Memory - Summarise

Memory - Summarise

1. Long Term Memory

   • Episodic
     • Stores information about events. Such as a birthday trip to Paris.
   • Semantic
     • Information about the general world, knowledge and facts. Such as Paris is the capital of France.
   • Procedural
     • Motor-skills, used for remembering things such as driving skills. Does not involve the conscious.

2. Factors Affecting Eye Witness Testimonies (EWT)

   • Refers to the account given by a first-hand witness, often to a traumatic event.
   • Leading Questions
     • Loftus and Palmer
       • Experiment One
         • Aim: To test their hypothesis that the language used in eyewitness testimony can alter memory.
         • Procedure: Students watched a video of a car crash in five conditions- an independent measures experimental design. After watching, they were asked to describe what had happened. Each condition used a specific verb within the question.
           • How fast was the car going when the car ______ with it?
             • Hit
             • Smashed
             • Collided
             • Bumped
             • Contacted
         • Findings:
         • Conclusion:
           • Supports the theory of leading questions
             • Response Bias Factor: Misleading Information provides a bias in response due to the wording used.
             • Memory Alteration: Wording changes a person's recollection of an event. Altering a person's meory.
       • Experiment Two
         • Procedure: Students were shown a video of a car driving through the countryside. This was then followed by multiple traffic accidents. They were asked questions on the speed of the car. One week later, they were then asked whether they remembered seeing glass breaking in the video.
           • How fast were the cars going when they _____ each other?
             • Hit
             • Smashed
             • Wasn't asked question (Control)
         • Findings:
           • Participants who had been asked how fast the car was going were more likely to remember glass breaking.
         • Conclusion
           • Supports research that memory is easily distorted by questioning techniques and information acquired after the event can cause inaccurate recall of already established knowledge. Does not support response bias but further supports memory alteration.
       • Evaluation:
         • Lacks External Validity
         • Lacks Support- Yuille and Cutshall found that misleading information did not alter a real life eye witness testimony
         • Unrepresentative sample
         • Easy to replicate because it follows standardised procedure
         • Practical Applications on EWT
   • Stress / Anxiety
     • Associated with real life crimes that are often violent or traumatic
     • Deffenbacher (1983) reviewed 21 studies and found that the stress-performance relationship followed an inverted-U function proposed by the Yerkes Dodson Curve (1908).
       • This means that for tasks of moderate complexity (such as EWT), performances increases with stress up to an optimal point where it starts to decline.
     • Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
       • Study of a real life robbery and it's eyewitnesses
       • Procedure: Police interviewed witnesses to a thief stealing guns and money before being shot multiple times and dying. They were interviewed immediately and then again five months later.
       • Findings:
         • Found that recall after five months was accurate.
         • Two misleading questions had no effect on recall
         • Illustrates two features:
           • There are cases of real-life recall where memory for an anxious / stressful event is accurate, even some months later.
           • Misleading questions need not have the same effect as has been found in laboratory studies (e.g. Loftus & Palmer).
       • Evaluation: Witnesses who suffered higher levels of stress were closer to the event so that may have contributed to their ability to recall.
   • Reconstructive Memory

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