Memory Flashcards

Question

Who proposed the MSM?

Answer 1

Atkinson and Shiffrin

Answer 2

The place where information is held at the senses, so for example fingers or nose, and the corresponding areas in the brain. There is unlimited capacity but you have to pay attention to the information for it to transfer to STM

Answer 3

Focusing attention on to a sensory store lets information go into our short term memory

Answer 4

Info is held here for immediate tasks. The middle store. It has limited duration and capacity. MAINTENANCE REHERSAL keeps it here and helps it to transfer to a LTM store

Answer 5

Maintence rehersal; repeating the information over and over like recall (tends to be verbal). The more it is done, the stronger the memory is

Answer 6

Potentially unlimited in duration and capacity. The last store in the model.

Answer 7

The process of getting information from the LTM means you have to retrieve it and pass it back through to the STM

Answer 8

- controlled lab brain scans support the separate stores of STM and LTM and the model in general. The prefrontal cortex is active during STM but not LTM, whereas the hippocampus is active during LTM engagement - case studies; HM suffered from epilepsy so had his hippocampus removed, which meant he could no longer form new LTMs but could remember stuff from before his surgery. This supports the role of the hippocampus and also the separate stores as he could no longer transfer from his STM to LTM. IDIOGRAPHIC

Answer 9

Baddeley and Hitch

Answer 10

An explanation of the memory used when we are working on a task; the different types of STM and how different information is processed

Answer 11

Episodic buffer, phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad

Answer 12

It directs attention to particular tasks and controls how the brains resources are allocated to particular tasks. It has a very limited capacity and cannot store a lot of info at once

Answer 13

Because there is one store for visual processing and another for auditory processing in short term memory

Answer 14

It deals with auditory information and preserves the order of information. It has a limited capacity. Relies on maintenance rehersal.

Answer 15

The phonological store- holds the words you hear like an inner ear An articulary process which is used for words that are seen or heard, in which they are silently repeated like an inner voice

Answer 16

This codes visual information in relation to separate objects and the arrangement of these objects in the visual field. Responsible for spatial awareness and information

Answer 17

A visual cache- stores information about objects, such as their colour and form Inner scribe- stores the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Answer 18

This recieves input from many sources, both visual and acoustic, and temporarily stores this information as it also has limited capacity. It intergrates the information to reconstruct a mental episode of what happens. It can transfer to and from the LTM.

Answer 19

They are limited in capacity

Answer 20

Baddeley and Hitch did a study in which task 1 occupied the central executive (they were told B was followed by A and then shown 'AB' and were asked if it was true or false). Task 2 occupied the articulatory loop (e.g. asked to repeat a word over and over) or involved both the CE and the articulatory loop (saying random digits). Task 1 was slower when task 2 involved both stores. This shows dual task performance. It is easier to do two tasks at the same time if they use different processing systems (verbal and visual) than if they use the same slave system.

Answer 21

A man named KF suffered a motorbike accident which damaged his STM for verbal information but not visual information. His brain damage was restricted to the PL. This supports the idea of seperate stores for different types of STM. Idiographic- unique.

Answer 22

Episodic and semantic. This is knowing THAT instead of knowing how

Answer 23

Memory with a narrative- personal memories of events, such as what you did yesterday or a family holiday. It also includes information about the context of the memory and the emotions you may have felt at the time.

Answer 24

Shared memories for universal facts or knowledge, such as knowing ice is made out of water. They can start as episodic memories because knowledge is aquired based on personal experience however it transitions to become semantic as it loses its personal association.

Answer 25

Memory for how to do things, for example how to ride a bike. Often it can be automatic based on how much you practice. Implicit memory- we are less aware of it.

Answer 26

Episodic memory is associated with the hippocampus/related parts of the temporal lobe and activity in the frontal lobe Semantic memory relies on the temporal lobe Procedural memory is associated with the cerebellum As the three different types are found in different parts of the brain they must be seperate

Answer 27

Patients with amnesia have a lot of difficultly creating declarative memories (semantic and episodic). However, their procedural memory is not impaired; their old procedural memories and new ones are unaffected. This is supported with HM too; the use of case studies and also wide scale patients is nomothetic.

Answer 28

An explanation for forgetting in terms of one memory disrupting the ability to recall another.

Answer 29

If the two memories have more similarity.

Answer 30

This is when past learning/memories prevent or disrupt recall of recent information.

Answer 31

This is where new learning prevents recall of old memories/previously learnt information.

Answer 32

Muller's study: His participants were given a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes and then were told to recall the lists after a short interval. If during the interval they were given an intervening task such as being asked to describe what they see in paintings, then recall was worse, because new information disrupted the recall of old information.

Answer 33

Underwood- He analysed findings of studies of forgetting over a 24 hour period. He found that if participants had previously learnt 15 or more word lists during the same experiment, the recall of the last word list, the day after, was around 20%. However, if they hadn't learnt any other word lists, recall, the day after, was around 80%.

Answer 34

Real world study; some rugby players in the team had played in all the games in the season, whereas others missed matches due to injury. The time interval was the same for all players because it was for a season, but some players had more interfering information than others because of intervening games. They found that the players who had played all the games remembered less team names than the players who missed matches. If decay theory is correct then all players would remember a similar amount of teams but interference theory suggests that people who played more would forget more.

Answer 35

McGeoch and McDonald: Ppts were given a list of 10 adjectives (list A) to learn. They were given an interval of 10 minutes, in which they learned list B, followed by recall. If list B was synonyms of list A then recall was poor, at 12%, but If list B was numbers then recall was better, 37% recall. This shows the closer the information is than the stronger interference is.

Answer 36

The research is quite artificial. There is a lack of ecological validity because we don't often have to remember things like word lists. Controlled lab studies have good internal validity but it is somewhat reductionist to generalize them because they do not represent real life. However, Baddley and Hitch's rugby team study is a great real life study displaying every day activities.

Answer 37

Real world application in advertisement. When people are exposed to adverts multiple times in a day rather than spread out over a longer period of time like in a week, then recall and recognition of the brand will improve. This helps advertisers grow their brand in contrast to competing brands, and maximise their effectiveness.

Answer 38

This is an explanation for forgetting which is based on the idea that the issue relates to being able to retrieve a memory that is available but not accessible. This is dependent on cues- a lack of cues means a lack of retrieval.

Answer 39

These are things that serve as a reminder. They may have meaningful link to a memory, or a non-meaningful link such as environmental cues or being related to your mental state.

Answer 40

The idea that memory is most effective if information that was present during encoding is also available at the time of retrieval. The closer the cue is to the original item, the more useful it will be. This is because the information is coded together.

Answer 41

Environmental context- when memories are formed we also remember where we were

Answer 42

Emotional state at the time- how we felt. This could be really happy, or drunk.

Answer 43

Godden and Baddeley- scuba divers Scuba divers as ppts had to learn a set of words either on land or in water. They were tested both on land or in water (4 experimental conditions). The results showed that the highest recall occurred when the initial context matched the recall environment- those who learnt the word list in water remembered best in water.

Answer 44

Goodwin- drunk males Male volunteers had to remember a list of words when they were either drunk or sober (drunk ppts were about 3 times over the UK drink drive limit). The ppts were asked to recall the list of words 24 hours after they learnt them- some were sober and some had to get drunk again. Information was better recalled when participants were in the same state as when they learnt the information- drunk males remembered better when they were tested drunk.

Answer 45

Great real world applications, for example when students are taking an exam they may wish to study in the same area as where they will take the test as this will improve recall. Smith even showed that simply imagining being in the room where you previously learnt the info was effective- this is mental reinstatement. MR is also used in the cognitive interview so it improves eye witness testimonies which can help catch criminals. Improving recall in the real world- shows just how impactful psychological research can be

Answer 46

One weakness is that it is slightly reductionist because there hasn't been a solid causal relationship. The encoding specificity principle relies on the fact that if a stimulus doesn't lead to retrieval of a memory that it can't have been encoded in our memory, but this is not always true- we cannot test for an item that hasn't been encoded in our memory and decay may have simply happened. Thus, cues do not cause retrieval but they are just associated with retrieval.

Answer 47

The evidence provided in court by a person who witnessed the crime who can help identify the perpetrator.

Answer 48

Supplying information that may lead a witness' memory of a crime to be altered

Answer 49

A question that, either by its form or content, suggests to the witness what answer is desired or leads them to the desired answer

Answer 50

Loftus and Palmer

Answer 51

Participants (students) were shown seven films of different traffic accidents, and after each film participants were given a questionnaire which asked them to describe the accident and had a series of questions. The researchers asked the critical question of 'how fast were the cars going when they ... each other?' and manipulated the verb, from simply 'contacted' to 'hit' to 'collided' to 'smashed'. This was a leading question as the verb suggests a different speed

Answer 52

When participants were asked how fast they contacted, they answered around 30 speed whereas when they were asked how fast they smashed it was around 40. This demonstrates that leading questions affect the response

Answer 53

They wanted to explore whether the leading q may bias the answer or whether the leading q actually causes info to be altered before it is stored. A new set of ppts were divided into 3 and shown a film of a car accident and asked about the speed. They returned after a week to answer more questions, including 'did you see any broken glass?'- those who thought the car was travelling faster answered that there was glass

Answer 54

If the eyewitness talks with others or an interviewer after the crime it may alter the witness' memory of the event

Answer 55

Co-witnesses may reach a consensus view of what really happened and may doubt their own memory so conform

Answer 56

Each time an eyewitness is interviewed, it is possible that the comments from the interviewer may alter the witness' recollection

Answer 57

The conformity effect and repeated interviews

Answer 58

The application to the criminal justice system, which relies on eyewitness testimony to prosecute and identify criminals. Research into this has helped the court ensure that innocent people are not convicted of crimes that they didn't commit because of faulty or manipulated EWT so the witnesses can keep their memories as unaltered as possible. This is morally right and thus has great applications.

Answer 59

Individual differences amongst the population; age for example. An eyewitness acquires information from the event itself and from external factors like misleading information. Research has found that elderly people have more difficulty remembering the source of their information despite the actual memory being unaffected so they are more prone to being affected by misleading information. Population validity issues as this is not considered in Loftus and Palmer study- in fact they used ppts of students (young)

Answer 60

An unpleasant emotional state that is often accompanied by increased heart rate and quick breathing (physiological arousal)

Answer 61

They investigated the effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony, specifically with the weapon focus effect

Answer 62

The view that the weapon in a criminals hand distracts attention from other factors because of the anxiety the witness feels, and therefore the accuracy of the EWT may be reduced

Answer 63

Their ppts had to sit in a waiting room where they overheard an argument and witnessed a man run out with either a greasy pen or a bloody knife. Greasy pen- low anxiety condition, bloody knife- high anxiety condition. Ppts were asked to identify the man from a set of pictures

Answer 64

The mean accuracy in identifying the man with the greasy pen was 49% whereas the bloody knife was 33%. The presence of a weapon causes attention to be physically drawn to the weapon itself and not to the persons face

Answer 65

High anxiety or arousal can create accurate memories because there is an evolutionary argument that we remember events that are emotionally important to us so we can identify/recall in future how to respond.

Answer 66

Real witnesses of bank roberies in sweden were interviewed and the witnesses were either victims (bank tellers) or bystanders, e.g. high vs lower anxiety. The witnesses who had high to moderate anxiety had the best recall, showing anxiety doesn't always have a negative effect.

Answer 67

The observation that arousal/anxiety has a negative effect on recall when it is either very low or very high, but moderate levels of anxiety have good impacts on recall. It is an inverted U shape curve.

Answer 68

We can apply this to crimes as witnesses who will have experienced extremely high levels of anxiety will have relatively inaccurate memories as their levels will be above the optimum, so over-reliance on EWT that will be overly effected can be avoided. However, this is slightly reductionist because some people cope better under stress than others, so individual differences are slightly ignored.

Answer 69

This a interview technique that was developed based on psychological principles including cues and mental reinstatement

Answer 70

Mental reinstatment Report everything Change the order Change perspective

Answer 71

This is when the interviewer encourages the witness to mentally recreate and immerse themself in the physical and psychological environment of the original incident- this is based on contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories. 'What was the weather like', 'How did you feel at the time?'

Answer 72

The interviewer encourages the witness to report every single detail of the event, no matter how insignificant. This is based on the idea that memories are all interconnected with each-other so recalling one memory may lead to the recall of another that seemed lost before

Answer 73

The interviewer may ask the witness to report their experience backwards. This is because our schema gives us ideas of how events may go whereas reporting backwards eliminates this

Answer 74

The witness will be asked to recall the incident from multiple other perspectives, for example how it may have appeared to someone who was on the other side of the road. This is to disrupt the effect of schema

Answer 75

It requires more time than is often available and uses up police's resources. This is also time consuming for the witness and by the end they may start to feel stressed and tired. It also requires special training of police officers which is expensive. However, considering a cost-benefit analysis in the long term implies that its probably worth it

Answer 76

It has been studied and found to produce around 35% more correct information than the standard police interview However, it focuses on the QUANTITY of information and not the quality- it provides a lot of unnessecary and irrelevant info