unit 1 cognitive psych

components of multi store model atkinson and shiffrin 1968

sensory memory

short term memory

long term memory

sensory register

it processes information from our 5 senses it has a extremely short duration and information needs to be paid attention too for it move to the short term memory

short term memory

it's acoustically based. it has a 15 to 30 second duration and a capacity of 5 to 9 items. this can be increased by chunking. information goes through a rehearsal loop so it gets encoded to the long term

evidence for short term memory duration

peterson and peterson (1959) asked participants to remember a trigram words then gave an interference task such as counting backwards from a number in intervals of 3 sec, 6 sec, 9 sec, 12 sec, 15 sec, and 18 sec. performance dropped after 15 to 18 sec

evidence for short term memory capacity

Geroge miller 1956's magical number 7 plus or minus 2 which means 5 to 9 items

long-term memory

information gets encoded semantically. thing with meaning gets stored more easily.Long-Term Memory is believed to be of indefinite duration and of potentially unlimited capacity.

evidence for long term memory encoding semantically

Alan baddely 1966 found that people remebred semantically dissimilar words more than semantically similar words becuase they don't confuse the meanings

evidence for long term memory duration

bahrick et al tested particpants memory from ages 17 to 74. there a 90 percent accurate recall of names and faces 15 years after leaving school and 7o to 80 percent after 48 years of leaving school

information processing

Information processing is where input from our senses flows through the three stores in memory in a sequential order (1) being processed by each store in order to retain the information temporarily in STM or forever in LTM (1).

encoding

Encoding is the process of transforming information into a form that can be stored in memory (1). In the multi-store model, each store has a different encoding method, such as acoustic in STM or semantic in LTM

evidence for different STM and LTM store

primary recency effect

Clive wearing

primary recencey effect

GLANZER AND CUNITZ They found that participants recalled more words from the beginning (primacy effect) and end (recency effect) of the word list. but recalled few from the middle of the list.

this is because eords at the begimming have a chance to be rehersed and transferred to the LTM, middle words are taking up slots in the STM and being processed while words at the end of the list displaced memory trace of the middle words.

Clive wearing

could make STM memories but can't transfer make long term memories . can remmeber his secind wife and children but can't remember names. but also proves simplicity of the model because he can remeber how to play the piano but not remember names suggesting maybe LTM has different components

weakness of MSM

- Some research of the short term memory has low ecological validity, participants were asked to remember little resemblance to items in real life

- The model is oversimplified, as evidence suggests that there are multiple short term and long term memory stores. For example long term memory can be split into episodic, procedural, and semantic memory

- It does not make sense to think of procedural memory being enconded semantically, e.g. knowing how to ride a bike through its meaning Ende1 Tu1ving ( 1972

- it is only assumed that long term memory has an unlimited capacity, as researchers were not able to measure this accurately

Strength of MSM

primary recency effect glanzer and cunitz

clive wearing

- This model inspired further research and influenced other models such as the working memory model by Baddeley and Hitch

HM- suffered amnesia following brain strrgery for epilepsy. resulting in severe impairment to his long-term memory although his short-term memory was largely intact. This case study demonstrates that the short-term and long-term memory stores were differentially aJfeci.ed by the brain damage caused perhaps because they are located in different regions of the brain.

Working memory model Baddely and HItch (1974)

the STM has central executive and two slave systems phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad

central executive

an attentional controller with the capacity to focus, divide and switch attention. lts role is to receive information from the senses and allocate verbal and visual information to the slave systems of the worlcing memory.

evidence for central executive

Baddeley et al. ( 1991) used Alzheimer's patient young and old. he conducted dual expirements using a visual task and verbal task where they either did them seprately or together. Alzheimers paiteints performed similarily to the other groups when doing the tasks sperately but struggled when doing together which suggests severe impairment of Central executive since it struggles to delegate tasks to the slave systems

weakness of central executive

it's not fully explained apart from the fact that it delegates tasks to the slave systems, and there is no location for it when PET scans are done

phonological loop

it's made of 2 components the articulatory rehearsal system (articuJatory process) and the phonological store. The phonological store was only able to hold a limited amount of verbal information for a few seconds. This could be extended if the information was subvocalised or refreshed using the articulatory rehearsal system.

phonological store: stores speech based information

articulatory rehersal: reherses information verbally and has a duration of 2 seconds

visuospatial sketchpad

temporarily hold and manipulate veroal and spatial (position/location) information. The role of the VSSP is to maintain and integrate visual and spatial information from these different channels using a visual code. but it has a limited capacity.

strength of Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad

. Klauer and Zhao (2004) found that visual memory tasks were more disrupted by visual interference and spatial tasks more disrupted by spatial interference, offering evidence for separate components to the visuospatial sketchpad.

weakness of Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad

liberman 1980: said that visuospatial sketchpad is more complicated because blind people still have good spatial awareness despite not being able to see

Dual task expirement

Participants were asked to complete two visual tasks, first individually and then both at the same time. They were then asked to do one of the visual tasks at the same time as a verbal task.

This study supports one of the concepts of the working memory model - that attention is limited and that tasks can only be done simultaneously if they rely on different slave systems.

When doing two visual tasks, both used the visuospatial sketchpad and so it became overloaded making the tasks difficult to complete.

However, when completing a visual task at the same time as a verbal task, then the tasks are well performed as different slave systems were used and so didn't become overloaded.

shallice and warrington case study of KF

KF was only 2 digits (normal people on average can remember 7). Shallice and Warrington also realised that KF's short term forgetting of auditory letters and digits was much greater than his forgetting of visual stimuli. They also learned that KF's short term memory deficit was limited to verbal materials (letters and words) and not not to meaningful sounds (cats meowing).

strengths WMM

● It extends on the work of the MSM and explains the complexity of STM with the

tasks it can perform

● Research on dual tasks (Baddeley 197six) supports the idea of separate

components and how they can be overloaded

weakness WMM

● The WMM is vague on the link between STM and LTM

● It is difficult to measure the CE which means that not much is actually known

Reconstructive Memory theory

memories are reconstructed from past events by the way we encode them and retrieve them. when retrieving from LTM memories change

Schema Theory

memories are not like video recorderers we make errors when reteriving them. We fill in gaps in our memory using our schema which is influenced by our experiences and media we consume

schema definition

mental framework which helps us interpret information. which represents an individuals knowledge and experiences about the world

war of ghosts bartlett 1932 aim

Bartlett's War of the Ghost study (1932) aimed to measure the accuracy of reconstructive memory and identify how schemas may influence them.

bartlett 1932 procedure

The sample included 20 British undergraduate students attending the University of Cambridge. The sample included 7 male and 13 female students.

Bartlett told participants a Native American legend called The War of the Ghosts. The participants in the study were British; for them, the story was filled with unknown names and concepts, and the manner in which the story was developed was also foreign to them. The story was therefore ideal to study how memory was reconstructed based on schema processing.

Bartlett allocated the participants to one of two conditions:

one group was asked to use repeated reproduction, where participants heard the story and were told to reproduce it after a short time and then to do so again repeatedly over a period of days, weeks, months or years.

The second group was told to use serial reproduction, in which they had to recall the story and repeat it to another person.

bartlett 1932 results

participans changed unfailiar words like canoe with boats

7 participants omitted the title of the story,

10 participants transformed the title. for example to ·war-Ghost story·.

Overall, three processes occurred in the study:

- Assimilation

- Rationalisation

- Shortening

Participants assimilated stories into their own cultural contexts, rationalised areas that

made less sense, and shortened it to remember better where necessary.

War of the Ghosts' (Bartlett ,1932) strength

A strength of Bartlett's research is chat he used the same War of the Ghosts story for each participant. which means that the apparatus used was standardised across the sample. The study can therefore be retested to see whether story transformations would occur consisten which would increase the reliability of his findings

Applications helped develope the cognitive interview technique which improves eye witness testomonies

- Loftus and Palmer (1974) found that leading questions influenced the accuracy of

memory recall. Loftus and Palmer (1974) support Bartlett's theory that cognitive

processes mediate memory recall processes. Both studies suggest that cognitive

processes such as perception or schemas influence the accuracy of memory

recall.

Mundane realism and task valadity

war of ghosts weakness

Bartlett did not apply any controls between reading the story and repeating the story hours, days, week reducing reliability

Bartlett only used a sample of 20 participants. which can limit the generalisability of the findings. as they may be restricted to the type of participants used. lack of population validity

Low ecological valadity

strength of reconstructive memory theory

supported by bartlett's study since participnts used their gaps to replace unfamailar words

weakness of reconstructive memory theory

Reconstructive memory theory is not a complete explanation of memory as it suggests that memories are part traces part schemas that we encode at the time of the event (1) which fails to explain how memory is reconstructed during of recall making it a partial explanation of memory processing (1).

Aim of schmolck et al 2002

wanted to compare HM's brain to other brain damaged patients to see the link between semantic memory and brain structure

if damage to a MTL is affected to semantic memory

IV and DV of schmolck et al

Iv: the damage to the Mtl (medial temporal lobe) and the hipocampus formation

Dv: scores on the test

schmolk participants

8 controls who were perfectly fine

6 with damage to MTL

3/6 had amnesia inclusing HM

the remaining had damage to their MTL+

schmolk procedure

they had 9 tests which were line drawings divided into 24 animals and 24 objects such as birds which were sub categorized as living things and vehicles as non living things. The participants were tape recorded and their responses transcribed (typed up). Each

transcript was checked for reliability and also looked at for grammar/syntax errors in the

way the participants spoke.

They were all tape recorded and checked by 14 raters, who checked each recording for

reliability, and to also look for grammatical errors because this is a sign of semantic

memory difficulties.

schmockk findings

the controls scored perfectly

so did the hipocampus paiteints (H.M scored 98 for living objects and 100 for objects

MTL+ scored the worse 85 for living things and 90 for objects

positive correlation between scores and severity of brain damage,

damage to the lateral temporal cortex is related to loss of semantic memory but this is only applicable to MTL+ damage patients

shmolck strengths

Strengths:

- Schmolck identified HM as an anomaly, which is a positive.

- 9 standardised tests, with 48 standardised items. This makes it very repeatable.

- As he recorded all of the conversations, it means that it has higher reliability

because they can be checked by other people. Use of 14 raters means it has high inter-rater reliability.

Schmolk weakness

Small sample of participants, only 6 therefore any anomalous result wouldn't be

averaged out.

- Participants are very rare and therefore if you try to generalise to the general

population, the sample doesn't have good population validity therefore may not be generalisable to the general population.

- Ecological validity -> Lab experiment. Artificial environment and artificial tests.

- As the participants had memory loss, they couldn't give informed consent as they

would forget the purpose of the experiment. Therefore they received presumptive

consent.

saachi et al aim

if doctored images would change the attitudes a person has towards past events

whether viewing these doctored images would change behavioural intentions for the future

saachi et al procedure

her sample was 187 undergraduates with 31 males and 156 females ranging from 39 to 19 years. She used events such as tiananmen square and a protest in Rome. There were 4 combinations 2 docotored photos and 2 orginal photos. These were counterbalanced and randomized when presented to participants. The participants were given a self report questionnaire consisting of multiple choice questions which were completed in a classroom setting. participants were debreifed after the study and explained the purpose of the study

saachi et al result

Beijing:

Familiarity: no difference with two photos- participants who viewed the doctored photos predicted higher numbers of people at the event- attitude: no difference on peaceful/violent scales

rome event:

familiarity: ppts who saw the original were more likely to recognise it

- 34% claimed there were injuries (saw original)

- 67% claimed there were injuries (saw doctored)

basically: ppts who saw doctored photos rated violence higher than those who saw original

saachi strength

task is common for particpants day to day life thereofre mudane realism and task valadity. ecological valadity since done in classroom setting

random allocation and counterbalancing which reduces order effects and expirementer bias which increases reliability,

code of ethics and debreifs the participsnt so they know the true purpose

loftus and palmer 1974 found that certain language can alter eye witness testimony's memory from the original which proves saachi et al's doctored photos findings to be reliable

saachi weakness

social desirability because of self report questionnaire

her sample has a disproprtionate amount of males and females which is a gender biased sample and population validity

participant variable such as some participants already having prior knowledge of past events which affects the findings. reducing valadity

episodic memory

Episodic memory is a type of long-term memory that stores personal experiences and events (1), including contextual details such as time and place (1).