Evaluations

• Short and Long Term Memory = AO3

  1) Capacity of STM may be more limited = Criticism is that Miller's original findings could not be replicated, to which Cowan did a meta-analysis and found that the capacity of STM is 4 Chunks.

  2) Testing for LTM is Artificial = Trying to memorise constant syllables does not reflect everyday memory activities.

  3) LTM may not be exclusively Semantic = Frost showed that long term recall was related to visual and semantic categories.

  4) Individual Differences = Capacity of STM was different for everyone - Jacobs found that it increased steadily with age (8 yrs = 6.6 digits + 19 yrs = 8.6 digits)
• The MSM = AO3

  1) LTM involves more than maintenance rehearsal = Craik and Lockhart suggested that enduring memories are created by processing rather than maintenance rehearsal, things that are processed more deeply are more memorable + Craik and Tulving = ppts had a list of nouns and answered a question that had shallow or deep processing and were asked if the word was in Caps Lock or if it was in a sentence - they remembered words in deep processing rather than shallow processing.

  2) Evidence from Brain Studies = Squire et al = Hippocampus is active during the LTM

  3) HM = Scoville and Miller = Could not make new LTM's

  4) The Multi -store is too simple = It suggests that the STM and the LTM are just single stores, when there are separate stores inside.
• The Working Memory Model = AO3

  1) The CE is quite vague and doesn't explain everything = Eslinger and Damassio = studied EVR, who had a cerebral tumour removed, to which he answered well on questions that required reasoning (meaning that his CE was intact) but had poor decision-making skills.

  2) Studies have been conducted that support WMM = KF = STM forgetting of auditory information was greater than him forgetting Visual Stimuli

  3) There is a problem of using brain studies

  4) Dual Task Performance = Hitch and Baddeley = Task 1 = occupied the CE + Task 2 = Articulatory Loop (e.g. say the, the, the repeatedly) or involved the CE and Articulatory Loop = Task 1 was slower than Task 2.
• Types of LTM = AO3

  1) Evidence from Brain Scans.

  2) Evidence from Case Studies support the existence of LTM. = HM

  3) Brain damaged patients.

  4) Distinguishing Semantic and Episodic Memories = Hodges and Patterson = Researcher's have seen the relationship between episodic and semantic by studying patients with Alzheimer's disease and found patients that can retain new semantic memories, but not episodic memories - known as single dissociation (separation between 2 abilities). A second dissociation was found by Irish et al, who found Alzheimer Patients that had the reverse, poor semantic but generally intect episodic memories.
• Explanation to Forgetting - Interference = AO3

  1) Accessibility vs Availability = Cerasco

  2) Interference only explains some forms of forgetting = Anderson

  3) Research is quite artificial

  4) Real World Application = Danaher = found that recall and recognition of an ad's message would be impaired when ppts saw ad's from competing brands within a week. This suggests one strategy to enhance memory trace to run multiple exposures to an ad in one day rather than spread over the week.
• Explanation to Forgetting - Retrieval Failure = AO3

  1) Lots of Research Support - Tulving and Pearlstone

  2) Real world application = E.G exam - based from Abernathy's

  3) Retrieval Cues do not always work = outshining hypothesis

  4) The Dangers of Circularity = Baddeley said that testing the Encoding Specificity Principle is impossible as it is circular. If a stimulus leads to the retrieval of a memory then it is encoded in memory, and if not then it can't have been encoded in memory. But it is impossible to test if an item has not been encoded in memory, so it cannot be proved. This suggests that cues do not cause retrieval but they are ASSOCIATED with retrieval.
• Accuracy of E.W.T = AO3

  1) There is evidence that supports the effect on misleading information = Loftus used a Bugs Bunny

  2) EWT in Real Life = Yuille and Cutshall = Witnesses to an arm robbery in Canada gave very accurate reports of the crime after 4 months.

  3) Real Life Application of EWT = the Justice System heavily relies on the EWT to which recent DNA has exonerated many people, showing that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest single factor contributing to the conviction of the innocent people - Wells and Olson

  4) Individual Differences = an EWT gets info from 2 sources, observation + subsequent suggestions (misleading info). Schacter = showed that compared to younger ppts, the elderly have more difficulty in remembering the source of their info but the memory is still unimpaired, meaning that they become more prone to misleading info when giving testimony.
• Accuracy of E.W.T - Anxiety = AO3

  1) Pickel

  2) Strength of Christianson + Hubinette = Study was conducted in the context of a real-time

  3) No simple conclusion = Violence of crime may affect the accuracy of recall.

  4) Individual Differences = Emotional Sensitivity. Bothwell = ppts were tested for personality characteristics and were labelled, wither 'stable' (less emotionally sensitive) or 'neurotic' (tend to become anxious quickly). It was found that as the stress levels increased, the stable ppts has higher levels of accuracy than the neurotics, whose accuracy decreased.
• Improving Accuracy of EWT: Cognitive Interview = AO3

  1) Strength = Supporting Research = meta-analysis of 53 studies.

  2) Quality May Suffer

  3) Time and Training is needed to implement CI = Kebbell and Wagstaff

  4) Comparisons are difficult = different police forces use only some parts of CI and not all of it, so identifying the effectiveness of CI is difficult.