Memory

Question 1

What is coding?

Answer 1

The format in which information is stored in the various memory stores

Question 2

What is capacity?

Answer 2

The amount of information that can be held in a memory store

Question 3

What is duration?

Answer 3

The length of time information can be held in memory

Question 4

Who conducted research on coding?

Answer 4

Alan Baddeley (1966)

Question 5

Describe Baddeley’s research on coding

Answer 5

He gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember

(1) acoustically similar words
(2) acoustically dissimilar words
(3) semantically similar words
(4) semantically dissimilar words

Question 6

What did Baddeley find about coding?

Answer 6

(1) after STM recall participants tended to do worse with acoustically similar words which shows STM is coded acoustically
(2) after LTM recall participants tended to do worse with semantically similar words which shows LTM is coded semantically

Question 7

What is a limitation of Baddeley’s research on coding?

Answer 7

Artificial material
- therefore this cannot be generalised to real-life situations and therefore the findings from this study have limited application

Question 8

What two psychologists conducted research on capacity?

Answer 8

George Miller (1956) (chunking) and Joseph Jacobs (1887) (digit span)

Question 9

Describe Joseph Jacob’s study on digit span

Answer 9

He asked participants to recall a certain number of digits and if they recalled this correctly then he would gradually increase the number of digit until the participant could not recall the order correctly

Question 10

What did Joseph Jacobs find?

Answer 10

He found that the mean span for digits was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3 items

Question 11

What is a limitation of Joseph Jacob’s study?

Answer 11

Lacks validity
- it was conducted a long time ago and back then variables could not be controlled as well and therefore this reduces its validity

Question 12

Describe George Miller’s study on capacity

Answer 12

He made observations and noted that things come in sevens and this suggests that the span of STM is about 7 (+or-2)

Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words just as well as they can recall 5 letters and they do this by chunking

Question 13

What is a limitation of George Miller’s study on capacity?

Answer 13

Over-estimate
- Miller is said to have over-estimated the capacity of STM and Cowan concluded that the capacity of STM is only about 4 chunks

• This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate of 5 is more appropriate

Question 14

Who conducted research on the duration of STM?

Answer 14

Peterson and Peterson (1959)

Question 15

Describe Peterson and Peterson’s study on the duration of STM

Answer 15

• 24 undergraduate student took part in 8 trials and on each trial the student was given a consonant syllable and a 3-digit number to count back from to prevent mental rehearsal
• on each trial they were told to stop after a different amount of time and this is called the retention interval.

Question 16

What did Peterson and Peterson find in their study of duration?

Answer 16

They found that STM had a very short duration of between 18-30 seconds unless the information was rehearsed over and over again.

Question 17

What is one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study of duration?

Answer 17

They used meaningless stimuli
- the stimulus material was artificial and therefore cannot be generalised to real-life situations and therefore the study lacks external validity

Question 18

Who researched the duration of LTM?

Answer 18

Harry Bahrick (1975)

Question 19

Describe Bahrick’s study into the duration of LTM

Answer 19

He studied 392 participants from Ohio aged between 17 and 74 and asked them to recall their graduating class either through free recall or photo recognition

Question 20

What did Bahrick find about the duration of LTM

Answer 20

• those tested within 15 years of graduation were 90% accurate in photo recognition and 60% accurate in free recall
• those tested after 48 years of graduation were 70% accurate in photo recognition and 30% accurate in free recall
• this shows that information can stay in LTM for a very long time

Question 21

What is a strength on Bahrick’s study on the duration of LTM?

Answer 21

High external validity
- he used real-life meaningful memories to the participants which led to recall rates being higher

• however, there is a greater risk of confounding variables as the participants may of looked at their yearbooks over the years

Question 22

What is the … of STM?

(1) capacity
(2) duration
(3) coding

Answer 22

(1) 7 (+ or - 2)
(2) 18-30 seconds
(3) acoustically

Question 23

What is the … of LTM?

(1) capacity
(2) duration
(3) coding

Answer 23

(1) unlimited capacity
(2) up to a lifetime
(3) semantically

Question 24

What is the multi-store model of memory (MSM)?

Answer 24

A representation of how memory works and how information is transferred from one store to another

Question 25

Which two psychologists developed the MSM?

Answer 25

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin

Question 26

What are the 3 stores involved in the MSM?

Answer 26

(1) sensory register (2) short term memory (STM) (3) long term memory (LTM)

Question 27

What is the sensory register?

Answer 27

This is the memory store for each of our five senses

Question 28

What is the ... of the sensory register? (1) capacity (2) duration (3) coding

Answer 28

(1) high capacity because it has millions of receptors (2) less than half a second (3) depends on the sense e.g. iconic is coded visually and echoic is coded acoustically

Question 29

What is required for information to pass from the sensory register to the rest of the memory system?

Answer 29

Attention

Question 30

How does information transfer from STM to LTM?

Answer 30

Maintenance rehearsal

Question 31

How is information transferred from LTM back to STM?

Answer 31

Retrieval

Question 32

What is one strength of the MSM.

Answer 32

SUPPORTING RESEARCH EVIDENCE - Baddeley found that we tend to mix up words that sound similar when using our STM but mixed up words that have similar meanings when we used our LTM. - this supports the view that LTM and STM are separate and independent stores.

Question 33

What are some limitations of the MSM?

Answer 33

MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF STM - Shallice and Warrington’s study of KF (amnesia patient) whose recall for digits was poor when read out to him but when he read them himself his recall was better and therefore there must be STM store for visual information and another for auditory information. MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF REHEARSAL - Craig and Watkins found that maintenance rehearsal does not transfer information to LTM but maintains it in STM and that elaborating rehearsal is need for long-term storage. MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF LTM - there is a lot of evidence to suggest that we have different LTM stores for events, knowledge and actions and therefore LTM is not a unitary store like the MSM suggests. ARTIFICIAL MATERIALS - a great deal of research support for the MSM is based on artificial material which makes the findings hard to generalise.

Question 34

What are the 3 types of LTM?

Answer 34

(1) episodic memory (2) semantic memory (3) procedural memory

Question 35

What is episodic memory?

Answer 35

- our LTM store for personal events and includes memories of when the event occurred and of the people, objects, places and behaviours involved - have to be retrieved consciously and with effort - these are ‘time-stamped’

Question 36

What is semantic memory?

Answer 36

- a LTM store for our knowledge of the world and includes facts and our knowledge of what words and concepts mean - we have to make a conscious effort to recall them - they are not ‘time-stamped’

Question 37

What is procedural memory?

Answer 37

- a LTM store of our actions and skills and how to do things - we recall these without making a conscious effort - these are not ‘time-stamped’

Question 38

What are some strengths on the type of LTM?

Answer 38

CLINICAL EVIDENCE - case studies of HM and Clive Wearing who both suffered from amnesia and they had difficulty recalling events from their past but their semantic and procedural memories were still intact. - this supports the idea that there are different memory stores in LTM as one can be damaged and the others remained unaffected. NEUROIMAGING EVIDENCE - Tulving got participants to perform various memory tasks while their brains were scanned in a PET scanner and found that semantic memories were recalled from the left prefrontal cortex and episodic memories were recalled from the right prefrontal cortex and this shows there is a physical reality. REAL-LIFE APPLICATIONS - this research has allowed psychologists to target certain kinds of memory in order to better people’s lives. For example, episodic memories could be improved in older people with mild cognitive impairment as this research has enabled the development of specific treatments.