Memory

Question 1

What is cognitive psychology?

Answer 1

looks at internal mental processes to explain behaviour

Question 2

what is encoding and what are the 3 types

Answer 2

encoding is the form in which the brain handles data
it can be acoustic (inner voice)
visual (minds eye)
semantic (based on meaning)

Question 3

Draw a diagram of the Multi Store Model

Answer 3

diagram involving -stimulus -sensory register (iconic, echoic, other) -STM (response out) -prolonged rehearsal, maintenance rehearsal -LTM -retrieval

Question 4

What is the sensory register - its capacity, duration and other points

Answer 4

Sensory registers are the memory store for the 5 senses such as vision (an iconic store) and hearing (an echoic store)
Coding is different for various sensory registers - in the iconic store coding is visual but in the echoic store coding is acoustic
Sensory registers have a very high capacity but hold information for less than 1/2 a second
information from sensory registers only passes further If you pay attention to that info

Question 5

An experiment to test duration of sensory register

Answer 5

Sperling’s experiment
Procedure:
Sperling flashed 12 letters in a grid on to a screen for a very short amount of time
Test 1: ppts recorded as many letters as they could
Test 2: after the letters disappeared Sperling would request only the letters on one line of the grid
Results of Test 1: 4-5 out of 12 total letters were recorded; about 33%
Results of Test 2: 3 out of 4 letters to recall were recorded; about 75%
Conclusion: This suggests the sensory register was picking up about 75% of the total 12 letters, yet the ppts could not record all 9 letters before the information was lost. This shows the duration is about 1/2 a second long.

Question 6

The case of HM - who is he and what did the studies show

Answer 6

HM suffered from epilepsy. He had his hippocampus removed from both sides of his brain. The hippocampus is now known to be very important for memory function. His epilepsy stopped, but he lost his LTM. He could not remember the operation or anything since. His LTM was repeatedly tested but never improved. Despite this, he performed well on STM tasks. The study of HM supports the MSM as it provides evidence for having two separate memory stores.
A criticism of the study of HM is that he was a brain damaged patient and so the evidence may not be true for other people (low population validity), weakening his support for the MSM.

Question 7

Experiment for capacity of STM

Answer 7

Jacobs (1887)
Procedure: Read out 2 letters / digits to ppts and ask them to recall them in the correct order. If they correctly do that move on to 3 letters / digits and so on.
Results: The mean span for digits was 9
The mean span for letters was 7
Evaluation: a very old study and may have lacked adequate control

Question 8

increasing capacity of STM

MSM

Answer 8

Miller (1956)

capacity of STM can be increased by combining separate bits of information into larger chunks.

Question 9

Experiment for duration of STM

Answer 9

Peterson and Peterson (1959)
Procedure: tested 24 students who each took part in 8 trials. Each student was given a trigram and then asked to count back from digit in 3’s. On each trial they were asked to stop after a different time interval. This prevented mental rehearsal of the trigram.
Results: the %age of correct responses decreased as the retention interval increased. After 18 secs only 13% was recalled
conclusion: STM has a duration of about 20 secs unless we verbally rehearse the information.
Evaluation: lacked external validity.

Question 10

experiment for duration of LTM

Answer 10

Bahrick (1975)
Procedure: studied almost 400 Americans. High school yearbooks were obtained and the ppts were tested on:
Test 1: photo recognition where some but not all of the photos were from the yearbook
test 2: free recall where ppts recalled names from their graduating class
Results for test 1: ppts tested within 15 years of graduating had a 90% accurate recall rate. after 48 years recall rate dropped to70%
results for test 2: ppts within 15 years were 60% accurate dropping to 30% after 48 years.
Conclusion: LTM has a lifetime long duration

Question 11

what is the capacity, duration and coding for the Sensory register, STM and LTM

(MSM)

Answer 11

Capacity:
SR: 9 letters (Miller)
STM: 5-9 letters
LTM: unlimited
Duration:
SR: 0.5s
STM: 20s (Peterson and Peterson)
LTM: lifetime (Bahrick)
Encoding:
SR: different for different registers - visual or acoustic mostly (Sperling 1960)
STM: acoustic (Baddeley and Conrad)
LTM: semantic, episodic and procedural

Question 12

Experiment for coding in STM and LTM

Answer 12

Baddeley (1966)
Procedure: gave lists of different words to 4 different groups
group 1: acoustically similar
group 2: acoustically dissimilar
group 3: semantically similar
group 4: semantically dissimilar
Test 1: ppts had to recall the words in the correct order immediately (STM)
test 2: ppts recalled words after 20 mins (LTM)
results:
Test 1 was worse with acoustically similar words suggests STM codes acoustically
test 2 was worse with semantically similar words suggesting LTM codes semantically.
Evaluation: high internal validity - well controlled
low external validity - artificial task

Question 13

2 types of rehearsal in MSM

Answer 13

Maintenance - maintains information in STM and does not move it to LTM
prolonged / elaborative - adding meaning to information so it can be moved to LTM

Question 14

study of KF and what he shows about MSM

how does KF support the WMM

Answer 14

Shallice and Warrington (1970) studied KF - a patient with severe amnesia.
His STM was very poor when digits were read aloud to him (acoustic). However it improved when he read the digits out to himself. Further studies showed there could be another STM store for non-verbal sounds. The MSM doesn’t account for separate STM stores for different types of information.

KF couldn’t process verbal information but could process visual information. this suggests his phonological loop was damaged but his VSS was intact. This suggests there are 2 separate STM stores as the WMM shows

Question 15

Definitions of episodic, procedural and semantic memory.

Answer 15

All types of LTM coding
episodic: memory store for personal events. ‘time stamped’. uses conscious effort to recall.
Semantic: memory for knowledge and facts. has no ‘time stamp’. usually take conscious effort to recall.
procedural: memory store for actions (how to do things) doesn’t use conscious effort to recall.

Question 16

What is the Working Memory Model?

Answer 16

an explanation of how the STM is organised and how it functions.
developed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
WMM has parallel processing

Question 17

What is the central executive and what does it do

wmm

Answer 17

• Allocates slave systems to tasks
• has no storage capacity
• uses data from sensory memory and/or LTM
• although the model is parallel it processes serially.

Question 18

What is the phonological loop and what does it do

wmm

Answer 18

It is a temporary store that deals with auditory information. it is divided into two parts:
Phonological store - ‘inner ear’ for sounds (not just speech)
Articulatory process - allows maintenance rehearsal. The capacity of this is 2 seconds worth of what you can say.

Question 19

What is the Visuo-Spatial sketchpad and what does it do

wmm

Answer 19

it is a temporary store for spatial tasks / visual information. has a limited capacity. it is divided into two parts:
Visual cache - stores visual data
inner scribe - records arrangement of objects in the visual field.

Question 20

what is the episodic buffer and what does it do

wmm

Answer 20

this was added to the model by Baddeley in 2000. it is a temporary store and combine diverse information ( auditory, visual/spatial and LTM)
it maintains a sense of time sequencing and has a limited capacity.
It links working memory (STM) to LTM and wider cognitive processes.

Question 21

Experiment to support the phonological loop

Answer 21

Baddeley (1975)
Procedure:
Test 1: ppts given a list of words to remember
test 2: ppts given a list of words and then told to repeat ‘lalala’ (an articulatory suppression task)
results from task 1: ppts find it easier to remember shorter words than longer words (word length effect)
results from task 2: ppts found remembering shorter words just as hard as remembering longer words (no word length effect)
conclusion: the articulatory process has a capacity of 2 secs worth of words. more short words fit into that time limit therefore you remember more short words. however, when given a suppressive task you cannot use the articulatory process (its already in use) therefore there is no advantage to having shorter words. instead of the articulatory process, the episodic buffer is used. this is not specialised so less words are recalled. this shows separate compartments - supporting the WMM

Question 22

Experiment to show separate slave systems (wmm)

Answer 22

Baddeley (1975)
Procedure:
Test 1: ppts take part in two visual / two verbal tasks simultaneously
test 2: ppts take part in a visual and a verbal task simultaneously
results: it is harder to take part in two tasks that compete for the same slave system.
conclusion: there are separate systems that function separately, but each have a limited capacity

Question 23

what is interference and the 2 types of it

Answer 23

interference is forgetting because on memory causes another to become distorted or forgotten.

proactive: old info interferes with new info
retroactive: new info interferes with old info

Question 24

experiment for interference (artificial task)

Answer 24

McGeogh and McDonald (1931)
Procedure: ppts had to learn a list of words until they could recall them with 100% accuracy. they then learned another list:
test 1: synonyms
test 2: antonyms
test 3: unrelated words
test 4: nonsense syllables
test 5: numbers
test 6: none
results: the more unrelated the second list was, the better the recall accuracy
conclusion: interference levels are higher when the information is more similar

Question 25

experiment for interference (real life task)

Answer 25

Baddeley and Hitch (1977) Procedure: asked rugby players to name teams they had played week by week throughout the season. test 1: players who had played every match (may have played 3 matches in 3 weeks) test 2: players who had not played every match (so may have played 1 match in 3 weeks) results: accurate recall did not depend on how long ago the matches were (decay over time), but instead on how many matches had been played since. conclusion: other matches were interfering with recall of a certain match, showing interference occurs in real life situations. evaluation: good external validity (ecological), low internal validity as it was controlled (may have been confounding variables)

Question 26

what is retrieval failure and what are the 3 types of encoding specificity principle?

Answer 26

a form of forgetting that happens when we don't have enough cues available to access the memory. (the memory is available but not accessible unless we have a suitable cue to retrieve it) there are 3 types of encoding specificity principle developed by Tulving in 1983 - context dependent - external e.g. in a classroom - state dependent - internal e.g. while drunk - meaningful link to material e.g. headings

Question 27

experiment to demonstrate context dependent forgetting

Answer 27

Godden and Baddeley (1975) Procedure: give deep sea divers a list of words to remember and recall in different contexts test 1: learn on land, recall on land test 2: learn on land, recall underwater test 3: learn underwater, recall underwater test 4: learn underwater, recall on land results: where the contexts of learning and recall were different, accurate recall was 40% lower than where they matched. conclusion: the external cues were different where the context was different and therefore the cues were unavailable, leading to retrieval failure

Question 28

experiment to demonstrate state dependent forgetting

Answer 28

Carter and Cassaday (1998) procedure: give ppts a list of words to remember and recall in different states. the anti histamine drugs make them slightly drowsy test 1: learn on drug, recall on drug test 2: learn on drug, recall not on drug test 3: learn not on drug, recall not on drug test 4: learn not on drug, recall on drug results: where the contexts of learning and recall were different, accurate recall was much lower than where they matched. conclusion: the internal cues were different when the state was, and therefore the cues were unavailable leading to retrieval failure.

Question 29

what is eye witness testimony and what is eye witness memory

Answer 29

EWM: the ability for people to remember events that they have observed (usually crimes) EWT: the testimony given in court of what an eyewitness observed

Question 30

what is misleading information, leading questions, post-event discussion and ? (EWT)

Answer 30

misleading information: incorrect information given to the EW after the event. it can be in the form of: - leading questions: a question which, because of the way it is phrased, suggests a certain answer - post-event discussion: Eye witnesses discuss what they have seen which may influence the accuracy of each witnesses recall of the event.

Question 31

experiment for effect of leading questions, and the two explanations

Answer 31

Loftus and Palmer (1974) procedure: trial 1:students watched film clips of a car accident and were then asked a question; test 1: how fast were the cars travelling when they hit each other? test 2: '' contacted test 3: '' bumped test 4: '' collided test 5: '' smashed trial 2: ppts were asked another question a few weeks later: 'did you see any broken glass?' results: the mean speed for each test was calculated. test 2 had a mean of 32 mph. test 5 had a mean of 40 mph. those in test 5 were much more likely to report broken glass (there was none) conclusion: there are two explanations: response-bias - the wording of the question does not affect ppts memories, only how they choose to answer the question. substitution explanation - the wording of the leading question actually affects ppts memories. (a few weeks later ppts were unlikely to remember the verb asked in trial 1, so response-bias was unlikely)

Question 32

experiment for post-event discussion (EWT)

Answer 32

Gabbert (2003) procedure: 2 sets of ppts watched a film of the same crime but from different perspectives test 1: ppts saw the title of the book stolen test 2: ppts did not see the title of the book stolen results: when asked questions before PED, 0% of test 2 said they'd seen the book title. when asked questions after PED, 71% of test 2 said they'd seen the book title. conclusion: witnesses often go along with each other to win social approval or because they believe other witnesses are right. this is called memory conformity.