Memory Flashcards

Question

Weaknesses of the interference theory

Answer 1

The artiﬁcial stimuli used in these tasks, such as learning lists of random words with no personal meaning to the participants, means that the ﬁndings of interference studies are likely to have low mundane realism. This is because in real life, we are likely to learn lists of meaningful information, such as revision topics for psychology, which we draw links upon and also which have personal meaning to us. These factors may also inﬂuence the extent of forgetting, rather than inﬂuence. This is a limitation because the use of artificial tasks makes interference much more likely in the lab. Interference may not be as likely an explanation for forgetting in everyday life as it is the lab

Answer 2

Retrieval failure is an explanation for forgetting from long-term memory. It refers to difficulties in recall that are due to the absence of correct retrieval cues or triggers. There are 2 types; state dependant failure and context dependant failure

Answer 3

Forgetting which occurs because the emotional or physical state at recall is different to that of the time of learning.

Answer 4

Context dependent forgetting can occur when the environment during recall is different from the environment an individual was in when they were learning the information to be recalled.

Answer 5

Aim: To test their hypothesis that the language used in eyewitness testimony can alter memory. Thus, they aimed to show that leading questions could distort eyewitness testimony accounts and so have a confabulating effect, as the account would become distorted by cues provided in the question. To test this Loftus and Palmer (1974) asked people to estimate the speed of motor vehicles using different forms of questions. Estimating vehicle speed is something people are generally poor at and so they may be more open to suggestion.

Answer 6

Loftus and Zanni (1975) Showed ppts a brief film clip of a car accident then asked a series of questions. Half were asked: "Did you see a broken headlight?" (7%) and the other half were asked "Did you see the broken headlight?" (17%). However there was no broken headlight in the film.

Answer 7

* Anxiety can have either a positive or negative effect on the accuracy of EWT. * Johnson and Scott (1976) demonstrated that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of EWT. The high-anxiety condition overheard a heated argument in the neighbouring room, with the sound of smashing glass and a man walking through the waiting room with a bloody paper-knife, as opposed to a greasy pen in the low-anxiety condition. When asked to identify the man, participants in the high-anxiety condition experienced 16% lower rates of accurate recall, compared to the low anxiety condition. This may be explained by the tunnel theory of memory and the weapon focus effect, where our attention is drawn towards the weapon as a source of anxiety

Answer 8

The Yerkes-Dodson Law suggests that there is an ‘inverted-U’ relationship between increasing arousal and increasing performance (in this case the accuracy of EWT), with moderate arousal yielding the highest levels of performance. However, this can be considered as an overly-simpliﬁed explanation of anxiety because it does not take into account the multiple factors which make up arousal i.e. cognitive, behavioural, emotional etc.

Answer 9

There are signiﬁcant ethical issues associated with exposing participants to distressing images of a car crash (Johnson and Scott) and forcing them to recall traumatic crimes which have occurred in the past (Yuille and Cutshall). This breaches the BPS guideline of the right of the participant to be protected from psychological harm, thus meaning that a cost-beneﬁt analysis would be needed to compare the associated ethical costs with the beneﬁts of increased knowledge of the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT.

Answer 10

Real-life studies, particularly with the use of ﬁeld studies, are particularly susceptible to the biasing effects of extraneous variables which have not been controlled. For example, Yuille and Cutshall could not have controlled the inﬂuence of post-event discussions, which has been suggested to reduce the accuracy of EWT, as demonstrated by Gabbert et al. This, alongside media inﬂuences in the form of TV report, and the effects of individual schemas, means that ﬁeld studies of EWT may be ﬂawed in that they lack reliability

Answer 11

The weapon focus effect may be testing for the effects of surprise rather than anxiety. For example, Pickel found that the highest levels of accuracy of EWT were experienced in the condition with high unusualness i.e. a raw chicken in a hairdressing salon. This suggests that the weapon focus effect can only be used to explain certain inﬂuences of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT.

Answer 12

The cognitive interview is a method of interviewing eyewitnesses, which is thought to be particularly effective in increasing the rates of accurate recall, by considering the theories discussed previously. The stages are as follows:

Answer 13

• 1. Report everything = Even seemingly insigniﬁcant details may be important or trigger the recall of larger events, by acting as a ‘cue’ (think back to retrieval failure!).

Answer 14

2. Reinstate the context = Recalling the weather, location and mood of the day prevents context dependent forgetting by reminding the eyewitness of their external cues at the time.

Answer 15

• 3. Change the perspective = Recalling events from the perspective of the victim or persecutor prevents the eyewitness’ account from being affected by their own schemas or pre-conceived perceptions of how the crime, in their opinion, happened.

Answer 16

• 4. Reverse the order = Recalling events in a different order, other than chronological, reduces the ability of the eyewitness to lie (as it is simply difﬁcult) and also reduces the impact of schemas on their perception of events.

Answer 17

• The enhanced cognitive interview was developed by Fisher et al (1987) and focuses on the social dynamics of the interactions between the eyewitness and the interviewer e.g. knowing when to make eyecontact and when to diminish it (increases the likelihood that the eyewitness will be calm and comfortable) as well as increasing rapport with the eyewitness (increases the likelihood that they will answer truthfully about personal or sensitive topics).

Answer 18

+ The entire CI need not be used to reap the beneﬁts, as Milne and Bull (2002) suggested, where context reinstatement and report everything produced the greatest accuracy of recall of correct information as compared to any other combinations of steps. This means that even if police forces do not have enough time to train the entire force for all of the 4 steps involved in the CI, even gradual changes from the standard police interview can increase the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness testimony

Answer 19

— The CI does not only increase the recall of correct information by 81%, but also increases the recall of incorrect information by 61%, as suggested by Kohnken et al (1999). This appears counterintuitive when considering that the chief aim of the CI was to improve the accuracy of recall of correct information and so increase the reliability of eyewitness testimonies as a whole.

Answer 20

The cognitive interview may have little practical value, due to being too time-consuming and requiring specialist skills. For example, Kebbel and Wagstaff argued that only a few hours of training, as is possible for many police forces, is insufﬁcient to adequately train interviewers, especially for the enhanced social understanding required for the enhanced cognitive interview. Therefore, this lack of time for training may explain why some forces may be unimpressed with the CI.

Answer 21

A major strength of the MSM is that it is supported by research studies that show that STM and LTM are indeed qualitatively different. For example, Baddeley found that we tend to mix up words that sound similar when we are using our STMs , but we tend to mix up words that have similar meaning when we are using our LTMs The strength of this study is that it clearly shows that coding in STM is acoustic and in LTM is semantic. So they are different, and this supports the MSM's view that these two stores are separate an independent

Answer 22

The MSM states that STM is unitary store, in other words, there is only one type of short term memory. However evidence from people suffering from amnesia shows that this cannot be true. For example, Shallice and Warrington (1970) studied a patient with amnesia known as KF. They found that KF's short term memory for digits was very poor when they read the out loud to him. But his recall was much better when he was able to read digits to himself. Further studies of KF and other people with amnesia showed that there could be another short term store for non verbal sounds (such as noises) The unitary STM is a limitation of the MSM because research shows that at the very least there must be one short term store to process visual information and another one to process auditory information. The WMM includes these separate stores

Answer 23

The MSM suggests that the amount of maintenance rehearsal determines the likelihood that the information will pass into the LTM. On the other hand, Craik and Watkins (1973) suggest that it is the type of rehearsal which is more important. They suggest that elaborative rehearsal, instead of prolonged rehearsal, is needed to transfer information from the STM into the LTM, by making links with existing knowledge. This is a very serious limitation of the MSM because it is another research finding that cannot be explained by the model

Answer 24

+The cases of HM and Clive Wearing show how one type of LTM may be impaired (episodic in their cases), but the other types of LTM will be unaffected (i.e. procedural and semantic). For example, Clive Wearing was still able to skilfully play the piano and understand the concept of music (procedural and semantic) but was unable to remember his wife visiting him 5 minutes previously (episodic). This gives strong support to the idea that different areas of the brain are involved in the different types of LTM, and conﬁrms the classiﬁcation of different types of LTM as separate.

Answer 25

There is also evidence from brain scan studies that different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain. For example, Tulving et al (1994) got their participants to perform various memory tasks while their btains were scanned using a PET scanner. They found that episodic and semantic memories were both recalled from an area of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. The left prefrontal cortex was involved in recalling semantic memories and episodic memories were recalled from the right prefrontal cortex The strength of this finding is that it supports the view that there is physical reality to the different types of LTM, within the brain. It has also been confirmed many times in later research studies, further supporting the validity of this finding

Answer 26

Support for the WMM comes from Shallice and Warrington's (1970) case study of patient KF who had suffered brain damage. After this damage happened KF had poor STM ability for verbal information buy could process visual information normally. This suggests that just his phonological loop had been damaged leaving other areas of memory intact. This supports the existence of a separate visual and acoustic store. However, evidence from brain -damaged patients may not be reliable because it concerns unique cases with patients who have had traumatic experiences

Answer 27

Studies of dual task performance support the separate existence of the visuo-spatial sketchpad. Baddeley et al (1975) showed that ps had more difficulty doing two visual; tasks than doing both a visual and verbal tasks at the same time. This increased difficulty is because both visa tasks compete for the same slave system whereas, when doing a verbal and visual task simultaneously, there is no competition. This is a strength of the WMM as it means that there must be a separate slave system (the VSS) that processes visual input

Answer 28

Cognitive psychologists suggest that this component of the WMM is unsatisfactory and doesn't really explain anything. Alan Baddeley himself recognised this when he said 'The central executive is the most important but the least understood component of the working memory' Baddeley (2003) The central executive needs to be more clearly specified than just simply being 'attention'. For example, some psychologists believe it may consist of separate components. This is a limitation of the WMM as it means that the WMM hasn't been fully explained

Answer 29

Tulving (1983) proposed the encoding specificity principle which states that if a cue is to help us to recall information it has to be present at encoding and retrieval

Answer 30

Godden and Baddeley repeated their underwater, deep-sea diver experiment (1975) but tested for the recognition of learnt words, as opposed to recall, and found no signiﬁcant difference in accuracy of recognition between the matched and non-matched conditions. This is a limitation of the retrieval failure theory as it suggests that retrieval failure may only explain forgetting for some types of memory, tested in speciﬁc ways and under certain conditions, hence not being a universal explanation. This further suggests that the ﬁndings from studies of retrieval failure suffer from poor generalisability.

Answer 31

Baddeley (1997) argues that context effects are actually not very strong, especially in real life. Different contexts have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen. For example, it would be hard to find an environment as different from land as underwater. In contrast, learning something in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to result in much forgetting because these environments are generally not different enough. This is a limitation because it means that the real life applications of retrieval failure due to contextual cues don't actually explain much forgetting

Answer 32

An impressive range of research supports the retrieval failure explanation for forgetting. The studied by Godden and Baddeley and Carter and Cassaday are just two examples of this research. In fact one prominent memory researcher, Michael Eysenck (2010) goes so far as to argue that retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from LTM. This is a strength because supporting evidence increases the validity of an explanation. This is especially true when the evidence shows that retrieval failure occurs in real life situations as well as in highly controlled conditions of the lab