Memory (PMT)

What is capacity?

A measure of the amount of information that can be stored in memory

What is coding?

The way that information is modified so it can be stored in memory. Information can be stored in the form of visual, acoustic or semantic codes

What is duration?

The measure of how long a memory can be stored before it is no longer available

What occurred in Peterson and Peterson’s study on STM duration?

• Participants given nonsense consonant triad and 3 digit number

• Participants had to count down in 3s from their number during a period of either 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds

• Had to recall triad given

What occurred in Baddeley’s study on coding in LTM/STM?

• Participants given word lists to learn, one semantically similar and acoustically different, one semantically different and acoustically similar

• Participants struggled LT with list 1 and ST with list 2

• Concluded LTM is encoded semantically and STM acoustically

What is proactive interference?

When past learning interferes with attempts to learn something new

What is retroactive interference

When current attempts at learning interfere with the recollection of past learning

What occurred in Goodwin’s study on state-dependent forgetting?

• Participants learn a list of words either drunk or sober

• Recall was best when they were drunk during encoding and recall or sober during encoding and recall

What was the case of HM?

• Scoville and Milner (1957) studied patient HM who had his hippocampus removed to treat epilepsy

• Unable to form LTMs but could form STMs

What occurred in Abernathy’s study on context dependent forgetting?

• Students tested in different conditions, by their regular teacher in their usual room/different one, or by a different teacher in their usual room/different one

• Results were best when tested in their usual room with their usual teacher

What are the components of the cognitive interview?

• Reinstate context

• Report everything

• Reverse order

• Change perspective

What occurred in Johnson and Scott’s study on anxiety affecting eye witness testimony?

• Participants heard an argument then saw a man run past holding a grease covered pen (low anxiety) or knife covered in blood (high anxiety)

• Low anxiety identification = 49% accurate

• High anxiety identification = 33% accurate

What are the 2 types of declarative memory?

• Semantic

• Episodic

What is procedural memory?

Memory that is concerned with knowing how to do things which eventually, through repetition, become automatic

Who conducted research on the effects of misleading information on eyewitness testimony?

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

What research is related to retrieval failure?

• Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) gave participants a list of 48 words from 12 different categories

• Recall was 40% accurate without retrieval cues

• Recall was 60% accurate when the category was given as a retrieval cue

What are cues?

Things that serve as triggers to a memory

What is semantic memory?

Memory concerned with knowledge of facts, such as the capital city of a country

What is episodic memory?

Memory concerned with the knowledge of life events such as a first day at school

What is eyewitness testimony?

The ability of a person to remember events they have witnessed, usually with the effect that they have to testify about what they have seen in court, or identify the perpetrator of the crime

What is the capacity, duration and encoding of the sensory memory?

Very large
Milliseconds
Iconic and acoustic

What is the capacity, duration and encoding of short term memory?

7 ± 2 ‘chunks’
18 seconds
Acoustic

What is the capacity, duration and encoding of long term memory

Unlimited
Lifetime
Semantic

What are the elements of the working memory model?

Central executive

Visuo-spatial sketchpad
Episodic buffer
Phonological loop

Long term memory