Memory - AQA A-Level Psychology

Memory - AQA A-Level Psychology

1. Models

   • Working Memory Model - Baddeley and Hitch
     • A limited capacity store for retaining information for a brief period while performing mental operations on that information
       • Includes the central executive, visuospatial sketchpad, phonological loop and episodic buffer
         • Central executive - drives the whole system and allocates data to the slave systems
           • Visuospatial sketchpad - stores and processes information in a visual or spatial form
             • Phonological loop - deals with spoken and written material, it is then subdivided.
               • Phonological store - processes speech perception and stores spoken words we hear for 1-2 secs
               • Articulatory control processes - processes speech production, rehearses and stores information from the phonological store
   • Multistore Model of Memory - Attkinson and Shiffrin
     • Information is passed through separate stores in a linear sequence
       • Encoding - the way information is changed so it can be stored in memory.
         • Visual (picture)
           • Acoustic (sound)
             • Semantic (meaning)
       • Capacity - how much information can be stored
       • Duration - how long the information is stored for
     • Sensory memory - duration 1/4 to 1/2 of a second, large capacity, encoding is each sense (touch, smell, taste, sight, etc).
       • Short term memory - duration 0-18 seconds, capacity 7+-2 items, encoding is mainly auditory
         • Maintenance rehearsal - verbally or mentally repeating information
           • If not rehearsed, information will decay / be displaced
         • Long term memory - duration unlimited, capacity unlimited, encoding mainly semantic.

2. Key studies

   • Peterson and Peterson (1967)
     • Tested whether participants could repeat three letters in the correct order after various delays of between 3 and 18 seconds (during which they counted backwards to prevent rehearsal). They found that only 10% of the trigrams were correctly recalled after a delay of 18 seconds.
       • Supports the multistore model of memory as it suggests that STM has a limited duration
   • Bahrick
     • Tested whether people could match the names and faces of their high school classmates. He found that even participants who had left school 50 years earlier could match the names and faces correctly about 80% of the time.
       • Supports the multistore model of memory as it suggests that the duration of LTM is unlimited
   • Jacobs (1887)
     • Asked participants to repeat sequences of numbers in the correct order immediately after they were read out. He found that most people could repeat sequences of between 5 and 9 numbers correctly before making a mistake (the average 'digit span was 7)
       • Supports the multistore model of memory as it shows that the capacity of STM is limited

3. Tulving - Types of LTM

   • Episodic - recall of life events, eg: your wedding day
     • DECLARATIVE MEMORY
   • Semantic - general knowledge, eg; knowing France is in Europe
     • DECLARATIVE MEMORY
   • Procedural memory - memory of how to perform an action, eg; how to ride a bike
     • NON-DECLRATIVE

4. Interference

   • One piece of information hinders recall of another piece of information
   • PROACTIVE interference
     • old information hinders new information
   • RETROACTIVE interference
     • new information hinders old information

5. Context - dependent forgetting

   • Occurs when a person is trying to remember something in a different environment to which they learned the information

6. State-dependent forgetting

   • Occurs when a person attempts to recall information in a different physical or mental condition to the one they were in when they learned the information.

7. Leading questions

   • Questions which suggest a certain answer thus lead to biased answers and inaccurate recall
   • Eg, 'the homework was hard, wasn't it?'
   • Study: Loftus and Palmer

8. Cognitive interview

   • Step 1: Context reinstatement
     • Step 2: Report everything
       • Step 3: Reverse order
         • Step 4: Change perspective