Memory Flashcards
Clive Wearing
Case Study. His procedural memory is intact and his semantic memory is only partly damaged however his STM, episodic memory and transfer from STM to LTM are completely damaged.
H.M
Case Study. Hippocampus removed to stop seizures from his epilepsy. Could learn new skills but couldn’t remember anything he just learned. No episodic memory or transfer but procedural intact.
Episodic Memories Neurological Pathway
Temporal lobe and frontal lobe connected by the hippocampus.
K.F
Case Study. Had STM loss. Couldn’t recall back more than 2 digits immediately if he heard them but could complete the task as normal if given to him visually.
Procedural Memories Neurological Pathway
Basal ganglia and limbic system link with cerebellum.
Bahrick (1975)
Tests LTM & VLTM duration. Recall and recognition of past school peers. Recall = 60% accuracy after 15 years & 30% after 47 years. Recognition = 90% after 15 years & 60% after 47 years.
Coding
The format in which information is stored in the various memory stores.
Report Every Detail
Witnesses encouraged to include every single detail. Trivial details may be important or may trigger other important memories.
Baddeley (Central Executive support)
True/False quiz with two conditions. Condition 1: the ‘the the’ test. Condition 2: Random Digit Task. Condition 2 was harder as it was a dual task so took longer due to dual task performance effect.
Retroactive Interference
Forgetting occurs when newer memories disrupt the recall of older memories. Degree of forgetting is greater when the memories are similar.
Gabbot (2003)
Post event discussion. Burglary video.
Accessibility (or lack of)
Memories that are in storage/LTM cannot be recalled unless appropriate cues are present. Items can be regarded as hidden or buried, but not lost altogether.
Conway et al. (1994)
Investigated flashbulb memories for Thatcher’s resignation. Results suggested memories for significant events are ‘special’ (vivid and accurate).
Cue
A trigger of information that allows us to access a memory. Such cues may be meaningful or may be indirectly linked by being encoded at the time of learning.
Interference
Forgetting because one memory blocks another, causing one or both memories to be distorted or forgotten.
Retrieval Failure
A form of forgetting. Occurs when we don’t have the necessary cues to access memory. The memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided.
Recall From A Different Perspective
Witnesses asked to recall the incident from other people’s perspectives. De-traumatises the event and disrupts the effect of schema.
Anxiety
A state of emotional and physical arousal. Anxiety is a normal reaction to stressful situations but can affect the accuracy and detail or EWT.
Procedural Memory
A long-term memory store for our knowledge of how to do things.
Episodic Buffer
The component of WMM that brings together material from the other subsystems into a single memory rather than separate strands. Also provides a bridge between working memory and long-term memory.
Schema Theory
A mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing. They are developed from experience.
Overton (1964)
State dependent forgetting. Rats.
Context Reinstatement
Witnesses asked to remember/imagine the environment (and their emotions) from the original crime scene.
Loftus and Burns (1982)
Anxiety. Boy being shot in the face. Weapon focus effect.
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Leading questions. Car accident. Critical verb suggested speed of car.
Hierarchical Network Model
Memories are a network - if it is there, there must be some way of getting to it.
Semantic Memories Neurological Pathway
Temporal lobe.
Peterson and Peterson (1959)
Tests STM duration. Nonsense trigram test. After 3 seconds = 80% success. After 18 seconds = 2% success. Suggests STM duration of between 18-30 seconds.
Weapon Focus Effect
When people are in a stressful situation their attention is focused towards the most fearful aspect of the situation.
Leading Questions
A question which, because of the way it is phrased, suggests a certain answer.
Baddeley and Hitch (1977)
Interference theory research.Rugby players.
McGeoch and McDonald (1931)
Interference theory research. Effect of similarity of materials.
Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
Anxiety. Shopkeeper shot criminal. 13 eye witnesses.
Yerkes-Dodson Law
The relationship between emotional arousal and performance looks like an ‘inverted U’. Lower levels of anxiety produce lower levels of recall accuracy. Memory becomes more accurate as the level of anxiety experienced increases however when the optimal level of anxiety is reached, the eyewitness is at maximum accuracy. If an eyewitness experiences any more stress than this, then their recall of the event declines.
Christianson and Hubinette (1993)
Real eye witness. 15 years later questioned. Anxiety.
Baddeley (Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad support)
Condition 1: Follow laser pointer while describing angles of F. Condition 2: Follow laser pointer and completing a verbal task. Condition 1 is harder as both visual and spatial used.
Misleading Information
Incorrect information given to the eyewitness usually after the event. It can take many forms e.g. leading questions and post-event discussion between co-witnesses and/or other people.
Cognitive Interview
A method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories. Uses four main techniques: report everything, context reinstatement, order reversal, change perspective.
Episodic Memory
A long-term memory store for personal events.
Multi-Store Model
A passive, linear representation of how memory works in terms of 3 stores called sensory register, STM and LTM. Also describes how information is transferred from one store to another, how it is remembered and forgotten.
Semantic Memory
A long-term memory store for our knowledge of the world.
Capacity
The amount of information that can be held in a memory store.
Jacobs (1887)
Digit Span Technique. Experiments STM capacity. Miller had a theory based on the results - The Magic 7.
Baddeley (Coding)
Tests STM and LTM coding. Counted the errors made by participants. Results suggest STM is coded acoustically and LTM coded semantically.
Phonological Loop
The component of WMM that processes echoic information (both written and spoken material). Its divided into the phonological store (inner ear) and the articulatory control system (inner voice.
Sensory Register
The memory stores for each of our senses, such as vision, iconic and echoic. The information is coded in the sense that is registered in. The capacity is huge and information lasts for a very short time in sensory registers.
Central Executive
The component of WMM that co-ordinates the activities of the 3 subsystems in memory. It also allocates processing resources to those activities.
Short Term Memory Store
The limited capacity memory store. Coding is mainly acoustic, capacity is between 5 and 9 items on average, duration is between 18 and 30 seconds.
Long Term Memory Store
The permanent memory store. Coding is mainly semantic, it has unlimited capacity and can store memories for up to a lifetime.
Bower (1969)
Argued information in semantic is hierarchically organised and he tested this. Participants who saw semantically organised words had better recall. Suggests that information in semantic memory is hierarchically organised.
Working Memory Model
A representation of STM. It suggests that STM is an active processor of different types of information using sub-units (slave systems) coordinated by a central decision-making system.
Elaborative Rehearsal
Needed for long term storage. Occurs when you link the information to your existing knowledge, or you think about what it means.
Dual Task Performance Effect
If the tasks are from the same stimulus it’s been found that people perform worse as they can’t attend to both things. Suggests that STM is not a unitary store.
Changing Temporal Order
Events are recalled in a different chronological order to the original sequence. Prevents dishonesty and people reporting expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events.
Maintenance Rehearsal
Verbally repeating an item to keep it in memory.
Retrieval
Recall of information previously stored in memory.
Post-event Discussion
Occurs when there is more than one witness to an event. Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses or other people. May influence the accuracy of each witness’ recall of the event.
Eyewitness Testimony
Ability of people to remember the details of events, e.g. accidents and crimes, which they have observed. Accuracy of EWT can be affected by factors e.g. misleading information, leading questions and anxiety.
Underwood and Postman (1960)
Interference theory research. Retroactive interference.
Goodwin et al. (1969)
Cue dependent forgetting research. Drunk med students. State retrieval failure.
Godden and Baddeley (1975)
Cue dependent forgetting research. Divers. Context retrieval failure.
Availability (or lack of)
No attempt to recall them will result in remembering. They have not been kept in storage or encoded in the first place and are simply not there.
Encoding Specificity Hypothesis (ESH)
If a cue is to help us recall information it has to be present at encoding and at retrieval.
Baddeley (Phonological Loop support)
Condition 1: Remember list of short words. Condition 2: Remember list of longer words. Word length effect occurs when there’s no suppression task and shorter words are remembered better.
Forgetting
Failure to access or retrieve information previously stored in the memory. There are 2 theories.
Visuo-spatial Sketchpad
The component of WMM that processes visual and spatial information in a mental space often called our ‘inner eye’.
Deffenbachern et al. (2004)
Anxiety. Meta-analysis. 18 similar studies.
Proactive Interference
Forgetting occurs when older memories disrupt the recall of newer memories. Degree of forgetting is greater when the memories are similar.
Duration
The length of time information can be held in memory.
Bunge et al. (Central Executive support)
Participants had to perform dual task while in an fMRI to assess brain activation. Significantly more activation in dual task condition.
