Memory

Question 1

What is the capacity of short-term memory and who investigated it?

Answer 1

• George Miller found that most people can count 7 dots when flashed on a screen but not many more. Therefore, he came up with Miller’s magic number 7 plus or minus 2 which means that on average we can store between 5 and 9 items in our short-term memory
• Jacobs found that the average span for digits was 9.3 items and 7.3 for letters

Question 2

What is the duration of short-term memory and who investigated it?

Answer 2

• Peterson and Peterson
• Participants were asked to recall trigrams after certain time intervals
• They found that participants were able to recall 90% of trigrams after a 3 second delay but after 18 seconds less than 5% were recalled correctly
• Therefore the duration of short-term memory is 3-18 seconds

Question 3

How is short-term memory coded?

Answer 3

Baddeley found STM is largely coded acoustically

Question 4

Give three evaluation points for short-term memory

Answer 4

-Capacity may be more limited- Cowan concluded that STM is limited to about 4 chunks. This suggests it may not be as extensive as first thought and the lower end of Miller’s number is more appropriate

Size of chunk- Simon (1974) found people had a shorter memory span for larger chunks e.g. wight-word phrases

Individual differences- Jacob found digit span increased steadily with age- 8 year olds could remember 6.6 digits and 19 year olds could remember 8.6 digits

Question 5

What is the capacity of long-term memory

Answer 5

Potentially infinite

Question 6

What is the duration of long-term memory and who investigated it?

Answer 6

Bahrick et al tested 400 people on the memory of their classmates. Participants tested within 15 years of graduation were 90% accurate. After 48 years this declined to 70%. Free recall was about 60% accurate after 15 years, dropping to 30% after 48 years

Question 7

How is long-term memory coded?

Answer 7

Baddeley found LTM is largely coded semantically

Question 8

Give two evaluation points for long-term memory

Answer 8

Testing LTM?-Baddeley tested LTM by asking participants to recall a word list 20 minutes after hearing it. It is questionable whether this was really LTM

May not be exclusively semantic- Frost showed long-term recall was related to visual categories and Nelson and Rothbart found evidence of acoustic coding, therefore, LTM is not simply semantic but can vary according to circumstance

Question 9

Who was the multi-store model developed by?

Answer 9

Atkinson and Shiffrin

Question 10

Describe the multi-store model

Answer 10

Information enters the sensory register in the form of environmental stimuli. If it is paid attention to it enters the short-term memory. Maintenence rehearsal or retrieval can happen here. The information can then enter the long-term memory through maintenance rehearsal. Once in the long-term memory, it can be retrieved to the short-term memory for retrieval

Question 11

Give three evaluation points of the multi-store model

Answer 11

• Research support- Glanzer and Cunitz got people to recall a list of words and found words at the beginning and end of the list were better recalled than the ones in the middle (serial position effect). The rehearsed words go into your LTM and the words you hear last go into your STM
• Case studies- HM suggests we have separate stores in our brain responsible for STM and LTM as he couldn’t form new LTM’s but could remember things from before his surgery
• Too simplistic- the MSM is too simplistic because it suggests STM and LTM are unitary stores but research does not support this e.g. working memory model shows STM as a number of qualitatively different stores

Question 12

Who was the working memory model designed by?

Answer 12

Baddeley and Hitch

Question 13

What does the working memory model consist of?

Answer 13

• Central executive
• Phonological loop
• Visuospatial sketchpad
• Episodic buffer

Question 14

What does the central executive do?

Answer 14

Directs attention to particular tasks. Very limited capacity

Question 15

What does the phonological loop do?

Answer 15

• Deals with auditory information
• The phonological store acts like an inner ear and holds the words you hear
• The articulately control system is your inner voice and is used for words heard or seen

Question 16

What does the visuospatial sketchpad do?

Answer 16

-Deals with visual and spatial information

Question 17

What does the episodic buffer do?

Answer 17

-Integrates information from all three systems and maintains a sense of time-sequencing

Question 18

Give three evaluation points for the working memory model

Answer 18

• Dual task performance- Hitch and Baddeley compared how quickly participants could complete a task. Some people just did task 1 involving the central executive and some people did task 2 involving the central executive and phonological loop. People doing task 2 was slower but could do it which proves short term memory has several components
• Central executive too simplistic- Eslinger and Damasio studied EVR who had a cerebral tumour removed. He performed well on tests requiring reasoning but had poor decision-making skills. This suggests his central executive is not wholly intact and our understanding of it is unsatisfactory and it is more complex
• Brain-damaged patients- the process of brain injury is traumatic which may change behaviour so the person performs less well on certain tasks

Question 19

State the three types of long term memory

Answer 19

• Episodic memory
• Semantic memory
• Procedural memory

Question 20

Describe episodic memory

Answer 20

• A type of declarative memory
• Retrieval is conscious
• Memory for personal events
• A detailed and vivid memory that is stored after one occasion and lasts for ones entire lifetime
• Usually life changing, emotional or memorable events
• Challenge the idea of maintenance rehearsal

Question 21

Describe semantic memory

Answer 21

• A type of declarative memory
• Conscious retrieval
• Memory of shared knowledge and facts
• General knowledge about the world
• No specific link of time and place of learning information
• Memories may relate to things and appropriate behaviours
• Generally begin as episodic memories because we acquire knowledge based on personal experiences

Question 22

Describe procedural memory

Answer 22

• Implicit therefore unconscious retrieval
• Memory for how to do things
• Skills and habits
• Implicit, automatic memories are acquired through repetition and practise. These memories are automatic so our attention can be focused on other tasks

Question 23

Give three evaluation points for types of long term memory

Answer 23

• Brain scans- brain scans show that different areas of the brain are active when the different kinds of LTM are active. Episodic memory is associated with the hippocampus and other areas of the temporal lobe. Semantic memory relies on the temporal love and procedural memory is associated with the cerebellum, basal ganglia and limbic system
• Distinguishing between procedural and declarative memories- HM was able to form new long term memories but retained pre-existing ones. He learned mirror-drawing but had no memory that he learned this which shows the distinction between procedural memories and semantic/ episodic ones
• Patients with brain damage- difficult to be certain on the parts of the brain affected until the patient has died and most studies have been conducted with living patients

Question 24

What is the interference theory?

Answer 24

Information in your memory can be disrupted or interfered with by what we have previously learned or what we will learn in the future

Question 25

What is proactive interference ?

Answer 25

Old information proactively interferes with the retrieval of new information
E.g. typing in your old phone number instead of your new one

Question 26

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 26

New information retroactively interferes with the retrieval of old information
E.g. when you learn a new language and use it in your first language

Question 27

How does similarity affect interference?

Answer 27

McGeogh and McDonald gave participants 2 lists to learn. If list B was synonymous with list A recall was poor (12%). If B was a nonsense list recall was better (26%). When list B was a number list recall was best at 36% which shows interference is strongest the more similar the items are

Question 28

What did Baddeley and Hitch investigate in terms of interference?

Answer 28

• Investigated interference effects
• Setting of rugby players recalling the names of teams they played against
• the players who played the most games forgot more
• The later games interferes with that earlier games (retroactive interference)

Question 29

Give three evaluation points for the interference theory

Answer 29

Research support- Baddeley and Hitch (rugby study)

Low in ecological validity- most of the research is lab-based and used word lists/ nonsense syllables and may not relate to real life. Leads to lack of motivation

-can’t explain everything- special conditions are required for interference to lead to forgetting because the memories need to be similar. Anderson concluded interference plays a role in forgetting but it is unclear how much forgetting is caused by interference

Question 30

What is retrieval failure ?

Answer 30

Retrieval failure occurs due to the absence of cues. It is an explanation for forgetting based on the idea that the issue relates to being unable to retrieve a memory that is not accessible

Question 31

Describe the encoding specificity principle

Answer 31

-Tulving and Thomson have participants 48 words belonging to 12 categories
-Participants either had to recall the words freely or they were given the category
-in the free recall 40% correct answers were given and when cues were given this increased to 60%
Cues allow us to retrieve information more readily

Question 32

What is context- dependent forgetting

Answer 32

• Abernethy arranged for a group of students to be tested. Some were tested in the same room with the same teacher, some in the same room with a different teacher and some in a different room with a different teacher
• Those tested in the same room with the same teacher did better
• This shows that familiar things act as cues

Question 33

What is state-dependent forgetting

Answer 33

Goodwin at al found that when participants recalled lists of words in the same state as when they learned them (drunk vs sober) the recall was better

Question 34

Give three evaluations for retrieval failure

Answer 34

Real life application- Smith showed that just thinking of the room where you did the original learning is as effective as actually being in the room. Therefore students who think of the room should remember more

Cannot explain everything- complex associations are less easily triggered by single cues. Smith and Vela have said context effects are largely eliminated when leaning meaningful material. These cues can explain everyday forgetting but not complex associations

-Theory is circular- Baddeley pointed that the encoding specificity principle is impossible to test. If the memory can be retrieved then it must have been encoded. If the stimulus hasn’t led to the retrieval of a memory it must not have been encoded but it is impossible to test for something that isn’t there

Question 35

Outline the procedure for Loftus and Palmer’s first experiment

Answer 35

• 45 students showed 7 films of different traffic accidents
• The students were given a questionnaire which asked them to describe the accident and asked them specific questions about it
• There was a critical question: “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other”
• One group was given the word hit and the other four groups were given the verbs smashed, collided, bumped or contacted in place of hit

Question 36

What did Loftus and Palmer find from their first experiment?

Answer 36

• The groups that had the words ‘smashed’ or ‘collided’ gave much higher estimates for the speed than the groups that had the words ‘hit’ or ‘contacted’
• The mean speed estimate for ‘smashed’ was 40.8 and for ‘contacted’ it was 31.8

Question 37

Outline the procedure for Loftus and Palmer’s second experiment

Answer 37

• A new set of participants was divided into three groups and shown a 1-minute film of a car accident
• The participants were then asked questions about speed
• The participants returned one week later and they were asked 10 questions about the accident including the critical question ‘Did you see any broken glass?’
• There was no broken glass in the video

Question 38

What did Loftus and Palmer find from their second experiment?

Answer 38

• People in the ‘smashed’ condition were more likely to say that they saw broken glass
• The leading question did change the actual memory a participant had for the event

Question 39

What is the conformity effect?

Answer 39

• Investigated by Fiona Gabbert
• Participants were in pairs and watched different videos of the same event so that they had different views on it
• Pairs were encouraged to discuss the event before individually recalling the event
• 71% of witnesses who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall items

Question 40

What is repeat interviewing?

Answer 40

Each time an eyewitness is interviewed there is the possibility that comments from the interviewer will become incorporated into their recollection of events. The interviewer may also use leading questions and thus alter the individual’s memory for events

Question 41

Give three evaluation points for misleading information

Answer 41

1. Supporting evidence- Loftus conducted a study where she asked students to evaluate Disneyland advertisement. Embedded was misleading information about Bugs Bunny or Ariel who could not have been seen at Disneyland at the time. The participants who were assigned to the Bugs or Ariel condition were more likely to report shaking hands with these characters
2. EWT in real life- Although Loftus found that eyewitness testimony was generally inaccurate, researchers disagree. Foster et al found that if people were watching a real-life robbery and thought their responses would influence the trial, their responses would be more accurate
3. Real world applications- the justice system relies heavily on eyewitness testimony. Psychological research has been used to warn the justice system of problems with eyewitness justification

Question 42

What did Johnson and Scott investigate?

Answer 42

The weapon focus effect

Question 43

Outline Johnson and Scott’s procedure

Answer 43

• Participants were asked to sit in a waiting room where they heard an argument in an adjoining room
• Then they saw a man running through the room carrying either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety)
• Participants were then asked to identify the man from a set of photographs

Question 44

What did Johnson and Scott find?

Answer 44

-Mean accuracy was 49% in identifying the man in the pen condition, compared with 33% accuracy in the knife condition (supports the weapon focus effect)

Question 45

What did Christianson and Hubinette find?

Answer 45

• They interviewed 58 witnesses to bank robberies. The witnesses were either victims or bystanders
• The researchers found that all witnesses showed generally good memories for details of the robbery itself (better than 75%)
• The witnesses who were most anxious of all showed the best recall
• This shows that anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall

Question 46

What is the Yerkes- Dodson effect?

Answer 46

The observation that anxiety has a negative effect on recall when it is very low or very high but moderate levels are actually beneficial

Question 47

Give three evaluation points for anxiety

Answer 47

1. Weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety- Pickel proposed that the reason for the reduced accuracy of identification may be due to the element of surprise rather than anxiety. He arranged for a thief to enter a hairdressing salon with items of high surprise/ high threat or low surprise/ low threat and found recall was least accurate in high surprise conditions rather than high threat
2. Real life versus lab studies- a strength of Christianson and Hubinette is that it was a real life study. It may just be that lab studies do not create the real levels of anxiety experienced by real eyewitnesses in a real crime
3. No simple conclusion- The study by Christianson and Hubinette concerned a violent crime. Many other studies did not involve violence. Halford and Milne found that victims of more violent crimes were more accurate in their recall of crime scene information than non-violent ones. This shows there is no simple rule about the effect of anxiety on recall

Question 48

Who developed the cognitive interview?

Answer 48

Geiselman et al

Question 49

State the 4 stages of the cognitive interview

Answer 49

1. Mental reinstatement of original context
2. Report everything
3. Change order
4. Change perspective

Question 50

Give three evaluation points for the cognitive interview

Answer 50

1. Research into effectiveness- a meta-analysis found on average a 34% increase in the amount of correct information generated, however this may just be due to some components i.e. ‘report everything’ and ‘mental reinstatement’
2. Quantity versus quality- The procedure is designed to increase the quantity of correct recall without compromising the quality. However, Kohnken et all found an 81% increase in correct information but also a 61% increase in incorrect information
3. Problems with CI in practice- This technique requires more time that is often available. It also requires special training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours