MEMORY

• Sensory information

  Information in the environment
• Encoding

  Turning sensory information into a form that can be stored
• Types of encoding

  • Acoustic encoding
  • Visual encoding
  • Semantic encoding
• Output

  Recalling information e.g. behavioural response
• Multi Store Model of Memory (MSM)

  Model developed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968 that identifies 3 different stores in our memory system: sensory register, short term memory, and long term memory
• Sensory register/memory

  • Registers a lot of sensory information briefly
  • We do not pay attention to all of the information around us
• Short term memory (STM)

  • Information that we pay attention to gets transferred here
  • Can be stored for 18-30 seconds
  • Capacity is 7+/-2
  • Older information is pushed out (displaced) if too much information
  • Can be stored longer through rehearsal
• Long term memory (LTM)

  • Can hold information for up to a lifetime
  • Has a limitless capacity
  • Mainly stores semantic memories (those with meanings)
  • Information can be retrieved but may be lost through decay
• Attention

  Taking notice of an event or information
• Rehearsal


  Repeating information to increase the duration of a memory
• Retrieval

  Recalling a memory
• Decay

  Forgetting information in the long term memory as it has broken down
• Displacement

  Forgetting information in the short term memory due to incoming information
• Capacity


  The amount of information stored
• Duration

  The length of time information is stored
• The Multi Store Model has support from case studies of patients with brain damage showing distinct separate STM and LTM stores
• The Multi Store Model is useful as it gives a good structure of the short term memory which means researchers can expand and improve on it
• Case studies have shown that some people have no STM but a LTM (e.g. Clive Wearing)
• Not all information is rehearsed and transferred into LTM, it can decay and displace
• Reconstruction

  Our memories are not exact copies but are influenced by our prior knowledge and expectations known as schemas
• Schemas

  Packets of knowledge about an event, person or place that influence how we perceive and remember
• How schemas are formed

  • Personal experience
  • Stereotypes
  • Culture
• How schemas influence memory

  • Omissions (leaving out unfamiliar, unpleasant or irrelevant details)
  • Transformations (changing details to make them more rational)
  • Familiarisation (changing unfamiliar details to align with our own schema)
  • Rationalisation (adding details to give a reason for something that may not have originally fitted with a schema)
• The theory of reconstructive memory has helped the police understand that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, leading to changes in how they interview witnesses
• Bartlett's research using folk stories and images can be viewed as a test of memory in the real world because remembering stories is a realistic use of memory
• Bartlett's research was not particularly scientific as he was interested in each participant's unique memories rather than using standardised procedures and controls
• Amnesia

  A special type of forgetting affecting the long term memory, characterised by forgetting or memory loss, particularly after a brain injury
• Types of amnesia

  • Retrograde amnesia (unable to recall information from before a brain injury)
  • Anterograde amnesia (unable to recall information from after a brain injury)
• Peterson and Peterson (1959) study

  1. Participants repeat out loud a trigram (three consonants)

  2. Participants count backwards in 3s from 400

  3. When signalled, participants have to recall the trigram

  4. Procedure repeated 48 times with different trigrams
• The longer participants counted backwards, the less able they were to accurately recall the trigram
• Accurate recall of the trigrams decreased rapidly over the duration of 18 seconds, suggesting short-term memory has limited duration
• The study used nonsense trigrams to control for personal meaning, but this reduces ecological validity and mundane realism
• The study only recorded the number of trigrams recalled, limiting interpretation of the results
• Bartlett's 'War of the Ghosts' study

  1. Participants read the story twice

  2. Participants then retold the story using serial reproduction and repeated reproduction

  3. Bartlett used qualitative analysis to identify changes and omissions in the retellings
• Participants did not recall the story accurately but were influenced by their schemas, altering details to fit their expectations
• The story was unfamiliar and illogical, which may have made it difficult for participants to remember accurately
• Bartlett's qualitative analysis may have been biased towards his theory, and the lack of controls means the study lacks reliability
• Reductionism


  The scientific theory of describing something using its basic parts or the simplest explanation
• Holism

  The opposite of reductionism, trying to understand behaviour by considering the whole behaviour and everything that affects the whole person
• Reductionism is associated with laboratory experiments that control variables to establish cause and effect