Memory Full Notes New 2007

7/29/2019 Memory Full Notes New 2007

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AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTESTHE MULTI STORE MODEL OF MEMORYATKINSON AND SHIFFRIN (1968)

They believed that there are three memory stores: sensory, shortterm and long term.

The model believes that there are three memory stores: sensory,short term and long term

Information from the environment is initially received by thesensory stores

Some of the information is attended to, and processed further, bythe short term store

In turn some of the information processed in the short term store

is transferred to the long term store The reason given for transfer of information between the STM

and LTM is rehearsal

The more information is rehearsed, the stronger the memorytrace.

EVALUATIONS OF THE MULTI STORE MODEL

One criticism of the model is that it proposes that the transfer ofinformation from short term to long term is made throughrehearsal. However in day to day most people devote very little

time to active rehearsal, even though they are constantly storingaway new information in long term memory. Rehearsal maydescribe what happens when psychologists conduct experimentsin laboratories but this isnt always what happens in real life.

Another criticism of the model is that it over simplifies STM andLTM. It assumes that there is a single short term store and asingle long term store. These assumptions are not correct. Forexample, the evidence from brain damaged patients such as KFsuggest that his memory deficit was limited to letters and wordsbut he could remember sounds. This suggests that there is not

just one short term memory but a number of different parts, eachrepresented in different parts of the brain.

A positive criticism of the model is that it provided a systematicaccount of the structures and processes involved in humanmemory. This allowed other researchers such as Baddeley andHitch to develop aspects of the model such as STM. Mostpsychologists agree that there is a difference between memorystores in terms of encoding, duration and capacity.


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AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESTHE MULTI STORE MODEL OF MEMORY - ATKINSON ANDSHIFFRIN (1968)

Outline the multi store model of memory. (6 marks)EVALUATIONS OF THE MULTI STORE MODEL

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Give two criticisms of the multi store model of memory. (3 + 3marks)

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTESTHE WORKING MEMORY MODEL BADDELEY AND HITCH

(1974)

Baddeley and Hitch (1974) described their model of short termmemory as that area of memory which is used while working onthings.

The working memory system consists of three components central executive: has limited capacity; is a modality free

component visuo spatial sketchpad: (sometimes called a scratch pad)

the inner eye and deals with visual and spatial coding. A kind ofwriting pad for visual information. articulatory phonological loop: the loop is divided into the

inner ear and the inner voice. The articulatory loop is linkedwith speech production and holds as many words as can be readout loud in two seconds. The phonological loop is linked withspeech perception

The articulatory phonological loop is used in everyday life forreading difficult material, making it easier for readers to retaininformation about the order of words in the text.

EVALUATIONS OF THE WORKING MEMORY MODEL

One limitation of the working memory model is that we knowleast about the central executive yet it is also the mostimportant. It has a limited capacity but no one has been able tomeasure it accurately. Richardson (1984) argues that there areproblems in specifying the precise function of the centralexecutive, he believes that the terminology is vague and that itcan be used to explain any kind of results. One positive criticism of the working memory model is that it

is an advance over the account of short term memoryprovided the multi store model. The working memory model isconcerned with active processing rather than the passiveprocess described by the multi store model. E.g. it viewsverbal rehearsal as an optional process that occurs within thearticulatory or phonological loop. It also places more emphasison visual aspects of STM unlike the multi-store model.

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AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES

THE WORKING MEMORY MODEL - BADDELEY AND HITCH(1974)

Outline the working memory model of memory. (6 marks)EVALUATIONS OF THE WORKING MEMORY MODEL

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Give two criticisms of the working memory model of memory. (3 + 3marks)

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTESLEVELS OF PROCESSING MODEL CRAIK AND LOCKHART(1972)

Craik and Lockhart put forward an alternative to the multi-store model of memory.

They argued that the concept of rehearsal is not sufficient toaccount for long term memory. They believed instead onemphasising the cognitive processes that are operating at thetime of learning therefore they concentrate on the processes

involved in memory and not the stores. The model suggests that information is processed at one of

three levels Structural level (what a word looks like e.g. capital letters of

lower case) Phonological level (what a word sounds like e.g. what does

it rhyme with) Semantic level (what does a word mean?)

The model emphasises what it calls shallow (Type 1)processing which occurs at the structural level and deeper(Type 11) processing that occurs at the semantic level.

The deeper the information is processed, the better it isrecalled.

EVALUATIONS OF LEVEL OF PROCESSING

A positive criticism of the levels of processing model is thatalthough it appears to deal with something that is obvious processes of learning few studies before 1972 hadconsidered this approach. This model could be applied toimproving memory. If you find it hard to remember someones

name, dont just repeat it over and over again elaborate onit or make the memory distinctive. This enhances the depth ofprocessing and will make it more memorable.

A limitation of the model is the use of levels. It is not clearexactly where one level ends and the next one begins. Wheredoes the structural level end and the phonological levelbegin? This problem occurs because of the lack of anyindependent measure of processing depth.

Another limitation is that the model describes rather thanexplains. Craik and Lockhart argued that deep processingleads to better long term memory than shallow processing.

However, they failed to provide a detailed account of whydeep processing is so effective. Why is something that is

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elaborated or more distinctive be more likely to result in longterm storage? It does happen (a description) but why?

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESTHE LEVELS OF PROCESSING MODEL CRAIK AND LOCKHART(1972)

Outline the levels of processing model of memory. (6 marks)EVALUATIONS OF THE LEVELS OF PROCESSING MODEL

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Give two criticisms of this model. (3 + 3 marks)

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTESDEFINITIONS OF: ENCODING: when psychologists talk aboutencoding they are referring to the way information is stored inmemory. It can be stored acoustically (using sound) or semantically(looking at meaning). When a person is given a list of words toremember they will encode them and place the words in memory.STM mainly uses an acoustic code and LTM a semantic code.STORAGE: as a result of encoding, the information is held inmemory until it is needed After the person has encoded the words

for the memory test they will hold the words in memory until theend of term. This is called storage. RETRIEVAL: the recovering ofstored information from the memory system. The words of the testmust be located and re-accessed if they are to answer the end ofterm test. This is known as recall or remembering. When the test isgiven, if retrieval has been successful, the words are written downon the test paper.SHORT TERM MEMORY ACOUSTIC ENCODING Evidencesuggests in STM information is stored by the way it sounds acoustically. When a person is presented with a list of numbers orletters, they will try to hold them in STM by rehearsing them.

Rehearsal involves saying items over and over to themselves.Rehearsal is a verbal process, whether the list is read out acousticor visual (on a sheet of paper).SHORT TERM MEMORY: RESEARCH INTO ENCODING:BADDELEY (1966): Procedure: Participants were given four setsof words to recall: Set A: acoustically similar (e.g. man cap, can,cab) Set B: acoustically dissimilar (e.g. pit, few, cow, pen) Set C:semantically similar e.g. (great, large, big, huge) and Set D:semantically dissimilar (e.g. good, huge, hot, safe). Results: Ifparticipants were asked to recall the word list immediately (STM),they did less well with acoustically similar words then withacoustically dissimilar words. Recalling the words after an interval(LTM) they performed the same on the acoustic lists but there weredifferences on the semantic lists, Conclusion: This suggests thatSTM uses an acoustic code and LTM uses a semantic code.SHORT TERM MEMORY DURATION: It is thought thatinformation is held in STM for a limited amount of time (about 18seconds). Its as if the information is written on a magic slate and,as time passes. The writing fades away. Of course, if you rehearsethe information (repeat it over and over) you can remember it forlonger.

RESEARCH INTO DURATION IN STM - PETERSON ANDPETERSON (1959): Procedure: Participants were shown trigrams

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(BVM, CTG) they were then asked to recall the trigram either after3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds. They were given an interference task(counting backwards in threes from a three digit number) betweenbeing presented with the trigram and recalling it. This stopped themrehearsing the trigram. Results: Recall after three seconds was

good (80% of the trigrams were recalled) but after 18 seconds onlyabout 10% were recalled. The memory trace seems to disappearafter about 18 seconds.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESDEFINITIONS OF:ENCODING:

STORAGE:

RETRIEVAL:

What is meant by the terms encoding and retrieval? (3 + 3 marks)SHORT TERM MEMORY ACOUSTIC ENCODING

Explain what is meant by the term encoding in STM. (3 marks)SHORT TERM MEMORY RESEARCH INTO ENCODING:BADDLEY AND HITCH (1966)

Describe the procedures and findings of one piece of research intoencoding in STM. (6 marks)SHORT TERM MEMORY: DURATION

Explain what is meant by the term duration in memory? (3 marks)RESEARCH INTO DURATION IN STM PETERSON AND

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PETERSON (1959)

Outline the procedures and findings into one study of duration inSTM. (6 marks)

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTESSHORT TERM MEMORY: CAPACITY: Miller (1956) put forwardthe idea that the capacity of STM centred around the magic number7 + - 2. He suggested STM can store between 5 and 9 pieces ofinformation. STM can only store a limited number of items becauseit has a limited number of slots. Miller suggested we can increasethe amount of information in STM by chunking the material e.g.

grouping letters together into words or abbreviations that havemeaning for us.SHORT TERM MEMORY: RESEARCH INTO CAPACITY - JACOBS(1887) Procedure: Participants were presented with a sequence ofletters or digits which they were required to repeat back in the orderthey were presented. The letters or digits were presented at halfsecond intervals using a metronome. Each participant started withthree items and these were increased each time by one until theyconsistently failed to reproduce the sequence correctly. Thesequence length that was recalled correctly on at least 50% of thetrials was taken to be the participants digit span. Findings: Jacobs

found that the average STM digit span was between 5 and 9 items.Digits (9.3) were recalled better than letters (7.3) He also found thatthe span increased with age. 6.6 was the average for 8 year oldscompared to 8.6 for 19 year olds.ENCODING IN LONG TERM MEMORYIt is thought we primarily use a semantic encoding in long termmemory. Semantic encoding is done on the basis of meaning. If wecan give meaning to numbers, letters and information we are morelikely to remember them over a long period of time.LONG TERM MEMORY RESEARCH INTO SEMANTICENCODING BADDELEY (1966): Procedure: Participants weregiven four sets of words to recall: Set A: acoustically similar (e.g.man cap, can, cab) Set B: acoustically dissimilar (e.g. pit, few, cow,pen) Set C: semantically similar e.g. (great, large, big, huge) and SetD: semantically dissimilar (e.g. good, huge, hot, safe). To test LTMencoding participants were asked to recall their list after a timedelay. Results: Recalling the words after an interval, (LTM),participants performed better on words that were semanticallydissimilar than words that were semantically similar and there wasno difference on the acoustic lists. Conclusion:This suggests thatSTM uses an acoustic code and LTM uses a semantic code.

LONG TERM MEMORY CAPACITY: People are able to remembera vast amount of information in long term memory. The kind of

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information people can remember is also extremely varied: yourroute home from school, what your previous school looked like, thenames of all the people you know, the letters of the alphabet, therules of arithmetic, the names of capital cities in the world, etc.There may be some limit to the actual brain cells available but it

seems that we never reach this upper limit in LTM.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESSHORT TERM MEMORY CAPACITY

Explain what is meant by the term capacity in STM. (3 marks)SHORT TERM MEMORY RESEARCH INTO CAPACITY JACOBS(1887)

Describe the procedures and findings of one study into capacity inSTM. (6 marks)ENCODING IN LONG TERM MEMORY

Explain what is meant by the term encoding in LTM. (3 marks)LONG TERM MEMORY RESEARCH INTO SEMANTICENCODINGBADDELEY (1996)

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Describe the procedures and findings of one study into encoding inLTM. (6 marks)LONG TERM MEMORY CAPACITY

Explain what is meant by the term capacity in LTM. (3 marks)AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES

LONG TERM MEMORY DURATIONIt is difficult to prove how long a memory lasts, as we may haveforgotten a piece of information today but we may be able to recallit tomorrow, or next week. Psychologists have conducted research

into Very Long Term Memory. It has been found that the elderlyrarely lose their childhood memories and many skills such as ridinga bike are never forgottenRESEARCH INTO THE DURATION OF LONG TERM MEMORY

BAHRICK, BAHRICK AND WITTINGER (1975) Procedure: Theyused photographs from high school year books (an annualpublication in American High schools where everyones picture isshown with their name and other details). They asked 392 ex-high-school students of various ages to freely recall the names of any oftheir classmates and also showed them a set of appropriate

photographs and asked them to identify individuals. Results: Evenafter 34 years ex-students were able to name 90% of thephotographs, thus supporting the view that people do have verylong-term memories.EPISODIC AND SEMANTIC MEMORY TULVING (1972) Hesuggested that episodic memory has an autobiographical flavour. Itcontains memories of specific events or episodes occurring in aparticular place at a particular time e.g. what you did yesterday orwhat you had for lunch last Sunday. Semantic memory containsinformation about our knowledge of the world e.g. rules and wordsof our language, how to calculate percentages and how to fill yourcar with petrol.EVALUATION: It is clear that there is difference in content betweensemantic and episodic memory, however it is less clear that there isa difference in the processes involved. Episodic and semanticmemory may depend heavily on each other. Remembering whatyou had lunch last Sunday involves episodic memory, howeversemantic memory is involved, in that your knowledge of the world isneeded to identify the different kinds of food you ate.DIFFERENCES BETWEEN STM AND LTM

STM LTM

Duration Short 18 secs Long potentiallyForever

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Capacity Limited by duration UnlimitedEncoding Acoustic SemanticSerial Position Recency effect Primacy effect

Last material is Earlier materialis

better remembered betterremembered

because of because it isinterference. better

rehearsed.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESLONG TERM MEMORY DURATION

Explain what is meant by the term duration in LTM. (3 marks)RESEARCH INTO THE DURATION OF LONG TERM MEMORYBAHRICK, BAHRICK AND WITTINGER (1975)

Outline the procedures and findings into one study of duration inlong term memory. (6 marks)EPISODIC AND SEMANTIC MEMORY TULVING (1972)

What is meant by the terms episodic and semantic memory?(3 + 3 marks)

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LTM AND STMLTM STM

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Outline three differences between long term and short termmemory.

(2+2+2 marks)

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTESEXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN SHORT TERM MEMORY

1. TRACE DECAYOne explanation of of forgetting in STM is trace decay. This is basedon the idea that memories have a physical basis (a trace) and thatthis will decay in time unless the trace is passed to long termmemory. Rehearsal prevents forgetting because it replenishes thetrace before it decays completely. The trace disappears just like aphotographic image that is not fixed with chemicals. Information in

short term memory certainly does disappear but this may not bebecause of trace decay, it could disappear because of interference.RESEARCH INTO TRACE DECAY PETERSON AND PETERSON(1959)Procedure: Participants were shown trigrams (BVM, CTG) theywere then asked to recall the trigram either after 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or18 seconds. They were given an interference task (countingbackwards in threes from a three digit number) between beingpresented with the trigram and recalling it. This stopped themrehearsing the trigram. Results: Recall after three seconds wasgood (80% recall) but after 18 seconds only about 10% recall.Conclusion: The memory trace seems to disappear after about 18seconds.EVALUATION OF RESEARCH

One limitation of the study is that participants were asked to recall avery artificial type of data. It is not a very common task for peopleto remember trigrams. It could be argued that STM is longer lastingwhen people are asked to remember more meaningful data such astelephone numbers or street names that are important to them.

A strength of the study is that it is a lab experiment and we canclearly identify the independent variable (the time people were

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given to recall the trigrams) and the dependant variable (thenumber of trigrams people were able to recall). This means that wecan clearly identify the effect of time delay on recall.2. DISPLACEMENT Another explanation of forgetting in STM isdisplacement. STM has seven slots (=2-2) and when these slots are

full, some of the old information is knocked out, or displaced, by thenew information. It follows that this would lead to forgetting, as youput the new information into STM and the old information is thenlost.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESEXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN SHORT TERM MEMORYTRACE DECAY

Outline one explanation of forgetting in STM. (3 marks)RESEARCH IN TRACE DECAY PETERSON AND PETERSON(1959)

Outline the procedure and findings of one piece of research intotrace decay in STM. (6 marks)EVALUATION OF RESEARCH

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Give two evaluations of this research into trace decay in STM.(3+3 marks)

DISPLACEMENT

Outline two explanations of forgetting in STM. (3 + 3 marks)AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES

EXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN LONG TERM MEMORY1. INTERFERENCE

One explanation of forgetting in long term memory is interference.The idea behind this theory is that memories may be interfered witheither by what we learned before, or by what we may learn in thefuture. There is proactive interference (earlier data interfereswith new data) and retroactive interference (new data interferes

with recall of old data). Interference is most likely to occur when twosets of data are similar.RESEARCH INTO INTERFERENCEMcGEOGH AND MacDONALD(1931)

Procedure: They asked participants to learn a list of adjectives,they were then given another task (this was called the interpolatedtask) and after this were asked to recall the original list ofadjectives.

Results: They found that forgetting was greatest when theinterpolated task was similar to the list of adjectives. There was littleeffect on recall from interference when the interpolated taskinvolved unrelated material. Most forgetting occurred when theinterference task involved synonyms of the original list.EVALUATION OF RESEARCH INTO INTERFERENCE McGEOGHAND MacDONALD (1931)

One limitation of interference theory is that it doesnt have muchapplicability to everyday life. It is rare that two different responsesare attached to the same stimulus and therefore much of our

forgetting is unlikely to be due to interference. Baddeley pointed outinterference doesnt apply widely outside of the laboratory. There is

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some disagreement as to whether interference should be thought ofas lack of accessibility or lack of availability. There is some evidencethat its due to lack of accessibility.

Another view is that interference does happen occasionally in

everyday life. In the 19th century the German psychologist HugoMunsterberg conducted a simple experiment by moving his pocketwatch from one pocket to another. When asked What time is it?he would often fumble about in confusion and put his hand in thewrong pocket e.g. proactive interference past experience isinterfering with current recall..

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESFORGETTING IN LONG TERM MEMORYINTERFERENCE

Outline one explanation of forgetting in LTM (3 marks)RESEARCH INTO INTERFERENCE McGEOGH AND MacDONALD(1931)

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Outline the procedures and findings into one study of forgetting inLTM. (6 marks)EVALUATION OF RESEARCH INTO INTERFERENCE McGEOGHAND MacDONALD (1931

Give two criticisms of this research into forgetting in LTM.(3 + 3 marks)

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTESEXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN LONG TERM MEMORY

2. CUE DEPENDENT FORGETTINGAnother explanation of forgetting in long term memory is called cuedependent forgetting. The idea behind this theory is that thememory has been stored it just isnt accessible until an appropriate

cue is given and suddenly it pops up. Such information is said to beavailable because it is stored, but not accessible because it cant beretrieved. It needs a cue hence the following conversation:Mary: What was that boys name?Susan: It was something like Ted or Frank.Mary: Oh, thats it. It was Fred.RESEARCH INTO CUE DEPENDENT FORGETTINGTULVING ANDPSOTKA (1971)

Procedure: Participants were given word lists. There were sixdifferent word lists, each with 24 words. Each set of words wasdivided into six categories so there were 4 words in each category.E.g. one list would be cat, tiger, dog, whale: ruby, diamond,sapphire, emerald: chair, table, sofa, bed : apple, pear, orange,lemon: oak, maple, birch, elm: lake, river, sea, pond. Some of theparticipants only learned one list and some learned two and so on.After each list had been presented participants tried to remember asmany words as possible. This was called free call. After all the listshad been presented participants tried to recall the words from allthe lists they had heard. This was called total free recall. Finally allthe category names were presented e.g. animals / precious stones /

fruit and the participants tried again to remember as many wordsas possible. This was called total free cued recall cued because

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they were given the category names.Results:They found that in the total free recall situation there was evidenceof retroactive interference - new data interferes with recall of olddata. Participants who were only given one or two lists were able to

recall a higher percentage of words than those with five or sixwords. This would seem to support the idea of interference.When the participants were given the cued recall test, the effects ofinterference disappeared. No matter how many lists the participantswere given recall was the same for each list about 70% when theywere given category cues. This means that interference had notcaused forgetting because the memories were available, theywerent able to be accessed until the cues were given.EVALUATION OF RESEARCH INTO CUE DEPENDENTFORGETTINGTULVING AND PSOTKA (1971)One limitation of this research is that the improved performance ofthe participants on the cued recall task might be due to the practiceeffect. The participants had completed at least two free recall testsbefore doing the cued recall test and this may have led to betterrecall. However, this cannot explain all of the results, such as whyrecall was much the same on all lists no matter how many weregiven.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESEXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN LONG TERM MEMORYCUE DEPENDENT FORGETTING

Give two explanations of forgetting in LTM. (3 + 3 marks)RESEARCH INTO CUE DEPENDENT FORGETTING TULVINGAND PSOTKA (1971)Procedure:

Results:

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Outline the procedures and findings into one piece of research offorgetting in LTM. (3+3marks)

EVALUATION OF ONE PIECE OF RESEARCH INTO CUEDEPENDENT FORGETTING TULVING AND PSOTKA (1971)

Give one limitation of this research. (3 marks)AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES

EMOTIONAL FACTORS IN FORGETTINGDEFINITION OF FLASHBULB MEMORY: The term flashbulb

memory describes long-lasting and vivid memories of highly

important and dramatic events. Brown and Kulik (1977) foundthat people were likely to remember six kinds of information inmemories of this kind:

(1)Where they were when they heard the news (2) what they weredoing at the time (3) the person who gave them the news (4)howthey felt about it (5) how others felt about it (6)the aftermath ofthe event.

The most important factors in triggering a flashbulb memory werethat the event was surprising, was seen to be important and wasassociated with a high level of emotional arousal. These ideas weredemonstrated in their findings that of the 80 people asked abouttheir memories of the assassination of President Kennedy 79remembered where they were and what they were doing at thetime.PILLEMER (1984)Procedure: In this American research, people were asked abouttheir memory for the attempted assassination of the AmericanpresidentRonald Reagan in 1981. They were asked about this event a monthafter it happened, and again six months later. Results: People hadvivid memories of where they were when they heard the news, and

who told them about it. They reported strong visual images. Theamount of emotional arousal people experienced was related to the

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vividness, elaboration and consistency over time of the memory.Conclusion: Flashbulb memories are associated with an eventbeing unexpected, seen as important, and creating strong emotionalarousal. As well as public events, we can also have flashbulbmemories of personal events. Rubin and Kozin (1984) asked

people to describe their three clearest memories. Many of theserelated to accidents or injuries to themselves or those close to them,others related to love affairs, sports, and experiences when startingcollege. National events made up only 3% of the sample. Surprisewas an important factor, the number of times people had rehearsedthe memory, i.e. gone over it in their minds, was also important.There is conflicting evidence about how reliable flashbulb memoriesare. Evidence to suggest they are not reliable comes fromMcCloskey, Wible and Cohen (1988) who interviewed peopleshortly after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and thenre-interviewed those people nine months later. They found thatparticipant did forget some elements of the event and they alsoshowed some inaccuracies in their recall. This finding suggests thatflashbulb memories are subject to forgetting in the same way thatother memories are. Conway et al (1994) felt the Challengerexplosion wasnt a good example because it didnt have importantconsequences in the lives of those interviewed. They looked atpeoples reactions to Mrs Thatchers resignation and found that 86%of UK participants still had memories after 11 months comparedwith 29% of people from other countries. Suggesting that when anevent has a distinctive meaning it will be more memorable.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESFLASHBULB MEMORY definition

BROWN AND KULIK (1977)

1.2.3.4.5.6.

Explain what is meant by the term flashbulb memory. (3 marks)PILLEMER (1984)Procedure:

Results:

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Conclusion:

Outline the procedures and findings of one study into flashbulbmemory. (6 marks)EVALUATION OF FLASBULB MEMORYAGAINST

FOR:

Give two criticisms of the reliability of flashbulb memory.(3 + 3 marks)

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTESEMOTIONAL FACTORS IN FORGETTING DEFINITION OFREPRESSIOON. FREUD (1915) suggested that material thatcaused anxiety may be dealt with in a number of ways that willreduce ones feelings of anxiety repression is one of thesemethods of ego defence.A simple example would be someone who dislikes going to thedentist. If they told you that they forgot their appointment youmight think of this as repressed memory the anxiety caused by thememory in some way made it inaccessible to conscious thought.EVIDENCE FOR: Some convincing evidence for repression hascome from repressors, individuals who have low scores on traitanxiety ( a personality factor relating to how likely you are tobecome anxious) and high scores on defensiveness (the tendency toprotect oneself from anxiety and embarrassment).MYERS AND BREWIN (1994) REPRESSED MEMORIESAim: Do people who are repressors i.e. those people with lowanxiety and high defensiveness, have restricted access to negativechildhood memories ?Participants: 27 female undergraduates tested on anxiety anddefensiveness. The participants were grouped as repressors, or

other types. Method: Natural experiment, semistructuredinterviews. The participants were asked to recall unhappy childhood

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memories as quickly as possible. Participants were also questionedabout the quality of their relationships with their parents using asemistructured interview. This was necessary in order to check thatthe repressors had something to repress. Results: The repressorstook twice as long to recall unhappy childhood memories as positive

ones. The repressors free-recalled fewer negative childhoodmemories than non-repressors, and the age of first memory wasolder in both free-recall and cued-recall conditions. Repressors weremore likely to report poor or negative relationships with theirfathers. Conclusion: This suggests that individuals with anxietyprovoking memories are more likely to repress such memories. Thereason why repressors took longer to recall unhappy childhoodmemories and fewer were recalled was repression rather than lackof unhappy memories.Evaluation: One problem with this research was the lack ofscientific rigour. It is hard to test Freuds theory as it is not ascientific theory and difficult to find empirical evidence to supportit.It is not justifiable to reach causal conclusions where theindependent variable has not been directly manipulated or whereparticipants have not been randomly allocated to groups. There isalso the issue of participants being reluctant to reveal certainmemories in an experimental situation.There are also ethical issues in dealing with research that deals withthe recovery of repressed memories. Is it right to encourageparticipants to recover painful memories which may upset thebalance of their family life? Should a researcher place themselves in

this situation or undertake the responsibility of conducting researchin this sensitive area?

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESDEFINTION OF REPRESSION

What is meant by the term repression ? (3 marks)MYERS AND BREWIN (1994) REPRESSED MEMORIESAim:

Procedure:

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Results:

Conclusion:

Describe the procedures and findings of one study into repression.(3 + 3 marks)

EVALUATION

Give two criticisms of this study (6 marks)AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES

BROWN (1986) suggests that there is a paradox to eyewitnesstestimony: judges, defence attorneys and psychologists believe it tobe about the least trustworthy kind of evidence of guilt, whereasjurors have always found it more persuasive than any other sort ofevidence.RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY BARTLETT (1932) argued thatmemory is affected by the store of relevant prior knowledge wehave, and not just by what information is presented. He regardedmemories not just as reproductions of information but asreconstructions influenced by prior knowledge. He asked people toread The War of the Ghosts and found that a number of changes tothe story occurred as it was recalled.

People gave shorter simpler versions

People retold the story more as a standard English one ratherthan a Native American story e.g. substituting boat for canoe.

Sometimes new information was introduced to make the storymore logical

This type of reconstruction Bartlett termed rationalisation. Suchdistortions are used to make sense of unfamiliar things. But the

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most important thing was that the central ideas of the story werenot really changed at all. Bartlett suggested that what happens isthat people store a few main facts about the story and thenreconstruct it from those facts. This act of reconstruction Bartlettreferred to as effort after meaning.

EVALUATION Support for Bartlett (1932) has come from severalstudies. SULIN AND DOOLING (1974) asked their participants toread a story, having told them it was either about Adolf Hitler orGerald Martin (a fictitious character). Afterwards, they were given atest of recognition memory and asked to decide whether eachsentence in the test had been presented in the story. The keysentences were those that had not been presented but whichreferred to well known facts about Adolf Hitler. Those participantswho had been told the story was about Hitler were more likely toclaim mistakenly that these key sentences had been in the originalstory. Thus, their prior knowledge about Hitler produced distortionsin their recall.Another criticism of Bartlett is that his approach lacked objectivity.Some psychologists believe that well-controlled experiments are theonly way to produce objective data. Bartletts methods were casual.He simply asked the group to recall the story at various intervalsand there were no special conditions for the recall. It is possible thatother factors affected their recall such as the conditions aroundthem at the time they were recalling the story. On the other handone could argue that his research is more ecologically valid thanthose studies that ask participants to recall lists of unrelated words.

At least Bartlett attempted to look at everyday memory an aspectof memory that is now being actively researched.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESBROWN (1986)

RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY BARTLETT (1932)

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Describe the procedure ad findings of one study into reconstructivememory. (6 marks)EVALUATIONS

Give two criticisms of this research (6 marks)AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES

LOFTUS AND PALMER (1974) Leading Questions Procedure:150 participants were shown a film of an accident between two carsand then asked to fill in a questionnaire about the accident. Theimportant question involved the speed of the cars at the point ofimpact. The question was phrased differently for different groups ofparticipants some were asked How fast were the two cars goingwhen they hit each other; others were asked the same question butwith smashed, collided, bumped or contacted replacing theword hit.Results: The average speeds the participants gave in their answerto the question were: Hit 34mph : Smashed 41mph : Collided 39mph: Bumped 38mph : Contacted 31mph.Conclusion:The speed at which participants thought the cars weregoing was affected by the verb used. Recall can be distorted by thewording of a question.

LOFTUS (1979) Weapon Focus : Procedure: Loftus askedparticipants to wait in a room outside a laboratory, during this wait

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some participants were allowed to overhear a low key discussionabout equipment failure a person then emerged from the labholding a pen he uttered a single comment and walked past theparticipant. In the other condition participants overheard a heatedexchange, the sound of breaking glass and a man emerged holding

a paper knife covered in blood, made a single statement and walkedon.Results: When the participants were given 50 photographs andasked to identify the man they had seen. The man holding the penwas correctly identified 49% of the time and the man with the knifeonly 33%.Conclusion: Participants in the knife condition focused on the kniferather than the mans face. This shows that emotion, particularlyhigh emotion can affect the accuracy of memory recall.LOFTUS (1975) The barn experiment Procedure: Loftusshowed 150 participants a film in which there was a car accident.After the film was shown the group were divided in two conditionsand each group were asked ten questions about the film. They wereboth given the same questions except that the second group hadone different question: How fast was the white sports car goingwhen it passed the barn? There was no barn. After one week theparticipants were all given another questionnaire the last questionfor both groups was: Did you see the barn?Results: In the first condition only 2.7% answered Yes. You wouldnot expect this to be high because the idea of the barn did notfeature on their questionnaire. In the second group 17.3% answered

Yes. Conclusion:The idea here is that false information can be fedto people early on in an investigation and then becomes embeddedin the memory and accepted as real information.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES

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LOFTUS AND PALMER (1974) LEADING QUESTIONSProcedure:

Results:

Conclusion:

Outline one study into eyewitness testimony. (6 marks)LOFTUS (1979) WEAPON FOCUSProcedure:

Results:

Conclusion:

Outline the procedures and findings of one study into eye witnesstestimony. (3 + 3 marks)LOFTUS (1975) THE BARN EXPERIMENTProcedure:

Results:

Conclusion:

Outline one study into eyewitness testimony. (6 marks)AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES

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EVALUATION OF EYEWITNESS RESEARCHA major limitation of most studies on the effects of post eventinformation is that they have focused on memory for peripheraldetails (e.g the presence or absence of broken glass). As Fruzetti etal (1992) pointed out, it is harder to distort eyewitness memory by

misleading post-event information for key details (e.g. the murderweapon) than for minor details.The studies also lack ecological validity. In the leading questionsexperiment participants were watching a video clip. This is farremoved from a real life incident in which a person would have anemotional reaction and as we have seen from repression andflashbulb memory research emotions can help or hinder peoplesability to recall.WAYS IN WHICH EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY CAN BE MADEMORE RELIABLE: FACE RECOGNITIONHuman beings seem to have an amazing ability to recognise faces.STANDING (1973) showed participants 10,000 faces over 5 days.When they were shown pairs of faces, one of which they hadpreviously been shown, together with a new one, they were able toidentify the face that they had seen 98% of the time. This ability isalso impressive when people are asked to identify faces which theyhave not seen for some time.BAHRICK et al. (1975)Procedure: Fifteen years after their graduation participants wereshown five pictures from year books. One picture of the five was aperson with whom they had graduated from high school.

Results: The participants were accurate in identifying 90% of theirgroupmates. It was found that even those participants who hadgraduated more than 40 years previously could identify 75% of theirgroupmates correctly.Conclusion: People have a well-developed ability to recognisefaces.ELLIS et al (1979) investigated what information is most importantwhen recognising familiar and unfamiliar faces. They found thatrecognition of unfamiliar faces depends more on external features,such as the shape of the face and the hairline. For familiar faces,internal features are more important. According to ROBERTS AND

BRUCE (1988) the area round the eyes is the most important, whilethe area round the nose is of the least importance.HAY AND YOUNG (1982) suggested that familiar faces are storedin the brain in neural circuits known as Face Recognition Units(FRUs) When we see a face we scan our FRUs for a match, todecide whether or not a face is familiar. If a match is found, we canthen access the information about the person, such as their job andbiographical information which may in turn generate their name.

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AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESEVALUATION OF EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY

Give two criticisms of eyewitness research. (6 marks)WAYS IN WHICH EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY CAN BE MADE

MORE RELIABLE: FACE RECOGNITIONSTANDING (1973)

BAHRICK et al (1975)Procedure:

Results:

ELLIS et al (1975)

Outline the procedures and findings of one study into facerecognition.

(6 marks)HAY AND YOUNG (1982)

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AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTESA system called FRAME (Facial Retrieval And MatchingEquipment) uses verbal descriptions given by witnesses to retrieve

possible matches from mug shots. The advantage of this system isthat it uses the information which witnesses can give, while makinguse of our well developed capacity to recognise faces.ELLIS et al (1989) Procedure: Each participant saw a target facefor 10 seconds, which they were later asked to identify. Using adatabase of 1000 male faces a comparison was made between theeffectiveness of the FRAME system and a mug shot album search.Results: The FRAME system produced 69% correct matchescompared to only 44% for the album search. There was also a muchhigher percentage of false alarms when mug shot albums wereused.

Conclusion: The use of verbal descriptions together with mug shotalbums is more effective in leading to face recognition thantheuse of mug shot albums alone.

THE COGNITIVE INTERVIEWGeiselman et al (1984) developed a technique called the basiccognitive interview, based on two principles of memory research.Firstly, that there may be a number of retrieval paths to a memory,and that a memory may be accessible if a different retrieval clue isused and secondly, that a memory trace is made up of severalfeatures and the effectiveness of a retrieval cue depends on how

much it overlaps with the memory trace.The basic cognitive interview technique involves:An eyewitness mentally reinstating the environmental and personalcontext of the crime.

This includes reporting what was going on at the time, both interms of the events witnessed and the witnesss own thoughtsand feelings.

The eyewitness being asked to report everything they can recallabout the event, regardless of how unimportant it might seem

Encouraging an eyewitness to recount what happened in avariety of orders

Asking them to report from a variety of perspectives and pointsof view

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AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTESFRAME

THE COGNITIVE INTERVIEW :

THE BASIC COGNITIVE INTERVIEW

Describe two factors of the basic cognitive interview technique.(6 marks)

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HOW TO WRITE A02

Question (c) will always be worth 18 marks. 6 marks for AO1 accurate description and 12 marks for A02.

AO2 requires that you analyse and evaluate.To analyse you need to:

(a) point out what may seem obvious to you, but spell out to theexaminer that you understand the conclusions that can bedrawn from a particular study or point of view.

For this you need to start sentences with these phrases.

This would imply.. This would imply that the capacity for shortterm memory is limited but the capacity for long term memory isnever reached.This suggests that. This suggests that if the capacity in shortterm memory is exceeded e.g. eight items, then we will forget someof the information.So we can see.. So we can see that short term memory has avery small capacity.One consequence of this would be One consequence of this

would be that if people wanted to retain more information in shortterm memory they would need to chunk the information.An alternative explanation might be. An alternativeexplanation for short term memory is provided by Baddeley andHitch who suggest it has a phonological and visual aspect.

Evaluation is notjust negatively criticising the study/theory that youhave described. Psychology would be a pointless discipline if all theknowledge was as flawed as some students essays would indicate.Remember that positive comments that support the research/theoryare also relevant.

To evaluate you need to:

(b) demonstrate that you appreciate the degree to which a studyor theory has been backed up by actual research evidence.

For this you need to start sentences with these phrases.This is supported by.. This is supported by evidence fromPeterson and Peterson who found that when participants countedbackwards, this information displaced the trigrams they were tryingto remember.

This is challenged by This is challenged by flashbulbmemory that suggests that distinctiveness and emotional factors,

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rather than depth of processing are important in retainingmemories.Not everyone reacts in the same way, for example. Somepeople may be visual learners and therefore will not do very well onin laboratory tests that require them to learn list of words.

There may be cultural variations. There may be culturalvariations to flashbulb memory that would affect the strength of thememory trace. People in India may not have been so shocked byMargaret Thatchers resignation as people in England.

USING AO2 EFFECTIVELYTo give your commentary impact, you should identify and thendevelop the point.

This study lacked ecological validity. Here the candidate hasonly identified the point but not developed it. This study lackedecological validity because we are really asked to remember lists ofunconnected words in everyday life. What the participants werebeing asked to do was a strange task. It would have been better toask them to remember items such as telephone numbers oraddresses that we are required to learn during the course of a year.

This study only used students. Again there is no developmentof the point. This study only used students. There is evidence(Sears, 1986) that students react differently to other sections of thepopulation when participating in psychological research. In studies

of altruism, for example, they are more likely to see tasks as achallenge to be overcome individually, and are therefore less likelyto ask others for help. This may, therefore, limit the validity ofWestern models of altruism, based largely on such laboratorystudies, particularly when these models are used to contrast withresearch in non-Western cultures, which generally show a greaterwillingness to seek and give help.

The study was unethical.To develop this much more needs to beadded. This study was unethical in that Zimbardo, by allowing theguards to engage in anti social behaviour against the prisoners

effectively gave the pursuit of scientific knowledge priority over thewelfare of his participants. A consequence of this decision has beena tightening of ethical guidelines to give other psychologists sharedresponsibility for the research behaviour of their colleagues.

AO2 needs to be sustained do think about the number of points thatyou are going to make and how much you are going to elaborate onthem. A few points coherently elaborated will always get moremarks and than a long list of points with little or no elaboration.

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MEMORY A02 ANSWERSQUESTION 1

Eyewitness testimony differs from many other aspects of memoryin that accuracy is of much greater importance.Consider what psychological research has told us about theaccuracy of eyewitness testimony.(18 marks)

Elizabeth Loftus has demonstrated the inaccuracy of eyewitnesstestimony in a number of different experiments. In the weaponfocus study (1979) participants were asked . Complete the A01

In the barn experiment she demonstrated that participants couldbe lead to imagining that they had seen a barn in a film when infact no barn existed. Providing you plant false information at anearly stage and give it time to embed in the memory, Loftussuggested that false information could become real.

However, Loftus has been criticised for lacking ecologicalvalidity. Complete this A02.

There is also evidence to suggest that there is a special area ofthe brain that deals with face recognition and that humans use asophisticated system to identify faces.

Although Loftus suggests that eyewitness testimony can bemanipulated and altered there is also evidence to support theview that, given the right techniques, it can be strengthened andmade more reliable than was at first thought develop this A02.

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Some psychologists believe that there are two memory stores, shortterm memory and long term memory.

To what extent does research support the view that there are twodifferent memory stores? (18marks)

There is considerable evidence to support the idea that thereare two memory stores. Atkinson and Shiffrins (1968) multi storemodel of memory was the first to suggest that memory could bedivided into three stores, sensory memory, short term memory andlong term memory. They put forward the idea that short termmemory had a limited capacity and a short duration. Millersuggested that the capacity of short term memory was based

around the magic number seven, plus or minus two. The capacitycould be improved by using a process called chunking. Atkinson andShiffrin also put forward the idea that you could hold information inSTM for longer periods of time if you rehearsed it. This was also away of moving STM information into LTM.

Now use some of these phrases to start and develop your A02:Evidence in support of this idea comes fromThe main problem with this idea isAtkinson and Shiffrin seem to concentrate onHowever, Craik and Lockhart believe

A strength of this ideaA weakness of this idea

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Not everyone remembers in the same way


Critically consider insights into face recognition that have beenprovided by psychological research (theories and/or studies).

(18 marks)

How do people recognise faces? Template theorists suggestthat we have a store of templates for different patterns and theseare matched with the incoming stimulus. The problem with thisexplanation is that we would need a huge number of templates andit would take a long time to find the right match.

An alternative model is feature detection, which proposes thatwe look for certain features of an object. For instance when we arelooking for the letter A in a list of letters we look for straight lines

and it is easier to find the letter A in a list of rounded letters such asO and G.

When recognising faces there is evidence that people do useinformation about individual features (such as eye colour) but theyalso use information about the overall arrangement of the features.In fact configuration may be more important for recognition offeatures. Hay and Young (1987) constructed faces by using the tophalf of a famous persons face and the bottom half of anotherfamous persons face. When these two pictures were aligned asclosely as possible, participants found it more difficult to identify thetwo people.

Bahrick (1984) suggested that familiarity plays an importantpart in recognising faces. He tested the face recognition accuracy of

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college lecturers for their students, who they taught three to fivetimes a week over ten weeks. They were asked to pick out theirstudents from photos. After eleven days recognition was reasonable69%, but after a year it had dropped to 48% and after eight years itwas no better than chance. This suggest that familiarity plays an

important part but there could also be an interference effect atwork, as lecturers would be seeing a huge amount of students overtheir working life.

Distinctiveness is also a factor. Valentine and Bruce (1986)suggested that we are likely to recognise faces much more quickly ifthere is something distinctive about them.

Yarmey (1993) found that there is a readiness to link facialfeatures with underlying personality characteristics. They showedparticipants videos of white males between 25 and 30 and askedthem to select the young men who best fitted good guys e.g. doctor,clergyman and bad guys e.g. mass murder, armed robber. Theyfound that there was considerable agreement about which youngmen fitted which stereotypical role. This has implications for thereliability of juries when looking at the person in the dock.

MEMORY AO2 ANSWERSQUESTION 4Consider the extent to which research into the process of repression

enables us to explain forgetting. (18 marks)

Freud believed that certain memories become inaccessible asa result of repression. According to Freud repression is anunconscious process that ensures that life threatening or anxietyprovoking memories are kept from conscious awareness. A simpleexplanation would be of someone who dislikes going to the dentist.If they are told that they forgot their appointment, you might thinkthat this is repressed memory the anxiety caused by the memoryin some way made it inaccessible to conscious thought.

Some convincing evidence for repression comes from

repressors. These are individuals who have low scores on traitanxiety (a personality factor relating to how likely you are tobecome anxious) and high scores on defensiveness (the tendency toprotect oneself from anxiety and embarrassment). Myers andBrewin (1994) conducted a natural experiment to comparerepressors with other personality types. They measured the time ittook for participants to recall negative childhood memories.Repressors were much slower than other personality types.

There is some concern with experiments in this area ofmemory. Is it right to expose anyone to anxiety-producing situations

in order to study the effects on their memory? There are majorethical and legal issues concerning such issues as the therapists

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responsibilities and the effects of accusations on other members ofthe family. Also Freuds theory regarding repression is difficult toprove. As it relies on unconscious and largely inaccessibleprocesses, it is not possible to explore the concept of repression in ascientific or objective manner.

Herman and Schatzow (1987) found that 28% of a group offemale incest victims reported severe memory deficits fromchildhood and such repressed memories were most frequent amongwomen who has suffered violent abuse. However, there is noconcrete evidence to confirm the accuracy of repressed memories.As with all memory that is retrospective it is open to exaggeration,editing and reconstruction.

Freud maybe right in suggesting that repression is a way offorgetting unpleasant memories. There are links here with the roleemotion plays in distorting memory traces. However, it does notexplain why we forget pleasant or neutral memories. Trace decay,displacement and interference, more straightforward explanationsof forgetting, may be more useful for suggesting why we forget inmore normal situations.

MEMORY AO2 ANSWERS

QUESTION 5Give a brief account of the multi store model of memory andconsider its strengths and weaknesses. (18marks)

Atkinson and Shiffrins multi store model of memory proposedthat the memory system is divided up into three stores. Theysuggest that external stimuli from the environment first entersensory memory, where they can be registered for very briefperiods of time, before decaying or being passed on to short term

memory. They believed that memory traces in STM are fragile andcan be lost in about 20 seconds unless they are repeated(rehearsed). They also believed that the capacity of STM was small around seven items, although this could be improved by chunking.Material that is rehearsed is passed on to the long term store whereit can remain for a lifetime, although loss is possible due to decay orinterference. Coding in LTM is assumed to be in terms of meaningi.e. semantic.

A crucial aspect of the multi store model is that there aredistinct short term and long term stores. There are several other

studies that support this idea and the model served as a basis forother models to elaborate on.

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However there are problems with the model. It is too simpleand fails to take account of factors such as the strategies thatpeople employ to remember things. It also places emphasis on theamount of information that can be processed rather than its nature.Some things are simply easier to remember than others, perhaps

because they are more interesting, more distinctive, funnier, etc.The multi store model cannot account for this.

It is also criticised for focusing on the structure of the memorysystem at the expense of adequately explaining the processesinvolved. For example, visual stimuli registering in sensory memoryare thought to be changed to an accoustic code for access to STM.In order to translate the pattern of the letter M into the sound em,the individual needs to access knowledge about letter shapes andsounds which is stored in LTM. This means that information fromLTM must flow backwards through the system to the re-coding stageprior to STM. This suggests that the flow of information is interactiverather than in a one way sequence as suggested by Atkinson andShiffrin.

Their idea of rehearsal as the only means of transferringinformation from STM to LTM has also been criticised. The levels ofprocessing approach by Craik and Lockhart suggests that there arenot three stores but one and information is remembered by howdeeply it is processed.

Finally their idea of STM having limited capacity is counteredby Baddeley and Hitchs model of working memory as having aninner voice, ear and eye, all controlled by the central executive.

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Memory Full Notes New 2007

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