What is a strength of the multi-store model?
Research support for separate stores
- Research support for the idea of Long term memory and short - term memory being different and separate stores provided by baddley (1966)
- In his study on coding he gave participants 1 of 4 lists of words to remember and he found that acoustically similar words were harder to recall immediately and semantically similar words were harder to recall after 20mins.
- It was concluded that acoustic confusion was occuring in STM and semantic confusion in LTM, suggesting STM codes acoustically and LTM semantically. - found that STM codes acoustically and LTM semantically
shows that the two different types of memory are two different entities
What is the a weakness of research into the MSM?
Counterpoint : Artifical Stimuli/Tasks
- Despite such apparent support, in everyday life we form memories related to all sorts of useful things – peoples faces, their names, facts, places, et cetera.
- But many of the studies that support the multi store model use none of these materials. Instead they use digits, letters, and sometimes words. They even use what’s known as consonant syllables that have no meaning.
This means that the multi store model may not be an accurate or valid model of how memory works in our everyday lives, where we have to remember much more meaningful information than is often used in research studies.
What is the weakness of Multi-store model?
Different types of short term memory
- The MSM states that STM is a unitary store i.e. there is only one type. However evidence from patients suffering from amnesia suggests that this is not true.
- Shallice and Warrington (1970) studies a patient known as KF.
- KFs STM for digits was very poor when they read them aloud to him, but his recall was much better when he was able to read digits to himself. This suggests that there is more than one ST store - one for sounds and one for images.
- SUch research challenges the MSM as it shows that there must be at least 2 types of short-term store, rather than just 1 unitary store as the model suggests.
What is a weakness of the multi-store model?
Outdated model
- Atkinson and Shiffrin Based the multi store model on the evidence available at the time that showed short-term memory and long term memory to be single memory stores, separate and independent from each other.
- However there is a lot of research evidence that long-term memory, like short-term memory is not a single memory store. For example, we have one long-term store for our memories of facts about the world, and we have a different one for our memories of how to ride a bicycle.
- Combined with research showing that there is more than one type of short-term memory and even more than one type of rehearsal, this suggests that the multi store model is an oversimplified and outdated model of memory.
What is a strength of the research into coding, capacity and duration?
(Bahrick)
High External Validity in Bahrick’s study
- This is because the researchers investigated meaningful memories (i.e. of people’s names and faces).
When other research has been conducted with meaningless pictures, recall rates were lower.
This suggests that Bahrick et al’s findings reflect a more ‘real’ estimate of the duration of LTM.
What is a weakness of the research into coding,capacity and duration?
Artficial stimuli in the peterson’s study
- Although not completely irrelevant because we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless material (e.g. phone numbers, postcodes).
Recalling trigrams does not reflect most everyday memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
This means the study lacked external (ecological) validity as it may not be possible to generalise findings to real life.
What is a strength of research into the types of long term memory?
Strength : research support from clinical evidence
Supporting from clinical studies of patients with amnesia.
- HM and Clive Wearing, both sufferers of amnesia. HM displayed normal functioning in his semantic memory (e.g. He understood the concept of a dog), but impaired functioning in their episodic memory (could not remember having owned a dog).
- Clive Wearing was a professional musician and could play the piano without difficulty, however could not remember having learnt to play, suggesting an impaired episodic memory but functioning procedural memory.
Both of these cases support the idea of a clear separation of different types of LTM.
What is a weakness of research into the types of long term memory?
Counterpoint : Clinical evidence
However, although studying people with brain injuries can help researchers to understand how memory is supposed to work normally, clinical studies are by no means perfect.
- One major limitation is that they lack control of variables. The brain injuries experienced by participants were usually unexpected, which means the researcher had no way of controlling what happened to the participant before or during the injury. Equally, the researcher has no knowledge of what their memory was like before the damage.
Without this information, it is difficult to judge exactly how much worse it is afterwards, which limits what clinical studies can tell us about different types of LTM.
What is a strength of research into the types of long term memory?
Strength : suppport from Neuroimaging research
There is also evidence from brain scan studies that different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain.
- Tulving et al. (1994) asked their participants to perform various tasks whilst scanning their brain with a PET scanner.
- They found that semantic memories involved the left prefrontal cortext whilst episodic memories involved the right prefrontal cortex.
- Supports Tulving’s theory as it shows there is a physical reality to the different LTM stores.
These findings have been confirmed many times in later research, further supporting the validity of the finding.
What is a strength of research into the types of long term memory?
Strength: Real life Applications
Understanding different types of memory allows for the development of helpful real world applications.
- Belleville et al. (2006) compared the performance of older people suffering with a mild cognitive impairment who received memory training with that of a control group who did not.
- It was found that participants in the experimental group performed better on a test of episodic memory.
This suggests that being able to identify different types of LTM can provide psychologists with the opportunity to improve people’s lives though devising appropriate treatments.
What is a strength of research into the working memory model?
Strength: Research support
A strength of the working memory model is that studies of dual task performance support the separate existence of the visuospatial sketch pad and phonological loop.
- When Baddeley et al’s (1975) participants carried out a visual and verbal task at the same time (dual task), their performance on each was similar to when they tried to carry out the task separately.
- But when both tasks were visual (or both were verbal), performance on both declined substantially. This is because both visual tasks compete for the same slave subsystem, whereas there is no competition when performing a verbal and visual task together.
This shows there must be a separate slave system (the visual spatial sketch pad) that processes visual input and one for verbal processing, the phonological loop, each with a limited capacity.
What is a strength of research into the working memory model?
Strength : Clinical Evidence
Support for the WMM comes from the case study of Patient KF, who was injured in a motorcycle accident.
- Following his accident, KF was able to recall stored information from his LTM; however, he had issues with his STM.
- He was able to remember visual images, including faces, but was unable to remember sounds (acoustic information). This suggests that there are at least two components within STM, one component for visual information and one for acoustic information.
The research into KF supports the WMM and the idea of two slave systems, the phonological loop and the visuo‐spatial sketchpad, therefore providing support to the WMM and the idea of a multi‐component STM system.
What is a weakness of research into the working memory model?
Weakness : Clinical Evidence: Counterpoint
However, it is unclear whether KF had other cognitive impairments (apart from the damage to his phonological loop) which might have affected his performance on memory tasks.
- For example, his injury was caused by a motorcycle accident. The trauma involved may have affected his cognitive performance quite apart from any brain injury.
This challenges evidence that comes from clinical studies of people with brain injuries that may have affected many different systems.
What is a weakness of research into the working memory model?
Weakness : The Nature of the central Executive
Critics have suggested that there lack clarity over the Central executive.
* Baddeley states this is the most important part of the model and yet the least understood -
* For example, some psychologists believe it may consist of separate components. E.g. Esslinger & Damasio studied patient EVR who after undergoing brain surgery was unable to make even the simplest decisions but could reason, both of which are functions of the CE.
Such research suggests that the WMM remains incomplete and that more research needs to be conducted to elaborate further e.g. Is the CE in fact made up of several stores as the research above suggests?
What is a strength of research into inteference?
Strength : research support
one strength of interfrence is that there is evidence for its effect in real life situations
* Baddley and Hitch (1977) asked rugby players to recall the names of teams they had played against during a rugby season. The players all played for the same time interval ( over one season) but the number of intervening games varied because some players missed matches due to injury. They found that players who played the most games had the poorest recall.
This study shows that interference can operate in at least some real world situations increasing the validity of theory
What is a weakness of research into interference?
Weakness : Research support counterpoint
However despite this, critics have argued that interfrence in the real world may be quite rare, because the conditions needed to produce interference are quite rare, whereas in a lab this is not the case.
- For example, in the real world we only rarely learn two very similar pieces of information within a short time frame and then we have to recall them, Wheras in lab learning and recall are controlled and happen quite quickly. Also in the real world there are variables that impact us and our learning, which can be controlled in a lab.
Therefore a lab can produce conditions needed for interfrence to occur in a way they may rarely do in the real world. Which means that whilst we can produce interference in a lab, it may not always be a reliable explanation in the real world and forgetting may be better explained by theories such as retrieval failure.
What is a weakness of research into interference?
Weakness : Inference and cues
One limitation is that interference is temporary and can be overcame by using cues
- Tulving and Psotka (1971) gave particpants lists of organised words into categories, one list at a time ( the categories were kept a secret). Recall averaged at around 70% for the first list but became progressively worse as additional list were learned (PI)
- However, at the end of the experiment the particpants were given a cue test in which they were told the categories, which resulting in the recall rising to around 70% again.
This shows that interference causes a temporary loss of access to material that is stil in LTM, rather than cause forgetting, as the theory suggests.
What is a strength of research into interference?
Strength : support from drug studies
Research into drug studies provides evidence for retrograde facillitation
- Coenen & Van Luijetlarr (1997) gave particpants drugs alongside a list of words and later asked them to recall the list, assuming that the intervening experience would act as interference. They found that when a list of words was learned under the influence of diazepam, recall one week later was poor compared to a placebo control group.
- However, when a list was learned before the drug was taken, later recall was better than the placebo, so the drug actually facilitated the recall of memory beforehand. Wixted(2004) suggests this is because diazepam prevents new information from reaching the parts of the brain involved in processing memories, meaning no new memories can be formed, thus retroactive interference could not occur with store information.
These findings show that forgetting can be due to interference as by reducing the interference we can reduce the forgetting that occurs.
What is a strength of research into retrieval failure?
Strength : research support
A strength of retrieval failure as a theory of forgetting is the impressive range of research that supports the retrieval failure explanation.
- The research by Godden and Baddeley mentioned earlier is just one example of this.
- Further research was also conducted by Carter and Cassaday who found that participants who learned word lists and extracts of prose whilst under the influence of a ”drowsy” antihistamine. Were more likely to remember those words and prose when under the same influence. This is compared to a groups whose cues did not match.
This evidence shows that retrieval failure occurs in real-world situations as well as highly controlled lab conditions.
What is a weakness of research into retrieval failure?
Limitation : Counterpoint
- A limitation of the research, however, is that Baddeley (1997) argues that context effects are actually not very strong, especially in everyday life. Different contexts have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen.
- For example, it would be hard to find an environment as different from land as underwater. In contrast, learning something in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to result in too much forgetting because these environments are not different enough.
This means that retrieval failure due lack of contextual cues may not actually explain much everyday forgetting.
What is a strength of research into retrieval failure?
Strength : Practical Application
A big strength of research into retrieval failure is its practical applications.
* For example in the cognitive interview the police often use what we know about cue-dependent forgetting to help witnesses remember more accurate details about an event. This is done by reconstructing the scene in order to provide both environmental and emotional cues which could jog the witnesses memory.
* Furthermore TV programmes such as Crimewatch produce reconstructions and broadcast them live, as was used in the murder of Danielle Jones in 2001 and ultimately led to the conviction of her Uncle.
Since then it has had a positive impact on countless criminal cases and has resulted in many criminals being brought to justice
What is a limiation of research into eyewitness testimonies involving anxiety?
Limitation: contradictory research
Research into the weapon focus effect has shown that it may in fact not be as relevant as initially thought
* Pickel (1998) suggested that the reason why people focus on the weapon may be because they are suprised at what they see, rather than because they are scared
* In a study Pickel used scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as hand-held items in a hair dressing salon video. Eye-Witness accuracy was significanlty poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and hangun)
This suggests that the weapon-focus effect is due to the unusualness rather than the anxiety/threat and therefore tells us nothing specifically about the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimonies.
What is a limiation of research into eyewitness testimonies involving anxiety?
Limitation : Ethical Issues
A final criticism of research into the impact of anxiety, is that numerous guidelines are often broken
* For example, in the Johnson and Scotts study the particpants were decieved about the nature of the experiment, as they thought they were being invited to have an interview and they were not protected from harm.
* Johnson and Scott also exposed some of the particpants to a man holding a bloodied knife, which could have caused extreme feelings of anxiety
This is an issue, as these participants may have left the experiment feeling exceptionally stressed and anxious, especially if they, or somone they knew, had been involved in a knife crime.
What is a strength of the cogintive interview?
Strength : Research support
Fisher et al. (1989) examined the effectiveness of the cognitive interview in real police interviews.
- 16 experienced detectives recorded a selection of their interviews, using a standard interviewing technique. The detectives were then divided into two groups. One group was trained to use the cognitive interview, while the other (control) group continued using the standard interview.
After training, their subsequent interviews were recorded and analysed. The trained detectives elicited 46% more information after their cognitive interview training, in comparison to the control group. Where it was possible to confirm the information, over 90% of it was found to be accurate. - These results support the effectiveness of the cognitive interview, using real police interviews and highlights the fact the CI can be useful in catching and charging criminals, which is a benefit to society as a whole. .
-
evaluation points : approaches31
-
evaluation : social influence44
-
evaluation: Attachments45
-
Evaluation : Biopsychology34
-
Evaluation : memory27
-
Psychopathology : abnormality18
-
Psychopathology : Phobias33
-
Psychopathology : depression26
-
Psychopathology : OCD23
-
Relationships: evaluation37
-
Issues and Debates : evaluation31
-
Schizophrenia : Evaluation30
-
Forensic psychology AO1+AO286
