MEMORY

MEMORY

1. CODING

   • ALAN BADDELEY (1966)
     • LTM - coded semantically / STM - coded acoustically
     • ARTIFICIAL STIMULI - not generalisable - limited application
   • "The format in which information is stored in the various memory stores"

2. CAPACITY

   • DIGIT SPAN - Joseph Jacobs (1887) = mean span between 5 and 9 items
     • mean span digits across all P's = 9.3/ mean span letter = 7.3
     • Lacking validity due to lack of control in old psychological studies, confounding variables
   • Miller (1956) made observations that things were often in chunks of 7, suggesting the span of capacity is 7
     • Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and found chunk capacity to be around 4
   • Capacity - the amount of information that can be held in a memory store

3. DURATION

   • STM - Peterson and Peterson (1959) = tested 24 undergads = consonant syllable triangles = mental rehearsal prevented = stm is 18-30 seconds
     • Meaningless stimuli - lacks external validity
   • LTM - Bahrick (1975) = 392 participants - high school yearbook recall
     • Higher external validity
   • "The length of time information can be held in memory"

4. MULTI STORE MODEL OF MEMORY

   • Sensory Register - less than half second duration, high capacity.
   • STM - 5 - 9 item capacity, coded acoustically, duration is 18 - 30 seconds
   • LTM - coded semantically, unlimited capacity and duration
     • EPISODIC MEMORY - ltm store for recalling events, takes conscious effort to recall them
     • SEMANTIC MEMORY - knowledge of the world inc. facts
     • PROCEDURAL MEMORY - memory for actions and skills.

5. INTERFERENCE

   • PROACTIVE - when and old memory interferes with new memory
   • RETROACTIVE - when new memory interferes with old memory

6. RETRIEVAL FAILURE THEORY

   • Encoding Specificity Principle - "if a cue is to help us recall info then it must be present at encoding"
     • CONTEXT-DEPENDENT FORGETTING - Godden and Baddeley (1975) - deep sea divers - accurate recall 40% lower in the non-matching conditions
     • STATE-DEPENDENT FORGETTING - Carter and Cassaday (1998) antihistamines = drowsy. Mismatching internal states = significantly worse

7. EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY

   • Loftus and Palmer (1974) - participants watched film clips of car accidents - critical leading question with different verbs = different verbs=different estimated mph
   • Response-bias explanation - suggests that the wording of the question influences how they decide to answer
     • SMASH
   • Post-Event Discussion - when co-witnesses discuss the event it with each other may contaminate their testimonies

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