Flashcards
Memory Studies
Cards in this deck (27)
- 1AQA Psychology Memory Key StudiesAlan Baddeley (1966)
Gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember:
- Group 1 (acoustically similar): words sounded similar
- Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar): words sounded different
- Group 3 (semantically similar): words with similar meaning
- Group 4 (semantically dissimilar): words that all had different meaning
Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order. When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it, they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words. If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes, they did worse with semantically similar words. This suggests that information is coded semantically in the LTM - 2Jacobs (1887) Developed a technique to measure digit span. The researcher gives, for example, 4 digits and then the participant is asked to recall these in the correct order out loud. If this is correct the researcher reads out 5 digits and so on until the participant cannot recall the order correctly. This determines the person digit span. Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items. The mean span of letters was 7.3George Miller (1956)
Made observations of everyday practice. For example, he noted that things come in sevens: there are 7 notes on the musical scale, 7 days in a week, 7 seven deadly sins and so on. This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7(+/- 2) items. However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters. They do this by chunking - grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks - 3Peterson and Peterson (1959) Tested 24 undergraduate students. Each student took part in eight trials. On each trial, the students were given a consonant syllable (also known as a trigram, e.g. WDS) to remember and were also given a 3-digit number. The student was then asked to count backwards from that number until told to stop. This counting backwards was to prevent any mental rehearsal of the trigram. On each trial, they were told to stop after a different amount of time - 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 seconds. This is the retention interval. Their findings were that only about 2% of participants could remember the trigram after 18 seconds while after 3 seconds 90% of participants were able to recall the trigram. It suggests that STM may have a very short duration indeedHarry Bahrick et al (1975)
Studied 392 participants from the American state of Ohio who was aged between 17 and 74. High school yearbooks were obtained from the participants or directly from some schools. Recall was tested in various ways including photo-recognition test consisting of 50 photos, some from the participant's high school graduation and a free recall test where participants recalled all the names of their graduating class. Participants who were tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in photo recognition. After 48 years, recall declined to about 70% for photo recognition. Free recall was less good than recognition. After 15 years this was about 60% accurate, dropping to 30% after 48 years - 4Cowan (2001) Reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunksShepard (1967)
Studied the duration of the LTM using meaningless pictures to be remembered, the recall rates were lower than in Bahrick's study - 5Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968, 1971) Developed the MSM (multi-store memory model)Shallice and Warrington (1970)
Studied a patient with amnesia known as KF. They found that KF's short-term memory for digits was very poor when they read them out loud to him. But his recall was much better when he was able to read the digits to himself. Further studies of KF and other people with amnesia showed that there could even be another short-term store for non-verbal sounds. - 6Craik and Watkins (1973) Found that there are two types of rehearsal. Maintenance rehearsal and Elaborative rehearsal. Maintenance rehearsal is the type described in the MSM, but this does not transfer information between the store. Elaborative rehearsal is needed for long-term storageEndel Tulving
(1985)
First psychologist to realise that the multi-store model's view of the LTM was too simplistic and inflexible. He proposed that there are in fact three LTM stores, containing quite different types of information. He called them episodic memory, semantic memory and procedural memory - 7HM and Clive Wearing Both men had severe impairments in their episodic memory as a consequence of amnesia. They had great difficulty recalling events that happened to them in the pasts. But their other stores of memories were unaffectedTulving et al (1994)
Got their participants to perform various memory tasks while their brains were scanned using a PET scanner. They found that episodic and semantic memories were both recalled from an area of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. This area is divided in two, one on each side (or hemisphere) of the brain. The left prefrontal cortex was involved in recalling semantic memories. Episodic memories were recalled from the right prefrontal cortex - 8Cohen and Squire (1980) Disagree with Tulving's division of the LTM into three types. They accept that procedural memories represent one type of LTM. But they argue that episodic and semantic memories are stored together in one LTM store that they call declarative memoryBelleville et al (2006)
Demonstrated that episodic memories could be improved in older people who had a mild cognitive impairment. The trained participants performed better on a test of episodic memory after training than a control group - 9Baddeley (2003) The VSS has a capacity of about 3 or 4 objectsLogie (1995)
Subdivided the VSS into the visual cache, which stores visual data, and the inner scribe, which records the arrangement of objects in the visual field - 10Baddeley (2000) Added in the episodic buffer. It is a temporary store for information, intergrating the visual, spatial and verbal information processed by other stores and maintaining a sense of time sequencing basically recording events (episodes) that are happening. It has a limited capacity of about 4 chucksShallice and Warrington (1970)
The case study of patient KF who had suffered brain damage. After this damage happened KF had a poor STM ability for verbal information but could process visual information normally presented visually. This suggests that just his phonological loop had been damaged leaving other areas of memory intact. - 11Baddeley et al (1975) Showed that participants had more difficulty doing two visual tasks than doing both a visual and verbal tasks at the same time. This increased difficulty is because both visual tasks compete for the same slave system whereas, when doing a verbal or visual task simultaneously, there is no competitionBaddeley (2003)
Recognised this when he said, 'the central executive is the most important but the least understood component of working memory' - 12Baddeley et al (1975) Demonstrated that people find it more difficult to remember a list of long words rather than short words. This is called the word length effect. This is because there is a finite space for rehearsal in the articulatory process. The word length effect disappears if a person is given an articulatory suppression task - this repetitive task that ties up the articulatory processBraver et al (1997)
Gave their participants tasks that involved the CE while they were having a brain scan. The researchers found greater activity in an area known as the left prefrontal cortex. What was especially interesting was that the activity in this area increased as the task became harder - 13McGeoch and McDonald (1931) Procedure studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between two sets of materials. Participants had to learn a list of 10 words until they could remember them with 100% accuracy. They then learned a new list. There were 6 groups Group 1- Synonyms Group 2- Antonyms Group 3- unrelated words Group 4- Nonsense syllables Group 5- 3-digit number Group 6- no new listMcGeoch and McDonald (1931)
Results
When the participants then recalled the original list of words, their performance depended on the nature of the second list. The most similar material produced the worst recall, then antonyms, then unrelated words, then nonsense syllables, the second best recall was numbers then best was where there was no new list. This shows that interference is strongest when the memories are similar. - 14Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch (1977) Wanted to find out if interference was a better explanation for forgetting than the passage of time. So they asked rugby players to try to remember the names of the teams they had missed games, for some the 'last term' they played might have been two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, or more. The results very clearly showed that accurate recall didn't depend on how long ago the matches took place. Much more important was the number of games they played in the meantime So a player's recall of a team from 3 weeks ago was better if they had played no matches since thenTulving and Psotka (1971)
Gave participants five lists of 24 words, each list organised into six categories. The categories were not explicit but it was presumed that they would be obvious to the participants. Recall was about 70% for the first word list but this fell as participants were given each additional list to learn, presumably due to interference. However, at the end they were given a cued recall test - they were told the names of the categories as a clue. Recall rose again to about 70% - 15Godden and Baddeley (1975) Procedure Carried out a really interesting study of deep-sea divers working underwater. in this situation it's crucial - a matter of life and death for divers to remember instructions given before diving about their work underwater The divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land and then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land. This therefore created four conditions: 1- Learn and recall on land 2- learn on land - recall underwater 3- learn underwater - recall on land 4- learn and recall underwaterGodden and Baddeley (1975)
Findings
In two of these conditions the environment contexts of learning and recall matched, whereas in the other two they did not. Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions. The external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall and this led to retrieval failure - 16Carter and Cassaday (1998) Gave anti-histamine drugs to their participants. The anti-histamine had a mild sedative effect making the participants slightly drowsy. This creates an internal physiological state different from the 'normal' state of being awake and alert. The participants had to learn lists of words and passages f prose and then recall the information, again creating four conditions: - Learnt on and recalled on the drug - Learnt on the drug - recalled when off it - Learnt off the drug - recalled on it - Learnt and recalled off the drug In the conditions where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on the memory test was significantly worse.Micheal Eysenck (2010)
argues that retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from the LTM - 17Baddeley (1997) Argues that context effects are actually not very strong, especially in real life. Different context have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen.Godden and Baddeley (1980)
Replicated their underwater experiment but used a recognition test instead of recall - participants had to say whether they recognised a word read to them from the list, instead of retrieving it for themselves. When recognition was tested there was no context-dependent effect; performance was the same in all four conditions - 18Loftus and Palmer (1974) Procedure Arranged for participants (students) to watch film clips of car accidents and then gave them questions about the accident. In the critical question, participants were asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling: 'About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?' This is a leading question because the verb 'hit' suggests the speed the car was going. There were five groups of participants, each was given a different verb in the critical question. One group had the verb hit, the others had contacted, bumped, collided, smashed.Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Findings
The mean estimated speed was calculated for each participant group. The verb contacted resulted in a mean estimated speed of 31.8 mph. For the verb smashed, the mean was 40.5 mph. The leading question biased the eyewitness recall of event - 19Fiona Gabbert et al (2003) Studied participants in pairs. Each participant watched a video of the same crime but filmed from different points of view. This meant that each participant could see elements in the event that the other couldn't. Both participants then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall. The researchers found that 71% of the participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they didn't see in the video but had picked up in the discussion. The corresponding figure in a control group, where there was no discussed, was 0%.Loftus (1975)
Believes that leading questions can have such distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses - 20Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) Found that people in age groups 18-25 and 35-45 were more accurate then people in the group 55-78 years. However, all groups were mre accurate when identifying people of their own age groupZaragosa and McCloskey (1989)
Argue that many answers participants give in lab studies of EWT are the result of demand characteristics. Participants usually don't want to let the researcher down and want to appear helpful and attentive. So when they are asked a question they don't know the answer to they guess, especially if it's a yes/no question. Imagine you are a participant. You have seen a film of a street robbery and now you are answering some yes/no questions. One is,' Did you see the blue car?' There was no blue car in the clip, but you still answer 'yes' to this question because that seems a more helpful answer - 21Foster et al (1994) Point out that what you remember as an eyewitness can have some very important consequences in the real world, but the same is not true in research studiesJohnson and Scott (1976)
Researched the effect of anxiety on EWT. They led participants to believe that they were going to take part in a lab study.While seated in a waiting room participants heard an argument in the next room. In the 'low anxiety' condition a man then walk through the room carrying a pen with grease on his hands. In the 'high anxiety' condition the participants heard the same argument then the sound f breaking glass. A man then walked out of the room, holding a paper knife that was covered in blood. The participants were then asked to pick the man out of a set of 50 photos; 49% of the participants who had seen the man with the pen were able to identify him. The corresponding figure for the 'high anxiety' condition was just 33%. - 22Yuille and Cutshall (1986) Procedure Conducted a study of a real-life shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver, Canada. The shop owner shot a thief dead. There were 21 witness of which 13 agreed to participate in the study. The interviews were hed 4-5 months after the event and these were compared to the orginal police interviews made at the time of the shooting. Accuracy was determined by the number of details reported in each account. the witnesses were also asked to rate ho stressed they had felt at the time of the incident, using a 7 point scale, and asked if they had any emotional problems since the event, such as sleeplessnessYuille and Cutshall (1986)
Findings
The witnesses were very accurate in their accounts and there was little change in the amount or accuracy after 5 months - though some details were less accurate, such as recollection of the colour of items and age/height/weight estimates. Those participants who reported the highest levels of stress ere most accurate - 23Yerkes and Dodson (1908) Look the the relationship between emotional arousal and performance. They can p it the inverted U theoryDeffenbacher (1983)
Applied the Yerkes - Dodson law to EWTs. Lower levels of anxiety produce lower levels of recall accuracy. But memory becomes more accurate as the level of anxiety experienced increases, just as you would expect from the graph. However, there comes a point where the optimal level of anxiety is reached. This is the point of maximum accuracy. If an eyewitness experiences any more stress than this, then their recall of the event suffers a drastic decline - 24Pickel (1998) Conducted an experiment using scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as hand-held items in a hairdressing salon video (where scissors would be low anxiety, low unusualness). Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun)Fisher and Geiselman (1992)
argued that EWTs could be improved if the police used better techniques when interviewing witnesses. They developed the cognitive interview (CI) which uses 4 main techniques: report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order and change perspective. - 25Kebbell and Wagstaff (1996) Suggested that the police may be reluctant to use the CI as it is time-consuming and also requires extra training in which some forces haven't been able to provide more than a few hours.Milne and Bull (2002)
Found that each individual element was equally valuable. Each technique used singly produced more information than the standard police interview. However, Milne and Bull found that using a combination of report everything and context reinstatement produced better recall than any of the other conditions - 26Kohnken et al (1999) Conducted a meta-analysis by combining data from 50 studies. The enhanced CI consistently provided more correct information than the standard interview used by policeKohnken et al (1999)
Found an 81% increase of correct information but also a 61% increase of incorrect information (false positives) when the enhanced CI was compared to a standard interview - 27Fisher et al (1987) Developed some additional elements of the CI to focus on the social dynamics of the interaction. For example, the interviewer needs to know when to establish eye contact and when to relinquish it. The enhanced CI also includes ideas such as reducing eyewitness anxiety, minimising distractions, getting the witness to speak slowly and asking open-ended questions
Information
- Description
- AS level Psychology Flashcards on Memory Studies, created by Benjamin Smith on 27/01/2018.
- Created by
- Benjamin Smith
- Views
- 1
- Rating