Memory Exam Q Essay Knowledge Flashcards
Outline Capacity of Short Term Memory
Outline Duration of Short term memory
-Capacity assessed using digit span, * Joseph Jacobs (1887)
participants read a sequence of numbers or letters and asked to repeat immediately. An additional digit is added on each subsequent trial to measure the capacity of STM.
- Duration assessed in Peterson & Peterson (1959), participants given three letters of consonants and three digit numbers, asked to count backwards for specified intervals and then asked to recall.
-90% correct after 3 seconds, 20% after 12 seconds, 2% after 18.
All Cognitive Interview Techniques and evaluate:
Report Everything: Recall every detail, including insignificant ones
Context/Mental Reinstatement: Mental recall of event context triggers more information retrieval
Reverse/Change Order Principle: Recall events in reverse chronological order to disrupt schemas
Change Perspective: Consider the event from another person’s perspective disrupt schemas for more recall.
Limitations of cognitive interview: Kebbell and Wagstaff (1996) Study.
Police typically use techniques limiting quantity of information instead of improving accuracy.
Cognitive interview requires special training, but many police forces lack adequate training, limiting its use.
as in Fisher et al showed trained detectives using cognitive interview elicited 46% more information than the control group, with over 90% of it being accurate.
Misleading information in cognitive interview: Centofanti and Reece (2006) Study.
Participants shown a bank robbery video and provided with misleading or neutral post-event summary.
Findings: participants that were cognitive interviewed recalled 35% more information, but were equally susceptible to misleading information.
Discuss Working Memory Model (WMM)
Baddley and Hitch:
Components of WMM:
Dual tasks studys supporting WMM:
Castre studies supporting WMM:
Nonomethic approach and idiographic:
(nonomethic is generalising things and idiographic is more specific to a part or person)
Working Memory Model (WMM) proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) as an alternative to the multi-store model.
WMM suggests short-term memory consists of multiple stores and is an active process.
Components of WMM: Central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad, episodic buffer.
Central Executive: Central executive monitors functions in wmm
* Central executive is vague and untestable
* Eslinger : Studied person with tumour removed, he had decent reasoning which suggest CE was intact but poor decision making skills suggesting it wasn’t.
Phonological loop: Deals with auditory information, including phonological store (words heard) and articulatory control process (rehearsal).
Visuo-spatial sketchpad: Used for spatial tasks, includes visual cache (visual information) and inner scribe (spatial relationships).
Episodic buffer: Added in 2000, integrates information from other components and transfers it to long-term memory.
Dual task studies support WMM: Baddeley and Hitch (1976) found impairment when two tasks require the phonological loop, but not when one task involves the phonological loop and the other involves the visuo-spatial sketchpad.
Case studies support WMM: Patient KF’s motorcycle accident showed impairment in STM for acoustic information but not visual images, suggesting separate components for visual and acoustic information.
Limitation of WMM: Focuses only on short-term memory and lacks information on sensory register and long-term memory.
Experimental reductionism in WMM research: Isolated variables studied in laboratory experiments may oversimplify complex behavior shows a Nonomethic approach of WMM: Attempts to generate universal laws about STM processes based on dual task studies in laboratory conditions. Idiographic approaches can provide insight into individual variations in STM loss like how it varies person to person
Discuss Retrieval Failure and Interference:
Proactive interference:
Retroactive interference:
Tulving and Thomson:
Retrieval failure occurs when:
Godden and Baddley
Proactive interference: Old information stored in long-term memory interferes with the learning of new information, especially when the new information is similar to the old information. Keppel and Underwood (1962) study: Investigated proactive interference on long-term memory using meaningless three-letter consonant trigrams. Participants’ recall was affected by interference from earlier consonants similar to the new ones.
retroactive interference – when a newer memory disrupts an older memory, ( Muller and Pilzecker) participants asked to learn a list of syllables, and with a intervening task before asked to recall, performance was worse when this was the case.
Tulving and Thomson (1973): Proposed the encoding specificity principle, stating that memory is most effective when the information present during encoding is also present during retrieval which are cues. Environmental and mental cues aid recall.
Retrieval failure: Occurs when cues are absent, leading to two types of failures: context-dependent (missing environmental cues) and state-dependent (different emotional state) Goodwin et al. (1969) found support for this phenomenon using drunk and sober conditions.
Godden and Baddeley (1975) study: Investigated the effect of contextual cues on recall using 18 participants from a diving club. Found that recall was better when learning and recall contexts matched. however had a small sample size and used a repeated measures design, possibly affected by demand characteristics, order effects, as the participants took part in multiple conditions.
Multi Store Model of Memory discuss and evaluate:
Sensory Register, STM and LTM
Case of Clive Wearing and Patient KF
Supporting Studies and experimental reductionism:
Information passes from the sensory register to STM and then to LTM in a linear fashion.
Sensory Register: Receives information from the senses but has a very limited duration of less than one second.
Short-Term Memory (STM): Receives attended information from the sensory register, has a capacity of 7+/-2 chunks, and a limited duration of approximately 20 seconds. Information is coded acoustically.
Long-Term Memory (LTM): Receives rehearsed information from STM, has unlimited capacity and a lifetime duration. Information is coded semantically.
Case of Clive Wearing: Supports the MSM as Wearing had severe amnesia but could recall past information from LTM, demonstrating the passing of information between memory stores.
Case of patient KF: Challenges the MSM as KF had STM issues but could recall stored information from LTM, suggesting separate components for visual and acoustic information within STM.
Supporting studies: Miller (1959) supports limited capacity in STM, Peterson & Peterson (1959) support limited duration in STM, and Bahrick (1975) support lifetime duration in LTM.
Experimental reductionism(complex behaviour reduced to a variable for testing): Critique of the MSM as it reduces memory to isolated variables, potentially overlooking the complexity of human memory in everyday contexts.
