memory

• retroactive interference: where newer memories interfere with older memories
• proactive interference: where older memories interfere with new memories
• what does PORN stand for?

  Proactive Old Retroactive New
• Research to support retroactive/proactive interference: Underwood gave ppts two sets of nonsense trigrams, one after the other. Ppts were asked to recall the second list however most recalled the 1st list
• Retrieval failure due to absence of cues: Cues from the original time of encoding are not present during retrieval
• Context cues: cues that were within the environment during encoding
• State cues: cues that were within the person e.g. emotions during the time of encoding
• Organisational cues: cues that were used to help us arrange the information, e.g. a mnemonic
• Research to support retrieval failure due to absence of cues: Baker et al (1996) found that participants who were given a cue to remember a list of words were better at recalling the words than those who were not given a cue (cue being chewing gum)
• Leading Question: a question which by the way it's phrased suggests a certain answer
• Post event discussion: participants discuss their thoughts and feelings about the event afterwards and this alters their memory of the event
• factors in post event discussion: retroactive interference, conformity and repeat interviewing
• The capacity of short term memory is 7+/-2
• The duration of short term memory is 18-30 seconds
• Jacobs had participants remember an increasing number of letters or numbers and found most ppts could remember 5-9 items
• Peterson + Peterson had participants remember a set of nonsense trigrams for a varying amount of time before asking them to recall them. 80% of participants correctly recalled them after 3s compared to 10% after 18s
• Chunking is grouping together pieces of info into meaningful units so that they are easier to process and retain
• Miller's magic number is 7 plus or minus two because we can hold between 5 and 9 chunks of information at any one time
• Cognitive psychologists have identified three types of long term memories - episodic, semantic and procedural
• Semantic memory refers to general knowledge about the world around us
• Episodic memory refers to the ability to recollect past events from our own personal experience
• Procedural memory refers to how we do things (procedures) such as riding a bike or playing tennis
• The hippocampus plays a key role in encoding new memories and consolidating them into LTM
• Retrieval cues are stimuli which prompt recall of previously learned material
• Multi-Store Memory Model can be divided into sensory register, short-term memory and long-term memory
• Long term memory stores information over an extended period of time
• Short term memory holds information for up to 20 seconds if not rehearsed