Memory

• coding in stm- Baddeley


  he gave a list of words to 4 groups of participants to remember., acoustically similar (cat/cab) and semantically similar(big/large) and found stm had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words whereas ltm had difficulty remembering semantically similar
• capacity of stm- Miller


  he made observations of everyday practice and noted how things come in 7s like 7 days of the week. he called this "the magic number" and the span of the stm is about 7 plus or minus 2 but can be improved by chunking (grouping digits into units).
• duration of the stm- Peterson


  used 24 students over 8 trials and given a consonant syllable and a 3 digit number to count back from. had to recall syllable after retention interval. found at 3seconds 80% correct and at 18s only 3% correct which suggests the stm is about 18s
• duration of ltm- Badrick et al

  392 american participants aged 17-74 had to put a name to a face of 50 yearbook photos. tested 15 years later where recall was 90% correct whereas 48 years later and about 70% accurate in photo recognition
• pro-active interference by Underwood


  found if participants memorised 10+ lists after 24hours they only remember 20% but 70% if just learnt
• retro-active interference by muller et al


  found performance was less good if had a task between initial task as had ptts have lists to learn for 6mins and a retention interval
• effects of similarities and interference by McDonald and McGeoch 


  6 groups given a different list to learn and performance was judged based on the nature of the second list. similar material was recalled the worst
• Baddeley and Hitch on Interference


  when rugby played recalled the names of the teams they had played against found those who played more forgot the most teams
• retrieval failure studies

  Godden and Baddeley- scuba diver learnt a set of words on land or underwater in 4 conditions. found matching conditions had best recall

  Goodwin et al- had males recall list in drunk or sober state and found recall in the same state was the best

  supportive evidence by Tulving et al had ptts learn 48 words that belonged to 12 categories. free recall was 40% correct and cues had 60% correct recall
• EWT-leading questions by Loftus and Palmer

  45 participants watched car accident clips and answered questions about the speed. 5 groups all given a different verb and found "contacted" estimated at 31.8mph whereas "smashed" had 40.5mph.

  There 2nd study- 3 groups shown a 1 minute clip of a car accident and returned a week later to be asked questions and found questions changed memory
• EWT- post event discussion By Gabbert et al 


  put participants in pairs and told them they watched the same clip but watched different videos of the same event. then participants discussed what they saw in the video. found that 71% of participants recalled aspects of events they didn't see.

  LaRooy et al said each time a witness is interviewed, comments from the interviewer may be incorporated into recall to alter memory
• EWT- anxiety has negative effects on anxiety

  Johnson and Scott asked participants to sit in a waiting room while overehearing an argument then saw a man run past with a pen covered in greese or knife in blood. participants asked to identify the man using photos. found mean accuracy in pen condition was 49% and in knife was 33%
• EWT- anxiety has positive effects on accuracy

  Yuille and Cutshall- there was a real life crime in a gun shop and the owner shot a thief. 13 witnesses interviewed 4/5months after by the police and had to rate how stressed they felt at the time. found those with the highest stress had the most accurate at 88% compared to 75%
• the cognitive interview by Giesleman 


  he had participants watch a simulated crime then interviewed them 48 hours later and found those interviewed using cognitive interview recalled 41% more than standard interview at 29.4%
• what is the working memory model

  its an explanation of how the stm is organised and how it functions. Baddeley and Hitch felt stm was not unitary but multiple stores. it explains memories relating to working on tasks that require immediate memory formation.
• central executive


  this manages attention, and controls information from the two "slave stores". it has very limited capacity
• the phonological loop


  deals with auditory information (spoken and written material) and the order of information.
• phonological loop is split up into...

  phonological store hold the words that we hear

  articulatory processor allows us to repeat verbal information in a loop to allow for maintence rehearsal
• the visuo-spatial sketchpad is...

  stores and processes information in a visual or spatial form. The visuospatial sketchpad is used for navigation.
• visuo-spatial sketchpad is split up into...

  visual cache- stores visual data

  inner scribe- record the arrangements of visual objects
• episodic buffer


  The episodic buffer acts as a “backup” store which communicates with both long-term memory and the components of working memory.
• types of long term memory

  episodic- personal events: time stamped and declarative

  semantic- knowledge about the world, universally known: declarative

  procedural- how to do things
• study to support different types of ltm memory

  HM study as his ability to form new ltm was affected by the removal of the hippocampus but still had pre-existing ltm. after still only formed procedural memories as learnt mirror drawing but had no recall of learning that memory
• Interference as an explanation for forgetting

  it is when one memory disrupts the ability to recall another memory and this is most likely to occur when they have 2 similarities
• proactive interference


  old memories interfere with the new memories. for example, struggling to remember new phone number because mind automatically remebers old number.
• retroactive interference


  new memories interfere with the old memories. for example, learning all new co-workers names then bumping into an old co-worker and incorrectly addressing them
• retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting

  it occurs due to the absence of cues. when information is initially placed in the memory with its associated cues, if the cues are not available neither is the memory
• Tulving's encoding specificality principle


  he suggested cues help retrieval, if the same cues are present at encoding and at retrieval then recall occurs. if cue doesn't produce a successful recall we assume the code wasn't encoded at the time of learning.
• context-dependant forgetting

  when retrieval is dependant on external/environmental cues

  Godden and Baddeley scuba divers study
• state-dependant forgetting


  retrieval is dependant on internal cues like state of mind at the time

  Goodwin et al study on drunk vs sober
• EWT- misleading information and leading questions

  leading questions may affect what you remember about an event

  Loftus and Palmer estimated speed and verbs study
• EWT- misleading information and post event discussion

  it is memory contamination when co-witnesses discuss and mix information. memory conformity when go along to win social approval.

  Gabbert et al study on discussing a clip

  LaRooy et al study on influence of interviewer
• EWT- anxiety


  an unpleasant emotional state accompanied by physiological arousal

  Johnson and Scott on negative effects of accuracy of EWT

  Yuille and Cutshall on positive effects of accuracy of EWT
• Improving EWT with the cognitive interview

  a procedure designed for police interviews to recreate original context of the crime in order to increase accessibility of stored information. 4 components of this is...

  • mental reinstatement of original context
  • report everything
  • change order
  • change perspective