P1: Memory

Question 1

ao1: working memory model

Answer 1

Proposed by Baddeley and Hitch
-alternative to MSM.
-emphasises the workings of STM and give more complex explanation of STM

The Central Executive - acts as a filter, which info in the environment is attended to. Processes info in all sensory stores and directs info to the slave systems. Limited capacity, only limited info at a time

Phonological loop - auditory info
-an acoustic store, confusions can occur here with similar sounding words
-capacity of 2 seconds
1. phonological store - words you hear
2. articulatory process - allows maintenance rehearsal

Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad - what info looks like and how its layed out
Subdivided by Logie:
1. visual cache - visual material
2. inner scribe - handling spatial relationships allowing people to successfully interact with the environment

Episodic buffer (added by Baddley)
-third slave system, links info across the two other domains
-extra storage space for visual and acoustic info

Question 2

Ao3: Working memory model: Strength - The dual task technique

Answer 2

Baddeley and Hitch - The Dual Task Technique
-Aim: if participants can use different parts of working memory at the same time
-Method: Asked participants to simultaneously follow a moving point of light and descrive the angles on the letter F ( both are visual tasks using the visuo-spatial sketchpad), or to follow a light and perform a verbal task
-Conc: verbal task made use of the phonological look and visual made use of the VSS, suggesting we can perform two tasks at the same time as long as they are using two different sub-systems
Eval: conducted under artifical lab conditions which lack mundane realism - argued the studies tell us little about the functioning memory of everyday life

Question 3

Ao3: Working memory model: Strength - Case Study - Shallice and Warrington 1970

Answer 3

KF - in 1970, KF was in a motor cycle accident resulting in brain damage. He remembers words better visually rather than when they are spoken. This suggests his phonological loop may be damaged but his VSS still intact.

Question 4

Ao3: Working memory model: Strength - RLA

Answer 4

Baddeley presented evidence that the phonological loop plays a key role in the development of reading skills, and that this loop may not be fully operative in some children with dyslexia

Question 5

Ao3: Working memory model: Weakness: Central Executive

Answer 5

WMM places great emphasis on the role of the CE in functioning of STM
-however, nature of it is very vague and therefore difficult to study
Shah (1996) hypothesised that the central executive may be even further subdivided into seperate systems controlling visual and auditory information, however, this is still unclear
Eslinger and Damasio studied EVR, who had a cerebal tumour removed. Although he performed well on reasoning, he had poor decision-making skills
-Suggests the function of CE is more complex than originally thought and may consist of subcomponents

Question 6

Ao3: Working memory model: Weakness: case studies

Answer 6

-Some of the key evidence for the WMM comes from case studies of individuals who have suffered serious brain damage bringing problems with using such evidence.
-Firstly, process of brain injury is traumatic, which may in itself change behaviour so that a person performs worse on certain tasks.
-Second, such individuals may have other difficulties such as difficulties paying attention and therefore underperform on certain tasks.
- therefore, these limitations undermine the extent to which we can rely on studies of patients with brain damage to eval the WMM

Question 7

ao1: explanations for forgetting: 2 types of interference

Answer 7

-occurs when two pieces of info interact with eachother, resulting in both or one piece of info being forgotten or distorted
-interference between memories make it harder for us to locate them = forgetting
Two types of forgetting
1. proactive - older memory interferes with new, e.g teacher has learned so many names in past she has difficulty remembering names of current
2. retroactive - new memory interferes with old - e.g. teacher learned so many new names this year has trouble remembering those of the past

Question 8

ao1: explanations for forgetting: Muller and Pilzecker - retroactive interference

Answer 8

-gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 mins, and after retention interval, asked participants to recall lists
-performance reduced if participants had been given an intervening task between initial learning and recall
-intervening task produced RI, later task intervened with what had previously been learned

Question 9

ao1: explanations for forgetting: effects of similarity - McGeoch and McDonald

Answer 9

-interference is worse when memories are similar, as discovered by McGeoch and McDonald. They investigated RI by changing the amount of similarity between 2 sets of materials.
Participants had a team learn a list of 10 words until they could remember them with 100% accuracy. Then learned a new list
There were 6 groups of participants who had to learn different types of lists e.g.
group 1 - synonyms, group 2, nonsense syllables, g3 - 3 digit numbers
findings - when recalling, performance depended on the nature of the second list, most similar material produced worst recall

Question 10

ao3: explanations for forgetting - interference: interference only explains some situations of forgetting

Answer 10

-interference isnt common
-pieces of info need to be similar for it to work and this isnt the case in everyday life
-suggests interference is relatively unimportant explanation and other theories are needed to provide a complete explanation of forgetting

Question 11

ao3: explanations for forgetting - interference: evidence from lab studies

Answer 11

One issue is that most of this research has been lab-based and often used rather artificial lists of words. The findings may not apply to everyday uses of memory. In addition participants may lack motivation to remember the links in such studies and this may allow interference effects to appear stronger than they really are.
This means research is low in ecological validity

Question 12

ao3: explanations for forgetting - interference: real world application to advertising

Answer 12

theres research on the effects of interference when people are exposed to adverts from competing brands within a short time period.
-Danaher et al found that both recall and recognition of an advertiser’s message were impaired when participants were exposed to two advertisements for competing brands within a week.
= suggests that should change exposure to an advertisement on one day rather than a spread over a week thus reducing effects of interference, and could potentially save advertisers money and enhance effectiveness of campaigns

Question 13

ao3: explanations for forgetting - interference: interference effects may be overcome using cues

Answer 13

Tulving and Psotka gave participants five lists of 24 words, each list organised into six categories.
The categories were not explicit but it was presumed that they would be obvious to participants
-Recall was about 70% for the first word list but this fell as participants were given each additional list to learn, presumably due to interference.
-However, at the end they were given a cued recall test - they were told the names of the categories as a clue. Recall rose again to about 70%.
= This suggests that the effects of interference can be reduced with cues

Question 14

ao3: explanations for forgetting - interference: individual differences

Answer 14

There is evidence that some people are less affected by proactive interference than others. Research has shown that individuals with a greater working memory (WM) span were less susceptible to proactive interference. The researchers tested this by giving participants three word lists to learn. Those participants with low working memory spans showed greater proactive interference when recalling the second and third lists than did participants with higher spans. A further test suggested that having a greater working memory span meant having greater resources to consciously control processing and counteract the effects of proactive interference.
= this suggests that the effects of interference may not be applicable to everyone

Question 15

ao1: explanations for forgetting - retrieval failure

Answer 15

-because of insufficient cues. When infon is initially placed in memory, associated cues are stored at the same time. If these cues are not available at the time of recall, you may forget the memory.
Encoding specificity principle (ESP)
Tulving (1983) reviewed research into retrieval failure and discovered a consistent pattern to the findings. He summarised this pattern in what he called the encoding specificity principle. This states that if a cue is to help us to recall information it has to be present at encoding (when we learn the material) and at retrieval (when we are recalling it). It follows from this that if the cues available at encoding and retrieval are different (or if cues are entirely absent at retrieval) there will be some forgetting.
Tulving and Pearlstone (1966)
* Participants had to learn 48 words in 12 categories (eg: fruit-apple).
* There were 2 different recall conditions: free recall and cued recall.
* Free recall condition = 40% of words were recalled
* cued-recall condition = 60% of words were recalled
= cues that have been explicitly or implicitly encoded at the time help to aid recall

Question 16

ao1: explanations for forgetting - retrieval failure - context dependant forgetting, Godden and Baddeley

Answer 16

Godden and Baddeley (1975) carried out a really interesting study of deep sea divers working underwater. In this situation it’s crucial - a matter of life and death for divers to remember instructions given before diving about their work underwater.

Procedure - In this study the divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land and then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land. This therefore created four conditions: * Learn on land - recall on land. * Learn underwater- recall on land. * Learn on land - recall underwater. * Learn underwater- recall underwater.

Findings – Highest recall occurred when the initial context matched the recall environment. Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions. The external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall and this led to retrieval failure.

Question 17

ao1: explanations for forgetting - retrieval failure - state dependant forgetting, Goodwin

Answer 17

Goodwin et al. (1969): asked male volunteers to remember a list of words when they were either drunk or sober. They were asked to recall the lists after 24 hours when some were sober and others had to get drunk again.
-This suggested that information learnt when drunk is more available when in the same state later.

Question 18

ao1: plan for ao1 of explanations for forgetting - retieval failure

Answer 18

1. def
2. encoding specifity principle (Tulving) - (tulving and Pearlstone)
3. context dependent forgetting - Godden and Baddeley
4. state dependent forgetting (Goodwin0

Question 19

ao3: explanations for forgetting - retrieval failure - supporting evidence

Answer 19

An impressive range of research supports the retrieval failure explanation for forgetting. In fact, one prominent memory researcher, Michael Eysenck (2010), goes so far as to argue that retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from LTM.
+ helps explain why ppl forget = find strategies such as cues to aid memory
- however, many lab studies are artificial, dont represent everyday, lack mundane realism, research low in eco validity

Question 20

ao3: explanations for forgetting - retrieval failure - RLA

Answer 20

An obvious application of this research is to use it to improve recall when you need to.
Smith (1979) showed that just thinking of the room where you did the original learning (mental reinstatement) was as effective as actually being in the same room at the time of retrieval.
Another application of retrieval cues is in the cognitive interview.
This shows how research into retrieval failure can suggest strategies for improving recall in real world situations

Question 21

ao3: explanations for forgetting - retrieval failure - can cues help interference?

Answer 21

Tulving and Psotka (1971) gave participants a list of words to recall which were in categories (such as, animals, furniture etc), when participants were given cued recall, the effects of interference disappeared – they remembered 70% regardless of how many lists they have been given
This shows information is there (available) but cannot be retrieved due to interference, as retrieval cues improve subsequent recall = thus shows retrieval failure is a more important explanation

Question 22

ao3: explanations for forgetting - retrieval failure - Problems with the encoding specificity principle

Answer 22

Can the encoding specificity principle (ESP) be tested? The short answer is no. The ESP is not testable and leads to a form of circular reasoning. In experiments where a cue produces the successful recall of a word, we assume that the cue must have been encoded at the time of learning. If a cue does not result in successful recall of a word, then we assume that the cue was not encoded at the time of learning. But these are just assumptions - there is no way to independently establish whether or not the cue has really been encoded.

Question 23

ao1: types of long term memories

Answer 23

Tulving (1985) was one of the first cognitive psychologists to realise that the model’s view of LTM was too simplistic and inflexible. Tulving proposed are in fact three LTM stores, containing quite different types of information; episodic memory, semantic memory and procedural memory.
1. episodic memory - concerned with personal experiences. explicit memories (need to consciously recall them). 3 elements: specific details of the event, context and emotions felt
2. semantic memory - knowledge of the world. Explicit. Memories arent time stamped, dont remember when we first learned it usually. Less personal and more about facts.
3. procedural - skills like bike riding, remembering how to do it rather than the rules. Aquired through repition and practise. Non-declarative - unable for conscious inspections

Question 24

ao3: types of long term memories - clinical evidence

Answer 24

Clinical evidence
The famous case studies of HM (Henry Molaison) and Clive Wearing are relevant here. Episodic memory in both men was severely impaired as a consequence of amnesia. They had great difficulty recalling events that had happened to them in their pasts. But their semantic memories were relatively unaffected. For example, they still understood the meaning of words. So HM would not be able to recall stroking a dog half an hour earlier and could not remember having owned a dog in the past, but he would not need to have the concept of ‘dog’ explained to him over and over again. Their procedural memories were also intact. They both knew how to tie their shoelaces, how to walk and speak, and, in Clive Wearing’s case (he was a professional musician), how to read music, sing and play the piano.
-supports the view that there are seperate memory stores in LTM, one store can be damaged but others are unaffected

Question 25

ao3: types of long term memories - neuroimaging evidence

Answer 25

Neuroimaging evidence
There is also evidence from brain scan studies that different types of memory are stored I different parts of the brain. For example, Tulving et al. (1994) got their participants to perform various memory tasks while their brains were scanned using a PET scanner. They found that
Episodic – hippocampus, temporal and frontal lobe
Semantic – temporal lobe
Procedural – cerebellum and basil ganglia

Question 26

ao3: types of long term memories - RLA

Answer 26

Being able to identify different aspects of LTM allows psychologists to target certain kinds of memory in order to better people’s lives. Belleville et al. (2006) demonstrated that episodic memories could be improved in older people who had a mild cognitive impairment. The trained participants performed better on a test of episodic memory after training than a control group. Episodic memory is the type of memory most often affected by mild cognitive impairment, which highlights the benefit of being able to distinguish between types of LTM - because it enables specific treatments to be developed.

Question 27

ao3: types of long term memories - 3 types of LTM or two?

Answer 27

Cohen and Squire (1980) disagree with Tulving’s division of LTM into three types. They accept that procedural memories represent one type of LTM. But they argue that episodic and semantic memories are stored together in one LTM store that they call declarative memory i.e. memories that can be consciously recalled. In contrast procedural memories are non-declarative

Question 28

ao1: Factors affecting eye witness testimony - misleading information

Answer 28

Loftus and Palmer (1974) were interesting in seeing how such questions could affect the accuracy of a persons memory, and therefore their ability to give accurate eyewitness testimonies.
Aims To test their hypothesis that eyewitness testimony (EWT) is fragile and can easily be distorted, Loftus and Palmer aimed to show that leading questions could distort EWT accounts via the cues provided in the question. To test this hypothesis, Loftus and Palmer asked people to estimate the speed of motor vehicles using different forms of questions after they had observed a car accident.
Procedures
45 American students formed an opportunity sample. This was a laboratory experiment with five conditions, only one of which was experienced by each participant (an independant design). Participants were shown a brief film depicting a car accident involving a number of cars. They were then asked to describe what had happened as if they were eyewitnesses. After they had watched the film, the participants were asked specific questions, including the question “About how fast were the cars going when they (hit/smashed/ collided/bumped/contacted-the five conditions) each other?” Thus, the independent variable was the verb used and the dependent variable was the speed reported by the participants.
A week after the participants were shown the film of the car accident they were asked, “Did you see any broken glass?” In fact, no broken glass was shown in the film.
Findings
They found that estimated speed was influenced by the verb used. The verb implied information about the speed, which affected the participants’ memory of the accident. Those who were asked the question where the verb used was “smashed” thought the cars were going faster than those who were asked the question with “hit” as the verb. The mean estimate when “smashed” was used was 41mph, versus 34mph when “hit” was used. Thus, participants in the “smashed” condition reported the highest speeds, followed by “collided”, “bumped”, “hit”, and “contacted” in descending order. In answering the follow-up question, a higher percentage of participants who heard “smashed” said that they had seen broken glass (32%) than those who heard “hit” (14%).
Conclusions
Loftus and Palmer concluded that the form of question can have a significant effect on a witness’s answer. In other words, leading questions can affect the accuracy of memory. Such leading questions are an example of what psychologists call post-event information – information given after the event which may alter memory. This can lead to one of two things happening which may be affecting the accuracy of EWT:
1. Response bias – leading questions suggest an appropriate response for the participants, for example “smashed” sounds more violent than “contacted” and so participant’s estimates of speed are biased.
2. Reconstructive hypothesis – leading questions may actually alter a person’s memory of events (e.g. recalling seeing broken glass when there was none)
Conformity effect - Gabbert and colleagues found that 71% of witnesses who discussed the event theyd seen on video went onto mistakenly recall items aquired during the discussion
Co-witnesses may reach a consensus view of what actually happened. This has been supported by research which showed that participants who discussed an event with a group were more likely to mistakenly recall items compared to participants asked alone.
Repeat interviewing
Each time an eyewitness is interviewed there is the possibility that comments from the interviewer will become incorporated into their recollection of events. It is also the case that an interviewer may use leading questions and thus alter the individual’s memory for events. This is especially the case when children are being interviewed about a crime.

Question 29

ao3: Factors affecting eye witness testimony - misleading information - contradictory research

Answer 29

Yuille and Cutshall (1986) studied real witnesses to violent crimes and found contradictory results. Important details were accurately recalled and not prone to being influenced by leading questions. They interviewed 13 people who had been witnesses to an armed robbery in Canada. Interviews took place 4 months after the crime had been committed. Despite the fact that the interviewers deliberately included two misleading questions, research showed that recall remained accurate and matched the original statements that were given.
This highlights an important criticism of Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) research study, that it lacks ecological validity. A laboratory experiment may not represent real life because people don’t take the experiment seriously and/or they are not emotionally aroused as they would be in a real accident. Foster et al (1994) found that if participants thought they were watching a real-life robbery and that their responses would influence the trial, their identification of the robber was more accurate.
This suggests that misleading information may have less influence on real-life EWT than Loftus’ research suggests

Question 30

ao3: Factors affecting eye witness testimony - misleading information - individual differences

Answer 30

There is evidence that older people are less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports. For example Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) found that people in age groups 18-25 and 35-45 were more accurate than people in the group 55-78 years. However, all age groups were more accurate when identifying people of their own age group (called own age bias). Research studies often use younger people as the target to identify and this may mean that some age groups appear less accurate but in fact this is not true.
This suggests that individual differences, age in particular, are an important factor when assessing the reliability of EWT

Question 31

ao3: Factors affecting eye witness testimony - misleading information - useful RLA

Answer 31

A great strength of all research into misleading information is that it has hugely important practical uses in the real world, where the consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious indeed. For example, Loftus (1975) believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses (cognitive interview). Additionally recent DNA exoneration cases have confirmed warnings of eyewitness identification researchers by showing that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest single factor contributing to the conviction of innocent people. Based on the work of Loftus, The Deviln Report (1976) recommended that juries should not convict on the evidence of a single eyewitness testimony alone.
This demonstrates the important role of EWT research in helping ensure that innocent people are not convicted of crimes they did not commit on the basis of faulty EW

Question 32

ao1: Improving eye witness testimony (Cognitive Interview)

Answer 32

The cognitive interview (CI) was designed by Fisher and Geiselman and is a very exciting development in the world of criminology and is an interview technique designed for use by the police in interviews that involve witnesses.
Fisher and Geiselman therefore identified four main principles that would enhance accurate recall:
1. Context reinstatement – the interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate the environment and emotional feelings from the original incident. E.g. “how were you feeling at the time?” This is related to context dependent forgetting - may all act as a cue/trigger to recall
2. Report everything - Report every detail you can recall, even if it seems trivial or the interviewee is not 100% confident of the accuracy. E.g. “Please do not sensor any information, even if you consider it to be unimportant.” This may highlight something that has been overlooked
3. Recall from changed perspective – try to describe the incident as it would have been seen from different viewpoints, not just your own. E.g. “how would the argument have looked to the shopkeeper across the road?”. This promotes a more holistic view of the event which may enhance recall
4. Recall in reverse order – the interviewer could try to go through the incident in different chronological orders i.e. moving backwards and forwards in time. E.g. “Can we start at the time of the murder and then work backwards?”. This is done to prevent people reporting their expectations of how the event must have happened rather than the actual events (schemas). It also verifies accuracy
-The cognitive interview has been designed to elicit much more information than the standard interview technique, as trivial incidents may trigger more important memories. It is also believed that the change of narrative order and perspective aid recall because they reduce witnesses’ use of prior knowledge and expectations and therefore should increase the accuracy of the testimony.
-Fisher later suggested an amended version of the cognitive interview which he called the enhanced cognitive interview, which included extra features such as the minimisation of distractions during questioning, anxiety reduction and encouraging the witnesses to speak slowly. Again, these additions are designed to elicit not only more, but also more accurate details from the event.

Question 33

ao3: Improving eye witness testimony (Cognitive Interview) - special benefits

Answer 33

Research suggests that the enhanced cognitive interview (ECI) may offer special benefits. For example, a meta-analysis by Kohnken et al. (1999) combined data from 50 studies. The enhanced Cl consistently provided on average 34% more correct information than the standard interview used by police. = CI is an effective technique for increasig the accessibility of info

Question 34

ao3: Improving eye witness testimony (Cognitive Interview) - quantity versus quality

Answer 34

The procedure is designed to enhance the quantity (the amount) of correct recall without compromising the quality (the amount of correct recall as a percentage of total recall) of that information. However, it may be that effectiveness has largely been in terms of quantity. Kohnken et al. (1999) found an increase of 61% of incorrect when the enhanced Cl was compared to a standard interview.
= police need to treat all info collected from CIs with caution, doesnt guarantee accuracy

Question 35

ao3: Improving eye witness testimony (Cognitive Interview) - ci is time consuming

Answer 35

Police may be reluctant to use the CI because it takes much more time not just to conduct in comparison to the standard interview, but also to train staff to use it effectively. Some have questioned whether this cost and time expenses are worth it given the significant limitations of the cognitive interview.
This also results in some police forces not using all aspects of the cognitive interview. For example, Thames Valley police use a version that does not include the ‘changing perspectives’ component. This means that it Is hard to establish the overall effectiveness of the technique when using all complement.

Question 36

ao3: Improving eye witness testimony (Cognitive Interview) - limitation, individual differences

Answer 36

Mello and Fisher (1996) found that the CI produced more significant information for older people, maybe because they are cautious about reporting information.
Suggests CI is more effective for older people than younger people