Memory - PAPER 1

Question 1

LTM vs STM

Answer 1

LTM:
- duration - up to a lifetime
- capacity - unlimited
- coding - semantic
STM:
- duration - 18/30 seconds
- capacity - 5/9 bits of info
- coding - acoustic

Question 2

Baddeley (1966) study (coding of STM and LTM)

Answer 2

• gave participants 4 lists of words, acoustically similar/ unsimilar and semantically similar/unsimilar, words being presented one at a time
• repeated measures design
• participants were asked to recall the order of the words immediately after and after 20 mins
  FINDINGS:
• acoustic confusion - difficulty remembering acoustically similar works when participants were asked to recall immediately
• semantic confusion - when asked to recall after 20 mins.
  SO:
• STM prefers to code acoustically and LTM prefers to code semantically

EVALUATIOM

• conclusions have stood the test of time
• led to the creation of the multi-store model (important step in our understanding of memory system)
• BUT artificial stimuli: word lists had no personal meaning, so lack of ecological validity. people may use semantic coding for STM.

Question 3

Josepf jacobs (1887) study on capacity of STM

Answer 3

• used a digit span test to assess the capacity of STM.
• he found that the average amount of letters remembered was 7.3 and numbers remembered was 9.3

EVALUATION:
- findings have been confirmed by newer studies
- BUT: lack of ecological validity because numbers and letters have no personal meaning

Question 4

George miller (1956) study on STM capacity

Answer 4

• found that people could absorb 7 (plus or minus 2) new pieces of information in STM at a time.
• founded chunking (grouping letters or digits into chunks, making them easier to remember)

EVALUATION:
- may have overestimated STM capacity
- Other psychologists reviewed other research and found the capacity may only be 4 (plus or minus 2) chunks
- some psychologists found 4 chunks is the limit for STM with visual info.

Question 5

Peterson and Peterson (1959) study on duration of STM

Answer 5

• participants given a nonsense trigram to remember, together with a 3 digit number.
• participants had to recall the trigram after a retention interval of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
• during the retention interval, participants had to count backwards from their 3 digit number, to ensure they weren’t recalling the trigram
• recall got worse as the delay grew longer and it was found that the duration of STM is 18-30 seconds

EVALUATION

• artificial stimuli, although, not completely irrelevant as we do sometimes have to recall meaningless info (phone numbers, postcodes etc.)
• recalling trigrams doesn’t reflect most everyday memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful

Question 6

Bahrick et al (1975) (study for how long LTM lasts)

Answer 6

• used 392 17-74 year olds

1) photo recognition task:

• participants supplied with old yearbook photos and asked to pick out who they had gone to school with.
• 90% accuracy if graduated within 15 years.
• 70% accuracy if graduated within 48 years

2) Free recall task:

• participants not supplied with old yearbook photos - just asked to recall who they had gone to school with
• 60% accuracy if graduated within 15 years
• 30% accuracy if graduated within 48 years

SO: LTM can potentially last a lifetime

EVALUATION

• high external validity as researchers investigated meaningful memories
• when other research has been done with meaningless pictures, recall rates were lower.

Question 7

diagram of multi-store model of memory

Answer 7

Question 8

sensory memory/ register properties

Answer 8

• coding - modality specific
• duration - less than half a second
• capacity - very high (e.g many cells in retina of eye, all storing data)

Question 9

what is the iconic sensory register store

Answer 9

visual images kept for a short period

Question 10

what is the echoic sensory register store

Answer 10

auditory senses kept for a short period

Question 11

George Soerling (1960) - study for duration of iconic sensory register

Answer 11

George sperling (1960):

• participants asked to recall a whole grid recalled worse than participants asked to recall just part of a grid
• proves the rapid decay of the iconic memory store

Question 12

Murdock (1962) - study for evidence of the multi-store model

Answer 12

Murdock (1962)

• participants learnt lists of words one at a time for 2 seconds per word, and then recalled the words in any order
• words at end of list were recalled better (recency effect) and words at the beginning of the list (primary effect), but words in the middle not at all
• evidence for STM and LTM: last words in STM and first few words in LTM because rehearsal took place

Question 13

study for evidence of the distinction between LTM and STM

Answer 13

Shallice and Warrington (1977):

• Patient had been in a motorcycle crash where he had sustained brain damage
• his LTM was unaffected but he was only able to recall the last bit of info he had heard in his STM
• had a normal visual STM capacity, but an abnormally low verbal STM capacity

Question 14

Endel Tulving (1985) - study for the 3 LTM stores

Answer 14

• one of the first cognitive psychologists to realist the multi-store models view of LTM was too simplistic and inflexible.
• he proposed there were 3 LTM stores (episodic, semantic and procedural)
• research into LTM has been conducted on individual patients, so might not be good for generalising.

Question 15

episodic memory

Answer 15

• linked to personal experiences
• time stamped
• has context and emotions linked to it
• explicit - conscious effort is needed to recall them

Question 16

semantic memory

Answer 16

• shared knowledge of the world
• e.g capital of France is Paris
• this information can be generalised
• explicit - conscious effort needed to remember

Question 17

procedural memory

Answer 17

• skill based
• automatic after practice/repetition
• implicit - less conscious effort needed to remember
• allow us to multitask

Question 18

working memory model diagram

Answer 18

Question 19

what is the central executive

Answer 19

• attentional process that monitors incoming data
• decides how to process incoming information
• very limited processing capacity (similar to sensory register)
• supported by LTM, otherwise nothing would be understood

Question 20

what is the phonological loop

Answer 20

• processes auditory information and preserves the order in which the information arrives.
• has two sub-divisions:

1) the phonological store - stores the words you hear
2) the articulatory process - allows for maintenance rehearsal (i.e repeating words you hear in a loop in order to keep them in the working memory). the capacity of this loop is said to be 2 seconds of what you can say.

Question 21

what is the visuo-spacial sketchpad

Answer 21

• stores visual and/or spacial info when required.
• capacity of 3-4 objects
• made up of two components:
  1) the visual cache - stores visual data
  2) the inner scribe- records the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Question 22

what is the episodic buffer

Answer 22

• the storage component of the central executive
• a temporary store for information, recording events (episodes) that are happening
• limited capacity of 4 chunks
• links working memory to long-term memory and wider cognitive process such as perception

Question 23

naturalistic vs controlled

Answer 23

naturalistic - setting where behaviour would usually occur

controlled - structured environment where some variables can be controlled

Question 24

covert vs overt

Answer 24

covert - ps don’t know they are being observed
overt- ps do know they are being observed

Question 25

participant vs non-participant

Answer 25

participant - researcher becomes apart of the group being observed
non-participant - researcher remains separate from the group observed

Question 26

What are examples of cognitive interview techniques

Answer 26

• interview conducted in room of event
• all info described in questions (e.g colour of cars) - may seem irrelevant but can trigger additional memories
• may be asked in a different order; disrupts schemas from filling in gaps of memory

Question 27

What are examples of misleading information and give a study for each

Answer 27

Question 28

Describe anxiety in eyewitness testimony and give 2 study examples

Answer 28

Question 29

Evaluate eyewitness testimony

Answer 29

Question 30

What are the different explanations for forgetting

Answer 30

• Interference: When new information conflicts with or disrupts existing information, it can lead to interference and make it difficult to retrieve information from memory.
• Decay: Over time, memories fade and become less accessible, leading to forgetting.
• Retrieval Failure: When people are unable to access information from memory, it can be due to a retrieval failure, such as not being able to recall a particular detail from a past event.
• Motivated Forgetting: Sometimes people may intentionally or unintentionally forget information that is emotionally difficult or conflicts with their self-image.
• Context-dependent Forgetting: People may find it difficult to recall information if they are in a different context than when the information was originally learned.

Question 31

What are the two types of interference

Answer 31