Memory

Question 1

explain Baddeley (1966) coding in STM and LTM

Answer 1

procedure;
acoustically similar words (e.g. cat, and cab ) or dissimilar (e.g. pit, few)
semantically similar words (e.g. large, big) or dissimilar (e.g. good, hot)

findings:
immediate recall worse with acoustically similar words, STM is acoustic.
recall after 20 minuets worse with semantically similar words, LTM is semantic

Question 2

explain Jacobs study of coding in STM

Answer 2

procedure; digit span: researcher reads four digits and increased until the ppt cannot recall the order correctly

findings:
on average, ppts could repeat back 9.3 numners and 7.3 letters in the correct order immediately

Question 3

explain Millers study into the capacity of STM

Answer 3

procedure:
Miller made observations that everything comes in sevens; 7 notes on the musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins etc

findings; the span of the STM is about 7 - + 2 items but can be improved by chunking - grouping sets of digits/letters into meaningful units

Question 4

explain Peterson and Petersons study into the duration of STM

Answer 4

procedure;
24 students were given a consonant syllable (e.g YCG) to remember, and a 3-digit number to count backwards for 3, 6, 9, 12,15 or 18 seconds

findings;
students recalled on average about 80% of the syllables correctly with a 3-second interval. average recall after 18 seconds fell to about 3% . suggesting that duration of STM without rehearsal is about 18-30 seconds

Question 5

explain Bahrick et als study into the duration of LTM

Answer 5

procedure;
ppts were 392 Americans ages between 17-74.
1. recognition test :50 photos from ppts’ high school year book.

2. free recall test: participants listed names of their graduating class.

findings: ppts tested 48 years after graduation were about 70% accurate in photo recognition.
free recall was less accurate but still high enough to suggest duration of LTM is a long time.

Question 6

state a limitation of Baddeley’s study

Answer 6

• it didnt use meaningful material

the words used in the study had no personal meaning to the ppts. when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for the STM tasks. this means the results of this study have limited application. we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task.

Question 7

state a limitation of Jacob’s study

Answer 7

-it was conducted a long time ago
early research in psychology often lacked adequate control of extraneous variables. e.g some ppts’ might have been distracted while they were being tested so they didn’t perform as well as they might. this would mean that the results may not be valid because there were confounding variables that were not controlled. however, the results were confirmed in other research which supports its validity.

Question 8

state a limitation of Millers research

Answer 8

-May have overestimated capacity of STM
Cowan (2001) reviewed other research. he concluded that the capacity of STM was only about 4 chunks. this suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate is more appropriate than 7 items

Question 9

state a limitation of peterson and petersons study

Answer 9

-they used an artifical stimulus;
trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real life memory activities where hwat we try to remember is meaningful. so it could be argued that this study lacked external validity - however, we do try memorise meaningless things such as phone numbers so not completely irrelevant

Question 10

state a strength of Bahrick et al’s study

Answer 10

-high external validity
real life meaningful memories were studied. when lab studies were done with meaningless pictures to be remembered, recall rates were lower.
the down side of such real-life research is that confounding variables are not controlled -ppts might have looked at their yearbook photos and rehearsed their memories over the years.

Question 11

State Atkinson and Shiffrins role in psychology

Answer 11

came up with the Multi store memory model

- describes how infomation flows through the memory system. memory is made of three stores linked by processing

Question 12

role of sensory register

Answer 12

stimulus from enviroment passes into SR.
duration; very brief- less than half a second
capacity; high we take in lots of data
coding; depends on the sense-visual, auditory etc

Question 13

transfer from SR to STM

Answer 13

we need to pay attention to the infomation

Question 14

STM; DURATION, CODING AND CAPACITY

Answer 14

duration : 18-30 seconds
coding; acoustic
capacity; 5-9 items ( 7+ - 2)

Question 15

transfer from stm to ltm

Answer 15

maintenance rehearsal occurs. we keep info in the stm as long as we rehearse it and if we rehearse it long enough it passes through to LTM

Question 16

LTM; DURATION, CODING AND CAPACITY

Answer 16

duration; potentially up to a lifetime
capacity; potentially unlimited
coding; tends to be in terms of meaning i.e semantic

Question 17

state a strength of MSM

Answer 17

it is supported by research that shows that STM & LTM are different;
Baddeley found that we tend to mix up words that sound similar when using our STM. but we mix up words that have similar meanings when we use our LTM. this clearly shows that coding in STM is acoustic and in LTM it is semantic. this supports the MSM’s view that these two memory stores are separate and independent.

Question 18

state limitations of MSM

Answer 18

x evidence suggest there is more than one type of STM
Shallice and Warrington studied KF, a patient with amnesia. his STM for digits was poor when they read them out loud to him. but his recall was much better when he read the digits himself. The MSM states that there is only one type of STM but KF study suggests there must be one short -term store to process visual information and another to process auditory information
- working memory model is a better explanation for its finding because it includes separate stores

x it only explains one type of rehearsal.
Craik and Watkins argued there are two types of rehearsal; maintenance and elaborative
- maintenance is the one described in the msm, but elaborative is needed for LTM. - serious limitation becuase it is another research finding that cannot be explained by the model

x supporting studies have used artifical materials. this suggests that the MSM lacks external validity. research findings may reflect how memory works with meaningless material in lab testing, but does not reflect how memory mainly works in everyday life.

x oversimplifies the LTM - limtied because it does not reflect the different types of LTM

Question 19

name 3 types of long-term memory

Answer 19

EPISODIC
SEMANTIC
PROCEDURAL

Question 20

what is episodic memory

Answer 20

• events (episodes) for our lives.
• links to a diary of daily happenings.
• e.g. breakfast you ate this morning
• episodic memories are more complex, they are time stamped (you remember when they happened).
• you have to make a conscious effort to recall them

Question 21

what is semantic memory

Answer 21

• stores our knowledge of the world; e.g. knowledge of such things as applying to uni, taste of an orange.
• semantic memories are not time stamped e.g we don’t usually remember when we learned about justin bieber

semantic knowledge is less personal and more about the knowledge that we all share

Question 22

what is procedural memory

Answer 22

stores memories for actions and skills- memories on how we do things e.g riding a bike

• recalls without awareness or conscious effort.