Psychology

• Process of memory


  Information is first detected by the senses then stored away for later use, and then retrieved when needed
• Encoding


  Information taken from the senses is adapted to a form that can be stored in the brain. This encoding can be visual as images, acoustic as voice, and semantic based on knowledge
• Storage


  How we hold memories in the physical neural structure of the brain, this information could be stored for a lifetime
• Retrieval


  The process of bringing information from the brain's storage to be used
• Short-term memory


  Information from the senses we pay attention to is held for less than 30 seconds and holds around 5-9 pieces of information. It is encoded acoustically
• Long-term memory


  Information from the short term that has been rehearsed. This rehearsal is either maintenance repeating it constantly or elaboration giving the meaning
• Types of long-term memory

  • Episodic
  • Semantic
  • Procedural
• Semantic memory


  Memories for facts, meanings and knowledge in the world
• Episodic memory


  Memory for events and personal experiences you have had like your first day of school
• Procedural memory


  Your unconscious memory of how to do things like driving a car
• HM had his hippocampus removed with a straw to help cure his epileptic fits. However, this procedure destroyed his ability to make new episodic or semantic memories. Although he was able to develop new procedural skills. This suggests that procedural memory is a separate process with a separate brain region
• Multi-store model of memory

  Environmental stimulus flows through senses into sensory register, then to short-term memory, then to long-term memory if rehearsed. Information can be retrieved from long-term to short-term memory
• The multi-store model shows how memory flows through our memory storage
• There is lots of research and case studies to support the multi-store model of memory demonstrating the stores are separate and the differences in the coding, capacity, and duration of each store
• The multi-store model of memory has been criticized as being too simplistic, there seem to be different types of long-term memory not just one store. Short term memory is also more complex, researchers now understand short term memory as an active store called working memory, holding both auditory and visual information
• Serial position effect


  The chance of remembering an item of information from a list depends on the position on the list the item was. Items at the start of the list are more likely remembered due to primacy effect. Items at the end are more likely remembered due to recency effect. Items in the middle are less likely to be remembered
• Murdocks serial position curve study aimed to investigate the existence of separate long term and short term memory stores, and how the numbers of items on a list affects recall
• Murdock found that remembering the words from the lists depends on the position on the list the word was. Words at the start of the list are more likely remembered due to primacy effect. Words at the end are more likely remembered due to recency effect. Words in the middle are less likely to be remembered
• Advantage of Murdock's study


  • It was a controlled lab study, so results are not affected by extraneous variables, making it valid and reliable
• Disadvantage of Murdock's study

  • He gave participants an artificial task, so the results may not apply to real-life situations, making it unreliable and invalid when applied to the general public
• Constructivist theory of perception


  Top-down theory suggesting our cognitive processes actively construct our perception using sensory information, stored knowledge, schemas, and expectations
• Direct theory of perception


  Bottom-up theory suggesting we passively and accurately perceive the world directly using information from our senses
• Inferences from visual cues

  
  

  Sensory information is incomplete, so the brain has to make inferences and guesses based on visual cues to create a model of reality
• Direct theory


  • Accurate direct perception has evolved in animals to help them navigate the environment
  • We don't need to rely on past experiences and inferences, the visual information from our eyes is complex but directly perceivable
• Motion parallax


  Provides direct information about features such as motion and depth
• Gibson's theory focuses on nature and its role in perception, suggesting accurate perception is innate
• Gregory's theory takes a nurture approach, suggesting perception is actively constructed based on experiences
• Visual illusions support Gregory's idea that perception is actively constructed based on limited sensory information
• Gibson's theory better explains the speed of perception and precise response to visual stimuli
• Gibson's concept of affordances is used to explain how we automatically perceive the usefulness of objects from sensory information
• Bartlett told his participants a story and then got them to recall the story as best as they could after a short delay


  1932
• Bartlett's theory of reconstructive memory

  • People recreate their memories actively using what they already know about the world
  • We use packages of knowledge about things, called schemas as a mental shortcut to understanding the world and remembering what happened to us
• Bartlett's study procedure


  1. Get 20 English college students

  2. Participants read a Native American folk tale called the 'War of the Ghosts'

  3. Participants told the story as though it were Chinese whispers

  4. Participants repeated the story after a few hours, days, weeks or even years
• Bartlett found that participants recalled the overall meaning of the story but did not recall the story accurately
• Omission


  Participants left some things out of the story
• Rationalisation


  Certain things were changed like recalling boats instead of canoes, missing out on the "ghosts" and remembering the war
• Bartlett concluded that people don't remember details accurately, we actively reconstruct memories by using our existing knowledge
• Reconstructive memory


  The process of recalling memories is not an accurate passive playing back of what actually happened
• Effort after meaning


  We remember the overall meaning of an event however we change the memory so it makes sense to us
• Sensation


  The information we receive about the world using our sense organs