AQA A Level Psychology Memory

Limitations of a Standard Interview

Close ended questions Don't maximise recall Short answers Brief questions to elicit facts Witness concentration broken by interruptions

What does the MSM model suggest

It attempts to explain how memory works Memory Consists of multiple stores There is a sequence between these stores

What does the Central Executive do

directs attention to particular tasks and controls the 2 slave systems (phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad)

Capacity of STM

7+_ 2 units

What can the visuo-spatial sketchpad be divided into

Visual cache (visual information) Inner scribe (processes spatial relations)

Duration of STM

30 seconds

How was the anxiety effect on EWT resolved

A psychologist reviewed 21 studies of the effects of anxiety on EWT and found contradicting evidence throughout. This can be explained via the Yerks-Dodson effect.

Weapon Focus may not be caused by anxiety

A psychologist stated that weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety and rather by surprise. To test this participants were to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying either scissors (high threat low surprise), handgun (high both), a wallet (low both) or a raw chicken (low threat high surprise). They found that identification of suspect was lowest when in high surprise conditions.

What does the Yerkes-Dodson Law show

Accuracy of EWT increases with anxiety until an optimal point and then it declines

Study of encoding

Baddeley (Semantically and Acoustically Similar/Dissimilar words) Baddeley had lists of acoustically similar words such as: Cat, cab, can, map, mat, max etc. And also semantically similar words: Huge, big, large, titanic, massive etc. He found that participants had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in the STM and in the LTM struggled with semantically similar words. He concluded that STM is largely encoded acoustically whereas LTM is encoded semantically.

Study of duration of LTM

Bahrick (Free recall, photo recognition and name recognition tests) 400 people of various ages were tested on their memory of high school classmates. They were given a free recall to recall as many class mates as they could. Then they were given 50 photos, some with people from their school year book. Bahrick found that recall after 15 years of graduation was 90% accurate from photos, and after 48 years was 70%. With free recall it was about 60% accurate and 30%. Showing that it is possibly an unlimited duration for LTM.

Name the three types of LTM

Episodic memories are about events that have happened to us before and is concerned with our personal experiences. Procedural memories are memories of how to do things such as tie your shoe laces or making a cup of tea, they are acquired through repetition. Semantic memories are concerned with knowing things, such as facts or that you go to school at a certain age etc. These usually start as episodic memories but eventually transition to semantic.

Evidence to support the MSM

Glanzer and Cunnitz (primacy and recency effect) HM (LTM gone) Beardsley (Prefrontal cortex for STM and Hippocampus for Ltm) (Bahrick Peterson and Peterson, miller, baddeley)

What study provides evidence for the WMM

Hitch and Baddeley ( dual tasks "B is followed by A") KF (Verbal bad Visual Fine)

Study of anxiety and EWT

Johnson & Scott (Weapon Focus Effect) Participants were told to sit in a waiting room where in an adjacent room confederates were having an argument and then saw a man run through the room with either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety). Afterwards they asked the participants to identify the man from a set of photos. They found that those in the knife condition had an accuracy of 15% lower of those in the pen condition.

Evaluate the WMM

Lack of evidence for the CE Supporting evidence for separate stores of STM (Hitch and Baddeley) Lieberman stated that the visuo-spatial should be divided into two separate components: one for visual and one for spatial as the sketchpad presumes that all spatial was first visual, but it cant be as blind people have good spatial awareness

Study of leading questions and EWT

Loftus and Palmer (traffic accident videos) Forty five participants were shown 7 films of different traffic accidents. Each participant was then given a questionnaire with a list of questions about the crash, with one critical question 'How fast were the cars going when they *verb* each other'. The verb was replaced with either smashed, collided, bumped, hit or contacted. This was a leading question based on the verb used. The results showed an average of 10mph mean difference between contacted and smashed. Another experiment was done but this time only two verbs were used smashed, hit and a control group. One week later they were asked whether they had seen any glass and found that while most said no, more people in the smashed condition did say yes.

Techniques used in a cognitive interview

MRCC! Mental reinstatement of original Context - allow for emotional and contextual cues. Report everything - Smaller things may trigger a bigger memory/piece smaller things together. Change order - Remove Schemas. Change perspective - Remove Schemas.

Encoding in STM

Mainly acoustically

Encoding in LTM

Mainly semantically

Evaluate the CI

Meta-analysis of 53 studies found that on average there was a 34% increase in correct information generated from CI compared to the standard interview. Quality vs Quantity - Kohnken conducted a study and found an increase of 81% correct information however also an increase of 61% of wrong information, this means police must handle all information with care as it may not be accurate. CI is also said to take a lot of time and police officers often say that this time is not readily available in many cases.

Study of capacity of STM

Miller (Immediate Digit Span Test) Jacobs Support

Study of duration of STM

Peterson and Peterson (Trigrams) 24 students given a consonant syllable and a three digit number ie. THX 512. They were asked to recall the consonant syllable after a retention interval of 3, 6 , 9, 12 or 15 seconds. During this interval they had to count backwards from their three digit number. Participants were 90% correct after 3 seconds, 20% correct after 9 and only 2% correct after 18 seconds. Suggesting it is less than 18 seconds.

Capacity of LTM

Potentially unlimited

Outline the two ways interference can explain forgetting

Proactive interference - This is where old information interferes with trying to learn new information. Retroactive interference - This is where new information has interfered with old information.

Show evidence for both proactive and retroactive interference

Proactive interference - Underwood conducted a meta-analysis and concluded that when participants have to learn a series of word lists they do not learn the lists encountered later on in the sequence as well as the ones at the start. Overall he said that if participants memorised 10 or more lists then after 24 hours they could only recall a very small amount compared to when they only learned one list they could recall much more. Retroactive interference - Muller gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 mins then after an interval they had to recall. If participants had been given an intervening task they recalled much less. Rugby

Define retrieval failure

Retrieval failure occurs when there is an absence of cues. This is an explanation for forgetting based on the idea that cues are needed in order to recall information. Cues are things that serve as a reminder as they have a meaningful link or an environmental cue to a memory.

What does the WMM suggest

STM is made up of multiple stores and the MSM is too simple

MSM of memory

Sensory Memory-> Attention->STM->(Maintenance rehearsal or) elaborative rehearsal->LTM->(Retrieval, Interference, Decay Retrieval failure, displacement for STM)

Outline context dependent forgetting

The context you are in when learning something can act as a cue and if that context dependant cue is not there then retrieving information can be difficult. Godden and Baddeley investigated this by having participants either learn a set of words on land or underwater (scuba divers), half of each groups had to go to the opposite condition and now all participant had to recall as many words as they could. They found that participants who were in the same context as where they learnt the information were able to recall much more than if in a different context.

Outline post event discussion with evidence

The memory of an event may be incorrect or altered after discussing it with others/being questioned about it multiple times. Gabbert investigated this by putting partners in pairs where each watched a different video of the same event. Pairs in one condition were encouraged to discuss the event before they individually recalled what occurred. A high amount of witnesses that discussed the event went on to make mistakes when recalling the event.

Outline state dependent forgetting

The mental state you are in at the time of learning information can also act as a cue. Goodwin conducted a study where he asked male volunteers to learn a list of words whilst they were either drunk or sober. The participants then were asked to recall the words 24 hours later where some were sober but others had to get drunk again. The recall scores were much higher when they were in the same state as when they learnt the information.

Explain evidence for anxiety having a positive effect on accuracy

There is an alternate explanation that says high anxiety leads to more accurate memories. There is an evolutionary explanation behind this that it would be adaptive to remember events that are emotionally important so that in the future you could recall what you did and do it again in the same situation. A study was done where they questioned 58 witnesses to bank robberies. The witnesses were either victims (bankers) or bystanders (customers), these can link to high and low anxiety, relatively of course. They found that those who would have experience the most anxiety were able to recall much more than the people with lower anxiety.

Outline and show evidence for the encoding specificity principle

This states that a cue does not have to be exactly right in order to retrieve information but rather the closer it is the more useful it will be. A study was conducted where participants had to learn 48 words belonging to 12 categories. Participants had to recall as many words as they could in one of two conditions, the first being where they are given a cue (the categories) and the second being free recall. Average words recalled were 60% compared to 40% showing that having cues learnt at the time of encoding can significantly help recall information.

Evaluate the MSM

Too simple (but easier to understand) Supporting Evidence

The accuracy of EWT is affected by...

age, anxiety, leading questions, post event discussion

What does the episodic buffer do

integrates information from all other STM stores

What can the phonological loop be divided into

phonological store (stores heard information, inner ear) articulatory process (subvocal repetition, inner voice)

What does the visuo-spatial sketchpad do

plans spatial tasks and stores visual or spatial information

Duration of LTM

potentially unlimited

What does the phonological loop do

processes and retains the order of heard information can be divided into 2 substores