Memory Flashcards
Explain the sensory register in MSM
There’s a sensory register that’s split into iconic (visual) and echoic (sound that is acoustically coded) It has high capacity Needs attention to be moved into STM Our senses have a store each Duration is less than half a second
Explain the STM in the MSM
Needs rehearsal
Info can be lost through displacement
Lots of rehearsal moves it to LTM
Explain LTM in the MSM
It’s permanent
Info lost through interference
It’s has unlimited capacity (Bahrick)
What are the types of long term memory
According to Tulving in 1985, there is three stores
Episodic semantic and procedural
What is episodic memory
Ability to recall events that are time stamped and needs conscious effort to recall
What is semantic memory
Knowledge of the world and meanings which aren’t time stamped but need conscious effort to retrieve
What is procedural memory
How we do things and it is unconscious/muscle memory
What is the theory about rehearsal
Craik and Watkins (1973) said that it’s not the amount but the type
That elaborate rehearsal transfers it to LTM
What is elaborative rehearsal
Linking info to knowledge
Explain Clive wearing and it’s relevance to MSM
He has good semantic and procedural memory but no episodic memory which shows that the MSM is too simplistic and supports Tulvings theory
Who goes against Tulving
Cohen and Squire (1980) as they believe it is declarative (e and s) and non declarative (p)
What do distinguish between LTM allow
Specific treatment to be developed
Give an example of when LTM was improved
Belleville et al (2006) demonstrated that memories could be improved in older people who had mild cognitive impairments through training
Why made the working memory model
Baddeley and Hitch
What does the WMM just focus on
Just short term
Name the first part of the WMM
The central executive
What does the CE do
Monitors incoming data, makes decisions and allocates slave systems to tasks
What is the coding and duration in the CE
Very limited storage capacity
Coding is modality free
Name the first slave system
Phonological loop
What does the PL do
Deals with auditory info
Has acoustic coding
Preserves order
What is the PL divided into
Phonological store - stores the words you hear
Articulating process - maintenance rehearsal and has a duration of two seconds
What is the second slave system
Visuo-spatial sketchpad
What does the VSS do
Stores visual and/or spatial info when required
Has a capacity of 3 to 4 subjects
What is the VSS divided into
Visual cache which stores visual data
Inner scribe records arrangement
What is the new part of the WMM
The episodic buffer
When was the EB added
In 2000
What does the EB do
Maintains a sense of time sequencing, integrates visual spatial and verbal
Storage component
Capacity of 4 chunks
Links memory to LTM
What is coding
The process of converting info from one form to another
What is Baddeleys coding research
In 1966 and 1966 Group 1 - acoustically similar Group 2 - acoustically dissimilar Group 3 - semantically similar Group 4 - semantically dissimilar Found that STM is coded acoustically And that LTM is coded semantically so dissimilar is better
Who did research into capacity
Jacobs (1887) measured digit span
Recalling numbers
Mean of 9-3 items and 7-3 letters
Miller noticed how everything came in twos and said that digit capacity is 7+/- 2
Who researched duration and what did they do
Peterson and Peterson
Gave each student a trigram and then asked to count back from a number
Done for 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds (retention interval)
Shows the stm is very short
Who studied LTM duration
Bahrick 1975 Yearbook photo recognition Then free recall Free call was worse 90% accuracy after 15 years in PR 60% accuracy after 15 years in free call
What is an issue with Baddeleys study for coding
He used artificial stimuli and not meaning material so it might not stick into their minds as much as real info would
Not generalisable
What is an issue with Jacobs digit span test
It was carried out a long time ago and lacked validity with confounding variables
What was an issue with Peterson and Peterson’s test
It lacked external validity as meaningless stimuli was used yet we do learn meaningless things such as phone numbers
What is a strength of Bahricks study
It used meaningful stimuli as the yearbooks meant something to the people yet it did mean there was less control as they could have looked at the year book prior
Explain the interference theory of forgetting
when two pieces of info conflict with each other resulting in forgetting one, or both, or distortion
Is it an accessibility or availability issue
accessibility, the info is there we just cannot reach it
What is proactive interference
previously learnt info interferes with new info you are trying to store
old info stopping you learning new
Give an example of proactive interference
As a teacher, i keep calling my new class the names from my old class
What is retroactive interference
a new memory interferes with older ones
new info stopping you from remembering old
Give an example of retroactive interference
As a teacher, i can’t remember names from last years class, only this years
Who did a study on interference
Muller & Pilzecker (1900)
What did M&P aim to find out
if new learning interferes with previous
What did they find
retroactive interference does occur
How did they find this
as they were worse at recalling nonsense syllables after describing pictures than a retention period
Who studied proactive interference
Underwood (1957)
What did he ask p’s to do
recall lists of words, later lists showed worse recall
Who believed interference is worse when memories are similar
McGeoch & McDonald (1931)
How did they suggest this
by showing that recall on synonyms were the worst and 3 digit numbers was the best
What were the 5 categories they asked them to recall
synonyms, antonyms, unrelated words, nonsense syllables, 3 digit numbers
What did Baddeley & Hitch do to study the interference theory
asked rugby players to name teams they have played in the last season
some missed games due to injury etc
What did they find
how long ago the match was didn’t matter (decay theory)
recall was effected by number of intervening games
Explain forgetting in terms of retrieval failure
when we forget due to insufficient cues
Why do cues help
as when we encode a memory, we attach smells sights and emotions to it
What happens if cues are absent
we can forget a memory or find it hard to recall
Is it an accessibility or availability issue
accessibility as we still have it we just don’t have the cues to access it
What is Tulvings encoding specificity principle
the greater the similarity between the encoding and retrieval events, the greater the likelihood of recalling the original memory
Name a meaningful cue
Mnemonics
What does context dependent mean
external environmental cues ie weather
What does state dependent mean
how we felt internally ie emotions
What can accuracy of eye witness testimonies be affected by
misleading information
What does misleading information encompass
leading questions
post event discussion
anxiety
What can the schema do to EWT
fill in any gaps but can be incorrect
Who studies leading questions
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
What did L&P do
got p’s to watch a car crash
asked how fast they were going when they “smashed” or “hit”
What were their findings
average of 40.8mph when said smash and average of 34.0mph when said hit
What is response bias
when a question affects an answer
what is the substitution explanation
when the wording of the question changes the answer
Give a study example of substitution
Loftus and Palmer
“Did you see THE broken glass”
or “Did you see broken glass”
Who studied post event discussion
Gabbert et al (2003)
What did they do
got people to witness a crime from different angles
one group discussed
one group didn’t
What did they find
people who discussed 71% recalled things they didn’t see
0% in control
What are the explanations to PED
source monitoring theory and conformity
What is source monitoring theory
when memories become distorted so we can recall event but not the source
What is a positive about EWT studies
it has real life applications
police have to be careful on what questions to ask
Name two negatives for EWT studies
tasks are artificial, there is much more stress in real life crimes or crashes
there are individual differences
Who studied individual differences
Anastasti and Rhodes (2006)
What did they find
that people are more likely to recognise people their own age and younger people are better at recognition
What is the Law that goes with anxiety
Yerkes-Dodson (inverted U)
Who did the study with the knife and pen
Johnson and Scott (1976)
What did they do
same argument heard in waiting room
low anxiety - pen with grease
high anxiety - knife with blood
What did they find
49% recognition for low
33% for high
tunnel/weapons focus theory
What is weapons focus theory
where we concentrate on weapon as it is the source of anxiety
Who studied the gun shop shooting
Yuille & Cutshall (1986)
What did they suggest
that stress may improve memory as their accounts didn’t change and they didn’t conform to leading questions
Who did the hair salon study
Pickels (1998)
What did Pickels do
gave the hair dresser either scissors, hand gun or raw chicken
What did Pickels find and suggest
accuracy was poorer in high unusualness
that weapons focus is due to unusualness
What happens in a cognitive interview
No standardised questions Open questions Remains silent during EW recall Different language for old and young Interviewer builds rapport
What are the four techniques used in a cognitive interview
Report everything
Context reinstatement
Change the sequence
Change perspective
What does reporting everything and context reinstatement do for EWT
It may help them trigger clues as they describe the setting and environment
Why is changing the sequence helpful
It prevents people reporting their expectations and use of schema
It also abides with recency effect where people have a better memory of more recent events
Who came up with enhanced cognitive interviews
Fisher et al 1987
What is added in an enhanced CI
The social dynamics of the interaction such as body language and eye contact
What did Kohnken find with CI
81% increase of correct information but also 61% increase in false positives
What is a negative about CI
It is time consuming and the policeman/woman has to be trained
Everyone uses different versions so it is hard to compare
What is the clinical evidence for the WMM
Shallice and Warrington 1970
KF brain damage
Difficulty with sounds but could recall letters and digits
Suggests that it is in separate stores
Explain dual task performance as a strength of WMM
Baddeley et al 1975
Participants couldn’t do two visual tasks but could do visual and verbal
Why is the central executive a weakness of the WMM
Cognitive psychologists say it is unsatisfactory
Baddeley recognised this and said it is the most important part but the least understood
Not fully explained
What is a weakness for MSM with rehearsal
There’s more than one type
Research shows it’s the type not the amount
Why are the studies that support MSM not enough
They use meaningless stimuli
Not representative to real life
Why is the MSM wrong for long term memory
Tulving suggests there’s more than one type of LTM
What is study that supports the MSM and that STM and LTM are separate stores
Baddeley showed that they were coded differently
