memory evaluation

• coding, capacity and duration

  • use of artificial stimuli (baddeley) - meaningful material not used as word lists had no meaning to participants - hard to generalise findings to different memory tasks
  • lacking validity (jacobs) - confounding variables were present as it was early research in psychology which lacked control
  • confounding variables (bahrick) - participants may have looked over yearbooks and rehearsed memory.
• multi -store model of memory 1

  • supporting research evidence - research supports LTM and STM are different. Baddeley found that we tend to mix up words that sound similar when we use our STM and that we mix up words that have similar meanings in the LTM - shows that coding in the STM is acoustic and that coding in the LTM is semantic- supports the MSM’s theory
• multi -store model of memory 2

  • stm as unitary store- suggests theres only one type of stm. Evidence from people suffering from amnesia shows that this can not be true. Shallice and Warrington studied a patient called KF who had poor recall in the STM for digits that were read out to him rather than when he read the digits himself - may be a STM for non-verbal sounds -unitary STM is a limitation of the MSM as research shows that there must be an STM processing visual information and another processing auditory information - working memory model
• types of long term memory 1

  • clinical evidence - Case studies of HM and Clive Wearing -episodic memory  was severely impaired due to amnesia - struggle recalling past events but semantic memory was unaffected e.g they still understood the meaning of words -supports Tulving’s view about the different types of memory store in the LTM as when one store is damaged the others are unaffected - shows theyre stored in different parts of the brain
• types of long term memory 2

  • neuroimaging evidence - evidence from brain scan studies show different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain. Tulving got participants to complete memory tasks as their brains were being scanned using a PET scanner.It showed that episodic and semantic memories both recalled from an area called the prefrontal cortex 
• types of long term memory 3

  • real life applications - belleville studied how episodic memories could be improved in older people who had a mild cognitive impairment.Trained participants performed better in a test compared to a control group.
• types of long term memory 4

  • declarative memory - Cohen and Squire disagree with the division of the LTM into three types.They argued that episodic and semantic memories are stored together in one LTM store (declarative memory)
• working memory model 1

  • clinical evidence - Shallice and Warrington carried out a case study on KF who had brain damage- had poor STM ability and struggled to process auditory material presented verbally  but could process visual information presented visually - suggests that his phonological loop had been damaged leaving the other areas of memory intact- supporting existence of a separate visual and acoustic store which are present in the WMM called the phonological loop and the visuo-spatail sketchpad
• working memory model 2

  • constricted only to stm - no explanation of LTM - not a complete accurate model of memory - has limited application of everyday process of human memory -limitation because it considers how the WMM is unable to convey the full process of memory.
• interference 1

  • evidence from lab studies - most studies show PI and RI are common ways information can be forgotten in LTM -strength because lab experiments have control over variables so suggest that the results are valid.
  • real life studies - baddeley and hitch - asked rugby players to recall names of teams they had played - some players missed games so less names to recall - Findings showed that recall didn’t depend on how long ago the games took place but the number of games they had played - shows high ecological validity (can be applied to everyday situations)
• interference 2

  • artificial materials - greater chance interference occurs in lab than in real life - stimulus material usually a list of words -different to what people remember on a daily basis such as birthdays and recipes - limitation because interfence isn’t applicable to forgetting in everyday life
  • time between learning - time between learning and recalling in lab are short - should be around an hour long - results dont reflect actual process of interference
• retrieval failure

  • supporting evidence - strength as more supporting evidence increases validity of an explanation - evidence shows retrieval failure occurs in real life and controlled conditions.
  • questioning context effects - baddeley argued context effects aren't strong in real life - to see an actual effect in retrieval failure the contexts have to be very different and that it is very hard to do - limitation as real life applications of retrieval failure due to contextual cues don’t explain much forgetting
• retrieval failure 2

  • recall vs recognition - godden and baddeley replicated their underwater study with recognition test instead of recall test -no context dependent effect and performance was the same in all 4 conditions -limitation of context effects as it suggests that the presence/absence of cue only affects memory when you test it in a certain way
  • problems with ESP - esp cant be tested so it leads to a form of circular reasoning - no ways to establish if cues have really been encoded
• misleading information 1

  • artificial tasks - limitation of loftus and palmers study is participants watched film clips which is different to witnessing a real accident as they lack stress of real accident- limitation becauses it means the study tells very little about the effect of leading questions on EWT in real accidents/crimes.
• misleading information 2

  • supporting evidence - college students asked to evaluate advertising materials about disneyland - material has misleading information about bugs bunny or ariel -(Bugs is not disney,Ariel had not been introduced at the time of their childhood)- assigned to Bugs,Ariel or a control condition.All had visited disneyland-Participants in the Bugs and Ariel group were more likely to report having shaken hands with these characters compared to control group- shows misleading information can create an inaccurate memory
• anxiety

  • ethical issues - some participants experienced psychological harm
  • weapon focus may not be relevant - Pickel conducted an experiment using scissors to raw chicken in a hair salon-Eyewitness accuracy poorer in high unusualness conditions- suggests weapon focus is down to unusualness rather than anxiety so isn’t relevant.
• cognitive interview

  • time consuming - takes more time than a standard police interview so police may be more reluctant and it also requires specialist training.
  • Support for the effectiveness of the ECI-Kohnken -combined data from 50 studies(meta analysis)- ECI consistently provided  more correct information than the standard police interview- shows that there are real practical benefits to the police-gives police more accurate information to catch and charge criminals.