Memory AQA A Level Psychology

• MSM


  An explanation of memory that sees information flowing through a series of storage systems
• Sensory register (SR)


  A short-duration store holding impressions of information received by the senses
• Sensory stimulus from the environment will pass through the sensory store
• Sensory stores


  • Iconic (visual information)
  • Echoic (auditory information)
• Short-term memory (STM)


  A temporary store holding small amounts of information for brief periods
• STM


  • Known as a limited capacity store of memory
  • Maintenance rehearsal occurs when something is repeated over and over again - this is the only way information can be kept in the STM
  • Information is lost if not rehearsed
• Longer rehearsal


  Information passes to the LTM
• Long-term memory (LTM)


  A permanent store holding limitless amounts of information
• Memories that have been rehearsed for a long period of time are stored in the LTM
• Recalling information from LTM

  1. Transfer it back to the STM by a process called retrieval

  2. No memories are recalled straight from the LTM
• Coding


  The format in which information is stored in the various memory stores
• Capacity


  The amount of information that can be held in each memory store
• Duration


  The length of time information can be held in each store
• Sensory register


  • Capacity = very large
  • Duration = limited
  • Iconic store is visual coding
  • Echoic store is auditory coding
• Sensory register duration


  Less than half a second, most info does not pass to other stores
• Info will only pass on to other stores

  If attended to
• Short-term memory (STM)


  • Capacity = 5 – 9 items
  • Duration = 20 – 30 seconds
  • Encoding = mainly acoustic
• Baddeley (1966) - Coding in STM


  1. Gave 4 different word lists to participants to remember

  2. Group 1 = words sound similar (acoustically similar)

  3. Group 2 = words sound different (acoustically dissimilar)

  4. After a short interval, participants did worse with the acoustically similar words, so code acoustically
• Jacobs (1987) - Capacity in STM

  • Developed the digit span test to study capacity in memory
  • Mean digit span was 9.3 items, and for letters it was 7.3
  • The span/capacity for STM is around 7+/- 2 items
• Chunking


  Grouping sets of digits or letters in groups or chunks to improve capacity in STM
• Peterson (1959) - Duration in STM

  1. Tested 24 undergraduate students

  2. Each trial, participants were given a consonant syllable (trigram) to remember and a 3 digit number

  3. Participants counted backwards from the 3 digit number to prevent rehearsal

  4. STM has a very short duration – 18-30 seconds - if information is not repeated or rehearsed
• Baddeley (1966) - Coding in LTM


  1. Group 3 = words with similar meanings (semantically similar)

  2. Group 4 = words with different meanings (semantically dissimilar)

  3. After a longer interval (LTM), participants did worse with the semantically similar words, so for LTM we code semantically
• Bahrik (1975) - Duration in LTM


  1. Studied 392 participants aged 17-74 using year books from school to recognise faces

  2. Recall was tested in various ways: photo recognition and free recall

  3. Participants who had graduated within 15 years = 90% accurate in photo recognition

  4. Participants who had graduated 48 years ago = 70% for photo recognition

  5. Information in the LTM can be retained for a very long time
• Multi-Store Model (MSM)


  • Suggests there is one type of Short-Term Memory (STM)
  • Oversimplifies STM
• Case study of patient KF with Amnesia

  • Recall was very poor when digits were read aloud to him
  • Recall was much better when he was able to read the digits to himself first
• Case study of patient KF

  Suggests there is at least one store for auditory information and one store for visual information
• The MSM suggests there is just one type of STM
• The MSM is limited in terms of its validity as it cannot be used to accurately measure STM processes because it does not consider the different processes involved
• Maintenance rehearsal


  Information is retained and transferred to Long-Term Memory (LTM) from STM
• Elaborative rehearsal


  New information is linked to pre-existing knowledge or rehearsal is based on thinking about what the new information means
• The MSM does not consider elaborative rehearsal, a key process, and is therefore limited in its applicability to studying real life memory
• Not all information simply moves to the LTM due to repetition as proposed by the MSM
• Baddeley, Peterson and Jacobs research


  • Used lab experiments
  • Stimuli used was artificial and not meaningful or relevant
• Having to remember a trigram whilst counting backwards from a random number is not a representative task that people regularly have to process
• The tasks were very artificial, so the research that supports coding, capacity and duration lacks ecological validity and cannot be confidently generalised to understand these aspects of memory in everyday life
• Variables can be controlled as much as possible in memory research, but an extraneous variable that is more difficult to control is the attention of the participants
• Due to the artificial nature of the experiments, participants may not have focused on the tasks and given them their full attention
• There is a potential internal validity issue with the research that has measured coding, capacity and duration, because the results could be due to a lack of attention rather than the different memory processes that are the focus in the research
• Tulving (1985) - model of Long Term Memory


  There are 3 LTM stores rather than just one which all contain different information
• Long Term Memory stores

  • Episodic memory
  • Semantic memory
  • Procedural memory