Memory

• Cognitive interview


  A range of techniques that fisher and geiselman suggested police interviews can use in order to improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
• The cognitive interview is not effective in improving the recognition of suspects from photographs, meaning that the CI has limited usefulness in a number of common police activities involving witness testimony
• Cost-benefit analysis of the cognitive interview


  It may be worth the additional resources invested in training to make a more effective police force with the CI ultimately reducing crime and its cost to wider society
• In a meta analysis of 42 studies including over 2500 interviews, kohnken et al found a significant increase in the amount of correct information recalled. However there was also a significant increase in the amount of incorrect information recalled resulting in a very similar accuracy rate (85% CI and 82% SI), suggesting the CI may be of very limited practical use due to increased errors
• Fisher,geiselman & amador (1989), field study, compared 7 detectives trained in the use of the cognitive interview with 9 using the standard interview. Results showed that the CI detectives received 47% more information in real interviews after their training and 63% more than trained detectives suggesting the cognitive interview is effective in enhancing memory, improving information gained by real interviewing police officers operating in the field
• Four characteristics of the cognitive interview

  • State everything (say all details)
  • Reinstate the context (physical environment, mental state)
  • Change the order (challenges expectations)
  • Change perspective (minimises bias and disrupts schema)
• Fisher studied the techniques used by the police in Florida when interviewing witnesses. 3 factors were identified as needed improvement and called the standard interview. Witnesses were given a large number of quick, direct and closed questions in a short time, the order of the questions were asked in a way which matched mental representation, witnesses were not able to talk freely about their experience and were frequently interrupted
• KF suffered from brain damage from a motorcycle accident that damaged his short term memory, his impairment was mainly for verbal information and his memory was largely unaffected for visual supporting the idea of STM being multiple stores
• Processes described in the working memory model are impossible to observe meaning that inferences must be made about underlying processes that have influenced a behaviour which may be incorrect
• The central executive has been criticised by other psychologists as being a vague concept without a full explanation of its function and not fully open to testing meaning it is not fully operationalised
• Using brain imaging FMRI scans, researchers asked participants to complete tasks with an equal amount of verbal and spatial information but in one condition the verbal and spatial information was separate, in the other the information was integrated. They found more activation in pre-frontal cortex when information was integrated suggesting that the episodic buffer exists and is in the pre-frontal cortex
• Baddeley. Participants were asked to perform two visual tasks such as tracking moving lights at the same time as describing the angles of the letter F or a visual and verbal task. They found that the performance was better when the tasks where not using the same processing. This suggests that the visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop are two different stores
• Episodic buffer


  Added to the working memory model in 2000. Information from visuospatial sketchpad, phonological loop and central executive and LTM integrated and stored here
• Visuospatial sketchpad


  Processes visual and spatially coded information. Can be broken down into two sections: 1. visual cache; passive store of form and colour 2. inner scribe; active store of holding the relationships between objects in 3d space
• Phonological loop


  Processes auditory coded information. Can be broken down into two sections: 1. phonological store; ''the inner ear'', holds words recently heard 2. articulatory process; '' the inner voice'' , holds information via sub-vocal repetition (maintenance rehearsal'' capacity = limited capacity of what can be said in 2 seconds
• Central executive


  Head of the working memory model. Receives sense information and filters this before passing into sub systems. Limited in capacity (4 items), working on each type of information at a time but can switch attention between different types of info eg visual to auditory
• Working memory model


  Created by Baddeley and Hitch to replace the STM of the MSM due to criticisms of the STM. Argued that STM must be more complex than just a single unitary store that only exists to pass information onto LTM. STM must be an active processor not just passive and holds multiple types of information simultaneously while being worked on
• The use of idiographic research has influenced nomothetic research. The use of modern cognitive neuroscience brain scanning techniques like Tulving (who used PET and FMRI scans to investigate how different types of long term memories are linked to areas of brain activation) has allowed ideas gained by idiographic research to be studied via nomothetic methods on larger and healthier samples allowing for generalisations to be made
• Clive Wearing is an ungeneralisable case study. These clinical case studies which focus on the individual provide issues with applying findings to wider population and explaining how memory works. There could be other unknown issues unique to an individual to better explain their memory
• Clive Wearing had retrograde amnesia so he could not recall memories from past but could develop new memories. He could not remember about his musical education (episodic) but remembered facts about his life e.g married to his wife (semantic) and can play piano (procedural), suggesting the memories are different processes
• Vargha-Khadem at al, investigated 3 young patients who had damage to their hippocampus. It was found that all 3 had episodic amnesia however they were able to learn and recall semantic information at an ability just below their age average suggesting that semantic memory is less dependant on the hippocampus than episodic memory providing biological evidence that semantic and episodic memories are distinct processes using different brain regions
• Characteristics of procedural memories

  • Non declarative
  • Time stamped
  • Not recalled consciously
  • Not autobiographical
• Characteristics of semantic memories

  • Declarative
  • Not time stamped
  • Recalled consciously
  • Not autobiographical
• Characteristics of episodic memories

  • Declarative
  • Time stamped
  • Recalled consciously
  • Autobiographical
• Procedural memories


  Unconscious memory of skills also known as muscle memory
• Episodic memories


  Memory of experiences and specific events
• Semantic memories


  Facts, meanings, concepts and knowledge about the world
• Types of long term memories

  • Semantic
  • Procedural
  • Episodic
• Lab based studies can suffer from demand characteristics with participants often wanting to ''help'' the researcher by giving responses they think they expect. The participant may just be picking up on the language used when being asked leading questions and giving an answer they think will help the researcher (response bias explanation)
• Research on the limitations of eyewitness testimony has led to real life application. One example is the development of the cognitive interview. This technique is designed to reduce the influence of schemas on the accuracy of recall
• Researchers have an ethical duty to protect their participants from harm and to ask for informed consent. Research on anxiety such as Johnson and Scott break both of these guidelines and could be considered unethical
• Yuille and Cutshall (1986) interviewed 13 witnesses to a deadly shooting four months after the event. It was found that witnesses resisted misleading information and those with the most stress (closest to the shooter) produced the most accurate eyewitness testimony. This suggests that anxiety may not be a significant problem for real world eye witness testimony
• Peters (1988) patients at a real healthcare centre were given a real injection by a nurse, with a researcher also present in the room. It was found that the patients were better able to recognise the teacher than the nurse. This suggests that anxiety is caused by having an injection and there is a weapon focus on the syringe
• Johnson and Scott (1976) naive participants were placed outside a lab, listening to conversations. 1. Normal conversation about equipment failure, a man walks out with greasy hands and a pen. 2. Hostile, breaking glass, furniture knocked over and man walks out with a knife covered in blood. They were then asked to identify the man from photographs shown to them. It was found that more participants identified a man with a pen (49%) than the knife (33%). This suggests that anxiety is caused by the weapon resulting in a decreased focus on the man's face
• Videos of crimes shot from different perspectives were shown to pairs of participants. With unique information in each film. It was found that 71% of pairs allowed to discuss what they had seen included aspects of the film they had not seen in their recollection video. This is compared to 0% in pairs who were not allowed to discuss what they had seen. This suggests that witnesses will change their account of crimes to match other witnesses' testimony. This may be an attempt to seek social approval resulting in memory conformity
• Loftus and Palmer follow up study: brief study above - - after one week participants completed a questionnaire. They were asked whether they saw any broken glass. It was found that participants were twice as likely in smashed condition to respond yes compared to the hit condition. This suggests that the effect of misleading information in the form of leading questions can be long lasting and actually changes memories via substitution
• Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed participants clips of traffic accidents. After watching the clip they were asked the following question ''how fast were the cars going when they hit each other''. The verb hit was being changed to '' smashed, collided, bumped, hit or contacted''. They found that the more extreme the critical verb the faster the estimation of the miles per hour. Smashed = 40.8, Contacted = 31.8 suggesting that misleading information in the form of leading questions can influence the recall of eyewitness testimony
• Yerks-Dodson law of arousal

  EWT accuracy increases as anxiety rises as the witness becomes alert. However at a point, anxiety becomes too high and more stress/distraction results in lower accuracy
• Some psychologists argue anxiety increases recall: a state of arousal improves alertness and awareness of the situation and surroundings; also the strong emotions felt could improve memory encoding
• Weapon focus effect


  Weapon focus effect is one explanation (weapons are a cause of anxiety, witnesses are distracted, focussing attention on the weapon rather than the criminal)