AQA Psychology Memory

Coding

Coding

The format in which information is stored. (How)

Who Did Research On Coding?

Baddely

Baddely's Procedure

Four groups were given lists to remember

a) acoustically similar words

b) acoustically dissimilar words

c) semantically similar words

d) semantically dissimilar words

-They were asked to recall the words some had to immediately (STM) others had to wait 20 minutes (LTM)

Result of Baddley's Experiment For STM

Confusion between acoustically similar words

Result of Baddley's Experiment for LTM

Confusion between semantially similar words

Conclusions for Baddley's Experiment

STM - Acoustic confusion, coded acoustically

LTM - Semantic confusion, coded semantically

Negative Evaluation of Baddley's Experiment

The words used had no personal meaning to the the participants so the stimuli was artificial

What is Capacity?

Amount of information that can be held.

Research for Capacity

Jacobs and Miller

Method for Jacob's Study

Aim - See how much info STM can hold at one time

(Digit Span)

Research gave a certain number of digits then the PP recalled in correct order. If recalled correctly, amount of digits increased. Determines individuals digit span.

Results of Jacob's Study

- participants had a mean score of 7.3 letters in order

- participants had a mean score of 9.3 numbers in order

Negative Evaluation(s) of Jacob's Study

This was conducted a long time ago so there was a lack of control on extraneous variables

This could mean the results were not valid as there were confounding variables that were not controlled

What Did Miller's Study Discover?

Instead as keeping the information as individuals, the unit of informaiton can be increased by chunking.

What is Miller's Magic Number?

7 +/- 2 (5-9 chunks)

What is Duration?

Length of time information can be held

Who Conducted STM Duration Research?

Peterson and Peterson

Method for Peterson and Peterson's Study

24 students were given a trigram, as well as a 3 digit number to remember. The student had to count backwards from this number (prevents mental rehearsal) told to stop counting at different seconds (e.g. 3, 9, 18).

Results for Peterson and Peterson's Study

Amount recalled correctly:

3 seconds - 90%

18 seconds - 5%

(Significant difference between them)

Conclusion for Peterson and Peterson's Study

STM has a very short duration unless it is repeated over and over again(verbal rehearsal)

Negative Evaluation of Peterson and Peterson's Study

Contains an artificial stimulus trying to remember constant syllabuses does not happen in real life so lacks ecological validity

Who Did a Study on Long Term Duration?

Bahrick et al.

Method of Bahrick's Study

Studied nearly 400 participants between 17-74. Recall was tested either by

- photo recognition where they name people in the photos from their year book

- free recall where they list names they remember from their high school class

Results of Bahrick's Study

Free recall after 48 years - 30%

Free recall after 15 years - 60%

Photo recognition after 48 years - 70%

Conclusions from Bahrick's Study

LTM can last a very long time, potentially a lifetime.

Positive Evaluation(s) of Bahrick's Study

High external validity real life meaningful memories were studied

Negative Evaluation(s) of Bahrick's Study

Confounding Variables are not controlled for - People could have looked at the year book. (rehearsal)

Who Devised the Multi-Store Model?

Atkinson and Shiffrin

What is the Multi-Store Model?

An explanation of how the memory works in terms of 3 stores:

Sensory Register

STM

LTM

Through flowing Storage systems

Describe the structure of the Multi-Store Model

What is the Sensory Register?

A short duration store that holds information we have gained through the 5 senses.

How is the Sensory Register Mainly Coded?

Via all 5 senses.

Mainly iconic (visual) and echoic (acoustic)

What is the Duration of the Sensory Register?

Very Brief

What is the Capacity of the Sensory Register

Very High

Describe Sperling's Research into the Sensory Register's Capacity

Flashed a 3x4 grid of letters for 1/20th of a second. A different tone indicated for each row.

Recall was high.

Capacity for SR is very large.

What is the Key Process for Attention?

Little of what goes into the sensory register goes into the STM

How is STM Coded?

Mainly Acoustic

Capacity of STM?

7 +/- 2 (5-9)

Duration of STM?

Max 30 seconds

How is the LTM Coded

Mainly Semantically

Capacity of LTM?

Huge

Duration of LTM

Very long time - Lifetime?

Was Case Study Supports the MSM?

Case of HM:

Man underwent surgery, his hippocampus was removed. When his memory was assessed, he thought it was 4 years ago. LTM was damaged but STM performed well. (Indicates sepperate stores)

Positive Evaluation(s) of MSM

First cognitive explanation - went on to progress and gave a greater understanding.

Considerable evidence - shows they're different.

Supported by amnesia cases.

Negative Evaluation(s) of MSM

More than one type of STM - KF couldn't recall digits when read aloud but could when read to himself.

Most studies don't represent real life situations

More than one type of LTM

Focuses of structure not processes.

Who Devised the Working Memory Model?

Baddley and Hitch

What is the Working Memory Model?

An explanation of STM as an active store that holds several different types of info in different sub-units

Structure of Working Memory Model

What is the Central Executive?

Attentional process that monitors incoming data. Allocates data to certain slave systems. Has limited processing capacity.

Evaluation of Central Executive

Little is known about it - Most important but least understood (Baddley)

Better understood as attention rather than a memory store.

What is the Phonological Loop?

Deals w/ auditory info, both written and spoken. Preserves the order info arrives. 2 Parts:

Phonological Store

Articulatory Process

What is the Phonological Store? (Primary Acoustic Store)

Stores words heard.

What is the Articulatory Process?

Allows for maintainence rehearsal/sub-vocal repetition.

Capacity of this is about 2 seconds.

Linked to speech production.

Evaluation(s) of Phonological Loop

Baddley demonstrated that people find it more difficult to remember a list of long words than short words. Only 2 seconds in store. So can't repeat if being vocal - Two stores in it.

PET scan shows different activities when doing verbal tasks.

What is the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad?

Stores visual or spatial information. Helps navigate around & interact with their environment. Through mental pictures.

Two Parts:

Visual Cache

Inner Scribe

What is the Visual Cache?

Stores Visual Data - Form and Colour.

What is the inner scribe?

Information about the Physical Relationship between items. Arrangment of objects in visual field.

Evaluation of Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad

Dual task Performance- supports the existance of the VSS. -->

The pp had diffculty doing two visual tasks other than visual and verbal- different slave systems.

PET scans show them as seperate stores.

What is the Episodic Buffer?

Added by Baddely later on (2000)

A temporary store- intergrating information from other sub systems rather than seperate strands

It's a bridge between working memory and LTM.

Maintains a sense of time recording events (episodes) happening

Who Looked at different sections of LTM?

Tulving-

He realised thsat the Multi-Store LTM was too simplistic

What did Tulving Propose about LTM?

Made of 3 Parts:

-Episodic Memory

-Semantic Memory

-Procedural Memory

What is Episodic Memory?

A LTM store for Personal Events

They're 'time stamped' (Dates)

The memory of a single episode which includes several elements.i.e places and people

Concious recall

What is Semantic memory?

Contains our knowledge of the world, includes facts and our knowledge of what words and concepts mean.

Concious Recall

What is Procedural Memory?

Stores our knowledge of how to do things. Includes memories of learned skills.

Unconcious Recall

Which case study shows that LTM has different stores?

Clive Wearing- The episodic part of his brains were impaired due to his amnesia. They had trouble recalling thier past.

His Semantic and procedural memory were unaffected.

Wearing knew hoe read music sing and play the piano.

Supports Tulving Theory.

Postive Evaluation Points for LTM?

Case Studies support the idea of different stores

Brain scan studies provide evidence that there are 3 different stores

Benefits real-life applications

Negative Evaluation Points for LTM?

Problems with clinical evidence- case studies ( lacks control of all variables)

Could be two instead of three- actually seperated as declarative and non-declarative (Cohen and Squire)

What are the two explanations for forgetting?

Interfernece Theory

Retreival Faliure Theory

What is Interferene Theory?

Forgetting in LTM is because you can't get access to information.

As the info is stored at different times so makes it harder to locate

(one memory blocks another)

What is Proactive Interference?

Older Memories interferes with the new

What is Retroactice Interference?

New Memories interferes with the old

When is Interference worse?

When the memories or learning is similar

What was Schmidt et al's Study?

Real-life study of childhood street names- PPs were given a map with the street names replaced by numbers.

Asked to remember as many as possible.

(Other relevant info was collected by questionnaire) - how man times they moved

Positive association between number of times moved and number of street names forgotten.

What was the conclusions of Schmidt's Study?

Learning new patterns of street names when moving makes recalling older patterns more difficult.

Retroactive interference effects recall in real-life situations

What was the Evaluation of this Study? Schmidth

Extraneous Variables - confounded results

Methodolgy used shows that its possible to research RI in real-life situations.

Positive Evaluation Points of Interference Theory?

Evidence from lab studies consistently demonstrates interference

Real-life studies supports it

The effects of interference may be overcome using cues

Negative Evaluation Points of Interference Theory?

Only really explains forgetting when two sets of info are similar.

Most are lab experiemnts- lacks EV

Don't clearly identify the cognitive processes

What is Retreival Theory? (Cue-dependent Forgetting)

When you don't have the necessary cues to access memory. (Cue-dependent forgetting)

What is Context-dependent forgetting?

Where recall occurs in an external setting or code?

What was the divers study to explain context-dependent faliure? (Godden and Baddeley)

This study looked at how external cues present at the time of encoding affected memory recall.

Divers learnt a list of words either underwater or on land- thren asked to recall the words either on land or water.

Four groups-

Land- Land

Land- Water

Water- Land

Water- Water

What was the findings for the divers study? (Godden and Baddeley)

Recall 40% lower in non-matching conditions

External cues are available at learning were different from recall there was a lack of cues.

Describe Tulving's research

Tulving reviewed research into retrieval faliure and concluded that cues can help us recall information if the cue was present at encoded and at retrieval.

The closer the retrieval cue is to the original cue, the better the cue works.

It can't be teseted fully.

What is Eyewitness testimony?

The ability of people to remember the details of events like accidents/crimes.

What can affect Eyewitness Testimony?

Leading questions

Post-event Discussion

Anxiety

What are leading Questions?

A question which because of the way it has been phrased suggests a certain answer.

What was the procedure for Loftus and Palmer's Study?

They arranged for 45 American pps to watch film clips of car accidents and then gave them questions about the accidents.

Critical Question - 'About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?'

Each of 5 groups were given different verbs in the critical question.

Hit, Contacted, Bumped, Collided, Smashed

What were the findings for the Loftus and Palmer Study?

Smashed produced the highest estimate (40.5 mph) and contacted was the lowest (31.8 mph).

What are the Positive Evaluation Points for Loftus and Palmer?

Replicable- Standardised Procedure

High Controls

What are the Negative Evaluation Points for Loftus and Palmer?

Artificial Situation- Lacks EV

Videos- affect the results as lack real-life relevance more of an emotional impact

Demand characteristics

Why do Leading Questions affect EWT?

A response-bias explanation- wording of the question doesn't effect the memory but influences how they decide to answer.

Substituation explanation- (Loftus and Palmer's 2nd question) Wording a leading question changes the participants memory. This was demonstarted as by hearing the word 'smashed' they thought they saw broken glass.

What is Post-event Discussion?

More than one witness where they may discuss what they have seen. This may influence the accuracy of each witness's recall of the event.

What study shows Post-event Discussion?

Gabbert et al

What was the procedure for Gabbert et al's study of Post-event Discussion?

PPs in pairs. Each watched a video of the same crime, but from different POVs.

Both pps then discussed what they had seen on the video before individually completing a test of recall.

What were the results for Gabbert et al's study of Post-event Discussion?

71% mistakenly recalled aspects of the event. This is what they picked up in post-event discussion.

0% error in control group

Positive Evaluation Points for EWT?

Useful real-life applications- Police Officers being more careful in their questioning

Can make positive differences

Negative Evaluation Points for EWT?

The research used are artificial

Individual Differences

Ppts don't expect to be purposefully mislead by researchers.

Studies can be potentially psychologically distressing for pps.

What is Anxiety?

Unpleasant stae of emotional arousal

Physical- increased heart rate & sweatiness

Normal reaction to a stressful situation

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Explains how different level of anxiety effect event recall.

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It produces optimal performance. Best accuracy of recall.

What is Weapon's Focus?

Where the witness focuses more on the weapon than on the culprits face. This then negatively affects the ability to recall the event.

What is Repression?

Anxiety hinders others the recall of memory. Access of memories is barred, so to protect the individual from emotional distress.