Memory AO3 Flashcards
Miller (1956) Capacity of STM
:) empirical evidence- Jacobs (1887) digit span 443 students- average 7.3 letters and 9.4 words- supports Millers findings
:( conflicting evidence- Cowan (2001) found stm is limited to 4 chunks- lower than what Millie found- reduces validity
:( individual differences- increased with age- 6.6 letters for 8yro and 8.6 for 19yro- brain development and individual memory strategies
Peterson and Peterson (1959) duration of STM
:( lacks mundane realism- recalling syllables- not representative of real life- low ecological validity
:) highly controlled lab study- University lab- high control of extraneous variables and has high reliability
:( conflicting evidence- Nairne (1999) found 96 second duration- cannot trust findings- may not be accurate
Bahrick (1975) Duration of LTM
:( field experiment- lowers internal validity as there is less control- confounding variables such as if they may have seen some of these people recently
:( unclear why recall reduces after 48- is it that LTM deteriorates with age or is it the duration- can’t establish causality
:) field experiment- high ecological validity- persons own long term memories- more generalisable
Overall MSM
:) case studies- Clive Wearing could only ever new info for 20-30 secs but could recall old info like how to play piano- shows separate stores
:( too simplistic- Baddeley and Hitch (1974) developed WMM which broke STM into individual parts
:) clinical evidence- brain scans- different parts of brain active for stm (hippocampus) and LTM (motor cortex) activities
Types of LTM
:) clinical evidence- brain scans- episodic hippocampus and temporal lobe- semantic temporal lobe- procedural cerebellum and motor cortex
:) case study- HM had hippocampus removed- could learn implicit tasks but not explicit info- separate parts of ltm
:( limitations of case studies- brain was not monitored before injuries- so before and after- individual differences possibly
Working memory model
:) case study- KF could recall info that was visual in stm but not acoustic info- at least 2 separate parts- phonological loop and Visio-spatial sketch pad
:) empirical evidence- dual task studies Baddeley and Hitch (1976) - 2 auditory tasks at once, 2 visual at once, 1 auditory and 1 visual- could complete 1 auditory and 1 visual- separate stores
:( only focuses on stm- link between wmm and ltm is not fully explained- how is I for processed in ltm- incomplete explanation
Interference Theory
:) empirical evidence- McGeoch and McDonald (1931) word lists-recall was the worse when lists were closest in similarity
:( lacks ecological validity- all lab experiments- don’t represent real life examples of interference and can’t be generalised
:( only explains forgetting when info is similar- incomplete explanation as it doesn’t explain why info that is not similar may still be forgotten
Context dependent forgetting
:) empirical evidence- Godden and Baddeley (1975)- divers learnt words underwater or on land then recalled on land or underwater- recall was 40% higher when conditioned matched
:( low ecological validity- underwater on land not representative of real life- context effects not that strong in real life
State dependent forgetting
:) empirical evidence- Carter and Cassaday (1998) antihistamine to ppts- mild sedative state- when states were different recall was significantly worse
:( hard to establish causality- Nairne (2002) only a correlation that vue were present at both time- just association- hard to conclude whether lack of cues cause retrieval failure
Leading Questions on EWT
:) empirical evidence- Loftus and Palmer (1974)- changed verb for car crash- verb ‘smashed’ ppts says speed was 40.5mph and ‘contacted’ 31.8mph- shows ewt is effected by leading questions
:( Yuille and Cutshall (1986) greater accuracy in real life example - witnesses to armed robbery have very accurate report 4 months later even when given 2 leading question
Post event discussion on EWT
:) empirical evidence- Gabbert et al (2003) 71% of ppts recalled info they hadn’t seen after discussing it with people who had seen other video
:( unable to conclude why distortion occurs- poor memory or unable to disguise between info
Anxiety on EWT
:) Johnson and Scott (1976)- those who witnessed man holding pen recalled man 49% of the time and those who saw him holding a knife 33% of the time- weapon focus due to anxiety
:( Yuille and Cutshall (1986)- real life shooting- 13 witnesses interviewed 5 months later has very accurate recall of suspects
The cognitive interview
:) Empirical evidence- Fisher et al (1989)- cognitive interview elicited 46% more info than control that was 90% accurate- supports technique
:( still susceptible to misleading information- Centofanti and Reece (2006) ppts provided with misleading info then cognitive interview
:( requires specialist training which many police forces don’t have facilities and capacity for
