Memory- section B Flashcards

Question

Who proposed the multi-store model? and what year?

Answer 1

- Atkinson and Shiffrin - 1968

Answer 2

- it is an explanation of memory based on 3 seperate memory stores, and how info is transferred between these stores. - it comprises of sensory memory, short-term and long-term memory.

Answer 3

maintenance rehearsal __ \ / Sensory \ / memory ---------->short term ------------> LTM SM memory (STM) | |__> retrieval

Answer 4

- All stimuli from environemt eg. sound of someone talking, smell of food is passed into sensory memory register. - capacity of these registers is very large but duration = limited

Answer 5

- Transfer from SM to STM - most of info is lost as it receives no attention. if attention is focused on one of sensory stores, info is passed to STM.

Answer 6

- STM has limited capacity store of temporary duration - coding=acoustic - duration = about 18 seconds unless info is rehearsed - capacity = between 5 and 9 (7 +/- 2) items before some forgetting occur.

Answer 7

- Transfer from STM to LTM: maintanence rehearsal occurs when we repeat material to ourselves. - We can keep info in STM as long as we rehearse it. -Eventually rehearsal can lead to info being transferred from STM to LTM.

Answer 8

-LTM= permanent memory store - coding = mostly semantic - duration = potentially up to a lifetime - capacity = potentially unlimited

Answer 9

- info stored in LTM can be returned to STM by process of retrieval , where it becomes available for use.

Answer 10

- supporting evidence for the MSM model- controlled lab experiments (eg.Peterson and Peterson 1959) support the existence of separate short and long term stores. Studies using brain scanning techniques have demonstrated a difference between STM and LTM. Beardsley (1997) found that the prefrontal cortex is active during STM but not LTM tasks. Squire et al (1992) found that hippocampus is acitve on LTM tasks but not STM tasks. This supports idea of seperate long term and short term store which is basis of MSM. - Support from case studies - studies of brain-damaged individuals show that different brain areas are involved in STM and LTM. HMs brain damage was caused by an operation to removed both hippocampus. He could not form new LTMs although he could remember things from before surgery (Scoville and Milner 1957) - provides support for the MSM as HM was unable to transfer info from STM to LTM but was able to retrieve memories from before surgery.

Answer 11

- The MSM is overly simplistic - The MSM proposes that the STM and LTM are single stores, but evidence does not support this. The WMM (Baddeley and Hitch 1974) suggests that STM is divided into a number of qualitatively different stores. Research has also found different types of LTM for eg. episodic, procedural and semantic memory. Suggests that MSM provides simplistic model of memory and does not take into account different types of STM and LTM.

Answer 12

1. Episodic memory - a long term memory store for our personal events. It includes memories of when the events occurred and of the people, objects, places and behaviours involved. Memories from this store have to be retrieved consciously and with effort. 2. Semantic memory - a long term memory store for our knowledge of the world. This includes facts and our knowledge of what words and concepts mean. These memories usually need to be recalled deliberately. 3. Procedural memory - a long term memory store for our knowledge of how to do things. This includes our memories of learned skills. We usually recall these memories without making a conscious or deliberate effort.

Answer 13

Tulving - 1985

Answer 14

stores events (episodes) from our lives - this store has been linked to a diary of daily personal experiences eg. your most recent visit to the dentist. They are time- stamped - you remember when they happened and how they relate in time. Involve several elements - people, places, objects and behaviours are woven into one memory - you have to make conscious effort to recall them.

Answer 15

stores our knowledge of the world - like a combination of an encyclopaedia ad dictionary eg. includes knowledge of such things as how to apply to uni, taste of orange. Not time stamped eg. we don't remember when we first ate orange. Less personal and more about facts/knowledge of world.

Answer 16

These memories of how we do things. eg riding a bike, playing table tennis. Recall occurs without awareness or effort . These skills/actions become automatic with practice. Explaining step by step procedure = hard because you do it without conscious recall.

Answer 17

- case study evidence of different types of LTM- clinical studies of amnesia eg. Clive Wearing showed both had difficulty recalling events that had happened to them in their past ( episodic memory ). But their semantic memory were relatively unaffected.Procedural memories were also intact (Clive playing piano) supports that there are different memory stores in LTM because one store can be damaged and other stores = unaffected. - helping people with memory problems - memory loss in old age is specific to episodic memory - harder to recall memories of recent experiences although past episodic memories are intact. Belleville et al. (2006) devised 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.

Answer 18

- problem with evidence from other patients with brain damage - a criticism of research in this area is the reliance on patients with brain damage. It is difficult to conclude from patients as HM the exact parts of the brain that are affected until after the patient has died. Also, damage to a particular area of the brain does not mean that this area is responsible for a particular behaviour. This means that we cannot establish a causal relationship between a particular brain region and type of LTM.

Answer 19

a representation of short-term memory. The model acts as an explanation of the memory used when working on a task. Each store/component is qualitatively different.

Answer 20

Bradley and Hitch (1974)

Answer 21

- central executive - phonological loop - visuospatial sketchpad - episodic buffer

Answer 22

MAIN PURPOSE: supervisory role - monitors incoming data, directs attention and allocates subsystems to task. CAPACITY: very limited storage capacity. CODING: can code any type of info (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell)

Answer 23

MAIN PURPOSE: Deals with auditory info and preserves the order in which info arrives. Phonological loop divided into: phonological store: stores all words you hear. Articulatory process: allows for maintenance rehearsal- repeating sounds to keep them in WM while they are needed. CAPACITY: believed to be 2 seconds worth of info. CODING: acoustic.

Answer 24

MAIN PURPOSE: subdivided the USS into: - visual cache - store visual data - inner scribe - which records the arrangement of objects in the visual field. CAPACITY: limited capacity - about 3/4 objects. CODING: visual and/ or spatial info when required.

Answer 25

MAIN PURPOSE: The general store for both visual and acoustic info. It integrates info from central execusive phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad - sends info to LTM. CAPACITY: limited of about 4 chunks CODING: codes info from all senses

Answer 26

- WMM has support from clinical evidence - eg. For example, Shallice and Warrington (1970) Studied patient KF who had a brain injury. His STM for auditory information was poor (damaged PL) but he Could process visual information normally (intact VSS). This supports the WMM view that there are separate visual and acoustic memory stores. - Dual task performance studies support the VSS Baddeley et al.s (1975) participants found it harder to carry out two visual tasks at the same time than do a verbal and a visual task together. (Same for two verbal tasks.) This is because both visual tasks compete for the same subsystem (VSS). There is no competition with a verbal and visual task. Therefore, there must be a separate subsystem that processes visual input (VSS) and also a separate system for verbal processes (PL).

Answer 27

- Problems with using case studies There are problems with using evidence from individuals with brain damage. Some supporting evidence for the WMM comes from case studies of individuals (such as KF) with serious brain damage. However, such individuals may have difficulty in paying attention and so simply underperform on certain tasks. This is an important issue because the results of case studies are difficult, if not impossible, to generalise to the general population.

Answer 28

1. Interference 2. retrieval practice

Answer 29

Forgetting because one memory blocks another, causing one or both memories to be distorted or forgotten. This is most likely to occur when two memories are similar.

Answer 30

- When two pieces of information disrupt each other. - Forgetting occurs in LTM because we can't get access to memories even though they are available.

Answer 31

1. Proactive interference 2. Retroactive interference

Answer 32

Old information interferes with new - eg. teacher learns many names in the past and can't remember names of their current class.

Answer 33

New info interferes with old - eg. teacher learns many new names this year and can't remember names of previous students

Answer 34

- McGeoch and McDonald (1931) - Procedure: participants asked to learn a list of words to 100% accuracy. Then they were given new list to learn. The new material varied in the degree to which it was similar to the old. Group 1: synonyms - words had same meanings as the originals. Group 2: antonyms - words had opposite meanings to the originals. Group 3: unrelated - words unrelated to the original ones. Group 4: Consonant syllables. Group 5: three-digit numbers. Group 6: no new list - participants just rested (control condition). - Findings/conclusions: Performance depended on the nature of the second list. - The most similar material (synonyms) produced the worst recall. - Showed that interference is strongest when memories are similar.

Answer 35

- Some support for interference in real-world situations - Baddeley and Hitch (1977) asked rugby players to recall the names of teams they had played against during a rugby season. Players did not play the same number of games (injuries). Those who played most (more interference) had poorest recall. This shows that interference operates in some everyday situations, increasing the validity of the theory. -Real-world application to advertising. There are interference effects when people are exposed too advertisements from competing brands. Danaher et al (2008) found that both recall and recognition of an advertisers message were impaired when participants were exposed to two adverts for competing brands in the same week. This interference effect was minimised by running multiple exposures to an advert on one day rather than spread over a week. This suggests that insights from interference research can enhance the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

Answer 36

- Interference only explains some instances of forgetting A criticism is that, although interference effects do occur in everyday life, they do not occur that often. For example, rather special conditions are required for interference to lead to forgetting, as the two memories need to be quite similar. Therefore, interference is considered a relatively unimportant explanation of everyday forgetting. This means that other explanations are needed for a complete understanding of forgetting.

Answer 37

A form of forgetting. It occurs when we don't have the necessary cues to access memory. The memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided.

Answer 38

A 'trigger' of information that allows us to access a memory. indirect cues may be external (environment context) or internal (mood or degree of drunkeness).

Answer 39

- Tulving (1983) discovered what he called the encoding specificity principle (ESP) that states that a cue has to be both present at encoding and present at retrieval for remembering to take place. If cues available are different at encoding and retrieval there will be some forgetting.

Answer 40

-Recall of knowledge or episodes is greater when the environmental context present during learning and retrieval are the same. When the context is different, it is more difficult to retrieve information.

Answer 41

Divers learned a word list either on land or underwater and were then recall was tested on either land or underwater.

Answer 42

The highest recall was when the initial context matched the recall environment. It was concluded that the external cues available at learning were different from the ones available at recall and this led to retrieval failure.

Answer 43

Recall of knowledge is greater when an individual's physical or psychological state is similar at encoding and retrieval. When these states are different, it is more difficult to retrieve information.

Answer 44

Goodwin et al. asked male volunteer participants to remember a list or words when either drunk or sober and then recall the list after 24 hours when either drunk or sober again.

Answer 45

Recall was best when in the same state at both times. Information learned when drunk is more available when drunk later on. Information learned sober is more available when sober later on. Supports state-dependent forgetting.

Answer 46

- There is research support for the importance of cues. Students often struggle to recall information in exams, experiencing a 'retrieval failure' of learned information. Gallagher (2017) tested whether including information from class lectures in test items as retrieval cues enhanced student performance on tests. Performance on identical test items with and without these cues showed that the ‘included cues’ group recalled significantly more than the no cues group. These results suggest that the selective use of retrieval cues on tests can help students overcome retrieval failure. - Retrieval cues have real-world application. People often go to another room to get an item but forget what they wanted, but they remember again when they return to the room they came from. When we have trouble remembering something, it is probably worth making the effort to recall the environment in which you learned it first (Context-dependent Forgetting). This shows how research can remind us of strategies we use in the real world to improve our recall.

Answer 47

Retrieval cues do not always work Although there is evidence to suggest that retrieval cues prevent forgetting, this is not always the case. In most of the research on retrieval cues, participants must learn word lists. However, everyday learning is far more complex. For example, learning about the working memory model requires complex associations that are not easily triggered by a single cue. This suggests that retrieval cues are unable to explain all types of learning and forgetting.

Answer 48

- misleading information - anxiety

Answer 49

The evidence provided in court by a person who has witnessed a crime, with a view to identify the perpetrator of the crime.

Answer 50

1. Leading questions 2. Post-event discussion

Answer 51

- Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Answer 52

procedure: - Forty-five students were shown seven films of different traffic accidents. After each film the participants were given a questionnaire which asked them to describe the accident and then answer a series of specific questions about it. There was one critical question: 'About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’ - One group of participants was given this question. The other four groups were given the verbs; smashed, collided, bumped or contacted in place of the word hit. This critical question was a leading question because it suggested the answer that a participant might give. Findings: The findings are shown in the table on the right, which demonstrate that leading questions affect the response given by participants. (slide 10 -lesson 7)

Answer 53

Procedure: - The leading question may bias a participant's response or may actually cause information to be altered before it is stored. To test this, a new set of participants was divided into three groups and shown a film of a car accident lasting 1 minute, and again asked questions about speed. - The participants were then asked to return one week later when they were asked a series of 10 questions about the accident, including another critical question, ‘Did you see any broken glass?’. There was no broken glass in the film but, presumably, those who thought the car was travelling faster might be more likely to think that there would be broken glass. Findings: The findings show that the leading question did change the actual memory a participant had for the event. (slide 13 on lesson 7)

Answer 54

Response-bias explanation: Wording of a question has no enduring effect on an eyewitness's memory of an event, but influences the kind of answer given. Substitution explanation: Wording of a question does affect eyewitness memory, it interferes with the original memory, distorting its accuracy.

Answer 55

Gabbert et al - 2003

Answer 56

Procedure: Fiona Gabbert et al. (2003) studied participants in pairs. Each participant watched a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view. This meant that each participant could see elements in the event that the other could not. For example, only one of the participants could see the title of a book being carried by a young woman. Both participants then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall. Findings: The researchers found that 71% of the participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up in the discussion. The corresponding figure in a control group, where there was no discussion, was 0%. This was evidence of memory conformity.

Answer 57

One explanation is memory contamination. When co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other, their eyewitness testimonies may become altered or distorted. This is because they combine (misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories. Another explanation is memory conformity. Gabbert et al. concluded that witnesses often go along with each other, either to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong. Unlike with memory contamination, the actual memory is unchanged.

Answer 58

-There is plenty of research evidence. Research has shown that misleading information can create false memories. Braun et al (2002) used misleading advertising material for Disneyland Containing information about Bugs Bunny (a Warner character, not Disney) Participants incorporated it into their original memories and remembered meeting Bugs Bunny during their visit to Disneyland. This shows how powerful misleading information can be in creating false memories. -There are real-world applications. EWT research has important implications for the criminal justice system, which relies on eyewitness identification for prosecution. Recent DNA exoneration cases have shown that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest single factor contributing to the conviction of innocent people (Wells and Olson, 2003). This suggests that research can help ensure that innocent people are not convicted of crimes on the basis of faulty eyewitness evidence.

Answer 59

-Eyewitness testimony (EWT) in real life may be different. Loftus’ research has been criticised for lacking ecological validity. It is argued that laboratory experiments in EWT do not represent real-life crimes/accidents because participants may not take the questions in an experiment seriously as they would in a real crime/accident. This suggests that misleading information may have less influence on real-life EWT than Loftus research suggests.

Answer 60

- Johnson and Scott - 1976

Answer 61

Procedure: Participants sat in a waiting room believing they were going to take part in a lab study. * Low-anxiety condition: participants heard a casual conversation and then saw a man walk through the waiting room carrying a pen with grease on his hands. * High-anxiety condition: a heated argument was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A man then walked through the room holding a knife covered in blood (creates anxiety and 'weapon focus’). Participants were later asked to pick the man from a set of 50 photographs. Findings: 49% of participants in the low-anxiety condition and 33% of high- anxiety participants were able to identify the man. Conclusions: The tunnel theory of memory argues that the presence of a weapon caused attention to be drawn towards the weapon itself and away from other things such as the person's face.

Answer 62

- Yuille and Cutshall - 1986

Answer 63

Procedure: In an actual crime a gun-shop owner shot a thief dead. There were 21 witnesses, 13 agreed to participate in the study. Participants were interviewed 4-5 months after the incident. The information recalled was compared to the police interviews at the time of the shooting. Witnesses rated how stressed they felt at the time of the incident. Findings: Witnesses were very accurate in what they recalled and there was little change after 5 months. Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (about 88% compared to 75% for the less-stressed group) Conclusion: Anxiety does not appear to reduce the accuracy of EWT for a real-world event and may even enhance it.

Answer 64

Deffenbacher (1983) reviewed 21 studies of EWT with contradictory findings on the effects of anxiety on recall. He suggested the Yerkes-Dodson effect could explain this - both low and high levels of anxiety produce poor recall whereas optimum levels can lead to very good recall. (slide 19 on lesson 9)

Answer 65

Anxiety may not be relevant to weapon focus. Johnson and Scott's participants may have focused on the weapon not because they were anxious but because they were surprised. Pickel (1998) found accuracy in identifying the 'criminal’ was poorest when the object in their hand was unexpected e.g. raw chicken and a gun in a hairdressers (both unusual). This suggests the weapons effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat and so tells us nothing about the specific effects of anxiety on recall.

Answer 66

Supporting evidence for negative effects. Valentine and Mesout (2009) used heart rate (objective measure) to divide visitors to the London Dungeon's Labyrinth into low- and high-anxiety groups. High-anxiety participants were less accurate than low-anxiety in describing and identifying a target person. This supports the claim that anxiety has a negative effect on immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event. supporting evidence for positive effects. Christianson and Hübinette (1993) interviewed actual witnesses to bank robberies some were direct victims (high anxiety) and others were bystanders (less anxiety). They found more than 75% accurate recall across all witnesses. Direct victims (most anxious) were even more accurate. This suggests that anxiety does not affect the accuracy of eyewitness recall and may even enhance it.

Answer 67

- Cognitive interview

Answer 68

a method of interviewing eyewitnesses to help them retrieve more accurate memories. It uses four main techniques, all based on well-established psychological knowledge of human memory: reinstate the context, report everything, reverse the order and change the perspective.

Answer 69

- Fisher and Geiselman - 1992 They claimed that EWT could be improved if the police use techniques based on psychological insights into how memory works.

Answer 70

1. Reinstate the context - witness returns to original crime scene 'in their mind' and imagines the environment (eg. weather, what they could see and their emotions - how they felt). This is based on concept of context dependent forgetting (retrieval failure) cues from context may trigger info. 2. Report everything - witnesses are encouraged to include every detail- even if witness not confident about it. Seemingly trivial details could be more important and may trigger other memories. 3. Reverse the order - events recalled in different order- from end to beginning/middle to beginning. Prevents people basing descriptions on expectation. Also prevents dishonesty. 4. Change the perspective - witness recall the incident from other peoples perspectives. How it would have appeared to another witness. Prevents influence of expectations and schema (packages of info developed through experience) on recall.

Answer 71

- Research support for the effectiveness of the Cl. A meta-analysis by Köhnken et al. (1999) combined data from 55 studies comparing CI (and ECI) with the standard police interview. The Cl produced an average of 41% more correct information than the standard interview. Only four studies showed no difference. This shows that the Cl is effective in helping witnesses recall information that is available but not accessible.

Answer 72

- CI is that it is time-consuming Police are reluctant to use the Cl because it takes more time than the standard police interview (e.g. to establish rapport and allow the witness to relax). The Cl also requires special training but many forces do not have the resources to provide more thana few hours training (Kebbell and Wagstaff 1997). This suggests that the complete Cl is not realistic for police officers to use and it might be better (as suggested above) to focus on just a few key elements. - Quantity rather than quality of recall. A criticism of the cognitive interview is that effectiveness is often measured in terms of quantity of information recalled rather than quality. Köhnken et al. not only found an increase in the amount of correct information generated, but also an increase in the amount of incorrect information (false positives). This means that the results of this procedure need to be treated with caution, as it does not necessarily guarantee accuracy.

Memory- section B Flashcards

(96 cards)