Unit 1: Memory, Social Influence and Psychopathology Flashcards
Introductory Topics:
-revise Conrad
-revise Baddeley
-revise Glanzer and Cunitz
what is the multi-store model of memory?
-the multi-store model of memory is the most well-known and influential model of memory, proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968
-they saw memory as a flow of information through a system of interacting memory stores
-each store has a different purpose, and each varies in terms of capacity and duration
MSM: sensory, STM and LTM memory
sensory register
-duration: 1/2 to 1/2 a second
-capcity: alll sensory experience (v.larger capacity)
-encoding: sense specific (e.g. different stores for each sense)
short-term memory:
-duration: 0-18 seconds
-capacity: 7+/-2 items
-encoding: mainly acoustic
long-term memory:
-duration: unlimited
-capacity: unlimited
-encoding: mainly semantic (but can be visual and acoustic)
Sperling Study: sensory register
1960
-Sperling’s experiment showed that iconic memory has a very short duration and limited capacity
-Participants brifely saw a 3x3 grid of letters for 50 milliseconds and could only recall 4-5 letters but reported seeing more
-When cued with tones to recall specific rows, they remembered 75% of letters in the cued row, demonstrating that iconic memory decays quickly
Derwin et al. : sensory register
1972
-Darwen et al-studied echoice memory using auditory stimuli
-Participants heard three lists (letters or numbers) from different directions and were cued to recall one list after delays of 0-4 seconds
-Recall decreased as the delay increased, and after 3 seconds, cues no longer improved performance
-This suggests echoic memory stores auditory information briefly in raw, unprocessed form for about 3 seconds before it fades
STM: capacity studies
-Jacobs (1887) measure this using a digit span technique, finding that participants could recall about 9.3 digits but only 7.3 on average
-Miller (1956) suggested that STM capacity is better understood in terms of “chunks” can vary; Simon (1974) showed that the complexity of chunks affects memory span
-Cowan (2000) noted that long-term memory can influence STM perfomance, as repeated sequences often improve recall, additionally, reading sequences aloud can enhance recakk by briefly storing information in the echoic store, as proposed by Baddeley (1999)
STM: duration studies
-Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed that information is held in STM through rehearsal, which involved repeating the information to keep it in STM and strenghten it for LTM storage
-Craik and Tulving (1973) argued that it’s not just the amount of rehearsal, but how it’s done that affects long-term retention. They identified two types of rehearsal: maintenance rehearsal, which involved simple repetition and doesn’t lead to LTM, and elaborative rehearsal, which involved processinf information meaningfully, such as linking it to existing knowledge
-Peterson and Peterson (1959) showed that without rehearsal, even small amount of information are quickly forgotten, with recall dropping to 5% after 18 seconds
STM: encoding studies
-Conrad (1964) found that STM encodes information acoustically. In his study, participants struggled more with recalling sequences of similar-sounding consonants compared to those with different sounds, indicating that even visually presented information was converted to an acoustic code in STM
-Supporting this, Posner and Keele (1967) showed that participants took longer to recognize visually different letters as the same if the letters were similar in sound (e.g., B-b) versus identical (B-B), suggesting STM initially encodes information visually but quickly transforms it to an acoustic form
-However, not all STM encodingis purely acoustic. Shulman (1970) found that semantic encoding, where meaning rather than sound or sight is used, is also possible in STM. Participants could quickly identify words based on meaning (synonyms, hononyms) as well as on sight and sound
LTM: duration studies
-Bahrick et al. (1975) studies the long-term memory (LTM) of 392 American high school graduates, aged up to 74, by testing their recall of former classmates using yearbook photos and names. Participants performed well, with 90% accuracy up to 34 years after graduation and 80% accuracy after 48 years. Recognition tasks (like identifying photos) yielded better results than recall tasks (remembering names without cues), showing the durability of LTM. The study highlighted that memory retention is influenced by cues and how well information was originally learned. For example, Bahrick and Hall (1991) found that people who studied advanced math had better recall of algebra and geometry even 55 years later
LTM: encoding studies
-Baddeley (1966) found that participants had difficulty remembering similar sounding words when tested immediately, but after 20 minutes had greater difficulty remembering words of the same meaning. Baddeley considered this good evidence for semantic encoing in LTM
-Researchers are quick to point out however that while semantic encoding is its preferred method, this is not the only type of encoding in LTM. Everyday experience tells us that we readily recognise sounds such as police sirens and ringing telephones, suggesting that we also encode LTMs acoustically. Similar arguments could be made for the other modalities; that visual and haptic (touch) encoding in LTM is possible from our immediate recognition of what we see and touch
evidence supporting a distinction between STM and LTM: KF
Shallice and Warrington (1970), The Case of KF:
- KF, a 28 year old man who sustained brain injuries after a motorcycle accident
-he had an impaired STM, working alongside a fully functioning LTM
-intact LTM -> he was able to learn new information and recall stored information
-reduced capacity STM -> he was only able to store a couple of bits or chunks of information rather than the normal 5-9 chunks
evidence supporting a distinction between STM and LTM: HM
Milner (1966), The Case of HM:
-HM, a young man who suffered from epilepsy
-he underwent brain surgery to alleviate his epilepsy, which involved removing parts of his temporal lobes, including the hippocampus
-this operation left him with severe memory problems -> he could only recall events in his early life and was unable to recall events for about 10 years before the surgery. He could also not learn or retain new information
-however, he repeatedly read the same magazine without realising he had read it before and he was unable to recognise the psychologists who has spent long periods of time with him
-this suggests HM had a normal STM, but his LTM was detective and that it was no longer possible for him to lay down new memories in it, or if he could, he was unable to retrieve them
limitations of the MSM: oversimplified
-human memory is extremely complex and it is highly unlikely that such a simple model could reflect this
-for example, the model doesn’t consider the different types of things we have to remember
-while it greatly emphasises the amount of information we can handle, it disregards the nature of the information
-everyday experience tells us that some things are easier to remember than others and this can simply be because we find it more interesting, relevant, funnier, etc.
limitations of the MSM: the role of rehearsal
-there is considerable evidence that simple repetition is one of the least effective ways of passing on information
-there is also a strong evidence that long term memories can be formed without any apparent rehearsal
-Brown and Kulik (1977): they have described this type of remembering “flashbulb memory” which is where the insignificant details surrounding highly emotional and shocking events are imprinted directly into LTM without any rehearsal
what is the working memory model?
-by the early 1970s it was becoming clear that traditional information processing models, suchas the MSM, could not account for some of the findings from memory research
-it was clear that the STM store was far more complex than existing theories could account for
-Baddeley and Hitch (1974) contested the idea that STM was a single and entirely seperate store
-they referred to the case of KF who, while only having a digit span of two, could transfer new information to his LTM, suggesting that though there had been some disruption to STM, other aspects of his STM must have continued to function-there must be several components of STM
the working memory model: actual model
-according to Baddeley and Hitch, working memory is a complex and flexible system comprised of several interacting components
-Central Executive
-Phonological loop- phonological store, articulatory control processes
-Visuo-spatial sketchpad- inner scribe, visual cache
-Episodic buffer
the central executive:
-> is the supervisory system of working memory, itr controls and manages attention, planning, task switching, but has limited capacity
-it can process information from any sensory system (e.g. sight, sound) and coordinates the activity of other components in working memory
-it uses ‘slave systems’ like:
-phonologival loop (for verbal information)
-visuo-spatial sketchpad (for visual/spatial information)
-episodic buffer (for integrating information)
-these free up space for complex, allowing us to do more than one thing at a time, such as listening and watching
-the central executive is the most flexible but hardest to study, since it is less well understood compared to its slaves systems
phonological loop:
-> often called the “inner voice”, temporarily holds verbal information in a speech-based form, it has two parts:
1. phonological store: passively stores sounds
2. articulatory loop: repeats words in your head (subvocal repetition) to keep them active
phonological loop: Baddeley et al. study
Baddeley et al. (1975) Study:
-aim: investigates how word length affects the phonologival loop’s capacity
-method: participants were shown lists of 5 words (either short, single-syllable words or longe, multi-syllabic words) and asked to recall all of them
-findings: short words were recalled better than long words
-conclusion: the phonological loop’s capacity is based on the time taken to say words, not the number of items (about 1.5 seconds) this is known as the word length effect
visuo-spatial sketchpad:
-> is reffered to as the “inner eye”, it temporarily holds visual and spatial information, it has two components:
1. visual cache: passively stores visual data
2. inner scribe: actively rehearses spatial information
-Klauer and Zhao (2004) Study
Brain Imaging Findings:
-the left brain is more active during visual tasks
-the right brain is ore active during spatial tasks (Todd and Marois, 2004)
visuo-spatial sketchpad: Klauer and Zhao Study
Klauer and Zhao (2004) Study:
-aim: tested whether visual and spatial components are distinct
-method: participants completed eother a visual task (remebering Chinese ideographs) or a spatial task (remembering locations of dots) while also doing interference tasks (visual or spatial)
-findings: spatial tasks were disrupted more by spatial interference than visual, visual tasks were disrupted more by visual interference than spatial
episodic buffer:
-> is a general storage system that integrates information from the visuo-spatial sketchpad, phonological loop, central executive and long-term memory
-it was added to the working memeory model by Baddeley in 2000, as the original model couldn’t explain how people remember coherent chunks of information, like prose, better than unrelated words
-combines information across different parts of working memory and from long-term memory
-studies show that people with intact central executive function but amnesia could immediately recall prose but forgot it shortly after. This suggests the e.b. temporarily stored information before it fades
-helps explain why memory for coherent information (e.g., sentences) is better than for random words, it allows information to be structured and processed using both working and long-term memory
Baddeley and Hitch study:
-aim: to test whether short-term memory (STM) has more than one component
-procedure: participants were given a six-digit number (e.g., 863492) to repeat out loud while also completing a reasoning task (e.g., judging sentences like “A follows B- AB” as true or false)
-hypothesis: if STM is limited to simple storage, doing two tasks at once should impair perfomance on the reasoning task
-findings: participants performed well on both tasks, although the reasoning task was slightly lower, errors were minimal
-conclusion: STM involves more than one component, as people can perform multiple tasks simultaneously if they use different parts of memory. Baddeley and Hitch saw STM as a “working memory” that actively processes information, rather than just storing it. They also viewed long-term memory (LTM) as a passive store accessed by STM when needed
-this study helped develop the Working Memory Model
weaknesses of the working memory model:
-the central executive has not been precisley defined: for example, the term “process” is vague, and the central executive may be made up of several sub-components or even be part of a larger component itself in working memory
-this lack of a comprehensive explanation for each component of WMM draws doubts about the accurazy of its depiction of working memory
-Lieberman (1980) critisizes the working memory model as the visuospatial sketchpad (VSS) implies that all spatial information was first visual (they are linked)
-however, Lieberman points out that blind people have ecellent spatial awareness, although they have never had any visual information
-Lieberman argues that the VSS should be seperated into two different components: one visual information and one for spatial
strengths of the working memory model:
-Shallice and Warrington’s study of KF provides support for the WMM because their findings show that KF had very poor STM recall for auditory stimuli but increased STM recall for visual stimuli
-this suggests that the components of memory which process auditory and visual stimuli are seperate (thus, STM is not a single, unified system), as described in the WMM through the phonological loop and VSS
-Studies of dual-task perfomance, where each participant must undertake a visual and verbal task simultaneously, shows decreased perfomance for such tasks and so supports. the idea that the central executive has a very limited processing capacity (as predicted by the WMM) and that the slave systems are in competition with each other for these tasks and resources
Types of LTM:
-research into LTM has shown that it is not a single unitary store, but rather it appears to have a number of different components which may be represented by separate brain systems
-a major distinctions between two types of LTM:
1. The conscious memory we have for facts and events (declarative)
2. Memory that is not open to conscious recollection, but rather what we see in our skilled behaviour and habits (procedural)
Procedural and Declarative Memory: HM Milner
1962
-Milner discovered that HM was able to learn to trace a shape using a mirror image, and retain this skills over a number of days
-however, he head no conscious recollection of ever having done mirror drawing tasks before, thus acquiring the skill
-it appears that while HM was able to use procedural memory to learn this skill, his operation had damaged his ability to use his declarative memory to consciously recollect this experience
Semantic Memory and Episodic Memory:
-semantic memory consists of our abstract and general knowledge about the world, e.g. facts we learn in school
-in addition to the facts and concepts that make up semantic memory, we also store memories for the things we have though and experiences we have had
-these personal recollections of episodes of our lives make up episodic memory
The effects of leading questions on the accuracy of EWT:
-memories witnesses create at the time of an event appear to be quite fragile and subject to distortion by things that happen after the event
-consequently, serious errors in EWT can occur
-it’s been found that witnesses who encounter inaccurate information after an event can absorb this into their memory, thus distorting the actual memory of the event -> Loftus (1992) calls this “misinformation acceptance”
-research algo suggests that there is a tendency for the misinformation effect to become stronger as the time between the witnessed event and recall of it becomes greater
Loftus and Zanni:
-1975
-participants were shown as brief video of a car accident and then asked a series of questions
-half of the participants were asked -> had they seen “a” broken headlight
-half of the participants were asked -> had they seen “the” broken headlight
-there was no broken headlight in the film
-17% of those asked about “the” broken headlight reported seeing one
-7% asked about “a” broken headlight reported seeing one
-those in the “the” condition -> gave fewer uncertain responses, such as “I don’t know” -> suggests they had greater confidence in memories for events that never occurred
-using “the” implanted the idea that there was indeed broken glass, leading some participants to change their recall accordingly
-in practical terms -> suggests that the way questions are asked following a crime can lead to innacuracies in witness recall, and brings into question the reliability of EWT
-this misinformation effect through the use of leading questions has been replicated in many studies
Loftus and Palmer:
1974
-showed 45 participants a film of a car accident
-following this they were asked to describe events as though they were eyewtinesses
-they were then asked a series of specific questions about events leading up to the accident
-one critical questions was asked ‘How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’ Other groups of participants were asked the same question, but, in each case, the verb was changed to either ‘smashed’, ‘bumped’, ‘collided’, or ‘contacted’
Loftus and Palmer: good things and bad
-because it was a controlled laboratory experiment, the study has been accused of being artificial, i.e. the conditions of testing do not resemble those in real life so therefore the behaviour of participants is not natural behaviour
-a film clip would not have the same emotional impact as witnessing a real-life accident, and because a witness would not be prepared to observe carefully (as they were in the experiment) it could be argued that their recall of a real accident would not be as complete
-there are a number of reasons why memories are affected by leading questions
-one possibility -> due to the constructive nature of LTM, leading questions actually change a witnesse’s perception of the event -> the storage of inaccurate memory
-whether or not accuracy of eyewitness memory is influences, storage or retrieval factors around the event itself can also influence recall
Loftus:
1979
-gave participants a set of slides that showed a red purse being stolen from a handbag
-they were later given an account of the theft that included several errors, i.e. “the purse was brown”
-in a subsequent recall test, all but two of the participants resisted the misinformation about the colour of the purse, although they were influences by misinformation about less central elements of the theft
-Loftus concluded that memory for information that is particularly striking at the time of an event is less suspectible to misinformation acceptance than memory for more peripheral details
-another important factors appears to be -> the amount of anxiety caused by witnessing a crime
-it has long been established that states of high emotional arousal can influence memory functions, and a number of lab studies have demonstrated impaired memory in people who have witnessed particularly unpleasant and anxiety-inducing events
Possible extraneous variables in research:
-variations in individual memory capacity may influence how participants recall details of the event
-previous knowledge or experiences: some participants may have prior knowledge of the event or may have been involved in similar situations, which could affect their recall
-participant attention during the event: if participants are not paying equal attention to the event being recalled, this could affect recall
-social desirability bias: participants may alter their answers to conform to what they think is “right” answer or to please the researcher
-emotional state of participants: a participant’s mood or stress levels may influence how they recall details
More possible extraneous variables:
-ambiguity in the even presented: if the event being shown to participants is ambiguous, this may influence recall
-question wording consistency: variations in how leading questions are phrased beyond the intended manipulation could introduce bias
-time delay between event and recall: the length of time between witnessing the event and being asked the leading questions may affect recall accuracy
-particpant’s age: age can affect memory recall, with younger and older participants possible recalling details differently
-environmental conditions: factors like lighting, sound, or other distractions in the environment may impact how well participants remember details
Fisher et. Al:
1987
-over a 4 month period, they studied real interview conducted by experienced detectives in Florida
-found that witnesses were frequently bombarded with a series of brief, direct and close questions aimed to elicit
-the sequencing of these questions often seemed out of sync with the witnesses’ own mental representation of the event
-witnesses were often interrupted and not allowed to talk freely about their experiences
-Fisher felt these interruptions were unhelpful because they broke the concentration of the witnesses and also encouraged shorter, less details answers
Geiselman et. Al:
1985
-> developed a technique to improve the accuracy of eyewitness recall during police investigations which they called cognitive interview
-context reinstatement (CR): mentally reinstate the context of the event, recall the scene, the weather, thoughts and feeling at the time
-report everything (RE): report every detail possible even if it seems trivial or irrelevant
-recall from a changed perspective (CP): try to describe the episode as it would have been seen from different points of view
-recall in reverse order (RO): change the order of recall so that the event is reported in different orders, moving backwards and forwards in time
The cognitive interview:
-> designed to enhance retrieval of the original memory by providing extra cues that might help jog witnesses’ memory for more central details
-subsequent research led to a version of the technique called the enhanced cognitive interview
-after looking at current police practice through detailed analysis of taped interviews, Fisher et. Al(1987) suggested adding several extra features to a more structured process
Support for the cognitive interview:
-Geiselman et. Al (1985): found that the cognitive interview resulted in more information being drawn from witnesses compared to other interview techniques
-Fisher et. Al (1989): also demonstrated the effectiveness of thecognitive interview technique in real police settings in Miami in the US
-they trained detectives to use the enhanced cognitive interview techniques with genuine crime witnesses and found that its use significantly increased the amount of information recalled
-Kebbell et.al (1999): carried out a survey of UK police officers and found that there was widespread use of cognitive interview
-Milne and Bull (2002): tested all cognitive interview procedures either singly or in combination
-they found that all 4 procedures snugly produced more recall from witnesses than standard interview techniques
-however the most effective combination appeared to be the use of CR and RE instructions, which is in line with that practising police officers had suspected
Opposition to cognitive interview:
-Kohnken et.al (1999): found that witnesses questioned using the cognitive interview also recalled more incorrect information than those questioned using the standard questioning technique
-this is possibly because the cognitive interview procedure elicits more information overall than other procedures
For Kebbell: however, while officers found it useful, they expressed some concern about the amount of incorrect recall generated and the amount of time it took to complete an enhanced cognitive interview
-in practice, it seemed like officers were using the RE and CR instructions, but rarely the CP and RO
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Cognitive interview:
Advantages:
-improved recall accuracy -> increases the amount of accurate info recalled
-reduces false memories
-widely applicable
Disadvantages:
-time intensive -> CI requires a longer time to conduct
-training demands
-inconsistent effectiveness
