to what extent is memory affected by ID

• P1- AO1

  • ID such as culture can affect memory.
  • Sebastian & Hernandez-Gil believed that culture affected memory and digit span when they compared Spanish school children to British school children using cross-cultural research.
  • Researchers thought this was because of the higher number of syllables in the words for numbers in Spanish.
• P1- AO1

  • Development of schemas is affected by upbringing and nurture, schemas represent stereotypes beliefs about objects or events.
  • This would suggest that reconstructive memory is affected by cultural variations.
  • E.g. War of the Ghosts folk tale became Native American tribes, boats became oars and hunting for seals became fishing.
• P1- AO3 strength

  • Sebastian & Hernandez-Gil used strict controls e.g. excluding children with hearing, reading or language impairments which could have affected results.
  • Increases internal validity of the experiment providing an ideal method to compare Spanish and British children in terms of digit span.
• P1- AO3 weakness

  • Bartlett only tested schemas using participants at Cambridge university meaning that they are all from similar cultural backgrounds.
  • Using people with similar backgrounds does not make the findings generalisable to other cultural groups, so it is ethnocentric.
• P2- AO1

  • ID exist with reference to autobiographical or episodic memory which is individual to the person as it is a collection of memories of their own life.
  • As an individual, we will have unique memories about people, events, times and places that relate to us.
• P2- AO1

  • ID in types of brain damage individuals have.
  • Some people may have damage from birth, others may be due to accidents or illness.
  • Area of the brain affected will cause different cognitive abilities or disabilities.
  • E.g. damage to temporal lobes will reduce semantic memory.
• P2- AO3 strength

  • Psychologists have used this knowledge to encourage dementia patients to talk about personal events in their lives.
  • Episodic memory is usually intact and will cause less stress than having to answer factual questions that require semantic memory.
• P2- AO3 weakness

  • People with brain damage are unique individuals and you cannot compare them as if they are the same e.g. HM.
  • Findings from people with brain damage might not be generalisable to the population without brain damage.
• Conclusion- strength

  • Knowledge of ID relating to memory can lead to UA in society e.g. phonological loop has UA in education.
  • In primary teaching, teachers should consider the limitations of their year group and adjust their instructions, to improve the child's ability to process the information.
• Conclusion- weakness

  • Alternative reasons for differences in memory ability which have not been considered here.
  • E.g. memory ability may be due to genetic inheritance or affected by stress from environmental situations which may lead to poorer memory.