4.1.2 Memory

Question 1

memory

Answer 1

the process by which we retain information from the past

Question 2

multi-store model of memory (MSM)

Answer 2

• developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
• a cognitive approach that explains memory as a process of information passing through a series of 3 storage systems; the sensory register, to short-term memory, and then long-term memory

Question 3

processes of the MSM

Answer 3

• environmental stimuli enters the SR
• info is then passed from SR - STM through attention
• any info not encoded from the SR fades
• then from STM to LTM through rehearsal
• info not rehearsed in the STM will be lost by displacement or decay
• we can use retrieval to bring info from LTM into STM

Question 4

sensory register

Answer 4

• environmental stimuli
• coding - unprocessed information from any of the 5 senses
• duration - even less than a second
• capacity - unknown, but very large
• if we pay attention to the info, it moves to the STM, otherwise it disappears

Question 5

short-term memory

Answer 5

• the select info that the individual pays attention to
• coding - mainly acoustic (sounds)
• duration - around 30 seconds, so info is ‘fragile’ here
• capacity - between 5-9 ‘chunks’ of info
• info will disappear quickly if not rehearsed (decay) or may be ‘pushed out’ by new info (displacement)

Question 6

long-term memory

Answer 6

• rehearsed info ends up here and the more rehearsal, the stronger the memory
• coding - mainly semantic (based on meaning), but may also be acoustic or visual
• duration - potentially infinite as it can last from over 30 seconds to an entire lifetime
• capacity - potentially infinite
• info can be retrieved and temporarily transferred to STM, e.g. remembering childhood experiences

Question 7

MSM - strengths

Answer 7

• Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) researched the primary / recency effect; when immediately recalling a list of words, the first few (primary) and last few (recency) words on the list are most commonly recalled, as the first few are rehearsed so enter the LTM and the last few are still in your STM at the time of recall
• brain scans such as fMRI and PET scans have shown that the prefrontal lobe ‘lights up’ during STM tasks and the hippocampus lights up during LTM tasks, indicating that they are 2 separate stores
• Shallice and Warrington (1970) reported the case of a man named KF who had been in a motorcycle accident and had severe damage to his STM while his LTM remained intact
• Henry Molaison (HM) had a surgery, after which he was able to form ST memories but unable to form new LT memories, so he couldn’t form declarative memories (those which can be consciously recalled)

Question 8

MSM - limitations

Answer 8

• may be overly simplistic, as both the STM and LTM are more complex than the MSM suggests, e.g. WMM shows how STM consists of many different components
• doesn’t account for the different types of LTM (episodic, semantic, procedural)
• case studies shouldn’t be generalised, e.g. HM’s memory system could be different to others
• research suggests the length of time of rehearsal may not determine whether info transfers to the LTM, but it’s instead due to how deeply we process info

Question 9

types of long term memory

Answer 9

• MSM is overly simplistic and Endel Tulving (1985) suggests there’s 3 different types of LTM;
• episodic memory (explicit - conscious and easy to put into words)
• semantic memory (explicit)
• procedural memory (implicit - subconscious and to do with skills and abilities)

Question 10

episodic memory

Answer 10

• memory of previous events
• includes context, details, and emotions felt
• strong emotions cause it to be coded more strongly
• e.g. your first day at school

Question 11

semantic memory

Answer 11

• general knowledge that we’ve accumulated over time
• e.g. the capital of England is London

Question 12

procedural memory

Answer 12

• memory of skills, ability, etc.
• aids the performance of tasks without consciously recalling previous experiences
• e.g. walking, talking, riding a bike, etc.

Question 13

types of long-term memory - strengths

Answer 13

• multiple studies which support the distinction between different types of LTM
• e.g. patients with retrograde amnesia may completely forget episodic details of their lives, while still retaining perfect procedural knowledge
• HM - his episodic memory was affected but his procedural memory was still intact
• Clive Wearing - could skilfully play the piano (procedural) but was unable to remember his wife visiting him 5 minutes before (episodic)

Question 14

types of long-term memory - limitations

Answer 14

• the difference within explicit types of LTM (episodic and semantic) is less clear, as there’s significant overlap between them
• e.g. when remembering a semantic fact such as the capital of England, you may do so by recalling your episodic experience of looking at a map
• so, Cohen and Squire (1980) suggest there are 2 types of LTM instead;
• declarative memory - has to be consciously recalled, i.e. episodic and semantic
• non-declarative memory - procedural memories that don’t need to be consciously recalled
• specific case studies can’t be generalised to a whole population

Question 15

the working memory model (WMM)

Answer 15

• developed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
• it’s a more detailed model of STM in response to the over-simplification of STM in the multi-store model
• it divides STM into 4 separate components; the key one is the central executive, and then there are 3 slave systems; the phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer

Question 16

WMM components

Answer 16

• central executive at the top
• LTM at the bottom
• phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer connect to and from both the central executive and LTM

Question 17

central executive

Answer 17

• key component which controls the WMM
• all sensory info passes to the central executive which then decides which slave system should process it (directing attention)
• also retrieves info from the slave systems once it’s been processed by them
• deals with conflicts of attention, i.e. what needs to be prioritised (decision making)
• coding - can code any type of info, i.e. acoustic, visual, etc.
• capacity - limited - can’t hold lots of info at one time

Question 18

phonological loop

Answer 18

• first slave system
• deals with auditory info
• has two parts;
• the phonological store (inner ear); deals with speech perception
• the articulatory control process (inner voice); processes speech production and rehearses information verbally
• limited capacity and holds info for around 2 seconds before it’s lost to decay

Question 19

visuo-spatial sketchpad

Answer 19

• second slave system
• concerned with visual (what things look like) and / or spatial (relationships between things) info
• also known as the inner eye
• info is coded as mental pictures
• has two parts;
• the inner scribe; deals with spatial info
• the visual cache; stores info about shape, form and colour
• has a limited capacity as it holds approx 3-4 objects at a time

Question 20

episodic buffer

Answer 20

• third slave system
• it was added to the WMM in 2000 by Baddeley
• it integrates info from the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad to link the info and form a cohesive whole
• explains how people can combine and store general, not just specific, information

Question 21

WMM - strengths

Answer 21

• more accurate and detailed as it accounts for the different types of STM and how they’re processed
• Baddeley and Hitch (1976) research on dual tasks found that 2 tasks are possible at the same time if they use different slave systems, but attempting 2 tasks using the same slave system overloads it and is difficult, supporting the idea of separate components
• evidence from Shallice and Warrington (1970) case study of KF, who had issues with STM and struggled more with auditory tasks than visual

Question 22

WMM - limitations

Answer 22

• it’s vague on the link between STM and LTM
• not much is known about the central executive due to its complexity
• STM may still be more complex than the WMM suggests, as research suggests the central executive consists of multiple parts as some executive tasks are impaired by brain damage while others aren’t

Question 23

explanations for forgetting

Answer 23

• interference (proactive and retroactive)
• retrieval failure (context and state dependent)
• they explain why we can forget info in the LTM (the info is always available, but isn’t always accessible)

Question 24

interference

Answer 24

• when one memory prevents retrieval of another memory
• tends to occur more when the two memories are similar in nature

Question 25

proactive interference

Answer 25

• when an old memory interferes with your ability to recall a new memory
• e.g. struggling to learn spanish as you confuse it with previously learnt french vocab

Question 26

retroactive interference

Answer 26

• when a new memory interferes with an old memory
• e.g. forgetting your old phone number as your new one has replaced it

Question 27

interference as an explanation for forgetting - strengths

Answer 27

• McGeoch and Mcdonald (1930) found it’s more common when the info is similar as they observed that ppts were more likely to be able to recall words that had no correlation to each other, rather than similar words
• Baddeley and Hitch (1977) found that rugby players who played the least matches had the greatest recall, and those who played more games had worse recall of the names of teams they played, as the later games interfered with a recall of earlier matches

Question 28

interference as an explanation for forgetting - weaknesses

Answer 28

• limited explanatory power as interference only explains forgetting in cases where two types of info are similar, but can’t be applied to much of what we forget, e.g. past events
• questions of ecological / external validity as most research into interference is often based in artificial lab settings so the findings lack mundane realism

Question 29

retrieval failure

Answer 29

• caused by an absence of cues
• memories are stored in the LTM along with certain cues
• if these cues aren’t present at the time of recall, the memory can’t be accessed as there’s nothing to trigger the memory

Question 30

context-dependent forgetting

Answer 30

• when the external environment doesn’t provide the cues necessary to recall a memory, as the context we recall in is different to the context we learnt the info in
• e.g. perfectly remembering a list of words when in class, but struggling to remember it when in the toilet
• Baddeley and Godden made some divers learn word lists either on land or in water, and results showed retrieval was 50% higher when encoding and retrieval were in the same context

Question 31

state-dependent forgetting

Answer 31

• when our internal environment during recall is different from the internal environment when the memory was coded
• i.e. a person may struggle when trying to recall something they learnt whilst on drugs
• Carter and Cassidy (1998) gave ppts an antihistamine drug, which produced a mild sedative effect, and a memory test and found that ppts performed worse on the test when the conditions they learnt words in were different to the conditions they recalled in

Question 32

retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting - strengths

Answer 32

• can be applied to a range of real-life situations, e.g. recalling people’s names, remembering what to buy from the shops, etc.
• research support from Baddeley and Godden for context-dependent forgetting
• research support from Carter and Cassidy for state-dependent forgetting

Question 33

retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting - limitations

Answer 33

• there’s an issue of separating retrieval failure from decay, as the memory may have decayed from the STM, so is not accessible
• questions of ecological / external validity as much of the research is based in artificial settings, so results can’t transfer to real life, e.g. from Baddeley’s diver study, it would be unusual to learn info underwater in real life

Question 34

eye witness testimony (EWT)

Answer 34

• where a person who was present at an event recalls what happened
• often used as evidence in court
• but it can be unreliable

Question 35

factors affecting the accuracy of EWT

Answer 35

• misleading information (leading questions and post-event discussion)
• anxiety
• age

Question 36

leading questions

Answer 36

• a leading question is one that tries to influence someone’s answer in a certain way, which can cause witnesses to give incorrect info as research has shown it can distort their memory
• Loftus and Palmer (1974) conducted a study to test the effect of leading questions;
• 45 ppts were shown 7 clips of car accidents and were then asked to recall and answer questions about the car crash
• ppts were divided into 5 groups and were asked how fast the cars were going when they went into each other, but each group was given a different verb to describe the crash - contacted, hit, bumped, collided, and smashed
• results found that the higher the severity of the verb, e.g. smashed, the higher the estimated speed, suggesting that the verb used affected results and EWT
• in a follow-up study, Loftus (1975) found that leading questions can add false info to a memory, as he showed ppts clips of a car crash again using the 5 verb conditions, and when asked about seeing broken glass, 16 ppts from ‘smashed’ condition reported seeing it, which is over twice as many as ppts in the ‘hit’ condition
• Loftus argued that this misleading question and the verb used had affected people’s memories of the event

Question 37

leading questions - strengths

Answer 37

• many practical applications of the study as legal representatives and the police now ensure leading questions aren’t used so witnesses aren’t biased
• quantitative data was collected, so it was easy to draw comparisons between the groups
• the 5 groups watched the clips in different orders to ensure order effects weren’t an issue

Question 38

leading questions - limitations

Answer 38

• lacks ecological validity, as the ppts knew it was only an experiment and their answers had no consequences
• watching a film is also very different from witnessing an event in real life
• ppts were all students, so can’t be representative of the general population
• students may be subject to demand characteristics to please their researcher
• individual differences may be an explanation for the different answers
• ethical implications as it may have been psychologically harmful for ppts to watch these crashes

Question 39

post-event discussion

Answer 39

• when witnesses to a crime discuss the details afterwards, their EWT can become contaminated
• this is because they share (mis)-information with one another, which leads to everyone slightly reconstructing their own memory of events

Question 40

anxiety

Answer 40

• anxiety levels can impact EWT, specifically when witnesses are recalling anxiety-inducing events such as violent crimes
• Deffenbacher (1983) suggested an ‘inverted-U’ hypothesis for the relationship between anxiety and the accuracy of EWT using the Yerkes-Dodson Law;
• low anxiety levels produce less recall accuracy
• a higher but moderate level of anxiety produces the most accurate and detailed EWT
• after a certain point, high levels of anxiety reduces recall accuracy
• so, anxiety may have a positive or negative impact on EWT

Question 41

anxiety as an impact on EWT - strengths

Answer 41

• higher anxiety levels creates arousal in the body which distracts us from details of an event, supporting the inverted-U curve hypothesis
• weapon-focus effect; where witnesses only focus on a weapon and not the surrounding details - Loftus (1979) reported on the findings of Johnson and Scott (1976) who conducted a study where ppts heard a loud argument and then a man walked in holding either a pen or a knife, and the knife condition group were less accurate when identifying the man compared to the pen group, supporting the idea that high anxiety levels reduce recall accuracy

Question 42

anxiety as an impact on EWT - limitations

Answer 42

• there is research which suggests that higher anxiety levels can improve recall accuracy, thus contradicting Johnson and Scott’s study - Yullie and Cutshall (1986) found that ppts with higher levels of anxiety when witnessing a crime were more accurate in recalling details of the scene than those with lower anxiety levels
• also, when we’re nervous, our sympathetic nervous system kicks in and we enter ‘fight or flight’ mode, which makes our pupils dilate and triggers an increase in alertness, so we’re better able to take in and later recall information
• lacks ecological validity, as implications of real-life testimony means witnesses are often much more accurate

Question 43

the cognitive interview

Answer 43

• developed by Fisher and Geiselman (1985)
• a method of interviewing eyewitnesses about what they can recall from an event
• it’s based on the research into EWT being unreliable, and aims to overcome the issue
• it’s designed to enhance recall and increase the amount of info recalled

Question 44

elements of the cognitive interview

Answer 44

• 4 main components of the cognitive interview;
• context reinstatement; witnesses are encouraged to recall the original context as it may provide cues that help trigger memories
• recall from a different perspective; recreating the event from another person’s POV may make them think about the event in a different way so may bring up new memories
• recall in a different order; recreating the event in a reverse order makes them think carefully about the event which improves accuracy
• report everything; witnesses are encouraged to report all details of the event, even if they seem trivial, as these extra details may provide cues which help trigger further memories
• Fisher et al. (1987) also proposed the enhanced cognitive interview, which focuses on the social dynamics between the interactions of the interviewer and witness, e.g. knowing when to make and diminish eye contact with the witness to help them feel more calm and comfortable, to improve the accuracy of EWT further

Question 45

comparing the cognitive interview to the standard interview

Answer 45

• in the standard interview, witnesses are bombarded with brief questions, frequently interrupted (which can break concentration), asked closed (yes/no) questions, and the interview technique doesn’t maximise recall

Question 46

cognitive interview - strengths

Answer 46

• Fisher (1999) conducted an experiment and found that the cognitive interview produced 46% more detail than the standard interview and was 90% accurate
• although there’s an increase in confabulations, there’s a bigger increase in the amount of correct info recalled compared to a standard interview
• if time is restricted, officers can use the most crucial elements of the cognitive interview, as suggested by Milne and Bull

Question 47

cognitive interview - limitations

Answer 47

• Koehken (1999) found that witnesses in the cognitive interview also recalled more incorrect info (confabulations), due to the extra detail they had to give
• Milne and Bull (2002) found that some features of the cognitive interview, particularly context reinstatement and reporting everything, are better than others as they appear to be the most crucial techniques
• a time-consuming process
• expensive to train officers (interviewers)