information was greater than that of visual stimuli, his auditory problems were limited to verbal material such as letters and digits but not meaningful sounds therefore his brain damage was restricted to the phonological loop
• Another patient SC, had good learning abilities with the exception of being unable to learn word pairs that were presented out land, therefore had damage to the phonological loop – Torjano and Grossi 1995
• Farah et al 1988 – LH had been involved in a road accident performed better on spatial tasks rather than those involving visual imagery suggesting separate visual and spatial systems

Question 37

Evaluation of the working memory model limitations: the central executive

Answer 37

• Some psychologists think it is just the same as paying attention, too vague and doesn’t really explain anything
• Critics believe that one CE is wrong and it is probably made up of different components
• Eslinger and Damasio 1985 studied EVR they had a cerebral tumour removed, but performed well on tests requiring reasoning so his CE was still intact, but he had poor decision making skills therefore he would spend hours trying to decide where to eat this suggests that the CE was not fully intact
• The account offered of the CE is unsatisfactory because it fails to explain anything as its probably more complex

Question 38

Evaluation of the working memory model limitations: Evidence from brain damaged patients

Answer 38

• Brain injury is traumatic this may change behaviour so that a person performs worse on certain tasks
• May have difficulties paying attention and therefore underperform on tasks

Question 39

Describe the different types of long term memory (Types of Long Term Memory)

Answer 39

• Divided into two main types this is explicit(declarative) memory and implicit(procedural) memory – this is the distinction between knowing that and knowing how

Question 40

Episodic memory and semantic memories are examples of knowing ….. (Types of Long Term Memory)

Answer 40

That - Explicit

Question 41

Procedural memories are examples of knowing….. (Types of Long Term Memory)

Answer 41

How - Implicit

Question 42

Describe episodic memory, and examples of it (Types of Long Term Memory)

Answer 42

• They are about knowing that
• For example an event or group of events occurring as a larger sequence – this is concerned with personal experiences and recollection, such as first day of school, holiday, playing with friends
• May recall context surrounding the event such as what happened before and what happened after and the emotions that you felt at the time

Question 43

Describe the 3 parts of the episodic memory (Types of Long Term Memory)

Answer 43

• details of the event
• the context
• the emotion of the event

Question 44

describe the semantic memories (Types of Long Term Memory)

Answer 44

• They are about knowing that
• But instead of knowing your first day of school was scary you known that people of a certain age go to school or the capital of England is London
• Knowledge that is shared with everyone not personal like episodic memories
• May relate to things such as how to function in social event and how to function an object or things such as maths and language

Question 45

Explain how memories become semantic (Types of Long Term Memory)

Answer 45

• Begin as episodic memories because that’s how we experience things and acquire knowledge
• Gradual transition from episodic to semantic as memory slowly loses association to a particular event and information is generalised
• Sometimes people have a strong recollection of when they learned a particular event

Question 46

Explain how procedural memories work (Types of Long Term Memory)

Answer 46

• Concerned with skills like tying a shoelace or to swim and read
• Remembering how to do something rather than knowing what the rules are to do
• Acquired through repetition and practise and this kind of memory is implicit unlike episodic and semantic, we are less aware of the memories because they are automatic
• Important that they are automatic so we can focus on other tasks

Question 47

Evaluation of Types of Long-Term Memory: Evidence from brain scans

Answer 47

• Three types of memory is supported by brain scans, it has been shown that different areas of the brain are active when the different kinds of LTM are active
• Episodic memory = hippocampus and other parts of the temporal lobe and the frontal lobe, memories of different elements of an event may be distributed in other areas but are all connected by the hippocampus to form one episode
• Semantic = temporal lobe
• Procedural memory = cerebellum – this is involved in the control of motor skills and the motor cortex, basal ganglia and limbic system are also involved

Question 48

Evaluation of Types of Long-Term Memory: Distinguishing procedural and declarative memories

Answer 48

• HM – destruction of hippocampus affected the ability to make new long term memories but his old ones were intact, so basically he could still form new procedural memories but not episodic or semantic memories
• Corkin 2002 discovered that he could draw a figure by looking at reflection in a mirror which is procedural memory but had no memory that he drew it which is episodic/semantic memory

Question 49

Evaluation of Types of Long-Term Memory: Distinguishing episodic and semantic memories

Answer 49

• Relationship between the episodic and sematic memories raise the question of whether episodic memories are a gateway to forming semantic memories or whether semantic memories can form independently
• Hodges and Patterson 2007 – studied patients with Alzheimer’s disease and found that some patients retain the ability to form new episodic memories but not semantic memories, therefore this is a single dissociation
• Not sufficient enough evidence that two are distinct as the episodic memory could be placing greater general demand on the mental processing and that’s why it is more affected by brain damage – therefore researches need to look for double dissociation
• Irish et al 2011 was an example of double dissociation – found Alzheimer’s patients have the reverse – poor semantic memories but intact episodic memories suggesting that semantic memories could form independently

Question 50

Evaluation of Types of Long-Term Memory: Evidence from patients with brain damage

Answer 50

• Low population validity
• HM – difficult to be certain of the parts of the brain that have been damaged until the patient has died
• Damage to a particular area does not mean that the area is responsible for that behaviour, may be acting as a relay station

Question 51

Evaluation of Types of Long-Term Memory: Priming and a fourth kind of LTM

Answer 51

• Priming describes how implicit memories influence the responses a person makes to a stimulus - for example if a person is given the word yellow and then asked to name a fruit later the chance that they name banana is greater than if they are not primed – answers are automatic and unconscious
• Research has shown that priming is controlled by a brain system separate from the temporal system that supports explicit memory – lead to suggestion that there is a fourth kind of LTM, the perceptual representation system memory (PRS) – automated enhanced of a specific stimulus
• Spiers et al 2001 – studied memory in 147 patients with amnesia – all procedural memories and PRSs were intact but other two systems were not this supports the notion of two kinds of implicit memory not affected by amnesia