Memory

Memory

1. Long term memory - memory of events in distant past

   • Episodic - personal experiences. Specific detail, context and emotion. I.e. a holiday
     • Semantic - begin as episodic but then generalises to semantic. I.e. appropriate behaviour, function of objects etc...
       • Procedural - skills, i.e. swimming, reading, riding a bike. Acquired through repetition

2. Short term memory - memory of present events or immediate past

3. Capacity - how much data can be held by a memory store

   • Millers magic number - 7 +/- 2 items or chunks
     • Joseph Jacobs - Digit span - 9.3 items. Letter span 7.3

4. Duration - how long memory lasts for

   • Peterson and Peterson - 18secs for STM

5. Coding - way information is stored, i.e. visually, acoustically etc...

   • Baddeley - STM = largely acoustic. LTM = semantically

6. Forgetting

   • Interference - one memory disrupting ability to recall another
     • Proactive - past memories interrupting new memories
       • Retroactive - new memories interfering with past memories
         • Georg Muller - gave ppt's nonsense syllables to learn, if given an interveining task, ppt's did worse
       • Benton Underwood - 10 lists / 24 hours = 20% recall. 1 list / 24 hours = 70% recall
   • Retrieval failure - absence of cues stopping memory being accsessible
     • Encoding specificity, closer the cue is to original item, better the recall - Tulving and Pearlstone (1973)
       • Context dependent: Baddeley - scuba divers learnt words either on land in sea. When recalling info they either went back to where originally learnt or swapped. Those who initial context matched recall environment did better
         • State Dependent: Mental state at time of learning can act as cue. Goodwin got ppt's to learn words either drunk / sober. During recall some were either sober or drunk. Those in the same state as when they learnt the info did better.

7. Eyewitness testimony

   • Leading questions - Loftus and Palmer, car crash verbs - 'Smashed', 'bumped', 'collided' etc..
     • Post event discussion - conformity effect and repeat interviews
   • Anxiety
     • Johnson and Scott - weapon focus gives anxiety a NEGATIVE effect on EWT
       • Christianson - real life victims of bank robberies found anxiety of the situation made them recall more accurate info. Showing a POSITIVE effect of anxiety
         • Yerkes Dodson model. If arousal increases above optimum, has a negative effect on EWT

8. Cognitive interview

   • Mental reinstatement of context - mentally recreate physical and psychological environment of incident. Aim is make memories more accessible
     • Report everything - remember any little details from the day, aim is to try and cue / trigger any memories asscociated with another insignificant one
       • Change order - work through the incident in a different order to how it happened, i.e. backwards. Stops pre-existing ideas (schemas) about the incident getting in the way of info
         • Change perspective - recall the incident from someone else's perspective, i.e. a neighbour or a far away bystander. Encourages though and can provoke memories