Memory: Paper 1 Flashcards
1
Q
Factors Affecting Eyewitness Testimony: Anxiety
- Anxiety has a negative effect on recall
A
Johnson and Scott led participants to believe they were going to take part in a lab study and made them wait as they heard an argument next door.
In one condition, the man came out with a grease covered pen. In another condition, glass was broken and a man came out of the room with a knife covered in blood.
Later participants were asked to identify the man they had seen carrying an item.
49% of participants identified the man carrying the pen whereas only 33% remembered the face of the man who carried the knife.
He coined this the weapon focus effect where the witness’ attention is tunnelled into the weapon at sight as it is a source of anxiety.
2
Q
Factors Affecting Eyewitness Testimony: Anxiety
*Anxiety has a positive effect on recall
A
Yullie and Cutshall conducted a study of a real life shooting in a gun shop in Canada.
13 of the 21 witnesses agreed to take part in the study.
Interviews were held 4-5 months after the incident and the accuracy was determined by the number of details reported in each account.
The witnesses were very accurate and there was little change in accuracy after 5 months. Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate.
This could be because of fight or flight response which heightens alertness and improves memory because we become more aware of cues in the situation.
3
Q
Factors Affecting Eyewitness Testimony: Anxiety
*How can we explain contradictory findings?
A
Yerkes Dodson Effect states that performance will increase with stress but only to a certain point until it would decrease drastically.
4
Q
What is procedural memory?
A
Refers to the memory of how we perform certain actions or skills.
These memories are your ‘muscle memory’ and don’t require much effort to recall this memory.
We may find this memory had to explain to someone else.
5
Q
What is semantic memory?
A
Refers to the memory of our knowledge of the world, which is consistently being added to.
6
Q
What is episodic memory?
A
Refers to our ability to recall memories from our lives. They are time-stamped and require conscious effort to recall them.
7
Q
What is coding?
A
The format in which information is stored in various memory stores
8
Q
Research on Coding
Baddley
A
Baddeley gave a different list of words to four groups of participants to remember:
Group 1 remembered words that sounded similar acoustically.
Group 2 remembered words that sounded different acoustically.
Group 3 remembered words with similar meanings and were semantically similar.
Group 4 remembered words that had different meanings and were semantically dissimilar.
Participants were then shown the words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
He found when they recalled words immediately (STM recall) the group that had acoustically similar words performed the worst.
He also found that when words were recalled after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall) the group with semantically similar words performed the worst.
This suggests that information is coded semantically in LTM and acoustically within the STM.
9
Q
Research on Capacity: Digit Span
Jacobs & Miller
A
Digit Span
Jacobs developed a technique to measure digit span.
The researcher gives the participant a number of digits or letters to recall in the correct order out loud, this number of digits or letters that the participants have to recall increases until the participant cannot recall the order correctly.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits was 9.3 whereas mean span for letters was 7.3.
Span of Memory and Chunking
Miller made observations of every practice and found things come in seven for example there are 7 notes on the musical scale and 7 days in a week etc, suggesting that the capacity of STM is about 7 + or - 2 items.
He also noted people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters. This is done by chunking - grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.
10
Q
Research on Duration of STM
Peterson & Peterson
A
Peterson and Peterson tested 24 undergraduate students.
The students had to recall meaningless three-letter trigrams (for example, THG, XWV) at different timed intervals from 3-18. To prevent rehearsal
the students had to count backwards in threes or fours from a specific number, until they were asked to recall the letters.
Peterson & Peterson found that the longer the interval the less accurate the recall.
At 3 seconds, around 80% of the trigrams were correctly recalled, whereas at 18 seconds only 10% were correctly recalled.
Peterson & Peterson concluded that short-term memory has a limited duration of approximately 18 seconds.
Furthermore, the results show that if we are unable to rehearse information, it will not be passed to long-term memory, providing further support for the multi-store model.
11
Q
Duration of LTM: Bahrick
A
Bahrick et al studied participants from the American state of Ohio.
High school yearbooks were obtained from participants or directly from their schools.
Recall was tested through:
Photo-recognition test consisting of 50 photos; some from the participants’ high school yearbook.
Free recall test where participants recalled the nam,es of their graduating class.
Findings:
Photo-recognition Test
Participants who were tested within 15 years of graduation were 90% accurate.
After 48 years tested again and their answers declined to 70% accurate.
Free recall test
Participants who were tested within 15 years were 60% accurate, dropped to 30% after 48 years.
Research findings demonstrate that LTM can last a very long time.
12
Q
What is context reinstatement?
Cognitive Interview
A
Questions should be asked to make the participant reimagine the environment they were in, and the emotions that they were feeling. This relates to context-dependent forgetting
13
Q
What is report everything?
Cognitive Interview
A
Witnesses are encouraged to report every detail of the event no matter how trivial it may seem because it can trigger other memories.
14
Q
What is recall in different order?
Cognitive Interview
A
Patients are encouraged to report the events in a different order such as a reverse order from the end of the events to the beginning.
This is to prevent dishonesty and the
distortion of schema as they report their expectation of what happened rather than their schema.
15
Q
What is recall from different perspective?
Cognitive Interview
A
Patients are encouraged to report events from the perspective of another person such as a bystander. The schema we have for entering a particular setting can distort our memory, therefore if we don’t recall incidents from another perspective, what we are recalling is actually our schema rather than what actually happened.
16
Q
What does retrieval failure theory suggest?
A
People may forget memories because of insufficient cues. The retrieval failure theory suggests the memory is available but cannot be accessed until an appropriate cue is provided.
17
Q
What are cues?
A
Cues are a trigger of information that allow us to remember a memory.
18
Q
What are state-dependent cues?
A
Aspects of our internal environment work as cues to memory (e.g. state of arousal).
Being in a different emotional state would inhibit memory as we would lack state dependant cues.
19
Q
What is the encoding specificity principle?
A
If a cue is to help us remember information it must be present at encoding (when we learn the memory) and at retrieval (when we are recalling the memory).
If cues are different at retrieval or encoding, forgetting of a memory can occur.
20
Q
Outline research into context-dependent forgetting.
A
Baddely and Godden asked divers to learn a list of words under water or on land and were asked to recall these list of words under water or on land.
Condition 1: Learn words on land, recall words on land.
Condition 2: Learn words on land, recall words on water.
Condition 3: Learn words on water, recall words on water.
Condition 4 Learn words on water, recall words on land.
Accurate recall was 40% lower in non-matching conditions.
Retrieval failure occurs because the cues present in encoding does not match the cues when we are recalling the memory.
21
Q
Outline research into state-dependent forgetting.
A
Carter and Cassady gave their participants a drug, which made them slightly drowsy.
They had to learn a list of words then a passage of proses then recall this information.
There were four conditions:
Learnt under the influence of the drug, recalled under the influence of a drug.
Learnt under the influence of drugs, recalled without the influence of drugs.
Learnt without the influence of drugs, recalled with the influence of drugs.
Learnt without the influence of drugs, recalled with the influence of drugs.
Mismatch at internal state (cues), leads to significantly worse performance in memory tests.
22
Q
What is proactive interference?
A
Proactive interference is when an old memory interferes with a new memory, making it harder for newer memories to be recalled.
23
Q
What is retroactive interference?
A
Retroactive interference is when a new memory interferes with an old memory, making it harder for an individual to remember older memories.
24
Q
Key Study: Postman - Investigation of Retroactive Interference
A
Method: A lab experiment was used. Participants were split into two groups. Both groups had to remember a list of paired words – e.g. cat – tree, jelly – moss, book – tractor.
The experimental group also had to learn another list of words where the second paired word was different – e.g. cat – glass, jelly- time, book – revolver. The control group was not given the second list. All participants were asked to recall the words on the first list.
Results: The recall of the control group was more accurate than that of the experimental group.
Conclusion: This suggests that learning items in the second list interfered with participants’ ability to recall the list. This is an example of retroactive interference.
25
What is interference?
Interference occurs when one or more pieces of information conflict with each other, resulting in a distortion or forgetting of a memory.
26
Research support for the effects of similarity.
Interference is worse when the memories are similar as recalled by McGeoch and McDonald.
Studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between two sets of materials.
Participants had to learn 10 words on a list with 100% accuracy before they could move on and learn another list.
There were six groups and each learnt a different lists:
Group 1 - Synonyms of original words
Group 2 - Antonyms of original words
Group 3 - Words unrelated to original words
Group 4 - Nonsense syllables
Group 5 - Three-digit numbers
Group 6 - No new list, participants just relaxed.
Findings were that synonyms produced the worst recall and thus interference is strongest when memories are similar.
27
Simon
Cowell
Bit
His
Cat
Smashed
Collided
Bumped
Hit
Contacted
28
Tell me about Loftus and Palmer's Experiment #1 & #2
#1
Loftus and Palmer told students to watch clips of car accidents and gave them questions about the accident. In the leading question, participants were asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling.
Each of the five groups were given a different verb; hit, contacted, bumped, collided and smashed.
For the verb smashed (the most intense verb) was found to have the highest mean speed of 40.8 mph. Therefore, the leading question led to the bias of eyewitness recall of an event.
#2
Loftus and Palmer conducted a second experiment, which supported the substitution explanation, in which participants who heard ‘smash’ as their verb were more likely to report seeing broken glass when asked if there was than those who heard ‘hit.’
The verb alternated their memory of the incident.
29
What is the conformity effect?
The conformity effect refers to the tendency of people to change their own beliefs or memories to match what other people say or think. Basically, it means that we often want to fit in and be accepted, so we may go along with what others say even if it contradicts our own experiences or memories. This can happen when we hear information from other people that is different from what we originally saw or heard ourselves.
30
What is a post-event discussion?
Post-event discussion refers to the conversations that happen between witnesses or with other people after an event has occurred. When people discuss what they remember about an event, they can unintentionally introduce new or misleading information to each other. This can cause their memories to be influenced or altered. For example, if one person mentions a detail that didn't actually happen, others might start to incorporate that detail into their own recollections, even if it's not accurate.
31
Research Support for Working Memory Model (Dual Task Performance)
How has this led to real-life applications in terms of laws?
The Working Memory Model A03s
- Studies of dual-task performance support the separate existence of the visuo-spatial sketchpad.
- Baddeley et al (1975) showed that participants had more difficulty doing both a visual and verbal task at the same time.
- There was increased difficulty is because both visual tasks compete for the same slave system, whereas when doing a verbal and visual task simultaneously, there is no competition.
- This means there must be a separate slave system (the VSS) that processes visual input.
- This highlights the importance of not using mobile phones while driving, as multitasking with shared working memory components can impair performance in one or both tasks.
32
Brain scanning studies support the Working Memory Model
The Working Memory Model A03s
- Braver et al. gave their participants tasks that involved the central executive while they were having a brain scan.
- The researchers found greater activity in an area known as the left prefrontal cortex.
- Moreover, activity in this area increased as the task became harder.
- This makes sense in terms of the WMM: as demands on the central executive increase, it has to work harder to fulfil its function.
33
The KF Case Study
KFC!!!
The Working Memory Model A03s
- The KF Case Study supports the Working Memory Model.
- KF suffered brain damage from a motorcycle accident that damaged his short-term memory.
- KF struggled to process verbal information but his visual memory was unaffected.
- This shows that visual information is processed separately from verbal information.
- Therefore, the research into KF supports the working memory model and the idea of two slave systems, the phonological loop & the visuospatial sketchpad.
34
A weakness of the working memory model is that it fails to account for musical memory.
The Working Memory Model A03s
- Evidence for this comes from Berz (1995) who demonstrated that participants could listen to instrumental music (music without words) without impairing performance on other acoustic tasks.
- This is problematic because it appears that 2 auditory tasks can be completed at the same time. According to the working memory model we would expect participants to not be able to complete both tasks as they would use the same store.
- Therefore, it could be said that memory is more complicated than the working memory model suggests.
35
There is physiological evidence to support the working memory model.
The Working Memory Model A03s
- For example, PET scans have shown that different areas of the brain are used whilst undertaking visual and verbal tasks which may correspond to the visuo-spatial sketchpad and phonological loop of working memory model.
- This is positive as it provides objective and scientific support for the view that visual and verbal material is dealt with by separate structures that may even be physically separate.
- Therefore, this increases the credibility of the working memory model as an accurate representation of memory.
36
The research has provided real life applications as this knowledge has been used in understanding cognitive changes associated with mental issues.
The Working Memory Model A03s
- Liddle and Morris for example found that schizophrenic patients have difficulty with info processing or tasks of attention such as the Stroop test which indicates a problem with the functioning of their working memory
- Therefore this research has helped in our understanding of why schizophrenic patients may feel a sense of information overload and may be an early indicator of schizophrenia
37
However there are limitations to the working memory model, specifically the central executive..
The Working Memory Model A03s
- For example there is very little evidence for the central executive. This is because it is modality free ( it can process information from any of the 5 senses) which makes it very difficult to research.
- If it is unclear how this central component works then it limits the understanding of the other components
38
What did Prabhakaran et al find?
The Working Memory Model A03s
Hint: FMRI
Using brain imaging FMRI scans, the researchers asked participants to complete tasks with equal amounts of spatial and verbal information.
In one condition, the spatial and verbal information was separate.
In another condition, the information was integrated (together).
They found that there was more activation in the prefrontal cortex when the information was integrated and that posterior brain regions were activated when the information was separate.
This suggests that the episodic buffer exists and is located in the prefrontal cortex (a brain region specialised in combining and storing visual and verbal/auditory information)
39
What did Baddeley find in his syllabic research?
The Working Memory Model A03s
Participants were visually shown word lists and asked to write them down in the same order.
Condition 1: Monosyllabic words such as 'bond'
Condition 2: Polysyllabic (more than one syllable) words such as 'opportunity'
It was found that participants recalled more short, monosyllabic words than long, polysyllabic words in the correct order.
This suggests that the capacity of the phonological loop is around two seconds worth of verbal information.
This is known as the word length effect and provides existence for the phonological loop because longer words would take longer to be rehearsed in the phonological loop and would be far less likely to be remembered.
40
Inferences need to be made
The Working Memory Model A03s
It is impossible to directly observe the processes of memory described in models like the working memory models.
This means that inferences must be made which are assumptions about cognitive processes, and these assumptions could be incorrect.
41
The KF Case Study
KFC!!!
The Multi-store Model of Memory A03s
- KF suffered brain damage from a motorcycle accident that damaged his short-term memory.
- KF struggled to process verbal information but his visual memory was unaffected.
- This shows that visual information is processed separately from verbal information.
- MSM is over-simplistic; there must be more than 1 short term memory store to process different info.
42
A03 - A further limitation of the MSM is that it oversimplifies LTM; is it really unitary?
The Multi-store Model of Memory A03s
- There is a lot of research evidence that LTM is not a unitary store.
- We have one LTM store for memories of facts about the world (semantic) and a different one for memories of how to ride a bike (episodic)
- The MSM is limited because it does not reflect these different types of LTM.
43
The Multi-store Model of Memory is too simple: HM case study
The Multi-store Model of Memory A03s
- HM's case study challenges the simplicity of the multi-store model of memory, which suggests a linear progression from sensory memory to short-term memory and then to long-term memory.
- HM's inability to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory highlights the complexities of memory consolidation.
- This suggests that the model's linear structure oversimplifies the process of memory formation and consolidation.
44
Supporting Research Evidence (+) & Artificial Stimuli (-)
The Multi-store Model of Memory A03s
- Baddeley found that we tend to mix up words that sound similar when we are using our STMs. But we mix up words that have similar meanings when we use our LTMs.
- The strength of this study is that it clearly shows that coding in STM is acoustic and in LTM it is semantic.
- So they are different, and this supports the MSM’s view that these two memory stores are separate and independent.
- However, this supporting research didn't use everyday info (e.g. names, face) instead using artificial tasks such as Jacobs' digits/letters, Petersons' trigrams
- ∴ Therefore, MSM may be invalid of how memory works in everyday, meaningful situations.
45
Research on Duration provides support for the multi-store model of memory
The Multi-store Model of Memory A03s
- Peterson and Peterson tested 24 undergraduate students. The students had to recall meaningless three-letter trigrams (for example, THG, XWV) at different timed intervals from 3-18.
- Peterson & Peterson found that the longer the interval the less accurate the recall.
- At 3 seconds, around 80% of the trigrams were correctly recalled, whereas at 18 seconds only 10% were correctly recalled.
- Peterson & Peterson concluded that short-term memory has a limited duration of approximately 18 seconds.
- Furthermore, the results show that if we are unable to rehearse information, it will not be passed to long-term memory, providing further support for the multi-store model.
46
AO3: Supporting research from Murdock
The Multi-store Model of Memory A03s
- Murdock (1962) identified 'serial position effect'; participants asked to free recall a list of 20 words correctly.
- First words (in LTM, primacy effect) & last words (in STM, recency effect) recalled better than middle
- This supports the existence of separate STM & LTM stores
47
AO3: Applications to real life with how to improve our memory
The Multi-store Model of Memory A03s
- The model may have application to helping people with dementia or brain damage. If patients struggle to rehearse new information, then writing things down and putting labels on things will help.
- Colour coding buttons on phones or remotes will also help because it brings in Elaborative Rehearsal.
48
Inferences have to be made
The Multi-store Model of Memory A03s
Models of memory cannot be directly observed so researchers have to make inferences on the structure of memory based on the behaviour observed during experimentation.
These inferences could be incorrect as researchers are making assumptions about cognitive processes when other processes of memory could be involved.
49
Makes sense in terms of the evolutionary theory.
The Multi-store Model of Memory A03s
The large capacity and short duration of the sensory register matches what would be expected from the evolutionary theory in that it has helped the human species survive by providing quicker reaction times in the past.
This is done by retaining as much information as possible from the environment but only having important information is processed, as too much information would slow down our reaction speeds and make us vulnerable to predators.
50
The cognitive interview is time consuming
Cognitive Interview A03s
- Interviewers have to be trained in how to phrase questions and prevent influence on eyewitness testimony.
- As a result, this can be expensive as it is time consuming.
- Moreover, the cognitive interview emphasises the use of the report everything technique, which would make the conduction of the interviews even longer.
51
Konhken et al: Support for the effectiveness of CI
Cognitive Interview A03s
- Meta analysis; combined data from 50 studies; more correct information acquired from CI than standard police interview.
- Shows that there are real practical benefits to the police of using the enhanced version of the CI.
- The research shows that it gives the police a greater chance of catching and charging criminals, which is beneficial to society as a whole.
52
However, research contradictory findings for CI state...
Cognitive Interview A03s
- While CI aims to increase the amount of accurate information, it could actually increase inaccurate information
- Kohnken et al found an 81% increase of correct information but also a 61% increase of incorrect information when the enhanced CI was compared to a standard interview.
- According to this study the cognitive interview does increase the quantity of accurate information but it also increases the quantity of inaccurate information.
- This is a weakness as increasing the amount of inaccurate information recalled defeats the purpose of the cognitive interview.
53
Strength: Milne & Bull (2002)
Cognitive Interview A03s
- Interviewed undergraduate students and children using just one component of the CI, and compared the responses to a control group.
- Recall across the four individual components was largely similar and no different from that of the control group.
- However, when participants were interviewed using a combination of "report everything" and "mental reinstatement" their recall was significantly higher than in all other conditions.
- This is a strength as it supports the idea that using a combination of these techniques can increase the amount of information accurately recalled during cognitive interview.
54
Strength: Individual differences (2)
Cognitive Interview A03s
- The cognitive interview may be particularly useful when interviewing older witnesses.
- Negative stereotypes about the memories of elderly people can make witnesses overly cautious about reporting information.
- However, because the cognitive interview stresses the importance of reporting any detail, these difficulties may be overcome.
- Mello & Fisher (1996) show that there is a greater difference between accurate information recalled in a CI than a SI when interviewing older people than younger people.
- This is a strength as it shows that the cognitive interview can overcome obstacles that standard police interview can't.
55
Strength: Support for the role of cognitive comes from the Encoding Specificity Principle and research carried out by Baddeley
Cognitive Interview A03s
- Evidence: Baddeley found that divers were much better at recalling words when their recall took place in the same context in which they had learned the information in comparison to recall words in a different context to which learning took place.
- Evaluation: This is positive because it is further support for the role of context in improving recall and therefore support for the cognitive interview in improving the accuracy of EWT
56
Weakness: The cognitive interview raises ethical issues.
Cognitive Interview A03s
- Evidence: For example, witnesses are asked to recall the traumatic event over and over again in a variety of different ways.
- Evaluation: This is a weakness because such a process could cause witness (or participants carrying out research into the cognitive interview) a great deal of stress and distress which goes against the guidelines put forward by the BPS.
57
Economic Implications
Cognitive Interview A03s
We could consider the cognitive interview from the perspective of a cost benefit analysis, which would consider the effect on the overall justice system and the economy of using cognitive interviews.
Perhaps it may actually be worth the additional resources invested in training to make a more effective police force as cognitive interview may ultimately reduce crime, and its cost to wider society saving the criminal justice system a lot of money.
58
Not effective in common police activities
Cognitive Interview A03s
The cognitive interview is not effective in improving the recognition of suspects in identity parades and from photographs.
This means that the cognitive interview has limited usefulness in a number of common police activities in eyewitness testimony and thus lacks application in real life scenarios of eyewitness testimony (external validity).
59
Research into anxiety could raise ethical issues
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
- Creating anxiety in a study opens participants up to psychological harm. Have to weigh up costs and benefits of performing research.
- This is why real-life field studies such as Yuilie and Cutshall's study are more beneficial because anxiety is not created by psychologists and is thus ethical. This therefore questions the need for studies such as Johnson and Scott's which creates anxiety through lab studies,
60
Weapon focus effect may not be relevant
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
- Pickel conducted an experiment, in different conditions, the man came out with different items such as raw chicken (perceived as a low threat, high surprise), wallet & scissors (perceived as a low threat, low surprise) and a blood covered knife (high threat, high surprise).
- Conditions with high surprise led to significantly inaccurate eyewitness testimonies.
- Shows that weapon focus effect is due to surprise rather than anxiety.
61
Field Studies Can Lack Control
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
- Researchers usually interview their participants sometime after the event has happened, giving time for a lot of occurrences such as post-event discussion happening to participants.
- Therefore, extraneous variables may be responsible for the accuracy of recall.
62
The Yerkes-Dodson model is too simple
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
- The Yerkes-Dodson model suggests that moderate anxiety is best for performance, but it faces criticism for oversimplifying anxiety's complexity.
- The model's inverted-U idea is reductionist as it implies only physical arousal affects performance, neglecting the interplay of cognitive, emotional, and behavioural factors in anxiety.
- This critique highlights the need for a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of anxiety, acknowledging its diverse aspects beyond just physical arousal.
- This nuanced understanding would improve the model's applicability and accuracy in explaining performance outcomes.
63
Support for negative effects of anxiety on memory
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
Valentine & Mesout (2009) used heart rate as an objective measure to divide visitors to London Dungeons into low-anxiety & high-anxiety groups
- High-anxiety participants were less accurate than low-anxiety in describing & identifying a target person
-Therefore, supporting that anxiety has negative effect on immediate EWT recall of stressful event
64
Support for positive effects of anxiety on memory
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
- Christianson & Hübinette (1993) interviewed actual bank robbery witnesses (some direct victims who had high-anxiety and some bystanders who had low-anxiety)
- 75% accurate recall across all witnesses (direct victims, most anxious = were even more accurate)
- Therefore, anxiety doesn't affect EWT accuracy & may even enhance it.
65
Support for positive effects - Counterpoint
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
Christianson and Hubinette interviewed their participants several months after the event (4-15)
This meant that researchers had no control over what happened to their participants in the intervening time.
Thus, effects of anxiety may have been overwhelmed by these other extraneous factors such as post-event discussion and impossible to assess by the time the participants were interviewed
Therefore it is possible that a lack of control over confounding variables may be responsible for these findings, invalidating their support
66
A methodological weakness of both Yuille and Cutshall, and Christianson and Hubinette's studies are that participants' answers to the interview are prone to social desirability bias
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
- As the topic is an extremely sensitive issue for the participants, they could have in fact lied by either underestimating or overestimating the level of anxiety experienced in order to appear emotionally strong or to sensationalise their story in the hope of receiving comfort or even attention.
- This therefore lowers the internal validity of the findings as they may be inaccurate and not a true representation of the participants' actual levels of anxiety of the incidents.
67
There is supporting evidence on anxiety affecting accuracy of EWT
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
- Deffenbacher conducted a meta analysis of 21 studies
- Findings indicated that heightened anxiety tended to negatively affect the memory of eyewitnesses.
- This suggests that high levels of anxiety can divert attention from important features of a situation and thus provides support for the Yerkes-Dodson inverted U hypothesis.
68
A methodological strength of Deffenbacher's study is that it has a large sample size
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety (A03s)
- This is because Deffenbacher conducted a meta-analysis of 21 studies which tested a large pool of people.
- Thus it is argued that his study has high population validity, meaning it is possible to generalise his findings to other groups of people.
69
Artificial tasks do not evoke the same emotions as if they were real.
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information (A03s)
- Emotional levels differ between watching a video and witnessing a crime in real life. For example, psychological research such as the Yerkes Dodson Model has shown that the level of arousal experienced by the participant during the event is also a significant factor impacting memory.
- Those with low or high levels of arousal are more likely to have poor recall (Yerkes Dodson Law)
- This could mean that the participants that reported seeing broken glass may have poor recall because they had a low arousal due to not actually witnessing the crime.
- Therefore, lacks mundane realism, as studies that use artificial tasks may tell us very little about how leading questions affect EWT in cases of real accidents or crimes.
70
Useful real life applications, where the consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious indeed.
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information (A03s)
- Psychologists are sometimes asked to act as expert witnesses in court trials and explain the limits of Eyewitness testimony to juries
- This shows that psychologists can help to improve the way the legal system works, especially by protecting innocent people from convictions based on unreliable eyewitness testimony.
71
Individual Differences
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information (A03s)
- There is evidence that older people are less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports.
- For example, research from Anastasi and Rhodes has found that people in age groups 18–25 and 35–45 were more accurate than people in the group 55–78 years, showing that old age has a detrimental effect on the accuracy of recall.
72
Individual Differneces
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information (A03s)
- Not everyone in the supporting research was affected by misleading information implying that independent behaviour may also be a significant factor in whether misleading information affects an individual's memory.
- It may be that those with an internal locus of control are less likely to be affected, as they are confident in their own judgment
73
Research support for misleading information creating false memories.
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information (A03s)
- Braun et al conducted a study involving college students who evaluated advertising material for Disneyland, embedded in this material was misleading information about Bugs Bunny (a Warner Brothers character, not a Disney Character). Participants were assigned to either the bugs condition or control condition with Ariel.
- Those in the bugs condition were more likely to report shaking hands with bugs at Disneyland, others even saying they fed him a carrot compared to the control group.
- Incorporated incorrect information into original memories, showing how shows how misleading information can create false memories.
74
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information (A03s)
Limitations of methodology used by Loftus and Palmer
- A further problem with the study was the use of students as participants
- Students are not representative of the general population in a number of ways.
- Importantly they may be less experienced drivers and therefore less confident in their ability to estimate speeds.
- This may have influenced them to be more swayed by the verb in the question.
- Therefore, the findings of study cannot be generalised to the general population as an unrepresentative sample was used.
75
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information (A03s)
Contradictory research evidence for the substituion explanation
- Sutherland & Hayne (2001)
- Participants recalled central details of an event better than peripheral ones, even when asked misleading questions.
- Presumably because their attention was focused on central features
- meaning that these memories were resistant to misleading info
- Therefore, they found that the original memory of event survived undistorted (not predicted by substitution explanation)
76
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information (A03s)
Contradictory research evidence for the conformity effect
- In Skagerberg & Wright's experiement, participants discussed clips they saw (1 mugger w/ dark brown hair, 1 w/ light brown hair).
- Participants recalled a blend of what they saw & what they heard in from co-witnesses in post-event discussion (e.g. said 'medium brown').
- This shows that the memory itself is distorted via contamination by post-event discussion, rather than via memory conformity.
77
Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information (A03s)
Contradictory research evidence for Loftus and Palmer's experiment
- After replicating Loftus and Palmer's experiment, Bekerian and Bowers found that participants are not susceptible to misleading information if the questions are presented in the same order as misleading information.
- Suggesting that the order of questions has significant effect so Loftus and Palmer's results may be due to response bias not change in memory.
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Highly scientific
Research into coding, capacity and duration of memory (A03s)
- One strength of psychological research into memory is that much of the research into memory is highly scientific, in that it was conducted in a laboratory.
- This is a strength as it means there was high control of confounding variables, which means the experiment is reliable and can establish cause and effect between the independent variable and the dependent variable.
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Ecological Validity (+) & (-)
Research into coding, capacity and duration of memory (2 A03s)
- However, Peterson and Peterson’s experiment lacks ecological validity and mundane realism. This is because trigrams are artificial, in that they do not occur in real life. Therefore, it could be argued that this experiment does not explain memory in a real life context.
- However, sometimes we remember meaningless things such as phone numbers. This suggests that the study isn't irrelevant in its ability to explain memory in some aspects of life.
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High external validity (+)
Lack of control (-)
Research into coding, capacity and duration of memory (A03s)
- Every day meaningful memories (e.g of peoples faces and names) were studied.
When the lab studies were replicated with meaningless pictures to be remembered, recall rates were lower as found by Shepard et al
- This means that Bahrick et al's findings reflect a more 'real' estimate of the duration of LTM
- However, downside is that the confounding variables are not controlled, participants may have looked at their yearbook and rehearsed their memory over the years.
81
Research into coding, capacity and duration of memory (A03s)
One limitation of Miller's research is it may overestimate STM capacity.
- For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research.
- He concluded that the capacity of STM was only about 4 (plus or minus 1) chunks.
- This suggests that the lower end of Miller's estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
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Helped improve our understanding of memory stores
Research into coding, capacity and duration of memory (A03s)
- Baddeley's studies identified clear difference between two memory stores
- For example - later research showed there are some exceptions in Baddeley's findings but idea that STM uses mostly acoustic coding + LTM mostly semantic stood the test of time
- There this is a strength because Baddeley's research was an important step in understanding of memory system, which led to multi-store model.
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Research into coding, capacity and duration of memory (A03s)
Low temporal validity (-)
Research support (+)
- Jacobs' research conducted a long time ago
- For example - early research in psychology often lacked adequate control - some participants may have been distracted while being tested so didn't perform as well.
Therefore, results might not be valid because of confounding variables that weren't controlled.
However, the research was replicated by Bopp (2005) to control confounding variables and found same results, supporting reliability of Jacobs' original findings.
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Individual Differences
Research into coding, capacity and duration of memory (A03s)
- The capacity of short term memory may not be the same for everyone
- For example, Jacobs also found that recall [digit span] increased steadily with age: 8 year olds could remember an average of 6.6 digits where as the mean for 19 year olds was 8.6
- This increase with age may be due to a gradual increase in brain capacity and/or the development of strategies to improve their digit span e.g. chunking.
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STM appears to have longer duration...
Research into coding, capacity and duration of memory (A03s)
- The duration of short term memory may be longer
- For example, Reitman [1974] - used auditory tones instead of numbers so that displacement would not occur (as sounds do not interfere with verbal rehearsal] in a study on the duration of short term memory.
- Results found that the duration were longer than what Peterson and Peterson suggested [18 seconds]
- This suggests that the findings of Peterson and Peterson's study was a result of displacement rather than decay and therefore was not measuring the duration of the short term memory.
- Thus findings may be internally invalid
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Explanations of forgetting: Interference (A03s)
McGeoch and McDonald's experiment can also be criticised for lacking external validity due to another methodological criticism.
- Participants were only given a limited amount of time to learn both the first list of 10 words and the second list. This is unlike the memory tasks we complete in real life such as revision for examinations.
- The limited time available to participants is another reason why the study lacks mundane realism as it is hard to generalise the findings to everyday life, where there is more time usually available to completed memory tasks.
- Thus the usefulness of interference as a reason for forgetting is lowered.
87
Explanations of forgetting: Interference (A03s)
Supporting evidence for retroactive interference as a reason for forgetting from the study conducted by Tulving and Psotka
- Tulving and Psotka gave each participant 5 lists of 24 words. Each of these lists of 24 words was made up of 4 words from each of the 6 categories e.g army ranks, buildings, metals, etc. After the first set of 24 words, recall was about 70% accurate but the figure decrease after each new list added.
- Tulving and Psotka the participant a cued recall task, telling them what the categories were. Recall rose again to 70%.
- Suggesting that the initial inability to recall was due to retroactive interference.
88
Explanations of forgetting: Interference (A03s)
Supporting Strength of Methodology used by McGeoch and McDonald
- McGeoch and McDonald carried out their study using standardised tasks in a controlled setting. This can be and has been replicated many times.
- The nature of the methodology used by these psychologists and the replication of their findings suggests that their study is reliable and has internal validity.
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Explanations of forgetting: Interference (A03s)
Research support
- One strength is that there is research support. For example, Baddeley and Hitch found that the more rugby games a player played, the more games they forgot. This means that due to the large volume of rugby games, this increased the likelihood that some would be mixed up and forgotten.
- As a result, this shows how interference is an explanation to forgetting.
- This shows that the interference explanation has applications to everyday situations, thus increasing the ecological validity of the explanation.
90
Explanations of forgetting: Interference (A03s)
Accessibility vs. Availability in interference
Are interference effects just temporary?
- Another weakness of interference is it may not mean the memory is forgotten, may just be temporarily unavailable.
- For example, Ceraso found when a memory was forgotten due to interference, it could be remembered 24 hours after. This shows that interference causes a memory to be forgotten, however spontaneous recovery of the memory is sometimes possible.
- Therefore, it may be appropriate to say interference causes memory to be temporarily unavailable as opposed to be permanently forgotten
91
Explanations of forgetting: Interference (A03s)
Real world application in advertising (interference)
- Danaher- suggested that lots of ads in one day rather than over a week reduces interference from competitors ads.
- Found recall and recognition was impaired when pp exposed to 2 ads for competing brands within a week.
- Useful applications for society, as research into interference can help advertisers maximise the effectiveness of their campaigns and target their spending most effectively.
92
Explanations of forgetting: Interference (A03s)
Research support for proactive interference; meta-analysis.
Hint: Researcher begins with U
- Underwood(1957) conducted a metanalysis of research into proactive interference.
- Found that if participants studied 10 or more word lists, after 24 hours only remembered 20%
- Recall was over 70% if only one word list was learnt, which supports proactive interference as each list made it harder to learn subsequent (newer) lists.
- Increases the validity of proactive interference
93
Explanations of forgetting: Retrieval Failure (A03s)
Alternative theories for retrieval failure - context
- Carol and Lockhart proposed the levels of processing theory, they suggested that remembering is not actually to do with rehearsal, not to do with WM and more to do with how you take info in.
- They suggested that iconic encoding is processed at a shallow level and most likely to be forgotten whereas semantic info is encoded at a deeper level and less likely to be forgotten
94
Explanations of forgetting: Retrieval Failure (A03s)
Questioning the Context Effects
- Baddeley (1997) argues that the context effects are actually not very strong, especially in real life. Different contexts have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen.
- For example - it would be very 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 much forgetting because they environments are generally not different enough.
- This is a limitation because it means that the real-life applications of retrieval failure due to contextual cue don't actually explain much forgetting and thus has low external validity.
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Explanations of forgetting: Retrieval Failure (A03s)
Research support for context dependent forgetting
- Tulving & Pearlstone (1996) gave participants a written list of 48 words to learn organised into 12 categories of 4 words each. At the top of each category was a one word heading (e.g Fruit) followed by the names of 4 types of fruit.
- Participants were told that they wouldn't have to recall the headings, just the words in the categories.
- They were then split into 2 conditions, a free recall condition and a cued recall condition.
- Participants who were not given the headings as cues to facilitate recall (free recall condition) remembered fewer words than participants given the headings as cues (cued recall condition).
- This supports the lack of retrieval cues as an explanation for forgetting because when they did not have the category names as retrieval cues, they did not remember as much.
96
Explanations of forgetting: Interference (A03s)
Individual Differences (-)
- Individual differences can affect how much an individual is affected by proactive interference.
- Kane and Engle (2000) found that people with a greater working memory span (can remember more items) were less susceptible to this.
- The suggestion is that having a greater working memory span meant having greater resources to consciously control processing and counteract the effects of proactive interference.
97
Explanations of forgetting: Interference (A03s)
Research support for retroactive interference from Schmidt et al
- Schmidt wanted to assess the influence of retroactive interference upon the memory of street names learned in childhood
- He found that there was a positive association between the number of times a pp had moved house outside the original neighbourhood and the number of street names forgotten.
- This suggests that learning new patterns of street names when moving house makes it more difficult to recall older patterns of street names.
- Retroactive interference does seem able to explain forgetting in some real life situations.
98
Explanations of forgetting: Retrieval Failure (A03s)
Research support for contextual cues affecting memory in terms of education, and how does this have real-life applications to memory in school?
- Further research supporting influence of contextual cues on memory.
- Abernathy found that students performed better in tests which took place in the same room that learning took place and were administered by the same instructor who taught the material.
- This is a strength as it highlights the importance of contextual cues in aiding our memory to remember meaningful information in an exam, thus validating the retrieval failure theory.
99
Research support for State-Dependent Forgetting
Hint: Drunk!
Overton asked participants to learn material when they were either drunk or sober and then tested them on this information when they were drunk or sober.
It was found that recall was worse in a different internal state from which info was learnt compared to matching internal state when info was learnt.
This suggests that being the same state for both learning and recall aids recall by providing state dependent cues.
100
Practical Applications in Cognitive Interview
Explanations of forgetting: Retrieval Failure (A03s)
For example, in the cognitive interview, police use research about cue-dependent forgetting to help witnesses remember more accurate details about an events by reconstructing the scene to provide cues such as emotion which could trigger a witnesses memory that may have been forgotten.
Thus our understanding of cue dependent forgetting has had a positive impact on policing, and has benefitted society positively as it has been used to punish offenders accordingly
101
Economic Implications due to increasing witness accuracy
Explanations of forgetting: Retrieval Failure (A03s)
Increasing witness accuracy has a positive impact on economy as there is a greater chance that police prosecute the right criminal.
This results in a reduction of wasted money on things such as wrongful arrests and court hearings which ultimately saves the criminal justice system money, thus research into state-dependent forgetting seems to have positive economic implications.
102
Research suggests that context effects may depend on the type of memory being tested...
Explanations of forgetting: Retrieval Failure (A03s)
Godden and Baddeley repeated their underwater experiment, and asked whether participants recognised a word read to them rather than retrieving the word for themselves.
Under these circumstances, there had been no context-dependent effect and performance was the same across all four conditions,
This therefore shows that retrieval failure may be a limited explanation for forgetting because it only applies when a person has to recall information for themselves rather than recognise it.
103
Why are there problems with the Encoding Specificity Principle?
Explanations of forgetting: Retrieval Failure (A03s)
When a cue produces successful recall of a word, we assume that the cue must have been present at the time or learning and when it does not result in successful recall then we assume that the cue was not encoded/present at the time of learning.
Well, there is no way to actually establish whether the cue has really been encoded.
This means that the encoding specificity principle isn't scientifically testable/provable & we can't be sure forgetting is due to retrieval failure
104
Case Study - British Musician (Clive Wearing) & Additional Support
Types of Long-Term Memory (A03s)
(2)
- Provides evidence that the LTM memory store is not unitary and is instead a multi-store.
- This is because he can not remember the some key events in his life e.g wedding day, or general knowledge like what the queen looks like. However he is still able to play the piano, suggesting that his procedural memory is still working.
- Additional support comes from Hodges and Patterson (2007) study of Alzheimer patients who retain the ability to form new episodic memories but not semantic memories - seems to be a separation between the two types of memory.
105
Neuroimaging Evidence
Types of Long-Term Memory (A03s)
- Brain scan studies have found that different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain.
- For example, in Tulving et al's research, they got their participants to perform various memory tasks during a PET scan.
- They found that episodic memory (left) and semantic memory (right) are located in the prefrontal cortex on opposite sides.
- This demonstrates that there is a physical difference between the memory stores.
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How does the methodology used in Tulving's theory, strengthen his theory?
Types of Long-Term Memory (A03s)
Tulving carried out a scientific study, using standardised tasks in a controlled setting, (a laboratory / using PET scanners).
This can be and has been replicated many times.
This scientific nature of the method used by Tulving and the replication of his findings suggests that his study and has internal validity with scientific rigor and objectivity.
107
Conflicting evidence of types of LTM and brain areas
Types of Long-Term Memory (A03s)
Buckner and Petersen reviewed research findings and concluded that semantic memory is located in the left prefrontal cortex and episodic in the right prefrontal cortex.
But other studies (Tulving et al) have found that semantic memory was associated with the right prefrontal cortex and the reverse for episodic memory.
This challenges any neurophysiological evidence to support types of LTM memory as there is poor agreement on where each type of LTM might be located.
108
Cohen and Squire argue otherwise...
Types of Long-Term Memory (A03s)
- They believe that there are two long term memory stores rather than three.
- They admit that episodic and semantic memory are very similar.
- They suggest that because both stores require a conscious effort to recall, they should be classed as one store declarative memory, and procedural memory should be known as non-declarative memory.
109
Disadvantages of case studies
Types of Long-Term Memory (A03s)
- The Clive wearing could be criticised for having a lack of control over other extraneous variables during their tests, there are also methodological criticisms as the results or theory behind their memory loss may not be representative of others so non-generalisable.
110
Priming and a fourth kind of LTM
Types of Long-Term Memory (A03s)
- The possibility that other types of LTM may exist raises questions about existing theories.
- Priming describes how implicit memories influence the responses a person makes to a stimulus.
- If a person is given a list of words, inc 'yellow' and later asked to name a fruit , they are more likely to say 'banana'.
- Research has shown that priming is controlled by a brain system separate from the temporal system that supports explicit memory.
- This has led to the suggestion of a fourth type of LTM related to priming.
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Why is Priming a good thing?
Types of Long-Term Memory (A03s)
- Priming exposes students to new material in a way that influences their learning behavior later, without them necessarily being aware.
- Provides a framework for them to better understand new information, and to see the connections between previous knowledge and new instruction.
- Has useful applications in schooling through pre-reading; helping students consolidate information into LTM.
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Real life applications
Types of Long-Term Memory (A03s)
Being able to identify different aspects of LTM allows psychologists to develop specific treatments in real life to aid others.
For example, research has found that loss in old age is specific to episodic memory- it is harder to recall memories of recent experiences although past episodic memories are intact.
This research allowed Belleville et al to devise an intervention for older people targeting episodic memory, which improved their memory compared to a control group.
This shows that distinguishing between, types of LTM enables specific treatments to be developed to improve people's lives such as old people.
