Memory Flashcards
McGeoch and McDonald studied retroactive interference. How?
Participants were put into six groups and had to learn a list of 10 words until they were 100% accurate. They then had to learn a new list:
Group 1: synonyms
Group 2: antonyms
Group 3: unrelated words
Group 4: nonsense syllables
Group 5: 3 digit numbers
Group 6: No new list
What does neuroimaging evidence tell us about LTM?
Tulving et al got participants to perform various memory tasks while their brains were PET scanned. They found episodic and emantic memories were in the prefrontal cortex. Left prefrontal cortex for semantic memories episodic memories from right prefrontal cortex.
What is a strength and weakness of Harry Bahrick’s research looking at LTM using yearbook photos?
Strength: Higher external vaildity. Real life meaningful memories.
Weakness: Confounding variables not controlled, such as the fact that Bahrick’s participants may have looked at their yearbook photos and rehearsed their memory over the years.
What are the evaluative points for interference theory?
Consistently supported by thousands of lab experiments which are highly controlled and therefore have a strong validity.
But artificial materials consisting of lists of words which is a limitation because this is an artifical task and therefore may have low external validity.
However, Baddeley and Hitch asked rugby players to remember teams they had played in that season. Most players had missed games so some had to remember back two or three weeks ago. Results showed that accurate recall depended a lot more of number of games played in the meantime than how long ago the match was. This has high external validity. Burke and Skrull also showed high external validity in their magazine advert experiment. (bottom left page 54 of text book).
What is the retrieval failure theory?
That people forget information because of insufficient cues. The information is not forgotten but not able to be accessed.
What is the main strength of the Multi Store Model?
Supporting research evidence (Baddeley, Joseph Jacobs, Peterson and Peterson, Bahrick).
Case Study: HM. Brain surgery to relieve epilepsy. Hippocampus removed from both sides. LTM tested over and over but never improved (couldn’t recall what he’d eaten that day, read same magazine repeatedly). However, for STM tests, (immediate memory span), he performed well.
What is the capacity and duration of short term memory?
5-9 items
18-30 seconds
Name one experiment to show context dependent forgetting and one to show state dependent forgetting.
Context dependent: Godden and Baddeley - deep sea divers recalling on land and underwater. Accurate recall was 40% lower in non-matching conditions. (Because external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall leading to retrieval failure) Baker et al - gum gum/no gum gum etc. Participants learned 15 words in two minutes. After 24 hours more words rememberd when the context was the same (gumgum/nogumnogum).
State dependent: Carter and Cassidy gave anti histamine to their participants. In the conditins where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on memory test was worse.
What is the dual task performance experiment that Baddeley did to support the separate existence of the visuo-spatial sketchpad in the Working Memory Model?
Participants had more difficulty doing two visual tasks (tracking a light and describing the letter F) than doing both a visual and verbal task at the same time. This increased difficulty is because both visual tasks compete for the same slave system whereas, when doing a verbal and visual task simultaneously, there is no cmopetition. This means there must be a separate slavee system (the VSS), that processes visual input.
What research was done on the duration of STM?
What were the limitations of this research?
Peterson and Peterson tested 24 students. Each student took part in 8 trials. On each tiral the student was given a trigram (e.g. YCG) and a 3 digit number to count backwards from until told to stop. This counting was to prevent any rehearsal of the trigram. On each trial they were told to stop after a different amount of time 2, 6, 9., 12, 15, 18 seconds (the retention interval).
Criticism: Artificial stimulus material (low external validity). The number counting may have displaced the trigram in the STM.
What are the real life applications of different aspects of LTM?
Belleville et al. demonstrated that episodic memories could be improved in older people with mild cognitive impairment. The trained participants performed better on an episodic memory test that untrained (control gorup. Episodic memory is the type of memory most often affected by mild cognitive impairment.
Evaluate retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting.
Lots of supporting evidence by Godden and Baddeley and Carter and Cassaday. This supporting evidence increases the validity of an explanation, especially when there are real life aspects e.g. smell in a museum, chewing gum. However the learning stimulus (list of words) was artificial.
When Godden and Baddeley did a follow up exp. where the divers had to recognise words from a list instead of retrieving it by recall, there was no context-dependent effect which is a limitation of the idea of context dependent effect - recall has to be in a certain way.
Although context dependent effects are not strong in real life (being in a different room is a lot weaker context than being underwater), it has had real life applications e.g. cognitive interview where you are taken to the original scene/context.
What is chunking?
Grouping sets of digits or letters into units or “chunks”. George Miller made observations of everyday practice e.g. 7 notes in a musical scale, 7 days in a week. He noticed that people can recall 5 words as well as 5 letters and suggested this was by “chunking”.
What are declarative and non-declarative memories?
Cohen and Squire accept that procedural memories are one type of LTM but argue that episodic and semantic are stored together in one store (declarative memory) i.e. memories that can be consciously recalled. In contrast procedural memories are non-declarative.
What are the criticisms of the Multi Store Model?
Shallice and Warrington studied KF whose STM was poor when digits read out but much better when reading to himself. Further studies shows there could be even an STM for non-verbal sounds.
Craik and Watkins discovered two types of rehearsal. Maintenance rehearsal which stays in STM and Elaborative rehearsal needed for long-term storage when you link the information to your existing knowledge or think about what it means.
What are the four main components of the Working Memory Model?
Central executive - monitors incoming data, makes decisions and allocates slave systems.
Phonological loop - slave system dealing with auidtory information. This is divided to phonological store, storing what is heard and articulatory process which allows maintenance rehearsal.
Visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSS) - slave system storing visual and spatial information. Divided into visual cache which stores visual data and inner scribe which records the arrangement of objects in the visual field.
Episodic buffer - Added later (2000), this is a temporary store for information integrating visual, spatial and verbal information and maintaining a sense of time sequencing. Links working memory to LTM and wider cognitive processes.
What is Tulving’s Encoding Specifity Principle?
If a cue is to help us to recall information it has to be present at encoding (when we learn the material) AND at retrieval (when we are recalling it).
Some cues are linked in a meaningful way like mnemonic techniques. Others are not coded in a meaningful way e.g. context-dependent forgetting (external cues) and state-dependent forgetting (internal cues).
What did Peterson and Peterson’s research on the duration of STM involve?
(Think of a rabbit and a clock to help (Peter Rabbit))
24 undergraduates took part in 8 trials. ON each trial the student was given a trigram such as YCG to remember and a 3 digit number.
Student had to count backwards from 3 digit number until told to stop. This was to prevent any rehearsal of the trigram (which would be a confounding variable)
On each trial they were told to stop after either 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds. This is the retention interval.
Over 75% correct responses after 3 seconds. Less than 10% after 18 seconds. Therefore STM very short unless verbal rehearsal.
In the MSM, what is the duration and capacity of the sensory register?
What are the two main stores?
capacity = high e.g. over 100,000,000 cells in the eye recording data.
duration = less than half a second
Iconic = visual information coded visually
Echoic = Auditory information coded acoustically
What was Fiona Gabbert’s EWT experiment?
Participants studied in pairs. Each participant watched a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view. Both participants then discussed what they had seen before completing an individual test of recall. 71% mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video. In a control group with no discussion the rate was 0%. Gabbert concluded that memory conformity was taking place (both NSI and ISI).
What are a-f in the following image/which memory model is this/what are the red arrows?
a = Sensory register
b = STM
c = LTM
d = maintenance rehearsal
e = retrieval
f = prolonged rehearsal
red arrows = response (remembering)
MULTI STORE MODEL
What research did Baddeley do on Coding of Memory?
Group 1: acoustically similar
Group 2: acoustically dissimilar
Group 3: semantically similar
Group 4: semantically dissimilar
Participants tended to do worse with acoustically similar words immediately after hearing it and semantically worse if asked after 20 minutes.
(STM is stored acoustically so more likely to get muddled with acoustically similar after short time, LTM is stored semantically so more likely to get muddled with semantically similary after longer)
What did Clive Wearing tell us about Long Term Memory?
Despite not remembering recent conversations and events, he could still read music and play the piano. This supports Tulving’s view that there are different memory stores in LTM. One can be damaged but others are unaffeted.
There are two explanations for misleading information affecting EWT. The response-bias explanation and the substitution explanation. What are they?
Response bias suggests the wording of the question has no real effect on the memories but influences the way they decide to answer. (e.g. smashed increasing estimates of speed).
The substitution explanation suggests that the leading question actually changes the participants’ memory. (e.g. recalling broken glass when there was none).
