Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Psychology B541
- Memory
- Key Concepts
- Information Processing:
input, encoding, storage,
retrieval, outout
- Input: Information entering the body through senses
- Encoding: Putting data into a format
- Storage: Storing information
- Retrieval: Retrieving the information
- Output: Saying something or writing it down
- Accessibility: problems occur when we can't get
information into the memory, cant retrieve it
- Availability: information is
no longer in the memory
- Core Theory
- Multi-Store Model
- STM: limited capacity & duration
- info will decay or be displaced
- LTM: unlimited capacity & duration - 25%
of into that reaches STM goes to LTM
- Sensory Store: info held until attention is paid
- Decay: info fades over time
- Displacement: info replaced with new info
- Memory retrieval: repeating info
- 1. Too rigid and ignores individual differences
- 2. Over simplifies STM & LTM
- 3. Over emphasises role of rehearsal
- not all info in LTM is rehearsed
- Core Study
- Terry 2005
- Lab experiment
- Procedure: commercials
shown to 15 people
- Repeated measures design
- Whether ptp recalled commercials
immediately or after a delay
- Results: serial position effect - good recall of first
few and last few. Middle ones were displaced
- 1. Lab exp lacks ecological validity
as it was an artificial setting
- 2. Lacks construct validity -
narrow measure
- 3. Demand characteristics - there were clear cues
of what the researcher was trying to investigate
- Alternative Theory
- Levels of processing
- Shallow processing: noticing only the colour - not
processing deeper information. Less likely to recall
- Deep processing: understanding - processing info
for meaning. More likely to recall
- Levels of processing: wrong to assume that memory is so limited - we can remember
vast amounts of info in a short amount of time
- Applications
- Memory aids
- Techniques for improving memory
- Cues - to trigger info and memories through the senses
- People recall info better if they are in the same context or situation
- Visual cues
- Phobias
- Key Concepts
- Typical behaviour: considered normal
- applies to the majority of people
- Atypical behaviour: considered
abnormal - applies to minority of people
- Phobia: atypical fear response
- Agoraphobia: fear of public spaces
- School phobia: fear of school
- Social phobia: fear of embarrassment
- Acrophobia: fear of heights
- Arachnophobia: fear of spiders
- Heart pounding, sweating,
feeling sick, dizziness
- It's all about avoiding what you're scared of
- Core Theory
- People learn their phobias
- Classical conditioning:
learning by association
- UCR: response is natural and
doesn't need to be learnt
- UCS: something that
triggers a natural response
- NS: doesn't trigger reaction
- CS: triggers learnt response
- CR: response that's been
learnt through association
- 1. Ignores thinking behind behaviour
- 2. Phobia's can be learnt indirectly
- 3. Cannot explain the fact that some people have phobias that they have no direct experience of
- Core Study
- Watson & Rayner 1920
- Little Albert, 9 months old
- Hammer hit a steel bar and scared him
- 11 months old - Albert was shown a rat
and the steel bar was hit
- Results: By the end of 7 trials, the rat scared Albert
in it's own and he would cry and avoid it
- Fear of white fluffy things
- 1. Lacks ecological validity - artifical setting
- 2. Can't generalise data as it was
carried out on one boy
- 3. Unethical - Albert was caused distress
- Alternative Theory
- Evolutionary Theory
- Animals have evolved over time and instinctively behave
in ways that allow them to survive and reproduce
- Some things are more threatening than others
- Doesn't agree that people are born with phobias
- Applications
- Behaviour Therapy
- Reversing phobias
- Flooding: clients immersed in their fear - works
on specific phobias, but it can be dangerous
- Systematic desensitasion: more ethical - form new associations for gradually
- Implosion: client imagines worst situation
rather than physically experiencing it
- Obedience
- Key Concepts
- Obedience - obey a command from an authority figure
- Denial of responsibility: blame your behaviour on a higher authority
- Defiance: don't obey the authority figure
- Agentic state:
you are an agent
and not to blame
- Core Theory
- Situational factors
- Setting: Milgram exp in a down town office - obedience decreased
- Culture: Hofling - culture of nurses obeying doctors
- Punishment: power to punish
- Consensus: copy others - obedience goes up
- 1. Research lacks ecological validity - not real life
- 2. Research was unethical - caused distress and deceived them
- 3. Ignores role of personality - suggests that behaviour is always a reflex or reaction - we live on an
automatic pilot
- Core Study
- Bickman 1974
- Procedure: dressed up as a guard, milkman &
civilian and asked ptp to pick up litter or give money
- Findings: More obeyed when wearing a guard
uniform - 89%, milkman - 57%, civilian - 33%
- 1. Lacked control of
extraneous variables -
ptp could have been deaf
- 2. Unethical - he didn't get consent from ptp
- 3. Experimenters were all male so it can't be generalised - women may behave differently
- Alternative Theory
- Authoritarian Personality
- Sees world in black and white
- Obeys authority and looks down on lower social class
- Does not like ambiguity (when things aren't clear)
- Fixed ideas of right and wrong, good and bad
- Someone who is willing to
be bossed around by people
of a higher status than them
- Attachment
- Key Concepts
- Applications
- Keeping order in institutions
- Rules
- Uniform - power and status or loss of identity
- Punishment if a rule is broken
- School: Detentions
- Prison: Solitary confinement