Memory theories + case studies

Question 1

Who is HM and what happened to him?

Answer 1

• had severe epilepsy
• hippocampus removed to prevent seizures

Question 2

How did the removal of the hippocampus affect HM?

Answer 2

unable to form new long term memories

Question 3

Who was HMs main researcher?

Answer 3

Millner

Question 4

What did Millner discover about HM?

Answer 4

able to learn skills (procedural memory) by tracing shapes but had no conscious recollection he learnt them (declarative memory)

Question 5

STM capacity

Who made the digit span technique for stm?

Answer 5

Jacobs 1887

Question 6

STM capacity

What is the digit span technique?

Answer 6

• read aloud a list of letters of numbers
• increase leangth of list until recall is wrong 50% of time

Question 7

STM capacity

What were the results of the digit span technique?

Answer 7

• stm capactity for digits was 9 and for letters 7
• concluded age doesnt affect stm
• avg digit span 5-9
• number easier to recall than letters

Question 8

STM capacity

Who divised the ‘magic number’ theory?

Answer 8

MIllner 1956

Question 9

STM capacity

What is the ‘magic number’ theory?

Answer 9

• belief that memory is determined by chunks of info
• noted things come in 7s so number capacity in stm is around 7
• also people can recall 5 words as well as 5 letters

Question 10

STM capacity

What did Cowan (2001) conclude about capacity?

Answer 10

Capacity of STM is around 4 chunks

Question 11

STM duration

Who did the trigram study?

Answer 11

Peterson and Peterson

Question 12

STM duration

What was the trigram study?

Answer 12

• test 24 students in 8 trials
• give consonant trigrams (non pronouncable letters like LDH)
• had to recall after intervals of 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds

Question 13

STM duration

What were the findings of the trigram study?

Answer 13

• participants able to recall 80% after 3 secs
• as intervals increases recall declined
• by 18 secs only recall 10% or less
• concluded recall decays rapidly when rehersal is prevented

Question 14

What was the evaluation of the trigram study?

Answer 14

• artificial so lacks mundane realism
• doesnt reflect real life memory activities so lacks external validity

Question 15

STM encoding

What did Conrad (1964) do?

Answer 15

showed participants a random 6 letter sequance and projected them rapidly onto a board and then immediately asked them to recall

Question 16

STM encoding

What were the 2 conditions of Conrads study?

Answer 16

1. acoustically similar (BCTGDV)
2. acoustically dissimilar (FJXMSR)

Question 17

What did Conrad find?

Answer 17

• Ps frequently made errors by substituting similar soundsing letters (V for a D)
• due to substitution errors and acoustic confusion

Question 18

What is the evaluation of Conrads study?

Answer 18

• well controlled lab exp
• artificial stimui so lacks relaism and external validity
• use of students lacks population validity
• too simplistic

Question 19

Who was KF?

Answer 19

• motorbike accident damaged temporal lobe

Question 20

How did the injury affect KF?

Answer 20

short term memory for digits was poor when read aloud (acoustic) but recall was better when reading digits (visual)

suggests there are seperate stores for visual and auditory

Question 21

MSM

What did Craik and Lockhart say about MSM?

Answer 21

things are remembered better if processed semantically

Question 22

MSM

What did Craik and Tulving say?

Answer 22

elaborate rehersal is needed for encoding into LTM

Question 23

Types of LTM

What was the study of Rosenbaum 2005?

Answer 23

• motorcycle accident left with brain damage
• large bilateral hippocampus leisions
• general knowledge (semantic) intact but recalling personal events was impared (episodic)
• ‘episodic amnesia’
• shows episodic and semantic are 2 different processes

Question 24

Episodic and semantic

What did Tulving do 1989?

Answer 24

• performed brain scans on 6 voulenteers
• when episodic memory used the frontal cortex was active
• when semantic used the back of the cortex was active
• backs up that semantic and episodic are seperate

Question 25

What was the aim Underwood and Postmans study 1960?

Answer 25

-to find out if new learning intereferes with previous learning

Question 26

What was the procedure of underwood and postmans study?

Answer 26

• Ps divided into 2 groups
• Group A learnt a list of word pairs and in the second list the second word in the pair was different
• B asked to learn first list only
• both groups asked to recall first list

Question 27

What were the results of Underwood and postmans study?

Answer 27

B recalled first list more accurately than A

Question 28

What did Underwood and Postman conclude?

Answer 28

learning items in 2nd list interfered with ability to recall which is retroactive interference

Question 29

What was Godden and Baddeleys aim (1975)?

Answer 29

to investigate the effect of the environment on recall

Question 30

What were Godden and Baddeleys conclusions?

Answer 30

being in the same environment for recall and learning is beneficial

Question 30

What was Godden and Baddeleys procedure?

Answer 30

• 18 divers asked to elarn a list of 36 unrelated words of 2 or 3 syllables

Question 30

What is the evaluastion of Godden and Baddeleys study?

Answer 30

• atificial
• controlled so easy to replicate. so reliability can be tested

Question 30

What were Godden and Baddeleys 4 conditions?

Answer 30

1. learn on beach and recall on beach
2. learn on beach and recall underwater
3. learn underwater and recall underwater
4. learn underwater and recall on beach

Question 30

What were the results of godden and baddeleys study?