cognitive psychology

• reconstructive memory - perception


  test memory for shapes and objects

  ppts assigned verbal labels

  perception determines how something is remembered
• reconstructive memory - imaging


  used in blots

  rummaged about stored images to find best fit

  determined by experiences and interests
• reconstructive memory - remembering


  war of ghost folktale

  culturally unfamiliar

  supernatural

  20 ppts

  story shortened , made modern

  rarely accurate
• reconstructive memory - schema 


  parcels of stored knowledge

  used to fill in gaps

  active reconstruction
• reconstructive memory Ao3

  • war of ghost is irrelevant ❌
  • same findings on diff ppts✅
• working memory model


  central executive

  phonological loop

  visuospatial sketchpad
• central executive 


  determines which info is and isn’t attended to

  process info in all sensory forms

  limited in capacity
• phonological loop


  “inner ear”

  auditory store

  slave system

  difficult to remember similar sounding words
• visuospatial sketchpad


  “inner eye”

  slave system

  visual store

  encode through mental pictures
• strengths of wmm

  Tulving 1989 / brain scans , frontal lobes active for episodic, back cortex active for semantic

  KC / suffered impairment to episodic but semantic intact after motorbike accident
• weaknesses of wmm

  HM&CW / both could still learn new skills

  case studies cannot be replicated for practical and ethical reasons so reliability cannot be checked
• Baddeley 1966 aim

  to investigate the influence of acoustic & semantic word similarity on recall in LTM and STM
• Baddeley procedure

  lab experiment

  4 lists of 10 words

  • acoustic similar eg man, can
  • acoustic dissimilar eg cow, mat
  • semantic similar eg big, large
  • semantic dissimilar eg good,huge

  1 word every 3 seconds
• Baddeley results


  acoustic encoding difficult but didn’t affect LTM recall

  semantic similar difficult to learn

  STM largely acoustic

  LTM largely semantic
• Baddeley Ao3


  reliable ✅

  controlled = cause & effect ✅

  lack mundane reality❌

  unable to generalise ❌
• Tulving episodic memory


  personal events & experiences

  eg birthday party

  mental dairy

  linked to time and context

  explicit
• Tulving semantic


  mental encyclopedia

  facts and knowledge

  no temporal link
• Tulving procedural memory


  skills and abilities

  added later - 1985

  eg Henry Molaison
• Henry Molasion


  surgical procedure to relieve seizures , lost hippocampus

  anterograde amnesia, unable to form new memory , no mem of new skills

  reterograde amnesia , unable to retrieve memory
• Tulving declarative memory


  words and concepts

  need retrieval cues

  influences reconstructive memory
• Tulving Ao3


  brain scans found episodic - front cortex

  semantic - back cortex✅

  KC✅

  case studies cannot be replicated ❌

  HM could still learn new skills❌