Remembering and Forgetting

Question 1

What are the three processes involved with remembering

Answer 1

Encoding, understanding new info
Storage, keeping hold of encoded info
Retrieval, recovering the stored info

Question 2

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) Memory Model

Answer 2

• The amount of information transferred from short term memory to long term memory is determined by the amount of rehearsal.

Question 3

What are the two types of rehearsal

Answer 3

• Maintenance rehearsal, repeating info until remembered
• Elaborative rehearsal, making associations to remember info i.e. linking someones name to things that remind you of this name

Question 4

Maintenance Rehearsal and Long term recall
Glenberg, Smith, and Green (1977):

Answer 4

• Participants had to remember four digit numbers
• In between the numbers they had to repeat a distractor word
• varied how long they had to repeat distractor word
• After repeating word, they had to repeat the number
• Then they were asked the word (they weren’t told they needed to remember the word)
• Regardless of how many times you repeat the word, the maintenance stayed low. i.e. repeating words isn’t good for long term memory

Question 5

Levels of processing theory
(Craik and Lockhart, 1972)

Answer 5

• Depends how deeply you process something
• You don’t have to try to remember something, it happens automatically.
• However, the extent to which you remember this varies depending on how deeply you process it.

Structurally- Long term retrieval won’t be great (only processing what it looks like)
Phonologically- linguistic features, retrieval will be better
Semantically - Deepest processing

Question 6

Support for the levels of processing theory
Craik and Tulving (1975)

Answer 6

• Presenting list of words
• Each word was linked with one of the three types of encoding
  3 conditions
  1) Is the word in upper case? (Structural)
  2) does the word rhyme with mat? (Phonological)
  3) Does the word fit in this sentence? (semantic)
• Then recognition task, recognition is better the deeper the word is processed.

Question 7

Criticisms of Levels of processing theory
Eysenck, 1978

Answer 7

• There is no independent measure that participants did or didn’t process the words deeply

Question 8

Transfer Appropriate Processing Theory
(e.g., Morris, Bransford, & Franks, 1977)

Answer 8

• Looks at the encoding process of memory and retrieval
• Levels of processing theory only looks at semantic processing being better than non semantic
• Encoding differs between each person

Question 9

Testing Transfer Appropriate Theory
(Morris et al., 1977)

Answer 9

• Participants were either in semantic (deep) task or rhyme task (shallow)
• Does … have a silver engine
• Does … rhyme with car
• Then participants were either given standard recognition test or rhyme recognition test
• Results showed that semantic processing doesn’t always enhance memory

Question 10

Encoding-Specificity Principle
(Tulving & Thomson, 1973)

Answer 10

• The likelihood of retrieval depends on the overlap between cues present at encoding and retrieval
• Relationship between the context of encoding and the context at retrieval

(Barclay et al., 1974) - depends on context of learning
- Man lifted piano showed better recall with something heavy
- Man tuned the piano showed better recall with melodious
- Participants encoded words with their context

Question 11

What are the two types of contextual
(Hewitt, 1973):

Answer 11

Intrinsic- features that belong to stimulus i.e. coca cola being red label
Extrinsic- Other features i.e. georgaphical location

Question 12

(Godden and Baddeley, 1975)
Context dependent memory

Answer 12

• Divers learn words on land or under water.
• Recall was best when the words were recalled in the same location they were learnt

Question 13

State dependant recall
(Eich et al., 1975)

Answer 13

• Recall is better when your initial state when encoding is the same when recalling.
• If you’re high when encoding information you’ll perform better if you are also high when recalling information

Question 14

Benefits of Organisation
Mandler (1967)

Answer 14

• Gave participants a pile of cards and they had to categorise their own piles.
• Group 1 just told about memory test and not asked to organise
• Group 2 told about memory test and asked to organise
• Group 3 just told to organise
• Information better retrieved when organised and not even told about a memory test than group that told about test and didn’t organise

Question 15

What is forgetting

Answer 15

• When you are unable to retrieve memories in that specific moment.
• Doesn’t actually mean you have lost the memory
• Sometimes we can recognise certain things that we are unable to actually recall

Question 16

Bahrick & Phelps, (1987) Testing memory

Answer 16

• Recognition and recall tests show that there is a lot of information available but it just depends on how you access that information

Question 17

Why do we forget?

Answer 17

• Decay, for example, memories fade over time.
• Regarding the decay theory, the fading of memories has a fixed rate.

Question 18

Interference Vs Decay

Answer 18

• Interference theory, forming new memories and learning new material gets in the way of old memories
• Hard to test this as you can’t stop people from processing new information.
• If forgetting is due to decay recall should depend on time interval
• But if forgetting is due to interference then recall should depend on what happens in the time interval

Question 19

Is forgetting due to Decay or Interference
Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924)

Answer 19

• learn a list of made up words either before they wen’t to sleep or when they woke up in the morning.
• They were then tested immediately or after up to 8 hours
• Sleep group much less affected by the amount of time than the awake group.
• No interference when sleeping

Question 20

Is forgetting due to Decay or Interference
Baddeley and Hitch (1977)

Answer 20

• Rugby players asked to recall teams they had played against
• ## The players who had played more games were less likely to recall the name of the teams rather than the ones who played less games

Question 21

Retroactive Interference

Answer 21

• Baddeley and Hitch’s (1977) study represents this. Later learning interferes with earlier learning
• May cause problems with eye witness testimony.

Question 22

Proactive interference

Answer 22

• Previous learning disrupts later learning
• For example in different countries hot and cold water taps may have different names such as italy.
• It is then hard to learn which tap is which when you have learnt something different before

Question 23

Release from proactive interference
(Wickens, Born, & Allen, 1963)

Answer 23

• Harder to remember letters because you have already learnt the previous ones which are similar to the following information.
• When the group was given a different sort of material on the 4th trial, their recall is almost as good as the first trial because it’s new material - this is called release from proactive interference