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Psychology Stacey Revision Memory Definitions within Memory Memory The mental process used to encode, store and retrieve information. Encoding Encoding involves changing the information presented into a different form. Since words or other items in the short term store are rehearsed or repeated, we might assume that they are encoded in terms of their sound (acoustic coding). In contrast, the information we have stored in the long term memory nearly always seems to be stored in terms of its meaning (semantic coding). Encoding takes many different forms; visual, auditory, semantic, taste and smell. Capacity The short term store has very limited capacity, about 7 items. In contrast the capacity of the long term memory is assumed to be so large that it cannot be filled, it is said to have unlimited capacity and lasts potentially forever. Duration Information lasts longer in the long term store than in the short term store,. There is evidence that in the short term store, if not rehearsed, information will disappear within about 18 20 seconds and in contrast there is evidence that elderly people can recognise the names of fellow students from 48 years previously. Storage As a result of encoding, the information is stored in the memory system; it can remain stored for a very long time maybe a entire lifetime. Retrieval Recovering information from the memory system. Can be known as recall or remembering. Short term Memory Definition Short term Memory A temporary place for storing information. Short term memory has a very limited capacity and short duration, unless the information within it is maintained through rehearsal. Capacity in STM (Jacobs): AIMS: To investigate how much information can be held in short term memory. To do this, Jacobs needed an accurate measure of STM capacity he devised a technique called the serial digit span His research was the first systematic study of STM PROCEDURES: This was a laboratory study using the digit span technique Ps were presented with a sequence of letters or digits This was followed by a serial recall (repeating back the letters or digits in the same order they were presented) The pace of the item presentation was controlled to half second intervals through a metronome Initially, the sequence was 3 items it was then increased by a single item until the participant consistently failed to reproduce the sequence correctly This was repeated over a number of trials to establish the participants digit span. The longest sequence length that was recalled correctly on at least 50% of the trials was taken to be the Ps STM digit span FINDINGS: Jacobs found that the average STM span (number of items recalled) was between 5 and 9 items Digits were recalled better (9.3 items) than letter (7.3 items) Individual differences were found, explaining the range of 5-9 STM span increased with age in one sample he found an 6.6 average for 8 year old children compared to 8.6 for 19 year olds
They aimed to study how long information remains in short term memory, using simple stimuli and not allowing the participants to rehearse the material presented to them They wanted to test the hypothesis that information not rehearsed is lost rapidly from short-term memory.
Procedures: They used the Brown-Peterson technique. On each trial participants were presented with a trigram consisting of 3 consonants e.g. BVM, CTG which they knew they would have to recall in the correct order. Recall was required after a delay of 3, 6, 6, 12, 15, or 18 seconds. Between the initial presentation of the trigram and the time participants were asked to recall, they were told to count back in threes from a random 3 digit number e.g. 866, 863, 860 this was done to prevent rehearsal. Participants were tested repeatedly with the various time delays and the effect of the time delay on memory was assessed in terms of the number of trigrams recalled. Findings: There was a rapid increase in forgetting from the STM s the time delay increased. After 3 seconds 80% of the trigrams were recalled. After 6 seconds 50% were recalled
Conclusions: The findings suggest strongly that information held in the STM is rapidly lost when there is little or no opportunity for rehearsal. Thus information in the STM is fragile and easily forgotten Evaluation: - They used artificial stimuli (i.e. trigrams), which have very little meaning and therefore the experiment lacks mundane realism and external validity. - The participants were given many trails with different trigrams so may have become confused. - Peterson and Peterson only considered STM duration for one type of stimulus, and did not provide information about duration of STM in other kinds of stimuli e.g. pictures, smells, melodies. + It was a well controlled lab experiment, which allows a cause and effect relationship to be established. + Repeated measures design Long term Memory Definition Long term Memory A relatively permanent store, which has unlimited capacity and duration. Different kinds of long term memory have been identified; episodic (memory for personal events), semantic (memory for facts and information) and procedural (memory for actions and skills). Key Study: BAHRICK ET AL DURATION IN LONG TERM MEMORY. Aims:
Bahrick et al aimed to investigate the duration of very long term memory (VLTM), to see if they could last over several decades and thus support the assumption that the duration of long term memory can last a life time. They aimed to test VLTM in a way that showed external validity by testing memory for real-life information.
Procedure: 329 American ex-high-school students aged from 17 74 were used It was an opportunity sample. They were tested in a number of ways: 1. Free recall of the names of as many former class mates as possible 2. A photo recognition test, where they were asked to identify former classmates in a set of 50 photographs, only some of which were classmates. 3. A name recognition test 4. A name and photo matching test Participants accuracy (and thus duration of memory) was assessed by comparing their responses with high-school year books containing pictures and names of all the students in that year. Findings: 90% accuracy in face and name recognition (even with participants that had left high school 34 years ago) After 48 years of leaving this accuracy of name recognition declined to 80% and for face recognition it was 40% Free recall was considerable less accurate; 60% accurate after 15 years and only 30% accurate after 48 years. Conclusions: The findings show that classmates were rarely forgotten once participants were given recognition clues. Thus the aim of very long term memory was supported. The research demonstrates VLTM for a particular type of information, it cannot be concluded that VLTM exists for all types of information. The finding that free recall was only 30% after 48 years indicates that memories were fairly weak. Evaluation + This study provides evidence for the assumption that information can remain in the LTM for very long periods of time. - Classmates faces and names are a very particular type of information. They might have emotional significance, and there was a great deal of opportunity for rehearsal, given the daily contact they would have experienced. The same is not true for other types of information and therefore the findings cannot be generalised to other types of information.
Rehearsal
Data
Sensory Memory
Short-term Memory
Long-term Memory
Forgetting
Evaluation of the Multi-store Model + Case studies of brain damaged patients lend support to the multi-store model; they support the view that there are two different memory stores. + Glanzer and Cunitz found that when rehearsal is prevented, the recency effect disappears. + There is evidence that encoding is different in short term and long-term memory. For example Baddeley found that acoustic or sound encoding was in the short-term memory and semantic or meaning encoding was in the long-term memory. + There are huge differences in the duration of information in the short term and long term memory. Unrehearsed information in the short-term memory had vanished after about 20 seconds (Peterson & Peterson). In contrast some information in the long-term memory is still there 48 years after learning (Bahrick et al.) - The model argues that the transfer of information for short term to long-term memory is through rehearsal. However in daily life people devote little time to active rehearsal, although they are constantly storing new information into the long-term memory. Rehearsal may describe what happens in laboratories but is not true to real life.
Craik & Lockhart Suggest that it is the level at which we process information that determines how well we remember it. Rehearsal represents a fairly shallow processing level. - This model is oversimplified. It assumes that there is a single short-term store and a single long-term store. These assumptions have been disproved, by evidence such as that from the studies of brain damages patients.
KF had a motorcycle accident that left him with a severely impaired STM but he could still make new longterm memories. Also Clive Wearing, another brain damaged patient, could till play the piano, speak and walk.
Therefore it makes sense to identify several long-term memory stores; episodic memory, semantic memory, declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge. Atkinson and Shiffrin focus exclusively on declarative knowledge and had practically nothing to say about procedural knowledge e.g. skills and learning.
They conducted a study and gave their participants several words, they found that participants remembered words that had been processed in terms of their sound (shallow processing) better than those that had been processed for meaning (deep processing). Therefore disproving the statement that deep processing is ALWAYS better than shallow processing. - Talving suggests that retrieval clues are important in remembering and Craik and Lockhart didnt take this into account. Craik and Lockhart did not explain the effectiveness of different kinds of processing, they did not state why deep, elaborative, or distinctive processing lead to better LTM.
BUT we cannot control what goes on in peoples heads so it is impossible to know that no new information was taken in
Also it lacks mundane realism as it is not representative of real life and only uses free recall.
Displacement This theory argues that when the capacity to the STM (7 items) is full, the old information gets knocked out by the new information Evaluation of Displacement + Waugh and Norman Demonstrated support for displacement as they showed that when a probe was given at the end of a list of numbers, the following number is more likely to be recalled than when a probe was at the beginning of the list. - HOWEVER Waugh and Normans study lacked external validity as it was an artificial task and didnt necessarily tell us anything us about memory in everyday life.
- Also Shallice found that when the rate of presentation speed up the number of items remembered increased. This suggests that STM works on a time based system rather than a capacity based system. Therefore supporting the theory of decay not displacement. Waugh and Normans study didnt rule out the possibility that information might be decaying rather than being displaced.
Theories of Forgetting in LTM There are two different explanations for forgetting in the Long Term memory they are: Interference Cue-dependant forgetting Interference Theory There are two types of interference; Proactive interference and Retro-active interference. Proactive Interference, is when old information prevents the learning of new information. Retro-active interference, is when new information interferes with old information and corrupts it so it is no longer available. The more similar the information, the more likely it is to be affected by interference. Evaluation of the Interference Theory + Results of paired associate learning tasks support the view that both pro-active and retro-active interference play a part in forgetting. + Jenkins and Dallenbachs study supports the view that interference is a factor in forgetting.
BUT - The time of day may have been a confounding variable, the sleeping group learned before going to bed and the awake group learned during the day. - It is artificial and lacks mundane realism - There is also no control over what the sleeping group were doing during the retention period. - Tulving and Psotka found that when a cued recall task was given the effects of interference disappear. This suggests that the original memory trace is not corrupted as suggested by the interference theory, but that free recall is not sufficient to be able to access it. - The explanation describes the effects but doesnt explain why they happen.
Cue Dependent Forgetting Tulving suggests that a lot of forgetting is simply retrieval failure and with the right cues we will be able to access the information. He also suggest that the closer the retrieval cue is to the stored information, the more likely it will that the cue will be successful in retrieving the memory. Which is supported by the tip of the tongue phenomenon. Evaluation of Cue Dependent Forgetting + Tulving and Pearlstone gave participants lists of words to remember arranged under headings. Half the participants had to free recall the words (given a blank sheet of paper) the other half were given the category headings. Those with the category headings remembered far more words, which supports the cue dependent theory. + Tulving and Psotka gave participants lists of words to remember some had one list, some had two and some had six. They found that the more lists a participant had to learn the poorer the recall, when they were tested using free recall. HOWEVER when cues were given the interference effect disappeared. - Both of Talving's studies are artificial and lack mundane realism, therefore it doesnt necessarily tell us much about how we use memory in a real life situation. + The model has practical applications as it can help people to improve their memories. + Research into State and Context dependency supports the cue dependency theory State Dependency where the internal physiological or psychological state of the individual at the time of the acquisition acts as a cue for remembering. Goddwin found that when heavy drinkers hid keys or money when they were drunk they could only find them when they were drunk again.
This study is good as it is more realistic than a lab experiment. Although there is a lack of control as it is a natural experiment. Context Dependency where the external physical environment at the point of acquisition acts as a cue for remembering. Baddeley found that when deep sea divers learned information under water they were more likely to be able to recall the information when underwater than those who had learned on dry land.
HOWEVER he only looked at one specific group of people, but the study did have practical applications.
- Very young children may not be able to lay down stable memories and therefore forgetting may be due to decay rather than repression. BUT the fact that some victims recovered the information after a period of time supports the idea that their forgetting was due to repression. - Williams used a bias sample and only deals with a specific situation so therefore his results cannot necessarily be generalised and his experiment lacks external validity. - There is no way to know whether or not the initial reports of abuse were real / true or not, so therefore results may be compromised. Or the recovered memories may be false demand characteristics. + Post Traumatic Stress Disorder supports the idea of repression. As victims often lose their memory of a very traumatic event or details that surround it, they may recover these memories later on either spontaneously or through therapy. HOWEVER Loftuss research suggests that a lot of recovered memories may be false, going against the idea of repression, as the memories have not been recovered. Flashbulb Memories Brown and Kulik A flashbulb memory is a long lasting, detailed and vivid memory of a specific event and the context in which it occurred. The event is important and emotionally significant e.g. a national or personal event. It is as if a flash photograph was taken at the very moment of the event with every detail indelibly printed in memory. Flashbulb events dont have to be negative or to concern international events. However nearly all studies of flashbulb memories have focused on dramatic world events. Brown and Kulik suggested that flashbulb memories were distinctive because they were both enduring and accurate Evaluation of Flashbulb Memories - Brown and Kulik had no way of knowing if the participants Flashbulb memories were accurate / reliable.
McCloskey , Wible, and Cohen wanted to test the reliability of flashbulb memories, they interviewed people shortly after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and then re-interviewed the same people 9 months later.
They found that participants did forget elements of the event, and showed some inaccuracies in their recall. This suggests that flashbulb memories are subject to forgetting in the same way that other memories are. Conway et al disagreed with McCloskey et al, they stated that the Challenger explosion was not a very good example of flashbulb memory as it did not have important consequences in the lives of those who were interviewed, and therefore lacked one of the central criteria for flashbulb memory.
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PROCEDURES: 45 American students formed an opportunity sample This was a laboratory experiment with 5 conditions. Each participant only experienced one condition (an independent measures design) Ps were shown a brief film of a car accident involving a number of cars. They were then asked to describe what happened as if they were eyewitnesses. After they had watched the film, the Ps were asked specific questions including the question about how fast were the cars going when they (hit/smashed/collided/bumped/contacted the five conditions) each other? Therefore, the IV was the wording of the question and the DV was the speed reported by the Ps. A week after the Ps were shown the film, they were asked Did you see any broken glass? when there actually was no broken glass in the film FINDINGS: Loftus and Palmer found that estimated speed was influence by the verb used. The verb implied information about the speed, which affected the Ps memory of the accident. Those who were asked the question where the verb used was smashed though the cars were going faster than those who were asked the question with the verb hit as the verb. The mean estimate when smashed was used was 41mph. compared to 34mph when hit was used. Therefore, the Ps in the smashed condition reported the highest speeds, followed by collided, bumped, hit, and contacted in descending order. In answering the follow up question, a higher percentage of Ps who heard smashed said that they had seen broken glass than those who heard hit. These percentages were 32% compared with 14%. CONCLUSIONS: The questions asked can be termed leading questions because they affected the Ps memory of the event. The answer to a leading question is in the question the question contains information about what the answer should be. Therefore, language can have a distorting affect on Eyewitness testimony, which can lead to inaccurate accounts of witnessed events. It is possible that the memory had been reconstructed. However, it is also possible that the original memory may have been replaced or experienced interference. This has important implications for the questions used in police interviews of eyewitnesses. EVALUATION: - The research lacks mundane realism, as what the observers saw in the laboratory would not have had the same emotional impact as witnessing a real life accident. It also differs from real life in that the Ps knew that something interesting was going to be shown to them, and were paying full attention to it. In real life, eyewitnesses are typically taken by surprise and often fail to pay close attention to the event or incident. - This research by Loftus and Palmer is important in showing that the memories of eyewitnesses can easily be distorted. However, the main distortion produced in this study was for an unimportant piece of information (the presence of broken glass), and it has proved harder to produce distortions for information of central importance (e.g. the weapon used by a criminal). - The Ps witnessed a brief film, which may have contained much less information than would be available when observing an incident or crime in real life. Eyewitness Testimony Unreliability: Eyewitness testimony tends to be unreliable yet many jurors find it highly persuasive. This unreliability maybe explained in terms of the reconstructive nature of memory (schema theory) and the effects of language on memory. The schema theory offers a different perspective on memory that describes memory retrieval as a process of active reconstruction relying on, and being biased by, schemas and stereotypes. Schemas affect recall because they affect both initial learning and subsequent retrieval. However, it cannot account for occasions when memory is accurate.
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