individual/developmental differences

• individual differences

  • schemas - bartlett war of the ghosts
  • memory ability - palombo (2012)
  • processing speed
• memory ability

  • autobiographical nature of memory is an individual difference
  • people have different memories resulting from the way they encode aspects of daily life into episodic or semantic memories depending on the depth of meaning thye attribute to the events
• memory ability - palombo (2012)

  • research shows memory capacities differ
  • palombo (2012) tested autobiographical memory components of semantic and episodic memory and found that individuals who score high/low in episodic score high/low in sematic memories
  • demonstrating people have overall good or poor memories individually
• developmental differences

  alzheimers - baddely (2001)
• alzheimers disease is a progressive, degenerative neurological disorder which is characterised by progressive memory loss, concentration loss and confusion
• alzheimers (baddeley 2001)

  • baddeley 2001 conducted series of tasks on alzheimers patients
  • involved looking at the letter Z among easy and difficult distractor letters and a dual task procedure was utilised - people with alzheimers performed worse in the distractor tasks and impaired in dual task
  • alzheimers affects dual attentional memory tasks - developmental disorders affect memory abilities
• evidence for individua differences

  • research evidence shows experiences and cultures influence schema
  • bartlett - british participants changed the word "canoe" to "boat" and "seal-hunting" to "fishing"
  • demonstrating memory of the story was affected and changed by british schema
• processing speed

  • the speed at which we can process information differs between individuals - this is dependant on STM capacity and is affected by age
  • younger children have a shorter digit span than older children so memory capacity increases with age