Psychology Memory

Coding, Capacity and Duration of memory
1. Coding - the format of which inforrmation is stored in the various stores
  1. Research on coding
    1. Baddeley- different lists of words, some that were acoustically similar , dissilmilar semantically similar and dissimilar
      1. The participants were asked to immediately repeat the list of words. - they tend to do worse on acoustically similar words.
      2. If the participants were asked to recall the list after 20 mins did worse on semantically similar words
        Suggests that info is coded semantically in LTM
    2. Evaluation on research into coding
      1. ARTIFICIAL STIMULI
        Baddeley used random used artificial words rather than meaningful words
        Cautious about generalising the findings to different memory tasks
2. Capacity - How much information the memory stores can hold
  1. Research on Capacity
    1. Span of memory and chunking
      1. Miller - 7+/-2
        Capacity of STM
    2. Evaluation of research into capacity
      1. Not so many chunks
        Cowan 2001 - concluded that STM was only four chunks
3. Duration - How long the information is stored for in the memory stores
  1. Research on duration
    1. Duration of STM
      1. Peterson and Peterson - 24 students were given a trigram to remember. they had to count backwards from a 3 digit number. they were stopped at 3,6,9,12,15 and 18 seconds
        They found that as the time of the retention interval increased the amount of right answers decreased
        Suggests that STM has a short Duration
        18 - 30 seconds
    2. Duration of LTM
      1. Bahrick - High school yearbook test - photo recognition test and free recall
        PPts who were tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in photo recognition.
        free recall - 60% accuracy
        After 48 years recall declined to 70% recognition
        Free recall - 30% accuracy
        Suggests LTM Has a long duration
    3. Evaluation into research for duration
      1. Peterson and Peterson - meaningless stimuli
        trying to memorise trigrams does not reflect real life - lacked external validity
      2. Bahrick - confounding variables were not controlled
        looked in yearbooks which means they could have rehearsed them over the years
The multistore model
1. Sensory register
  1. Stimulus from the environment
    1. Two main stores - iconic memory - visual info - coded visually
      1. echoic memory - auditory info - coded acoustically
2. Short term memory
  1. 7+/-2
  2. coded acoustically
  3. 18-30 seconds unless rehearsed
  4. Maintenance rehearsal occurs when we repeat materials to ourselves over and over again it then passes onto the LTM
3. Long term memory
  1. Unlimited capacity
  2. Memories can last a lifetime
  3. LTM is coded semantically - meaning
  4. Memories are transfered to STM through a process called retrieval
4. Evaluation of the multistore model
  1. Supporting research evidence - strength - Baddeley we tend to mix up words.
  2. There is more than one type of STM - shallice and warrington KF
  3. There is more than one type of rehearsal - Craik and Watkins - 2 types of rehearsal - maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal
Types of Long term memory
1. Episodic memory
  1. Is the ability to recall events (episodes) from our lives
  2. The memories are time stamped
  3. Your memory of a single episode will include several elements such as people, places, objects, and behaviours all woven together to create one memory
  4. You have to make a conscious effort to recall episodes. you may be able to do it quickly or it may take a while but you are aware you are looking for that memory
2. Semantic memory
  1. This stores our knowledge of the world - This includes facts
  2. This memory has often been linked with a dictionary and encyclopedia
  3. These memories are not time stamped
  4. semantic memory is less personal and more about the facts
3. Procedural memory
  1. This is our memory for actions and skills or basically how we do things
  2. We can recall these memories without consciousness. such as driving a car or riding a bike.
  3. Our ability to do this depends on the procedural memory
4. Evaluation of different types of LTM
  1. Clinical evidence - HM and Clive Wearing - episodic memory effected, semantic memory unaffected. supports Tulving's theory
  2. neuroimaging evidence - brian scans
  3. Real life application - allows psychologists to target certain areas in peoples memory to improve their lives
The Working Memory Model
1. The central executive
  1. Co-ordinates the activities of the three slave stores
  2. The central executive has a very limited processing capacity
2. Phonological loop
  1. one of the slave stores it deals with the audirtory info
  2. subdivided into
    1. phonological store
      1. Stores the words we hear
    2. articulatory process
      1. which allows maintenance rehearsal. the capacity of the loop is believed to be two seconds
3. Visuo-spatial sketchpad
  1. Stores visual and/or spatial info when required
  2. sub divided into
    1. the visual cache - stores visual data
    2. the inner scribe - records the arrangement of objects in the visual field
4. Episodic buffer
  1. Added to the model by Baddeley in 2000
  2. It is a temporary store for info intergrating the visual, spatial, and verbal info processed by other stores and maintaining a sense of time sequencing
  3. The episodic buffer links working memory to the LTM and wide cognitive processes such as perception
5. Evaluation of the working memory model
  1. Clinical evidence - Shallice and Warrington - KF
  2. Dual task performance - supports the seperate existancee of the visuo-spatial sketchpad. BAddeley showed that people hadmore difficulty doing two visual tasks at the same time. this is because visual tasks compete. where as if they are different tasks there is no competition
  3. Lack of clarity over the working memory model - it doesnt really explain anything.
Explanations for forgetting.
1. Interference
  1. Proactive
    1. old memories get in the way of recalling new memories
  2. Retroactive
    1. New memories get in the way of recalling older memories
  3. Study - McGeoch and McDonald - Retroactive forgetting
    1. PPTS had to learn a list of words. They were split into six groups. 1. synonyms. 2. antonyms. 3. words unrelated to the original list. 4. nonsense syllables. 5. three digit numbers. 6. no new list
      1. the most similar material (synonyms) produced the worst recall.
        This shows that interference is strongest when the memories are similar
  4. Evaluation
    1. Evidence form lab studies - This is a strength because lab experiments control the effects of irrelevant influences and thus gives us confidence that interference is a valid explanation for forgetting.
    2. Artificial materials- This is a limitation because it makes interference much more likely in a lab. Interference may not be likely as an explanation for forgetting in an everyday life as it is in a lab
    3. Real life studies - This study shows that interference explanations can apply to at least some everyday situations
2. Retreval failure
  1. Encoding specificity principle
    1. if a cue to help us it needs to be present at encoding and at retreval
    2. If there are no cues or if they are different forgetting is likely to happen
  2. Context-dependent forgetting
    1. Badeley's divers - learn on land recall on land or learn in water recall in water got the best results
  3. State dependent forgetting
    1. Carter and Cassidy study - learn on drugs recall on drugs etc.
      1. learning and recalling in the same state gave better results that when learning and recalling in different states
  4. Evaluation
    1. Supporting evidence - this is a strength because it increases the validity of the explanation of forgetting
    2. Questioning context effects - this is a limitation because it means that the real life applications of retreval failure due to contextual cues don't actually explain much forgetting
    3. Recall vs recognition - this is a limitation because it means that the presence or absence of a cue only affects memory when you test it in a certain way
Factors effecting eye witness testimonies
1. Misleading information
  1. Leading questions
    1. Loftus and Palmer - car accident video, questionnaire, changed the verb different serverity e.g crash, smash, collided.
      1. findings - the mean estimated of the speed of the car increased with the serverity of the verb describing the incident
    2. Response bias explanation - suggests that the wording of the question has no effect on the ppts memory, but it influences how they decide to answer.
    3. substitution explanation - the wording of the leading question actually changes the ppts memory of the incident
  2. post event discussion
    1. Gabbert et al - showed each ppts different angles of the same crime. Then the ppts discussed what they saw
      1. findings were that 71% of the ppts mistakenly recalled aspects of the crime that they did not see but had picked up on in the group discussion.
  3. Evaluation
    1. Useful real life application - it makes a huge positive impact on peoples lives
    2. The tasks are artificial - it tells us little about how people would react if they witnessed a real crime
    3. individual differences - younger people seem to give more detailed accounts of the crimes etc
2. The effects of Anxiety
  1. Anxiety has a negative effect on recall
    1. Johnson and Scott - knife with blood or pen with oil
      1. They found that 49% with the pen picked the man out of pictures
      2. Only 33% with the knife could pick him out
      3. the tunnel theory of memory argues that witnesses attention narrows to focus on a weapon because it is the source of the anxiety
  2. Anxiety has a positive effect on recall
    1. Yuille and Cutshall
      1. shop owner shot someone interviewed the witnesses
      2. The witnesses were detailed in their account. little change after 5 months. the witnesses who claimed to suffer the most stress were more accurate that the less stressed witnesses
  3. contradictory findings
    1. Yerkes Dodson law
  4. Evaluation
    1. Weapon Focus Effect may not be relevant - it is due to unusualness rather than anxiety and therefore tells us nothing about the effect of anxiety on EWT
    2. Field studies sometimes lack control - the researchers have no control over what is said in the post event discussion and it could be because of extraneous variables that has effect on the accuracy of EWT
    3. Ethical issues - putting people at risk of psychological harm
Improving the accuracy of EWT - cognitive interviews
1. Report everything - encouraged to say every little detail about the event
2. Reinstate the context - return to the original crime scene in their minds
3. Reverse the order events should be recalled chronologically in reverse
4. Change perspective - recall the incident from someone else's view point
5. Enhanced cognitive interview - focus on the social dynamics of the interaction e.g eye contact and reducing anxiety
6. Evaluation
  1. The CI are time consuming - spend more time on these than standard police interviews
  2. Some elements may be more valuable than others - using combo of report everything and context reinstatement they found they got more information that was accurate from the witness
  3. Supports for the effectiveness of the ECI- more correct info than standard police interviews

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Psychology Memory

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	Created by Emily Hancox over 7 years ago