AO3 memory

• Cognitive Interview (CI)

  • Strength: Evidence that it works
  • Gives an average 41% increase in accurate information compared to standard police interview
  • Only 4 studies showed no difference between CI and standard interview
• The CI is an effective technique in helping witnesses to recall information that is stored in memory (available) but not immediately accessible
• Cognitive Interviews (CI/ECI)


  • Limitation: May sacrifice quality (accuracy) of eyewitness testimony in favour of quantity (amount of details)
  • Police officers should treat eyewitness evidence from CIs/ECIs with caution
• Original Cognitive Interview (CI)

  • Limitation: Not all elements are equally effective or useful
  • Using a combination of 'report everything' and 'reinstate the context' produced better recall than other elements
• Cognitive Interview (CI)


  • Limitation: Time-consuming and requires special training, many police forces do not have the resources
• The weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat
• Anxiety


  • Negative effect on the accuracy of immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event
  • Positive effect on the accuracy of recall for actual crimes (bank robberies)
• Lack of control over confounding variables in the Christianson and Hübinette study may be responsible for the finding that anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall
• Research on misleading information

  • Strength: Important practical uses in the criminal justice system
  • Limitation: Research conditions may not reflect real-world experiences of eyewitnesses
• Eyewitness testimony is more accurate for central details of an event than for peripheral details
• Post-event discussion can distort the original memory through contamination, rather than just causing memory conformity
• Retrieval cues


  • Strength: Can help overcome some forgetting in everyday situations
  • Limitation: Context effects may not be very strong in everyday life
• Retrieval failure only applies when a person has to recall information rather than recognise it
• Interference


  • Strength: Evidence of interference effects in more everyday situations (rugby players)
  • Limitation: Conditions necessary for interference to occur are relatively rare in everyday life
• Interference is temporary and can be overcome by using cues
• Forgetting may be better explained by retrieval failure due to a lack of cues rather than interference
• Interference


  Temporary and can be overcome by using cues (hints or clues to help us remember something)
• Endel Tulving and Joseph Psotka (1971) study


  1. Participants given lists of words organised into categories, one list at a time

  2. Recall averaged about 70% for the first list, but became progressively worse as participants learned each additional list (proactive interference)

  3. At the end, participants given a cued recall test - told the names of the categories

  4. Recall rose again to about 70%
• This shows that interference causes a temporary loss of accessibility to material that is still in LTM, a finding not predicted by interference theory
• When a list of words was learned under the influence of the drug diazepam


  Recall one week later was poor (compared with a placebo control group)
• When a list was learned before the drug was taken

  Later recall was better than placebo
• The drug prevents new information (i.e. experienced after taking the drug) reaching parts of the brain involved in processing memories, so it cannot interfere retroactively with information already stored
• This finding shows that forgetting can be due to interference - reduce the interference and you reduce the forgetting
• Patient KF


  • Had poor STM ability for auditory (sound) information but could process visual information normally
  • His immediate recall of letters and digits was better when he read them (visual) than when they were read to him (acoustic)
  • KF's phonological loop was damaged but his visuo-spatial sketchpad was intact
• Baddeley et al's (1975) dual-task performance study


  1. Participants carried out a visual and verbal task at the same time

  2. Performance on each was similar to when they carried out the tasks separately

  3. When both tasks were visual (or both were verbal), performance on both declined substantially
• This shows there must be a separate subsystem (the VSS) that processes visual input (and one for verbal processing, the PL)
• Central executive


  The most important but the least understood component of the working memory model
• HM (Henry Molaison) and Clive Wearing


  • Episodic memory severely impaired due to brain damage, but semantic memories and procedural memories relatively unaffected
• Understanding types of LTM allows psychologists to help people with memory problems, such as devising interventions to improve episodic memories in older people
• Studies show that STM and LTM are different, as we tend to mix up words that sound similar when using STM, but mix up words with similar meanings when using LTM
• Jacobs' study on digit span has been replicated, suggesting it is a valid test of STM capacity