Memory experiments

Question 1

Baddeley

Answer 1

Encoding
Aim:
To see the effect of acoustic and semantic similarity on the STM and LTM.

Procedure:
75 ppts, either list A, B, C or D ( as,ad,ss,sd). List A or B recall immediately, list C or D after 20 minutes.

Results:
A =10%
B= 60 - 80%
C= 55%
D= 70 -85%

Conclusion:
STM is encoded acoustically and LTM is encoded semantically.

Question 2

Evaluation of Baddeley encoding experiment.

Answer 2

Pluses:
- ethical experiment, ppts were not treated badly.
- independent design, decreases order effects.
- controlled environment, done in a lab so increased validity.

minuses:
- individual differences.
- lacks ecological validity.
- not generalisable, all from the same university.
- did not test other types of encoding.
- should have waited longer than 20 mins.

Question 3

Peterson and Peterson

Answer 3

Duration of STM.

Aim
To the investigate the duration of STM.

Procedure:
24 students had to recall trigrams, presented one at a time then they had to count back in 3’s, this time increased and then the students had to recall the trigrams.

Results:
3 seconds = 80%
6 seconds = 50%
18 seconds = 10%

Conclusion:
The short term memory has a duration of at least 18 seconds, as recall was 20% correct at this time.

Question 4

Evaluation for Peterson and Peterson

Answer 4

pluses:
- lab experiment (increased validity)
- had good control, therefore can easily be replicated.

weaknesses:
- all psychology students (demand characteristics)
- lacks ecological validity as trigrams lack meaning.

Question 5

Bahrick

Answer 5

Duration of Long Term Memory

Aim:
To investigate the duration of VLTM in a natural setting.

Procedure:
There were 392 participants, aged between 17 and 74 and they had their high school yearbook. Ppts had to do a free recall test, a photo recognition task and a name recognition task of ex classmates.

Findings:
After 15 years: 90% of names and faces recalled.
After 15 years: 60% free recall.
After 48 years: 70% of faces recalled.
After 48 years: 80% of names recalled.
After 48 years: 30% free recall.

Conclusion:
evidence of VLTM upto 57 years after a person has left school, recall is at its best with cues for the participants and allows us to retrieve information that may otherwise have had been difficult.

Question 6

Evaluation of Bahrick

Answer 6

pluses:
-high ecological validity (used their own yearbook, so relevant to real life).
- good sample size and range, used 392 ppts of different ages and genders.

minuses:
- low validity as ppts may have looked at their yearbook and refreshed their memory of their classmates.
- Bahrick’s experiment does not conclude whether recall gets worse with time due to a limited capacity or simply due to age.

Question 7

Sperling

Answer 7

Capacity of sensory register.

Aim:
To investigate the capacity of the sensory register for vision. your

Procedure:
Ppts watched a tachistocope which flashed visual stimuli for 50ms. Ppts were to asked recall what they saw immediately. Sperling then taught the ppts to sound to a row. Then had to recall the row that they heard.

Results:
Condition 1 - could recall about 4/12 symbols but recalled seeing more.
Condition 2 - could recall 3 or 4/4 on each row.

Conclusion:
Iconic store can hold about 76% of all data. Capacity 15 better when you are given something to focus on. Can hold 9-12 items in your SR if you pay attention.

Question 8

Jacobs

Answer 8

Capacity of short term memory

Aim:
To investigate the capacity of STM.

Procedure:
Read out a sequence of numbers, everytime he did this, he added a digit “digit span”. Asked ppts to repeat what they heard, repeated with words and letters.

Results:
Numbers = average of 9.3.
Letters = average of 7.3.

Conclusion:
Hold between 7-9 items in STM, satisfies MSM theory of capacity.

Question 9

Evaluation of Jacob’s

Answer 9

Pluses:
Good application to education and everyday life.
Easy to replicate (lab experiment), high control.
Valid = good cause + effect.

Minuses:
Lacks ecological validity (not an everyday task).
Does not really take meaning into account.

Question 10

Clive wearing

Answer 10

Case study:

1985, contracted a virus that damaged his brain.
Could still play the piano, and speak, write and play cards.
The forgets something as soon as it has happened.
Damaged his hippocampus showing why his procedural was not damaged.
Shows different types of memory.

Question 11

Tulving

Answer 11

Types of LTM.

Aim:
To investigate if different types of LTM happen in different areas in the brain.

Procedure:
6 participants were injected with radioactive gold and blood flow was tracked in a PET scan. The brains were scanned whilst they thought about historical facts (semantic) and childhood experiences (episodic).

Results:
Semantic: anterior temporal lobe and hippocampus.
Episodic: prefrontal cortex and hippocampus.

Conclusion:
Semantic and episodic memory both happen in different areas but both use the hippocampus, suggests they are separate.

Question 12

Evaluation of Tulving

Answer 12

Pluses:
Lab experiment, high control and validity.
Can help psychologists and medical professionals.

Minuses:
Only properly experimented on 3 people as others dropped out.
Participants could have practiced demand characteristics.

Question 13

Gathercole and Baddely

Answer 13

Dual processing of WMM.

Aim:
To see if the STM can dual process.

Procedure:
Condition 1= track a light and count the number of angles in a letter (visual + visual).
Condition 2 = verbal task and track a light (visual + verbal).

Results:
Condition 1 was reported to be harder than condition 2, as they used two different stores.

Conclusion:
The visuospatial sketchpad has a limited capably as it cannot do two tasks at once.
There are different stores.

Question 14

Real life implications of Gathercole and Baddely.

Answer 14

Helps road users who are driving vehicles:
- Keep visual stimuli to a minimum.
- Simplify the dashboard.
- Auditory stimuli (speed/map).

Question 15

Underwood and Postman

Answer 15

Retroactive interference:

Aim:
To investigate how retroactive interference effects learning.

Procedure:
- Participants were split into 2 groups, both had to remember a list of paired words.
- The experimental group also had to learn another list, where the second word changed.
- All participants had to recall the words on the first list.

Results:
Experimental group = 20%
Control group = 70%

Conclusion:
Items in the second list interfered with the first list (retroactive interference).

Question 16

Evaluation of Postman

Answer 16

Pluses:
Validity- conducted in a lab, a controlled environment so can be replicated.

Minuses:
Independant design - can we be totally sure on cause and effect?
Ecological validity - not an everyday task, so is it applicable to real life?

Question 17

McGeoch and McDonald

Answer 17

Retroactive interference.

Procedure:
- Participants were given 10 words (list A) until they could recall them with accuracy.
- They were then given a second list (list B), there was 6 groups (synonyms, antonyms, unrelated words, nonsense syllables, 3 digit syllables or no new list).
- They then had to recall list A.

Results:
If list B was similar to list A= 12%
If list B was nonsense = 26%
If list B was very dissimilar = 36%

Conclusion:
The strongest interference was when list B was similar to list A, so it shows newly learned information often interferes with old information (retroactive).

Question 18

Baddely and Hitch

Answer 18

Interference or retrieval delay?

Procedure:
Rugby players were asked to recall the names of teams played against throughout the whole rugby season. For various reasons, including injuries and suspensions most players they interviewed had missed some games, making the last game played vary.

IV = Number of games each player had played.
DV = Number of games and team names recalled.

Results:
Recall for the last game was equally good whether the game was played some time ago or last week. This shows that incorrect recall was not due to delay.

Conclusion:
Results were better with less interference and this was nothing to do with the time.

Question 19

Godden and Baddely

Answer 19

Context dependent failure.

Procedure: 18 divers from a diving club were asked to learn lists of 36 unrelated words of 2-3 syllables.
4 conditions: BOOB

Results:
BB: 13.5
BO: 8.5
OB: 8.6
OO: 11.4

Conclusion:
Forgetting is more likely to happen if you try and recall in a different place to where you learnt it.

Evaluation:
In a lab (controlled), low ecological validity, water and diving is familiar, words are not.

Question 20

Goodwin et al

Answer 20

State - dependent failure

Procedure: 48 male medical students, 1 day training, day 2 test.
4 conditions:
1 = SS
2 = AA
3 = AS
4 = SA
4 tests:
Avoidance task
Verbal rote learning task
Word association test
Picture recognition.

Results:
More errors in the AS and SA condition, but the SS group was better overall.

Conclusion:
You are more likely to forget something if you are in a different state to when you learned it.

Evaluation:
They were all male medical students, increase in DC, decreasing the validity.

Question 21

Lotus and Palmer

Answer 21

Misleading information.

Aim:
To investigate the effects of leading questions on memory.

Procedure:
45 students were shown a film of a car accident. They then had to write down the speed they think the car was going when the accident happened, but the verb used each time to describe it changed.

Results:
Smashed = 40.8 mph
Collided = 39.3 mph
Bumped = 38.1 mph
Hit = 34 mph
Contacted = 31.8 mph

Conclusion:
- Leading questions have a big impact of EWT and memory.
- EWT were labelled as incorrect and unreliable.

Question 22

Evaluation of Loftus and Palmers first experiment.

Answer 22

• Participants were recalling information too soon after the event.
• Only tested students, who will have limited knowledge of the road.
• Lacks ecological validity, watching a video.

Question 23

Loftus and Palmer experiment 2

Answer 23

Broken glass.

Aim:
To investigate the effects of leading questions on LTM.

Procedure:
150 ppts shown a video of a car accident (no glass) and were asked how fast the car was going, changing the verb each time. A week later ppts were asked if they saw broken glass.

Findings:
Smashed = 32% false memory.
Hit = 14% false memory
Control = 12% false memory.

Conclusion:
As the aggression of the verb increased, so does the number of false memories.
Leading questions can affects EWT.
BUT MORE PEOPLE DID NOT HAVE A FALSE MEMORY.

Question 24

Gabbert

Answer 24

Post event discussion.

Aim:
To investigate the effects of PED in EWT.

Procedure:
- 120 ppts ( 60 students and 60 older adults).
- Ppts were randomly allocated to group A or B and watched a video of a girl stealing money.
- Controll group and co - witness group.
- Group A saw her steal, group B did not.
- They then discussed what they saw (group A + half of group B).
- Did a questionnaire on what they saw.

Results:
Co - witness group -
60% = did steal
71% = info they didn’t see.

Control-
6.67% did steal.

Conclusion:
PED have an impact of the accuracy of EWT.
People may make this up due to conformity and the desire to be right or liked (NSI and ISI), could lead to false convictions.

Question 25

Evaluation of Gabbert

Answer 25

Pluses:
- Bodner = if you are warned about PED, your memory is less likely to change.
- Good sample size.
- Lab experiment, controlled environment which adds to validity.
- Shows that PED does not help EWT = police can use it.
- Interview straight away or keep them separate.
- Video was real.

Minuses:
- Only tested on 2 age groups from the same area = less generalisable.
- lacks meaning, may pay more attention if they thought it was real.
- discussion happened straight way, not likely to happen in real life = lacks EV.
- Some may not pay attention.
Would stress impact this? Or if there was a real consequence?

Question 26

Weapon focus study

Answer 26

Anxiety affecting accuracy of EWT.

Aim:
To investigate how anxiety affects the accuracy of EWT.

Procedure:
PPTs had to sit outside a lab, where they heard a discussion, followed by a man leaving with a pen.
In the other conditions, ppts heard a fight, smashing glass and a man leaving holding a bloody knife.
They were then given photos of 50 men and asked to identify him.

Results:
Pen = 49% accuracy
Knife = 33% accuracy

Conclusion:
The ppts attention was taken away from the person and put onto the weapon, if this were to happen in real life, recall and accuracy would be lower.

Evaluation:
Not ethical = thought they had seen a murder and were lied to.
EV = given 50 photos (way too much), odd situation.
Still low= 49% and 33% are still very low.