Memory In Psychology

Memory In Psychology

1. Eye Witness Testimony

   • Age
     • Anastasia And Rhodes (2006) - Found those who were in their own age where better identified by those in their same age groups
     • Yarmey (1993) - Found no difference in ages groups when recalling information.
   • Anxiety
     • Loftus Et Al "weapon Focus" (1979)- people found it harder to recall the face of a criminal as they were to focused on the weapon.
     • Christianson And Hubinette (1993) - Found those who were victims not bystanders in bank robberies (threatened, attacked) could recall the situation better and more acurately
   • Misleading Information
     • Loftus (1974)- Paricipants watched a car crash and then they were all asked the question but one word had been changed (impact). Partiipants asked "smashed" had the higest speed when asked, followed by "collide", "bumped" and contacted in descending order
       • A week later those how asked if they were "smashed", majority report to see broken glass when their was none.

2. Memory Models

   • Multi-storage Memory Model
     • Its a unitary model that has 3 units, Sensory Input. STM and the LTM. The STM capacity is 7+/-2 and it has a duration of 18 seconds maxium. Information must be rehersed to enter the LTM
       • Clive Wearing couldn't lay any new information down but could play the piano and speak English.STM impaired but LTM is fine. Show their are separate models
       • Shallic And Warrington (1970), kF had his STM impaired but his LTM was intact
       • Peterson & Peterson (1959)suggest that is rehersal is prevented it wont enter the LTM.
       • Doesn't explain how people have "flash bulb" memories and recall that information without rehersal
       • FK only suffured from acoustic impairment, others like semantic and visual where intact. Suggest STM is more complicated than is shown.
   • Working Memory Model
     • More detailed look at STM. Subsystems in the STM. It has the central executive which sorts the information. Then the slave systems, visio-spacial sketchpad and the Phonological loop/ Articulatory system, which must working correspondenly to function. The third slave is the eposodic buffer which works backwards and forwards for the LTM to the STM, putting peices of diffrent information together to make "episodes"
       • Applies to real life tasks, reading (phonological loop), problem solving (central execuative) and navigation (visio-spacial)
       • KF supports it, KF's impairment was mainly verbal and his visual remained unaffected. Shows their are separate areas in the STM
       • Little evidence for how central execuative works. We are unable to mesure it.
       • Ignores most sense like touch, taste, smell
       • Its not a comprehensive model, it only includes the STM