Psychology memory

• Who proposed the WMM?

  Baddley and Hitch
• What are the four structures in the WMM?


  Central executive, episodic buffer, phonological loop, Visio-spatial sketch pad
• What are the two items in the phonological loop?

  Articulatory control system and the phonological store
• What are the two items in the Visio-spatial sketch pad ?

  Inner scribe and visual caches
• What does the central executive do?

  Controls attention and directs info to the two slave systems. Can process any sensory modality
• What does the phonological loop do?

  Temporary storage system for verbal info. The articulatory control allows repetition of acoustic info and the phonological loop is a storage space for the coding foe acoustic info
• What is the Visio-spatial sketch pad ?

  Temporary storage system for visual and spatial info. The inner scribe deals with manipulation of mental images and the visual cache has limited capacity for coding visual and spatial info
• What is the capacity of all three items in the WMM?

  Limited capacity
• Advantage of the WMM

  Supporting research -> HM

  • was injured in an accident and was able to recall info from his LTM but not STM

  • able to remember visual images but not sounds(acoustic)

  • suggests there are two components within the STM

  • supports the WMM and the idea of two slaves

  increases the value and plausibility
• Issue with the WMM

  Only focuses on the STM

  •reductionist approach

  • no info on how the information is processed or transferred to the LTM and back again

  • Incomplete representation of Memory

  • Decreases plausibility
• Advantage of WMM (2)

  Further research support

  • dual task studies done by Baddley and Hitch

  • one condition participants required to compete two acoustic based tasks e.g. remember series of digits and completed verbal task

  • second condition participants required to complete one acoustic task and one visual task e.g. remember digits and copy a drawing

  • performance is not impaired when doing the second condition.

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• Normative social influence


  = when we comply because we want to be liked by the group and not face rejection . lead to compliance
• informative social influences 


  = where an individual complies because they believe they are correct . Can lead to internalisation
• 2 explanations of resistance

  -Locus of control= when an individual believes that everything in their life is dictated by their actions and have control over it

  -Social support= the presence allows an individual to remain independent. a disobedient role model can aid a person resist obeying orders they do not wish to. having an ally breaks the unanimity of the group and challenge legitimate authority.
• three factors that affect minority influence

  -consistency= being stable over time

  -commitment= must be deducted to their cause

  -flexibility= willingness to compromise to express opinions
• social change


  = ways in which society develops over time to replace beliefs with new norms and expectations
• processes used in social change

  • consistency
  • deeper processing
  • drawing attention
  • argumentation principle(majority draws attention to the selfless and risky actions the minority takes)
  • snowball effect(more and more people pay attention)
  • social crypto amnesia(source and message have been dissociated)
  • NSI
  • gradual commitment (foot in the door technique)
• reasons for forgetting

  -proactive interference= when the info stored in the lot interferes with the learning of new info. occurs when similar

  -retractive interference= when the learning of new number interfered with the old info. e.g when learned number you forget your old number

  -retrieval failure due to lack of cues= insufficient cues to trigger the memory

  • context-dependant= environmental cues missing
  • state-dependant= emotional state is diff
• eyewitness testimony

  = info given in court/police investigation when someone who has witnessed a crime/incident

  • factors that effect it are: misleading info, leading questions, anxiety,post-event discussion
• misleading info


  -comes from when co-witnesses discuss the details of the accident/crime after.

  -also comes from leading questions
• geiselman developed the cognitive inter

  view with 4key principles to enhance their ability to recall key event

  • context reinstatement = mentally recalls the context f the event, acts as a trigger
  • report everything= recalls every detail they can remember
  • Recall from changed perspective= consider from diff pov
  • recall in reverse order= reverse chronological order
• what is the episodic buffer


  temporary storage that integrates info from other slave systems and maintains a sense of time so the event occurs in a sequence
• MSM

  • proposed by Atkinson and shiffrin
  • made up of three components

  sensory register- unknown capacity, v limited duration, raw/unprocessed ingo

  STM- 7+/-2 items, 20 sec duration, acoustic info

  LTM- unlimited capacity, lifetime duration, semantic info
• How does info enter our memory

  • enters the sensory register via our senses
• Advantage of MSM


  • supporting research evidence
  • Clive wearing contracted virus causing amnesia
  • could only remember info fro 20-30 secs but able to remember wifes name
  • shows he was able to transfer info from STM-LTM but not retrieve the info
  • memories formed from passing info from one store to another in linear fashion- damage to any part can result in memory impairment
• advantage of MSM


  • brain scans suggest that different parts of the brain are active when performing different tasks
  • LTM( motor cortex) and STM( hippocampus and subiculum)
  • suggests that different brain regions are responsible for the different components of the MSM
  • memory is made up of discrete stores
• Types of LTM


  Episodic memory (hippocampus)

  • explicit memory including personal experinces
  • includes: the context, the emotions and details of the event
  • strong emotions=strong episodic memory

  Semantic Memory (temporal lobe)

  • explicit memory including knowledge about the world around us
  • start off as episodic memories then develop
  • strong emotions= strong semantic memory

  Procedural Memory (cerebellum/ motor cortex)

  • implicit including how to perform certain tasks
  • difficult to explain in words
  • often aquired through repetition and practice
  • many formed early in life
• Advantage of LTM

  • brain scans suggest that different parts of the brain are active when accessing the diff types
  • Procedural ( cerebellum and motor cortex) and Episodic( hippocampus and temporal lobe) and semantic ( temporal lobe)
  • suggests that different brain regions are responsible for the different types of LTM and the district categories
• advantage of LTM


  research evidence to support

  • patient HM suffered from sever epilepsy and got his hippocampus removed alleviate sysmptoms
  • STM remained inctct however was unable to transfer certain types of LTM.
  • could learn procedural tasks but not episodic or semantic
  • demonstrated the idea that there are diff types of LTM
  • raises plausibility