PsyA1 Memory Part 1

PsyA1 Memory Part 1

1. The Nature Of Memory (Brief)

   • Capacity
     • The amount of information the memory can hold at any one time.
   • Duration
     • This is the length of time that a memory can be held for.
   • Encoding
     • The way in which information is represented in the memory store E.g. by sound, meaning or image.
   • Types of memory
     • Short term memory (STM)
       • Things that happen in the immediate past or present. Things like a phone number. It lasts for 3-18 seconds, can hold 7 (+/-2) items and is encoded acoustically.
     • Long Term Memory (LTM)
       • This stores memories from the more distant past. They can range from 2 minutes ago to 100 years or more.
     • Sensory Memory
       • The duration of this is incredibly short (a few seconds). It is mainly what is going on around you. It is created by stimuli such as sight, smell and sound. It only transfers the information to the STM if you pay attention to it.
         • Proved by Sperling. Discovered that it holds 12-16 items at a time.

2. Short Term Memory (STM)

   • Duration
     • Peterson and Peterson asked P's to memorise sets of triagrams and to prevent rehearsal, got them to do a distraction task. Thy found that 80% were recalled after 3 seconds but less that 10% were recalled after 18 seconds.
   • Capacity
     • Miller found that the capacity of STM is 7 (+ or -2) 'items'. This means that the STM has between 5 and 9 'slots' for information to be stored in.
   • Encoding
     • Baddelley found that people found it easier to recall words that were not acoustically similar so he concluded that encoding in the STM is acoustic.

3. LTM

   • Duration
     • Bahrick tested the duration by asking college friends to recognise their old classmates years after they have left. He found that people tested within 15 years were 90% accurate but after 48 years were 80% accurate verbally and 70% accurate visually. However it was also found that the duration of the LTM is potentially limitless.
   • Encoding
     • Badly conducted a study and found that words were encoded the most efficiently when the words were semantically dissimilar, therefore the LTM is encoded semantically.

4. Multi-Store Model Of Memory (MSM)

   • Atkinson and Shiffrin came up with this model in 1968 and it shows the path that information takes when it is recognised by the sensory memory. The model also shows the way information is passed between stores and how it is lost. A negative of this model is that it is reductionistic because it doesn't focus on the processes to much extent, however a good thing is that it does look at all aspects of the memory stores.
   • AO2: +'s: Explains the different stores, shows how information is encoded, a lot of supporting evidence. -'s: Reductionist, incapable to explain the complexities of the brain, information is not always encoded in the way suggested.
   • Murdock proved this model by discovering the primacy and recency effect which is where people remember the first and last words of a list the best because the first words are transferred to the LTM and the last words are still in the STM when asked to recall the list.

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