Memory

• What does the process of memory start with?

  encoding
• Visual


  what it looks like
• Acoustic


  how it sounds
• semantic


  its meaning
• tactile


  how it feels
• Olfactory


  how it smells
• What are the three processes of memory

  encoding, storage, retrieval
• Regocnition


  Seeing an object and remembering the information through recognising what it is.
• Cued recall


  Being given a cue, e.g. 'it begins with the letter T', which helps you to remember the information.
• Free recall


  Retrieving information without cues
• Aim of Baddely's study of encoding


  To investigate how long and short-term memories are encoded
• Procedure of Baddely's study of encoding

  - Four groups of participants either asked to remember a list of: acoustically similar words, acoustically dissimilar words, semantically similar words or semantically dissimilar words.

  - Participants who were asked to remember acoustically similar/dissimilar words were asked to recall after 5 mins (testing short-term memory).

  - Participants who were asked to remember semantically similar/dissimilar words were asked to recall after 20 mins (testing long-term memory).
• Results of Baddely's study of encoding

  Baddeley found that participants found it most difficult to recall acoustically similar (testing short-term memory) and semantically similar (testing long-term memory) word lists.
• Concusion of Baddely's Study of encoding

  Our short-term memories are encoded acoustically and our long-term memories are encoded semantically.
• A strength of Baddeley's experiment

  it was reliable - took place in a laboratory setting and tested his participants' hearing prior to the experiment to make sure he did not have extraneous variables.
• A limitation of Baddeley's experiment

  it may lack validity = he tested his participants' long-term memory after twenty minutes which may not have been a long enough time for them to store the memory in that particular store
• Episodic memory


  memories of our personal experiences which are time-stamped, e.g. your 5th birthday party.
• Semantic memory


  memories of our shared knowledge and facts about the world, e.g. who the president of the United States is.
• Procedural memories


  memories of our unconscious actions and skills, e.g. how to ride a bike.
• Strength of 3 types of LTM

  - Research support from brain scans (reliable sources) which suggest we have different types of long-term memories in different parts of the brain

  - Support from amnesia patients, e.g. Clive Wearing, who has lost his episodic memory but not his procedural.
• Limitation of 3 types of LTM

  There is a significant overlap for some people between their semantic and episodic memories
• Outline the multi store model of memory

  - A stimulus from the environment, goes into our sensory register.

  - If we pay attention to the 'thing' in our sensory register it is passed into our short-term memory.

  - Through the process of maintenance rehearsal the memory can be passed to our long-term memory store.
• Sensory register coding


  There is no specific coding - all senses
• Sensory register capacity


  Very large (all sensory information)
• Sensory register duration


  Short duration (0.5 seconds)
• Short-term memory coding


  acoustic
• Short term memory capacity

  5-9 items
• Short term memory duration

  18-30 seconds
• Long term memory coding

  semantic
• long term memory capacity

  very large (infinite)
• Long term memory duration


  a lifetime
• Strength of the multi store model

  there is supporting research from Baddeley's encoding study whereby short-term memory is encoded acoustically and long-term memory is encoded semantically.
• Limitation of the multi store model

  - it is too simple and does not explain why, (for example) Clive Wearing lost some of his long-term memories but not all (he lost his episodic but not procedural).

  - does not explain why we forget
• Serial position effect


  remembering the first and last words in a list.

  This is because the words which we hear first in a list are rehearsed into our long-term memory and the words which we hear last are still in our short-term memory.
• Primacy effect


  we remember the first words in a list.
• Recency effect


  we remember the last words in a list.
• Murdock's serial position curve study Aim


  To investigate whether memory of words is affected by the number of words a person is trying to remember.
• Murdock's serial position curve study Procedure

  Murdock randomly selected 4000 common English words and created 20 words lists using these words ranging from 10-40 words long. He recruited 103 participants and gave them a word list to remember which they immediately read back to Murdock.
• Murdock's serial position curve study Results

  Higher recall for the words first in the list (primacy effect) and last in the list (recency effect).

  Low recall for the words in the middle of the list.
• Murdocks serial position curve study Conclusion

  The results demonstrate a serial position effect which supports the multi-store model of memory.