Paper 1- Memory

Question 1

What is the duration of the STM? Give supporting research

Answer 1

Peterson and Peterson studied 24 ppts in a lab and showed them nonsense syllables followed by 3 digit numbers that they had to count back from (articulatory repression).
Counting for 3 seconds: 90% of syllables remembered
Counting for 18 seconds: 2% remembered
Suggests STM has a short duration if rehearsal is prevented
- lacks mundane realism (all artificial tasks) which are meaningless
- could have been displacement; numbers may have replaced the syllables rather than decay (lack of validity) - other researchers found up to 96 seconds

Question 2

What is the capacity of the STM? Give supporting research

Answer 2

Miller found 7+/-2
However it could be limited to around 4 chunks of info for visual rather than verbal stimuli (size of the chunk also matters)
- also individual differences - may increase capacity steadily with age (due to brain/strategy development)

Supported by Jacobs et al - digit span test with every letter except those which had two syllables - people found it easier to recall numbers rather than letters - letter was 7-3 but numbers 9-2

Question 3

STM encoding?

Answer 3

largely encodes acoustically (so it is better at remembering semantically similar words)

Question 4

What is the duration of the LTM?

Answer 4

Barrick et al tested 400ppts in a natural experiment based on their ability to remember their classmates in their yearbook from photo-recognition
After 15 years: 90% recognition
After 48 years: 70%
Suggesting it could be potentially limited
- this experiment was high in ecological validity due to meaningful results

Question 5

Capacity of LTM?

Answer 5

Unlimited

Question 6

Encoding of LTM?

Answer 6

Semantic encoding (remembering acoustically similar better)

Question 7

Describe divisions in the LTM

Answer 7

Episodic (explicit)
- remembering an event concerned with personal experiences (feelings, surroundings)

Semantic (explicit)

• knowledge that may be shared by everyone (function, abstract concepts, general knowledge)
• tend to begin episodic as we gain knowledge off of personal experience

Procedural (implicit)

• concerned with skills and remembering how to do something
• automatic function (over-attention may disrupt it)

Question 8

Give evidence for research into the LTM divisions

Answer 8

Evidence to support:
- Distinction made between the three types (they originate in different parts of the brain). Tested through brain scanning and found hippocampus: episodic, temporal: semantic, cerebellum: procedural

Distinguishing between procedural and declarative:
- case study of HM who had a damaged hippocampus and parts of the temporal lobe - retained pre-existing LTM’s but could not form new ones : form new procedural but not semantic and episodic (showing different areas) - idiographic?

Distinguishing between episodic and semantic:
— Hodges et al found that episodic could be formed without semantic showing a single dissociation in Alzheimers patients (however insufficient evidence as episodic memory places greater demands for mental processing so damage would be more detrimental)

• Irish et al therefore found second dissociations in Alzheimer’s patients demonstrating poor semantic but intact episodic showing the gateway but ability to form semantic separately
• Tulvings PET scans found that left prefrontal cortex semantic and right prefrontal cortex episodic

Question 9

Describe the assumptions of Alkinson+Shiffin

Answer 9

Suggested to be 3 distinct/separate stores where information mores in a linear direction
- SENSORY to STM to LTM
maintenance rehearsal between STM and LTM
Sensory: modality specific - iconic and echonic stores , 1/2 second duration but unlimited capacity

Question 10

Evaluate research into the MSM

Answer 10

Supporting lab evidence
- Brain scanning techniques demonstrating that the that the LTM triggers activity in the hippocampus and STM in prefrontal (distinct and separate) - objective but artificial tasks

Too simple
- theory assumes ‘unitary’ stores but unsupporting research from Baddeley and Hitch who suggested that the STM was split further in different functioning stores - same in LTM (maintenance rehearsal would only explain semantic)

Involves more than maintenance rehearsal
- Lockheart et al: memories are processed deeply or shallowly (more memorable is deeper processing) - easier to remember words when they were in sentences rather than out of context words

Case study support Scoville and Milner
- HM brain damage; retained personality but hippocampus damage from surgery stopped formation of LTM (shows distinct stores but idiographic)

Question 11

Describe the WMM

Answer 11

Baddeley and Hitch assumed that the STM was split into further stores and dual tasks between the stores often resulted in interference
- central executive: master store which directs attention to particular tasks, data arrives from LTM of senses with a very limited capacity
Phonological loop: Limited capacity but deals with and processes auditory info (phonological store=holds words you hear, articulatory processes= words you read)
-Visuo-spatial sketchpad: Used when you have to plan a spatial task (visual cache=info about visual items, inner scribe=deals with spatial relationships and arrangement)
- Episodic buffer: general store - both visual and acoustic info and integrates from all stores , maintains sense of time sequences

Question 12

Evaluate research into the WMM

Answer 12

Research:

• gave ppts two tasks (1 occupied the central executive and 2 was either articulatory loop/ central exec
• efficient when different but interference and unsuccessful when they were the same (lacks ecological)

Evidence from brain damaged patients:
Shallice and Warrington - studied KF who forgot auditory stimuli more than visual but his auditory problems were limited to verbal material rather than meaningful sounds (showing the damage was only limited to phonological and not episodic; separate) - idiographic
AND… the process of brain injury is traumatic and may itself change performance - difficulty paying attention may compromise memory

Lack of clarity

• Baddeley recognised that the central executive
• underexplains

Braver
- brain scanning- left prefrontal cortex, increased activity when task became harder as it demands on the CE

Question 13

What is interference? (forgetting)

Answer 13

• explanation of forgetting in terms of one memory disrupting the ability to recall another (most likely when the memories are similar)

Question 14

Explain retroactive interference

Answer 14

Retroactive - Muller - current attempts of learning interfere with past learning:

• current attempts of learning interfere with past learning
• gave ppts list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 mins, intervening task and recall - poorer performance if there was an intervening task as it interfered with past learning

Question 15

Explain proactive interference

Answer 15

Underwood- past learning interferes with current attempts of learning
- analysed a range of studies and found that when participants had to learn a series of word lists, they were stronger in the middle (10 lists only 20% remembered but 1 list is 70%)

Question 16

Describe the similarity of test materials

Answer 16

McDonald et al found similarity was significant in interference
- gave ppts list A (10 adjectives), list B (synonyms) and list C (numbers)
When synonyms = 12% but when it was entirely different (numbers) = 37%
Stronger interference when similar

Question 17

Describe research from the real world (rugby)

Answer 17

Rugby players: asked to recall names of players - players who played the most games in the season had greater interference and less recall

Question 18

Evaluate research into interference

Answer 18

Research is artificial

• most is lab based and uses artificial word lists, making it meaningless and lacks ecological validity
• participants may lack motivation to remember links in the studies (effects of interference may appear stronger than they really are) HOWEVER… evidence in real life

Real world application into adverts:

• effects of interference are present when shown advert of competing brands within a short time - therefore recall and recognition would be impaired
• to save money, we should run multiple exposures of one brand in one day rather than spreading them across the week

Interference only explains some situation:
- interference in everyday is not reoccurring - requires special conditions

Individual difference:
- Kane et al demonstrated that the individual with greater WMM would be less susceptible to proactive interference - greater resources and mechanisms to counteract

Accessibility vs availability:
- researchers question whether interference effects actually cause a memory to disappear or whether it is temporary effect - interference occurs - memories are temporarily inaccessible (just requires relevant cues)

Question 19

What is the assumption of retrieval failure?

Answer 19

Assumes that info is rarely forgotten but inaccessible due to the lack of relevant cues

Question 20

Describe Tulving’s encoding specificity principle

Answer 20

Tulving proposed that if there is a match between cues present at the time of encoding are also present at the time of retrieval, forgetting would be less likely (cues should be similar)

Question 21

Describe Tulving’s study into retrieval failure

Answer 21

• gave 48 words belonging to 12 categories
• condition 1: free recall of words
• condition 2: given cues (categories)
  Cues present - 60% recall compared to 40% without

Question 22

Describe context dependent forgetting

Answer 22

Abernathy: context is relevant in retrieval
- Gordon and Baddeley: scuba divers learned a set of words on land and water then tested on land and in water - highest recall = match in context

Question 23

Describe state-dependent forgetting

Answer 23

The mental state can act as a cue
Goodwin asked volunteers to remember a list of words when drunk and sober
- when asked to recall in the same state as the previous night - highest recall when there was a match between states

Question 24

Evaluate the retrieval failure theory

Answer 24

Lab experiments:
- all lacking ecological validity and mundane realism - word lists are artificial and meaningless but standardised and repeatable

Positive applications:
- improving recall when taking exams - Abernathy suggested that you should revise in the exam room -improvements - however Smith said just thinking (mental reinstatement) could improve

Retrieval cues do not always work:
- most research uses word lists; in real life there are more complex associations which are less triggered by individual cues - outshining hypothesis - Smith and Vela (cues effectiveness reduces presence of better cues - context effects may be removed when doing meaningful things

Strong research for retrieval failure

• Tulving gave ppts words that could be split into 6 categories
• free recall
• gave categories
• when presented with cues, effects of interference disappeared by up to 70%

Question 25

What is a eye-witness testimony?

Answer 25

used in criminal investigations but may be misleading

Question 26

Describe the effect of misleading questions on eyewitness testimony

Answer 26

Loftus and Palmer:
- experiment 1: showed 45 ppts traffic accidents and then when they were given a questionnaire with a series of Qs (e.g. How fast was the car driving when it___) - blank was replaced with ‘hit’, ‘smashed’
- when ‘smashed’, the mean speed was 40mph rather than 30mph (‘contacted)
HOWEVER… they didn’t know whether it was response bias or their memory actually changing
- experiment 2(Loftus and Zanni): divided 16ppts in 3 groups and asked a series of questions about a video
- group 1: ‘smashed’ and group 2: ‘contacted’
- when asked if ppts saw broken glass, the group with ‘smashed’ confirmed that they saw broken glass - there memory had actually changed (NO GLASS)

Question 27

Describe the effect of post-event discussion on eyewitness testimony

Answer 27

• idea that memory can be altered through discussion (conformity)
• Gabbert et al: had them a pair watch a video from different angles and encouraged discussion afterwards
• 71% of ppts who had discussed recalled the events from their partners perspectives
• memory conformity/ memory contamination

Question 28

Evaluate research into misleading eyewitness-testimonies

Answer 28

Supporting evidence:

• Loftus conducted a study on ppts in Disneyland using Bugs Bunny and Ariel cut outs
• ppts were asked to evaluate advertising using material with falsely embedded info about BB (warnerbros) or Ariel
• those who were given false info reported shaking hands with them (than the control) - misleading info can create false memories

Real world application:
- Olson et al ; more extreme cases - misleading info and false info can divert the course of justice so it can be used to warn them

Methods
- lab experiments are artificial and unrepresentative(with possible demand characteristics): ppts may also not take them seriously: in real life experiments like Foster et al, they were told they were watching a real life robbery and responses would be influential, there was more accuracy and less impact of misleading info (films will produce less anxiety)
Yulie and Cutshall; greater accuracy levels in real life examples - armed robbery in Canada and four months later, accurate recall even with misleading questions

Individual differences
- elderly people might find it difficult to recall memories and may be prone to misleading info

Question 29

What is anxiety?

Answer 29

• A negative emotional response, characterised by high heart rate and high psychological arousal

Question 30

Describe research into the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony

Answer 30

• Investigated by Johnson and Scot: weapons focus effect: if there are weapons present on a crime scene, it will distract them and reduce accuracy in identification
• ppts sat in a waiting room, overhearing and argument in the next room - saw a male burst in with either a pen covered in grease or a bloody knife (high anxiety). When asked to identify the culprit, 49% accuracy with pen and 33% with knife (anxiety difference)

Follow up study - tracking eye movement in a robbery - tracked a weapon

Question 31

Describe the alternate approach to anxiety on eyewitness testimony

Answer 31

• suggests anxiety has a positive effect
• Christiensen et al conducted a natural experiment where he interviewed robbery victims in Sweden. Those who experienced the most stress (life threat), had the highest accuracy in recall
  (yerkes-dodson law suggests optimum psychological arousal has highest performance rating)

Question 32

Evaluate research into anxiety on eyewitness testimony

Answer 32

Possibly not anxiety:

• Pickel et al conducted an experiment in the hairdressers: could be that surprises reduce identification rather than anxiety
• a thief entered with scissors (low surprise), a gun (high surprise), a raw chicken (high surprise) or a wallet (low surprise) - identification was least accurate with a raw chicken as it was most suprising

Application to real life:
- legal systems are warned about potential anxiety effects - prevents the blind acceptance of eyewitness testimonies so there is a lower chance of miscarriage of justice (a lot of research is based in labs so difficult to apply to real life situations)

Individual differences:
- a key extraneous variable is emotional sensitivity - Bothwell’s study assessed neurotic behaviour and found that those who were neurotic: increasing anxiety had a decline in identification but the opposite for stable individuals

Ethics - Johnson and Scott ; psychological trauma

Question 33

Describe a cognitive interview

Answer 33

Developed by Fisher and Geiselman - based methods on the encoding specificity principle

• Mental reinstatement: encourages interviews to mentally recreate the scenario (context, feelings); makes memories more accessible
• Reporting everything: encourages all events to be reported (no matter how insignificant) - all memories are interconnected so may trigger each
• Changing order: encouraging alternate ways of recalling can prevent the influence of pre-existing schemas
• Change perspective: recalling from multiple perspective - disrupts the effect

Question 34

Evaluate the cognitive interview

Answer 34

• more effective than standard interviews: meta analysis of 53 studies which show a 34% increase in accuracy compared to standard - however some critics suggest that only mental reinstatement and reporting everything are important
• limited real life application: requires time and training and may be excessive
• individual differences: useful for the elderly to report everything but may be less effective for younger - Mello found cognitive interviews were more effective the older