Memory

• Define capacity.


  a measure of the amount of information that can be stored in memory
• Define coding.


  refers to the way that information is modified so it can be stored in memory, with information stored in the form of visual, acoustic, or semantic codes
• Define duration.


  this is a measure of how long a memory can be stored before it is no longer available
• Describe Peterson and Peterson’s study on STM duration.

  involved participants counting down in threes from a three-digit number during different retention periods, then recalling a nonsense consonant triad
• Describe Baddeley’s study on coding in LTM and STM.

  • Baddeley (1966) gave participants word lists to learn- one semantically similar, acoustically different, and one semantically different, acoustically similar

  • Participants struggled short-term with list 2, and long-term with list 1

  • Baddeley concluded that LTM is encoded semantically and STM acoustically
• Define 'Proactive Interference' 


  occurs when past learning interferes with attempts to learn something new
• Describe Goodwin’s study on state-dependent forgetting.

  Goodwin's study on state-dependent forgetting found that recall was best when participants were in the same state during encoding and recall
• Briefly explain the case of HM.

  Scoville and Milner's study on a patient who had his hippocampus removed, leading to an inability to form new long-term memories but retaining short-term memories
• Describe Abernathy’s study on context dependent forgetting.

  showed that recall was best when tested in the usual room by the usual instructor
• List the components of the Cognitive Interview.

  • Mental reinstatement of events - done to provide contextual and emotional cues that make memories more accessible.

  • Report everything - even irrelevant information, may trigger the recall of another one, or allow small pieces of information to be pieced together.

  • Change the order - done to remove any schemas that may impact EWT.

  • Change perspective - done again to minimise effects of schemas.
• Describe Johnson and Scott’s study on the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT.

  Participants heard an argument and then saw a man run past holding a grease covered pen (low anxiety) or knife covered in blood (high anxiety).

  In the low anxiety situation identification of the man was 49% accurate but only 33% in the high anxiety scenario.
• List the two types of declarative memory

  • semantic memory

  • episodic memory
• Define Procedural Memory 


  This is memory that is concerned with knowing how to do things, becoming automatic through repetition like riding a bike or driving a car
• Who conducted research on the effects of misleading information on EWT.

  Loftus and Palmer in 1974
• Describe research related to retrieval failure.

  • Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) gave participants a list of 48 words from 12 different categories.

  • recall was 40% accurate without retrieval cues.

  • recall was 60% accurate when the category was given as a retrieval cue.
• Define ‘cues’ in regards to memory.

  'Cues' in memory are triggers that help recall, such as the category a word belonged to or the room where the information was learned
• Define semantic memory.


  Memory that is concerned with knowledge of facts, like the capital city of a country
• Define episodic memory.


  memory that is concerned with the knowledge of life events, such as the first day of school
• Define eyewitness testimony 


  refers to a person's ability to remember events they have witnessed, often to testify in court or identify a perpetrator
• Define 'Retroactive Interference'

  this refers to when current attempts at learning interfere with the recollection of past learning
• What is the Central executive


  An important feature of the working memory model that is poorly understood, but is said to direct information to the appropriate slave systems in the model.
• What is the Episodic buffer


  A component of the working memory model that puts information from all the other components to make a combined, sensible memory.
• What are Leading questions


  • A type of question which when asked, encourages a certain answer.

  • e.g “Was the perpetrator black?” being asked instead of the question “What ethnicity was the perpetrator?”
• What is Long term memory


  A type of memory storage that has potentially unlimited storage, in which we hold different kinds of memories for potentially unlimited time.
• What is the Phonological loop


  A component of the working memory model that holds information regarding words, composed of words we repeat in a loop to ourselves and perceiving words we hear for a short duration of time.
• What is the Sensory register


  A place that holds information gathered through your senses for a very short amount of time, perceiving information before it is stored or processed by any other memory store.
• What is Short term memory


  A type of memory store lasting about 30 seconds that can hold 5-9 pieces of information. Information from here can be moved into long-term memory via rehearsal.
• What is the Visuo-spatial sketchpad


  A component of the working memory model in which visual and spatial information is stored for a short amount of time.