Memory-AO1 (AS Paper 1)

Question 1

STM
Duration
Capacity
Coding

Answer 1

Duration- 18-30 seconds without rehearsal
Capacity- 7+/- 2 digits (single or chunks)
Coding- Acoustic (sounds)

Question 2

LTM
Duration
Capacity
Coding

Answer 2

Duration- up to a life time
Capacity- unlimited
Coding- semantic (meaning)

Question 3

What’s the first store in the MSM and the capacity and duration

Answer 3

Sensory register
Large capacity
0.5-3 seconds

Question 4

1)How does information go to the LTM from the STM
2)How does information go from the STM to the LTM

Answer 4

1) Retrieval
2) Prolonged rehearsal

Question 5

What are the 3 types of long term memory

Answer 5

1) Episodic- Episodes and Events
2)Semantic- Facts and meanings
3) Procedural- Practice

Question 6

What are the 2 types of interference

Answer 6

PORN
Proactive interference is when
Old information interferes with new info
Retroactive interference is when
New info interferes with old

Question 7

Retrieval failure theory- context dependant study
Who conducted the study, what was the study, what were the conclusions

Answer 7

Godden and Baddeley conducted a study with deep sea divers. They gave them information to learn and recall. There were 4 groups: learning and recalling in water, learning and recalling on land, learning in water and recalling on land, learning on land and recalling in water. Results showed that learning and recalling on the same environment increased accuracy of results.

Question 8

Research on proactive interference
(Underwood and underwood study)

Answer 8

Underwood had asked some students to recall a list of nonsense syllables and 24 hours later asked them to recall them. Recall was a lot lower then expected. He found those students had already participated in a memory test and the old info was interfering with the new, meaning this is a case of proactive interference.

Question 9

Research on retroactive information
(McGeoch and McDonald)

Answer 9

They asked participants to learn a list of 10 words until they could remember them with 100% accuracy. They were put into 6 groups and asked to learn a new list of words.
1) synonyms
2) acronyms
3) unrelated words,
4) consonant, syllables
5)numbers
6) none
Results showed that group 1 (learnt words with similar meaning) were more likely to get muddled up as them words were similar. Whereas group 5 (who learnt numbers) are less likely to get muddled up as the info is completely different. This shows the new info interferes with the old, when they are asked to recall the first 10 words from the original list.

Question 10

EWT (eye witness testimony)
Leading questions research
(Loftus and palmer study)

Answer 10

Loftus and Palmer carried out a study were 45 student were split into 5 groups. They all watched the same video of a car crash. They were all asked a question about the cars speed, however the verb used changed each time (hit, bumped, contacted, collided and smashed) Results showed that students with the word smashed said that the car was going at around 40 MPH while the students with the word contacted said the car was going around 30 MPH.

Question 11

Post-event discussion
What’s the difference between memory conformity and memory contamination

Answer 11

Conformity= witness agrees with others to achieve social approval
Contamination= incorrectly remembering information.

Question 12

What is post event discussion

Answer 12

Occurs when more than one witness sees an event and may discuss this with other eye witnesses around them. This may influence the accuracy of a whitenesses recall about the event.

Question 13

Anxiety having a negative effect on recall
(Johnson and Scott)

Answer 13

1) eye whitenesses saw a men with a pen in his hand. When asked to recall the man they accurately identified him 49% of the time

2) eyewitnesses saw a man with a bloody knife in his hand. When asked to recall the man they accurately identified him 33% of the time.

This suggests that whitenesses focused on the weapon which distracts then from the man holding it. - Anxiety decreased accuracy of EWT.

Question 14

Anxiety having a positive effect on recall
(Fight or flight)

Answer 14

Whitenesses were asked how stressed they felt after seeing the event of a real life crime (shooting) measured on a 7 point scale. They were also asked about emotional problems such a lack of sleep. People who were the most stressed were the most accurate about the shooting 4-5 months after. Showing that anxiety does have a positive effect on recall.

Question 15

Duration of STM study and conclusions
(Peterson and Peterson)

Answer 15

Participants are briefly shown a trigram (3 constants). They are then given a distracted task such as counting backwards in threes. After 3 seconds, the participant was asked to recall the trigram. Each time the participants are shown a new trigram, the distracted task increases by 3 seconds. 80% of participants were able to successfully recall the trigram after the first v3 second interval. However as the time of the distracted task increased, the amount of participants who recalled it correctly decreased.

Question 16

Duration of LTM study and conclusions
(Bahrick)

Answer 16

He used 392 people who graduated from an American high school over a 50 year period and he split them into 2 groups.
Group 1 was the recognition group and group 2 were the recall group. Group 1 were given 50 photographs from their high school year books and were asked if they recognised them or not. Group 2 were asked to recall as many people as they could from their graduation class. Overall the recognition group were more accurate when identifying people as 15 years from graduation 90% identified accurately. While only 60% were accurate identifying people from graduation 15 years ago

Question 17

Capacity of STM study and conclusions

Answer 17

The digest span technique was used to identify the capacity of STM. Jacobs used a sample of 443 female students. The students were given number to recall back in the same order and the amount of numbers increased until the students got it incorrect. On average the number of digits recalled was 5-9 items. This could be increased with chunks.

Question 18

What are the 4 instructions asked in a cognitive interview

Answer 18

1) recreate the context- eyewitnesses are encouraged to include every detail even if they don’t think it’s relevant, as this could trigger certain memories.
2) recall all details- eyewitnesses imagine the crime scene in their head and describe their feelings and emotions during the event.
3) recall the event in different orders- this is done to prevent expectations or what others might think would happen.
4) changing perspectives- they describe the event from someone else’s point of view.

Question 19

Conclusions pulled from the cognitive interview compared to the standard interview
(Correct items and incorrect items)

Answer 19

Correct items
Cognitive = 41.5 Standard= 29.4

Incorrect items
Cognitive = 7.3. Standard= 6.1