Memory

Question 1

Discuss the Working Memory Model (AO1)

Answer 1

• Active mind when storing and manipulating information
• Central executive = attentional process that makes decisions and has very limited capacity
• Phonological loop = coded acoustically, phonological store (stores words) and articulatory process (repeats words in a loop for maintenance rehearsal,,, capactity of 2 secs)
• Visuo-spatial sketchpad = limited capacity of 3/4 objects, visual cache (stores visual data) and inner scribe (records arrangement of objects in visual field)
• Episodic buffer = intergrates all the information together, storage component, limited capacity of 4 chunks

Question 2

Discuss the Working Memory Model (AO3)

Answer 2

• Dual task performance - Baddeley
• Patient KF - poor ability to process verbal info but fine for visual
• Central exec isn’t fully expained

Question 3

Discuss the cognitive interview (AO1)

Answer 3

• Fisher and Geiselman
  1) Report everything
  2) Reinstate the context
  3) Reverse the order
  4) Change perspective
• Enhance cognitive interview - reduce eyewitness anxiety, minimise distractions, slow speaking and open-ended questions

Question 4

Discuss the cognitive interview (AO3)

Answer 4

• Time-consuming - requires special training
• Milne and Bull - report everything and context reinstatement produce better recall - gives CI credability
• Kohnken et al- meta-analysis - 50 studies and found that enhanced CI consistently provided more correct info than a standard interview

Question 5

Describe and evaluate research into the influence of misleading information on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony (AO1)

Answer 5

• Leading questions - Loftus and Palmer - students watched clips of car crashes - contacted = 31.8 mph
  - smashed = 40.5mph
  - response-bias -influenes how they answer
  - substitution explanation - actually changes what they think they saw
• Post-event discussion - co-witnesses disussing a crime and combine their information
  - Gabbert - in pairs- watched same video but different perspective so information was somewhat different - found that 71% of participants recalled aspects they hadn’t seen - go along with their partner, memory conformity

Question 6

Describe and evaluate research into the influence of misleading information on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony (AO3)

Answer 6

• Real-life applications - CI which doesn’t use leading q’s
• Artificial tasks - can’t generalise
• Individual differences - people might just have better memory than others - Anastasi and Rhodes - young people more accurate than old

Question 7

Describe and evaluate research into the influence of anxiety on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony (AO1)

Answer 7

• NEGATIVE - creates physiological arousal which prevents us paying attention to important cues
  
  • Johnson and Scott - low-anxiety - argument and walks out with a pen and greasy hand - high-anxiety - argument, shattered glass and walks out with paper knife covered in ‘blood’ - found 49% could pick out pen man, 33% could pick out knife man - tunnel theory - attention narrows to focus on weapon cause of anxiety
• POSITIVE - fight or flight response
  - Yuille and Cutshall- real life shooting, 4-5 months after the incident, compared with original interview and also asked to rate how stressed they felt at the time and any emotional problems since - found very accurate accounts with little change, highest levels of stress more accurate - 88% compared to 75%
• EXPLANATION - Yerkes and Dodson - inverted U graph, optimal level of anxiety

Question 8

Describe and evaluate research into the influence of anxiety on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony (AO3)

Answer 8

• Pickel - based on surprise and not anxiety - tested with a raw chicken and found that chicken created lowest recall
• Ethical issues - psychological harm
• Lack of control - extraneous variables such as post-event discussions cant be controlled and so they could be responsable for the accuracy and not anxiety

Question 9

Discuss the Multi-Store model of memory (AO1)

Answer 9

• Atkinson and Schiffrin
• Sensory register - stimulus from the environment - 5 senses - iconic = visual, echoic = audio
  - duration = less than half a second
  - capacity = high
• STM - duration = 30 seconds
  - coding = acoustically
  - capacity = 7 +/- 2
  - maintenance rehearsal sends it to LTM
• LTM - duration = unlimited
  - capacity = unlimited
  - coding = semantically
  - retrieval - transferred back through STM

Question 10

Discuss the Multi-Store model of memory (AO3)

Answer 10

• Baddeley - coding - mix up words that sound similar in STM but mix up words with similar meanings in LTM
• Patien KF - different types of STM
• Peterson and Peterson - duration of STM - consonant syllables and 3 digit numbers - no mental rehearsal and different rention intervals - very short duration
• Bahrick - duration of LTM - look back at yearbooks
  - photo recognition and free recall - within 15 years = 90%, 48 = 70% for photos