Memory (AS) PAPER 1

Question 1

Explain what is meant by ‘duration’, ‘capacity’ and ‘coding’ in relation to memory

Answer 1

Duration- The period of time that information can stay in the memory stores.

Capacity- How much data can be held in the memory stores.

Coding- The way information is changed to stay in the memory, e.g semantic (meaning) , acoustic (sound) and visual (image)

Question 2

Describe and evaluate research that has investigated capacity in STM (8)

Answer 2

Miller, the span of STM is about 7 items, plus or minus 2, chunking things together allows us to remember more,

Evaluation- Millers original findings have not be replicated, other researchers found that 5 was a more appropriate limit, showing that STM might not be as extensive as we thought

Question 3

Describe and evaluate research that has investigated duration in STM and/or LTM (10)

Answer 3

STM- Peterson and Peterson, 24 students were given a consonant sylabll to remember and a 3 digit number to count backwards from for 3,6,9,12,15 or 18 seconds.
3 seconds = 80% recall, 18 seconds = 3% recall
Duration of STM without rehersal is about 18-30secs

(-) not artificial, as the study did not have relevance to everyday life, lacks ecological validty however we do remember meaningless things e.g phone number.

LTM- Bahrick et al, 400 people (17-74yrs) on there memory of classmates. 50 photos from participants yearbook, they needed to give the name of there graduating class. people tested within 15yrs of graduation were 90% accurate, after 48yrs it decreased to 70%.

(+) high external validity, real life meaningful memories (peoples faces) were studied, lab studies done with meaningless pictures lowered recall rates (Shepard)

(-) confounding variables, not controlled, ppts may have looked at there yearbook or reharsed their memories over the years.

Question 4

Describe and evaluate research that has investigated coding in memory (8)

Answer 4

STM &LTM - Baddeley (1966) used word lists to find the effects of acoustic and semantic similarity on STM and LTM.
acoustic e.g cat, cap, cab
semantic e.g great, large, big
participants had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in STM but not LTM, whilst semantically similar words were difficult in LTM then STM.
STM- encoded acoustically
LTM- encoded semantically

(-) Baddeleys methodology has been criticised, because participants were asked to recall a word list immediatley after hearing it to test STM and wait 20mins to test LTM, which doubts the validity of his research on LTM.

Question 5

Outline the multi-store model of memory (6)

Answer 5

Atkinson and Shiffrin
(Sexual Adults Sometimes Mate Like Rabbits)

-SENSORY REGISTER (information is held at each of the senses). Sensory register has unlimited capacity due to large amount of information the senses receive on a daily basis, but has a limited duration.

-ATTENTION - If a persons attention is focused on one of the sensory stores, then data is transformed to short-term memory. Attention is the first step of remembering

-SHORT TERM MEMORY - has limited duration. In order for information to stay in the STM it needs to be repeated (maintanace rehearsal, LARGLEY VERBAL SOMETIMES CALLED VERBAL REHERSAL) if this information is not rehearsed then information decays and leaves the STM, information can also disappear from STM if new info enters, pushing out the original info.

-MAINTENENCE REHERSAL keeps info in STM but gradually moves it to LTM

• LONG TERM MEMORY is unlimited in duration and capacity

-RETRIEVAL is the process of getting information from the LTM and passing it through the STM to be used.

Question 6

evaluate multi-store model of memory

Answer 6

(+) supported by research that STM and LTM are different
- Baddeley coding in STM is acoustic and LTM is semantic. two seperate independent memory stores
- HM (hippocampus removed to treat epilepsy) unable to form LTM but could form STM

(-) only explains one rehearsal type
- psychologists argued that there are two types of rehearsal , maintenence and elaborative, maintenence is described in MSM but elaborative is needed for long term storage - linking info to existing knowledge.
maintenence rehearsal - recall info that u are intrested in rather than not even if reharsed for the same time - questioning rehearsal altogether

(-) uses artifical materials. Ppts are often asked to recall digits, letters, words (consonants like Peterson), these have no meaning compared to memories formed in every day life. MSM lacks external validity.

Question 7

Outline the working memory model (6)

Answer 7

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
alternative of MSM, they believed STM was not a unitary store due to dual task effect

CENTRAL EXECUTIVE - supervisory function, retrives information and passses it on to the suitible slave systems, they deal with the tasks requiring attention. Limited capacity, deals with info one at a time.

3 SLAVE SYSTEMS:

1) PHONOLOGICAL LOOP - deals with auditory information, and functions as a storage system for sound.
2 parts:
The phonological store - holds words that you hear in your ear.
Articulatory process - used for words that are heard or seen, these words are silently looped like an inner voice, form of maintanace rehearsal.

2) VISUO-SPATIAL SKETCHPAD - Visual and spatial information is stored here. Logie suggested it can be split into two parts:
Visual Cache- stores info about visual items (colour)
Inner scribe- stores the arrengement of objects in a visual feild

3) EPISODIC BUFFER - Baddeley added it in 2000, a general backup store for both visual and acoustic information. limited capacity, it integrates info from central executive and the slave systems, sends info to LTM

Question 8

Evaluate the working memory model

Answer 8

(-) central executive is too vague
- cognitive psychologists believe it doesnt explain anything, similar to the role of attention
- Some psychologists believe it consists of seperate componants and is more complex
- WMM doesnt fully explain the central executive
-limits its utility as a scientific concept

(+) KF case studies support seperate STM stores
- KF is a brain damage patient
- he has poor short term memory for verbal info but could process visual info
- shows how his phonological loop was damaged but the other areas were intact
- suports seperate visual and acoustic stores
- COUNTER- Brain damage patients can be unreliable as they are unique cases, typically as a result of trauma.

(+) Dual task performance as a study support for Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad
- Baddeley found that ppts had difficulty in doing two visual tasks rather than one visual and one verbal task at once.
- both visual tasks compete for the same resources but visual and verbal tasks at once have no competiton.
-proves existence of VSS - MSM cannot explain this

Question 9

Explain episodic, semantic and procedural memory as different long term memory types

Answer 9

episodic - memories of specific event that we have experienced in the past, time-stamped, declarative

semantic - memories of knowledge and facts we accumulate through life, includes personal details, not time stamped, declarative

procedural - memories of our knowledge of how to perform skills and actions, can recall without awareness, non declarative

Question 10

Evaluate long term memory types

Answer 10

(+) support from case studies on episodic
- clinincal studies on amnesia HM and Clive
- couldnt remember past memories (episodic) but could remember semantic memories
- if one store is damaged the other is unaffected
- supports different memory stores

(+) support from brain scans on different LTM stores
- Tulving asked ppts to do a memory task while doing PET brain scan on them
- Episodic (right) and Semantic (left) both in pre frontal cortext
- physical evidence of difference in stores

(-) problems with clinical evidence
- evidence is often on clinical case studies
- lack of serious control in these studies
- difficult to generalise from these studies to determine exact LTM nature

Question 11

Briefly explain what is meant by the terms proactive interference and retroactive interference in explanations for forgetting

Answer 11

these are explanations for forgetting, when two peices of info are in conflict in LTM and we cannot access it, especially if they are similar

Proactive interference - old information disrupts the recall of new stored information

Retroative interference - new information disrupts the recall of previously stored information

Question 12

evaluate explanations for forgetting (interference)

Answer 12

(+) real life studies support
- Baddeley and Hitch
- asked rugby players to recall number of teams they played against in a season, some players played for the whole season, some didnt due to injury etc
- those who played every game found it hard to recall - more interfering games
- can be applied to real life situations

(+) Lab studies
- may lab studies show how both types of interference are explanations for frogetting in LTM
- lab studies control any extraneous variables
- confidence that interference is a valid explanation

(-) artifical materials
- in lab studies they typically use artificial materials
- in day to day life we tend to remember birthdays faces etc
- artificial materials makes interference more likely in a lab
- interference may not be for everyday forgetting

Question 13

Describe one study that demonstrated how the absence of cues may lead to retreival failure

Answer 13

Godden and Baddeley investigated the effects of contextual cues. They reqruited suba divers as ppts and made them learn a set of words either on land or underwater. They were tested either on land or underwater.
highest recall was when inital context matched recall envionment e.g learning on land recalling on land. 40% when they werent same

shows that when learning something on land disapears when recalling underwater as there are no cues to help you, if context is not there memory is difficult to locate

Question 14

explain what is meant by a ‘leading question’ use an example in your answer

Answer 14

A leading question is a question that suggests to the witness what answer is desired or leads them to the desired answer.
e.g if if an inteveiwer asks if you saw any broken glass, it can influence you to think there was glass

Question 15

explain how post - event discussion might create innacuracy in eyewitness testimony

Answer 15

A conversation between a co-witnesses after a crime has taken place, this may CONTAMINATE a witnesses memory for an event which causes an incaurracy.
memory conformity - witnesses go along with other witnesses to win social approval or because they doubt there own memory

Question 16

Describe one research study related to the effect of misleading information on eye witness testimony

Answer 16

LOFTUS AND PALMER (leading questions)

-45 ppts were shown videos on traffic collisions and then given a questionnaire to test their immediate recall of the videos events
- one crucial question ‘about how fast the cars were going when they hit each other?’
- one group was given this version but 4 other groups were given versions that replaced ‘hit’ with ‘contacted’ ‘collided’ ‘smashed’ ‘bumped’

• RESULTS -
• contacted = mean estimated speed 31.8
• smashed =40.8
• smashed suggested faster speed than contacted
  -shows how an eye witness’ immediate recall of events could be skewed by leading qs

Question 17

Explain how anxiety might effect the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Answer 17

Anxiety can have a negative effect on accuracy as it can impair memory recall and cause witnesses to focus on irrelevant details.

Anxiety can have positive effect on accuracy as it creates more enduring and accurate memories

Question 18

Describe one research study related to the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony

Answer 18

WEAPON FOCUS EFFECT (johnson and Scott)
- the veiw that a weapon in a criminals hand distracts attention from other features and therefore reduces accuracy of identification

PROCEDURE
- asked ppts to sit in another room and where they heard an argument in the other room
- man runs through the room with either a pen covered in greese (low anxiety) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety)
-ppts were asked to identify the man from a set of photographs

FINDINGS
- mean accuracy 49% in identifying man with pen , 33% accuracy in identifying man with knife
-tunnel theory of memory argues that anxiety focuses attention on central features of a crime (e.g weapon)
- researchers monitered eye witness eye movement and found that attention to be drawn to weapon rather then the persons face.

Question 19

identify and breifly explain all 4 techniques used in cognitive interveiw

Answer 19

Men Really Cant Cum GEISELMAN ET AL

1) mental reinstatement of original context

witnesses return to original crime scene ‘in their mind’ and imagines the environment (similar to context dependent forgetting)

2) Report everything

every single detail is encouraged, even if it seems insignificant it could cue a whole lot of other memories

3) Change order

reversing the order in which an event occurred prevents people from using expectations of how they think the event happened (schema)

4) Change perspective

recall incident from multiple perspectives, again to prevent influence of schema on recall

Question 20

explain how a cognitive interveiw differs from a standard interveiw

Answer 20

A standard interview might just ask witnesses to recall an event, but a cognitive interview could ask them to recall the context in which the event occurred. This could include environmental details (such as the weather) and emotional factors (such as how they felt at the time).

Question 21

Breifly explain how the lack of cues can lead to retreival failure

Answer 21

-forgetting is due to an absence of cues

-Encoding specificty principle by Tulving - cues help retrieval, if the same cues are present at learning and recall, the better the cue works

• context dependent forgetting - environment for learning was different to environment of recall (room)
• state dependent forgetting - physical state for learning and recall was different (mood)

Question 22

evaluate explanations of forgetting (retrieval failure)

Answer 22

(+) study support by godden and baddeley, scuba divers, 4 series, learn on land/underwater and recall on land/underwater.
- 40% higher when learning and recall matched
-supports context dependent forgetting.

(-) context effects are not very strong in real life.
- needs to be drastic e.g land and underwater
-learn in one room and recall in a different room wouldnt cause much forgetting
- real life applications on context cues do not provide much explanation for forgetting

(-) lab studies, more research uses artificial data, lacks ecological validity, no correlation to real life

Question 23

evaluate eyewitness testimony (misleading information)

Answer 23

(+) real life application
- important practical use for police and investigators
- loftus claimed that police need to be careful how they phrase questions when interveiwing witnesses
- psychologists make a difference to lives of real people (improving the legal system and acting and acting as expert witnesses

(-) loftus and palmers research used artificial material
- ppts watched clips from car accident instead of experiencing it (less stressful)
- psychologists found that witnesses of a real traumatic event had very accurate recall after 4 months
- artifical tasks arent accurate portrayal
- COUNTER ethical issues to make a car crash

(-) lab studies of EWT cause demand characteristics
- they guess when they dont know to be helpful
- challenge validity
- answers given may not actually represent memory

Question 24

evaluate eye witness testimony (anxiety)

Answer 24

(-) may be testing surprise and not anxiety
- pickle used scissors, and hand gun, chicken and wallet as hand held items
- ewt accuracy was poorer for gun and chicken
- testing strangeness rather than anxiety

(-) field study lacks variable control
- real life witnesses are interviewed after crime has occurred
- cause extraneous variables (talk to other co witnesses/ read police accounts etc)
- may be responsible for inaccurate recall

Question 25

Evaluate the cognitive interview

Answer 25

(+) effectiveness supported by research studies
- geilsmans feild experiement

(-) time consuming
- standard interview is far quicker
- need more time to build a rapport with witness and make them relaxed
- CI requires special training

(-) not effective for everyone
- children get more stressed when interrogated
- more susceptible to leading questions