Experiments

Sperling's Sensory Memory Experiment (1960)

Flashed an array of letters and asked participants to recall as many as they could

Whole Report Method

Participants tasked to report as many letters as possible from the entire display, 4.5/12

Partial Report Method

Immediately after they saw the letters participants heard a tone that told them which row of the matrix to report, 3.3/4

Delayed Partial Report Method

The letters were flashed on & off and then the cue tone was presented after a short delay, participants able to report slightly more than one letter

Conclusion of Sperling

Short lived sensory memory registers all or most information that hits our visual receptors, but that this information decays within less than a second

Viskontas et al. (2009) Remember/Know Study

Participants asked to pair certain stimuli and then asked 10 mins or 1 week later if they remembered, knew, or didn't them certain pairings

Hippocampus Responding

Connected with episodic memory

Viskontas et al. Findings

More remember responses after 10 minutes and only 1/2 of remember responses remained after 1 week

Nader et al (2009)

Created a fear response in rats through classical conditioning

Tone With Shock

Freezing upon hearing tone

Inject anisomycin with shock + tone

No freeze

Learn fear response & then recieve anisomycin

Freeze

Learn fear response, anisomycin during reconsolodiation

No freeze

CogLab for Levels of Processing

Deeper processing with category vs. structure

Serial Position Curve Word Lists

Participants asked to recall a list of words, plot of percentage of participants remembering each word against the position of the word in the list

Deese Roediger McDermott (DRM) Word List

Theme lists presented, theme words not presented

Results of DRM

False recall of word occurred in 40% of trials

DRM Conclusion

Theme words often come with a strong sense of familiarity because of related concepts

Chess Experts Study

Compared chess experts to normal people, asked them to reproduce the positions on a chessboard after looking at it for 5 seconds

Chess Expert Results

Experts excelled when the pieces were in game position but not better than beginners where there wasn't a pattern

Chess Expert Conclusions

Storage of patterns in memory through chunking

Carmichael et al. (1932) Study

Ambiguos figures shown and participants asked to identify what they think it is

Carmichael et al Conclusion

Making meaning at encoding

Ross et al. (1994) Study

Teacher robbed in staff room and participants asked to identify robber

Actual robber not in photo spread

More identification in experimental group

Actual robber in photo spread

Lower % identified in experimental group, closer to control group

Unconscious Transference

Witnesses fail to distinguish between a target person & another encountered at a different time whose face is familiar

Loftus et al (1978) Misinformation Paradigm

Presented subjects with a filmed accident, followed by leading questions with misinformation

Participants with consistent information

Chose correctly 75%

Participants with inconsistent information

Chose correctly 40%

Loftus et al. (1992) Episodic Memory Fabrication

Made people think that they had been lost in a shopping mall when they were younger to the point that they believed it

Rovee Collier

Ribbon tied between baby's ankle and overhead mobile

Rovee Collier Baseline

Kicking was measured before ankle & mobile were connected by ribbon

Rovee Collier Results

Babies reliably kicked more at test than baseline across different conditions

Wickens et al (1976)

Participants presented word related to fruit or professions and attempted to recall words after counting backwards