psychology - memory Flashcards

Question

what is proactive interference ?

Answer 1

forgetting occurs when older memories disrupts the recall of newer memories p = present memories get messed

Answer 2

they gave ptps a list of 10 adjectives (list a) after they learned them there was a resting interval of 10 mins where they learned list b followed by recall. when list b was synonyms of list a recall was 12% when list b was nonsense syllables recall was 26% when it was numbers recall was 37% similarity affects recall due to : proactive interferene - explain or retroactive interference explain

Answer 3

1. proactive interference affects some more/less than others. kane and engle found people w a greater memory working span were less susceptible to proactive.i . by giving them 3 lists of words to learn. ptps with low working memory spans showed grater interference recalling the 2nd and 3rd list 2.interference affects everyday situations. baddely and hitch made rugby players recall people they played against on a season. no. interfering games differed some weren't present due to injury. players who played the most matches had the most interefence/ poorest recall, increases validity. 3. only explains some forgetting, they dont occur everyday. special conditions are needed e.g the memories have to be quite similar so this is an unimportant explanation for everyday forgetting. mcgeoch and mcdonald show interefence is the strongest the more similar the items are

Answer 4

a cue is a trigger of information that allows us to access a memory. indirectly linked by being present at time of encoding or meaningful. external : environmental internal : mood

Answer 5

tulving and pearlstone participants had to learn 48 words in 12 different categories each word was presented as category/ word. ptps had to recall as many words as they could or they were given cues in the form of category names free recall : recall was 40% cued recall : recall was 60%

Answer 6

retrieval failure is used to improve accuracy of ewt. the cognitive interview has witnesses mentally go back to the scene of the crime with that weather and time of day. based on the idea that conditions present at encoding must be present at the time of recall. studies support retrieval failure in lab, filed and natural experiments. e.g godden and baddely study shows retrieval failur happens irl and in labs. however baddely argues that context has to be very different before an effect is seen. e.g hard to find a difference like land and water but learning and recall in different rooms would have much of an effect. context effects are dependent on the type of memory being tested. godden and baddely found recall was poor when context for recall and learn were different. however when they repeated this using a recognition test instead of recall there was no context dependent forgetting. retrieval failure is a limited explanation as it only refers to recall not recognition

Answer 7

misleading information - incorrect info given to the eye witness after event through post event discussions or leading questions

Answer 8

lq - because of the way they were phrased they suggest a certain answer. ped - witnesses discuss what they have seen with eachother and influence the accuracy of eachothers recall

Answer 9

test their hypothethesis about language and misleading questions 45 students were shown films of traffic incidents ranging from 5 to 30seconds. after each film ptps were given a questionnaire to describe the accidents and answer questions on them there was one critcal question : about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other? 5 groups of ptps were given 5 different verbs : hit contracted bumped collided and smashed contacted- 31.8 smashed - 40.8

Answer 10

they combine misinformation from other witnesses with their own memory.memoryconformity: co witnesses reach a consensus view of what actually happened. gabbert et al had each ptp watch the same crime from different povs so some could see things that others couldnt. both ptps discussed what they had seen before doing recall alone. researcher found 71% mistakenly recalled parts of the event they didnt see but picked up in the talk.

Answer 11

real worldapplication. leading questions, misleading information and post-event discussions lead to inaccurate EWT. educate police officers and detectives on how not to conduct an eyewitness interview. positive results for the individual as it prevents innocent people from being wrongly convicted. there are individual differences older people are less accurate than younger people. Anastasi and rhobes found 18-45 were more accurate than 55-78. this is important as these studies typically use younger people so the results cant be generalised to older people. artificial tasks. l + p asked them to watch a video about how fast the cars were going in a crash. this is artificial. watching a car crash through a video is a different experience than watching it in real life where people are more likely to be anxious and distressed affecting their judgement and response as its been proven that emotion can affect an individuals memory. Lacks external validity n tells us little about real crimes

Answer 12

anxiety leads to changes in the body which prevents us from paying attention to important cues so our recall is worse. tunnel theory suggests our attention tunnels to specific features and our attention to detail of other aspects is flawed e.g weapon focus

Answer 13

while seated in a waiting room participants heard an argument in the next room. low anxiety condition : man then walks through the waiting room with a pen and grease on his hands High anxiety condition : participants heard the sound of breaking glass and a man walks out of the room with a paper knife and blood on his hands. then the had to pick out the man in 50 photos. in the low anxiety condition recall was 49% in the high anxiety condition recall was 33%

Answer 14

the stress of witnessing a crime or accident creates physiological changes in the body through anxiety. this triggers fight or flight which increases our alertness and improves our memory as we become more aware of cues and this improves the detail of our recall

Answer 15

yuille and cutshall real life shooting in a gun shop in Canada. The shop owner shot a thief dead 21 witnesses: 13 agreed to take part in the study Interviewers were held 4-5 months after the incident and these were compared with their orginal police interviewers The witnesses were also asked to rate how stressed they had felt at the time of the incident using a 7-point scale and asked if they had any emotional problems since the event The witnesses were accurate in their account and their was very little change in the amount or accuracy after 5 months. Those participants who reported the highest level of stress were most accurate.

Answer 16

evidence supporting the negative effects of anxiety on memory . Valentine and Mesout used an heart rate, which is an objective measure, to divide participants into low anxiety and high anxiety groups. In this study, anxiety clearly disrupted the participants ability to recall details about the actor in the London Dungeon’s Labyrinth This suggests that high anxiety does have a negative effects on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event field studies sometimes lack control for example yuille and cutshall conducted a study of a real life shooting in a gunshop and interviewed participants 4-5 months after. alot of events could have happened in the mean time that the researcher could not control e.g discussions with other people about other accounts. these can act as extraneous variables and effect the study. research to support anxiety having a positive effect on the accuracy of memory Christianson and Hubinette interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden. Some of the witnesses were directly involved such as the bank workers and some that were indirectly involved such as the bystanders.It was round that recall was 75% accurate across all witnesses. The direct witnesses were more accurate

Answer 17

witnesses were often interrupted and not allowed to talk freely witnesses were bombareded with short brief close ended questions aimed to elicit facts. interview revolves around the interviewer

Answer 18

mentally reinstating context - return to the original crime scene in their mind and imagine the environment reporting everything - include every detail even if it seems irrelevant as it could trigger the recall of other information changing the order - recall in a different order e.g backwards to ensure theyre reporting what actually happened not how it should've happened recall events from another persons perspective to disrupt the schema and promote a holistic view of events.

Answer 19

fisher et al added some developments for the social aspect interviewer must know when to establish eye contact and when to withdraw it. eci includes: reducing anxiety , getting partici[ants to speak slowly,minimizing distractions and asking open ended questions build a rapport so they reveal more information.

Answer 20

the cognitive interview is more time consuming than a standard police interview. time is needed to establish a rapport and allow them to relax and the special training also takes time. weakness as they may be reluctant to use the c.i. because they have high demands to solve lots of crimes quickly. some aspects of the cognitive interview may be more useful than others. Milne and bull found each element is valuable but when combined found reinstating context and report everything were the most helpful. This is a strength as it increases the credibility of police officers who use it and helps the cognitive interview to not be so time consuming so they can use it. theres research to support the effectiveness of eci. konken et al did meta analysis on 50 studies and found that the ci. consistently provided more accurate results than the standard police interview. This is a strength as it suggest there a real practical benefit to using the cognitive interview which gives the police a better chance of catching these criminals which protects the whole of society

Answer 21

Retrieval failure is a form of forgetting. It occurs when we don’t have the necessary cues to access memory. The memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided. Forgetting in long term memory is mainly due to retrieval failure

Answer 22

Tulving and Thomson proposed memory is most effective if information that was present at encoding is also available at the time of retrieval.

Answer 23

Tulving and Pearlstone Participants had to learn 48 words, belonging to 12 categories. Each word was presented as category + word, e.g. fruit-apple, fruit-orange. Participants either had to recall as many words as they could (free recall) or they were given cues in the form of the category names (cued recall). free recall: 40% cued recall: 60%

Answer 24

Context dependent forgetting is the reduction in recall of specific information when the context present at encoding and recall are different The mental state you are in at the time of learning can also act as a cue: state dependent forgetting

Answer 25

godden and baddely 18 deep sea divers had to learn a list of words on land or underwater and then recall the list of words on land or underwater LL;RL LL;RU LU;RU LU;RL Recall was 40% higher in the matching conditions