Memory Flashcards
(Coding)
Four lists of words
- Acoustically similar - STM: worst recall
- Acoustically dissimilar
- Semantically similar - LTM: worst recall
- Semantically dissimilar
Poor performance suggests displacement occurs
So, the STM is coded acoustically and the LTM is coded semantically
Baddeley
(Capacity)
Digits forward
One digit added after each recall
Numbers - 9.3
Letters - 7.3
7-9
Jacobs
(Capacity)
Chunking
- Observed that things in everyday life come in sevens
E.g. days of the week, deadly sins, notes on the musical scale
Capacity is probably 7(+/-2) - People are able to recall 5 words as well as 5 letters as the information is grouped together into units
Miller
(Capacity A03)
Found that capacity is only 4 chunks
The lower end of Miller’s estimate (5) may be better than the higher (7)
Cowan
(Duration - STM)
Consonant trigrams
- 24 students
- 8 trials
- 3 syllables
- ppt counts down from 3-digit number to prevent rehearsal
- Retention intervals - 3,6,9,12,15,18
Duration of STM is 18 seconds
Peterson and Peterson
(Duration - LTM)
Yearbooks
- 392 students from Ohio, 17-74
- Photo recognition test - identifying classmates in 50 photos
- Within 15 years - 90%
- After 48 years - 70% - Free recall - naming graduates
- Within 15 years - 60%
- After 48 years - 30%
Bahrick
(Duration - LTM - A03)
Recall for meaningless pictures is far lower than for yearbook photos
Shepard
(The multi-store memory model)
- Sensory register
iconic and echoic sensory stores - STM
prolonged or maintenance rehearsal - LTM
Atkinson and Shiffrin
(The multi-store memory model A03)
KF case study
- amnesia patient
- poor memory for digits read aloud to him, but good memory if he read them himself
Suggests there are separate visual and auditory stores
Shallice and Warrington
(The multi-store memory model A03)
Elaborative rehearsal
- Maintenance rehearsal only keeps information stored on the STM
- Elaborative rehearsal is needed to transfer information to the LTM - this is done by linking it to existing knowledge or thinking about its meaning
Craik and Watkins
(Types of LTM)
- Episodic memory - events
‘time-stamped’
declarative
conscious effort needed to recall - Semantic - general knowledge
not ‘time-stamped’
declarative - Procedural - how to do things
not usually ‘time-stamped’
non-declarative
can recall unconciously
Tulving
(Types of LTM A03)
PET scans
Semantic tasks - activity in the left pre-frontal cortex
Episodic tasks - activity in the right pre-frontal cortex
LTM stores are independent - localised and lateralised
(contradicts Cohen and Squire’s idea of declarative and non-declarative stores)
Tulving
(Types of LTM A03)
There are only 2 types of LTM
Declarative - episodic and semantic (same store)
Non-declarative - procedural
Cohen and Squire
(The working memory model)
- Central executive
(slave systems)
- Visuo-spatial sketchpad
- visual cache: visual data
- inner scribe: arrangement of objects in visual field - Phonological loop
- phonological store - words we hear
- articulatory process - allows maintenance rehearsal before speech - Episodic buffer - integrates visual and verbal data, records events that are happening
Baddeley and Hitch
(Working model of memory A03)
Dual-task performance
- Ppts struggle to carry out two visual tasks at the same time (tracking a light and describing the letter F) but can do visual and verbal tasks together
- This is because they do not have to compete for the same slave system
Baddeley
(Working model of memory A03)
The central executive
- Brain scans
- Tasks involving the central executive trigger activity in the prefrontal cortex
Braver
(Explanations for forgetting: Interference)
Retroactive interference
- Ppts learn a list of 10 words until they can recall them accurately
- Once they have done this, they learn another list
1. synonyms
2. antonyms
3. unrelated words
4. nonsense syllables
5. 3-digit numbers
6. no new list (control group)
Most similar material produces most recall
Most interference for synonyms
McGeoch and McDonald
(Interference A03)
Rugby players
- Rugby players asked to recall names of teams they have played in the season so far
- It was the number of games played since, rather than the length of time since their last game that effected recall
Suggests new information is replacing old information (retroactive interference)
Baddeley and Hitch
(Interference A03)
Cues can be used to overcome interference
- 5 lists of 24 words
- Each organised into 6 inexplicit categories (zinc, copper, aluminium, bronze)
Recall for first list was around 70%, decreasing with each new list
Once the category name was given (metals) recall rose to around 70% again
Tulving and Psotka
(Explanations for forgetting: retrieval failure)
Encoding specificity principle (ESP)
- If a cue is used to help us learn something, it has to be present at encoding and retrieval
- If cues are different there will be some forgetting
- Cues may be encoded in a non-meaningful way (context and state)
Tulving
(Retrieval failure)
Context-depending forgetting - divers
Lists of words learnt and recalled in 4 conditions
- land - land
- land - underwater
- underwater - land
- underwater - underwater
Accurate recall 40% lower in umatching conditions
Godden and Baddeley
(Retrieval failure)
State-dependent forgetting
Lists of words and passages learnt and recalled in 4 conditions Used antihistamines - drowsy effect 1. drug -drug 2. drug - no drug 3. no drug - drug 4. no drug - no drug
Accurate recall significantly lower in unmatching conditions
Carter and Cassaday
(Retrieval failure A03)
Context may not be as important in real-life learning
Learning information in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to have the same effect on recall as learning and recalling in two completely different environments, like underwater and on land
Baddeley
(Retrieval failure A03)
Recognition in different contexts
- Replicated diver experiment
- Divers had to indicate whether they recognised words rather than recalling them themselves (cues)
- Performance the same in all conditions
Godden and Baddeley
(Eyewitness testimony: misleading information)
Leading questions
- Ppts watch films of car accidents
- Asked a critical question about the speed the car was going
- 5 groups - each given a different verb
(hit, contacted, bumped, collided, smashed)
Contacted - 31 mph
Smashed - 40 mph
Response-bias explanation
Substitution explanation - the wording actually alters the memory of the clip
E.g. ppts who heard ‘smashed’ more likely to report seeing broken glass when there was none
Loftus and Palmer
(Eyewitness testimony: misleading information)
Post-event discussion
- Matched pairs
- Watched videos of the same crime from different perspectives
E.g. only one could see the title of a book
71% of ppts recalled information picked up in discussion that weren’t shown in their own clip
(memory conformity)
0% in control group
Gabbert
(Misleading information A03)
Real-life application in police interviews
Leading questions have such a big impact on recall that police should be cautious about how they word questions in interviews
Loftus
(Misleading information A03)
Affect of age
- 18-25 year olds more accurate than 35-45 and 55-78 year olds in recall
- All groups better at identifying people from their own age group (own age bias)
Anastasi and Rhodes
(Misleading information A03)
Validity
There are real implications in EWT in real life, which may mean recall is more or less accurate than in studies with artificial stimulus
Foster
(Eyewitness testimony: Anxiety)
Negative effect - weapon focus effect
- Ppt believed they were taking part in a lab experiment
- Heard an argument next door whilst in the waiting room
- Asked to identify man from 50 photos
‘Low anxiety condition’ - man walks through carrying pen with grease on his hands
- 49% identified the man
‘High anxiety condition’ - sound of glass breaking, man walks through holding paper knife with blood on his hands
- 33% identified the man
(tunnel theory)
Johnson and Scott
(Eyewitness testimony: Anxiety)
Positive effect - fight-or-flight response
- Studied witnesses of real-life shooting in gun shop
- 13 ppts
- Interviews 4-5 months after incident
- Compared with police reports
- Rated anxiety on 7-point scale
Those who reported highest anxiety level were most accurate - 88%
Lower-anxiety group - 75%
Yuille and Cutshall
(Eyewitness testimony: Anxiety)
Inverted-U theory
- Shows link between arousal and performance
- Can be applied to anxiety and EWT
Anxiety increases accuracy of recall, but there is an optimal level of anxiety - after this anxiety begins to have an increasingly negative effect on recall
Yerkes and Dodson
Yerkes-Dodson law
(Eyewitness testimony: Anxiety A03)
Suprise rather than anxiety may affect recall
- Conducted experiment in hairdressing salon using several props - scissors, handgun, raw chicken
- EWT significantly poorer in usual conditions (raw chicken)
Pickel
(The cognitive interview)
- Report everything
trivial details may trigger further memories - Reinstate the context
tackles context-dependent forgetting - Reverse the order
prevents dishonesty and reportings based on expectations - Change perspective
reduces effect of schema on recall
Enhanced cognitive interview
- Focuses on dynamics (when to establish eye contact, reducing anxiety, open-ended questions)
Fisher and Geiselman
(The cognitive interview A03)
1 and 2 most important
- All techniques used individually produced more information than standard police interviews
- A combination of 1 (report everything) and 2 (reinstate the context) produced more accurate recall than any other conditions
Milne and Bull
(The cognitive interview A03)
Incorrect information
- Meta-analysis of 50 studies
- The enhanced cognitive interview produces more accurate recall than standard interviews - 81%
- However, it also increases recall of incorrect information - 61%
Kohnken
