Memory

Memory

1. Memory

   • Working Memory Model (Baddeley and Hitch)
     • Components
       • The Central Executive
         • Controls the other slave systems
       • Phonological Loop
         • Phonological Store
           • Inner Ear
         • Articulatory Loop
           • Inner Voice
       • Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad
         • Visually organizes information
     • Strengths
       • Farah et al reported that LH was good at spatial tasks but not visual imagery
         • Visual and Spatial tasks require separate systems
       • Baddeley and Hitch - doing two things at once
         • Doing tasks that uses the same component causes difficutly.
     • Weakness
       • Not allot of research into the central executive
   • Multi Store Model (Atkinson and Shiffrin)
     • STM encoded acoustically
       • Conrad - Showed strings of letters quickly to participants and they had to recall the letters.
         • B and V were muddles with P but S was only very rarely muddled with S
           • Visual information must have been converted into sound to be encoded.
     • STM capacity
       • Miller said the capacity of the short term memory was 7 +/- 2
     • STM duration
       • Very limited to we hold onto information for longer by rehearsing it.
       • Peterson and Peterson showed participants trigrams and made them count backwards in threes.
         • After 18 seconds of counting backwards they could not remember the trigrams
         • Trigrams are not reflective of real world tasks
         • Used university students which may not be fully representative of the population..
     • LTM encoded semantically
     • LTM capacity and duration
       • Bahrick et al used participants from the US and asked them about their yearbook.
         • Remember as many class mates names as they could
           • 15 years = 60% accurate
           • 48 years =30% accurate
         • Recognise names and faces
           • 15 years = 90% accurate
           • 48 years = 75% accurate
         • uses meaningful stimuli which creates more realistic findings
         • Cannot control whether participants has looked through their yearbook since leaving school
         • unknown whether permission was given for all images to be used
     • Evaluation
       • Murdock - primancy and recency effect
         • words learnt at the start are more likely to have been rehearsed and therefore stored in the LTM
         • Most recent words still stored in the short term memory
       • KF
         • could not recall one or two numbers in the digital span test however LTM memory was fine
       • Tulvig - MSM doesn't distinguish between different types of LTM
   • Eye Witness Testimony
     • Misleading Questions
       • Loftus and Palmer - showed car crash videos to 45 students
         • 'How fast were they going when they ...... into each other?'
           • Smashed = 41 mph
           • Contacted = 32 mph
         • Not real life
     • Anxiety
       • Loftus and Palmer monitored the gaze of participants when shown a film of a crime.
         • They tended to focus their gaze on the gun used in the robbery
           • Less able to identify robber
         • Weapon Focus
       • The Yerkes-Dodson law
         • There is an ideal or optimum point where anxiety helps memory.
     • The Cognitive Interview
       • Techniques
         • Context Reinstatement
           • Mentally recreate the situation
             • Weather, mood etc.
         • Change Perspective
         • Recall in Reverse
         • Recall Everything
       • Limitations
         • Time consuming
         • Requires Training
       • Geiselman
         • Participants watched a film on a violent crime
           • 35% more accurate in cognitive interview
     • Age
       • Young
         • Ceci et al found that children ages 3-4 were most susceptible to having memories altered by leading questions
           • Memories are weaker and fade faster
         • Goodman and Schaff - a child's ability to comprehend and answer the question affect recall
       • Old
         • Coxon and Valentine
           • Young children and elderly people were less accurate in their recall than young adults
           • Participants shown a video of a staged crime
           • elderly people were less reliable but this was due to less compete recall rather than susceptibility to leading questions

2. Memory Improvement Strategies

   • Method of Loci
     • linking verbal pieces of information with visual images uses two coding systems. Creating a stronger memory.
     • Croviz - two groups required to memorize a list of 32 words
       • 78% recall in loci and 25% in standard
   • Narrative Chainging
     • Bower and Clark asked participants to learn 12 lists of 12 words
       • narrative groups recalled 94% and non narrative recalled 14%
   • Acronyms
     • Not easy to form
     • May have to rearrange the order of events, which isn't good if the order is important
     • Needs to be committed to memory which takes effect