AQA AS Psychology New Spec: Memory

1. When participants had to learn a series of word lists they didn't remember the lists encountered later on.
2. When one list was memorised, participants remembered 70% of the information. When 10 or more were memorised, participants remembered 20%.

Annotations:

• Key study: Postman (1960) Aim: To investigate how retroactive interference affects learning.  In other words, to investigate whether information you have recently received interferes with the ability to recall something you learned earlier. Method: A lab experiment was used. Participants were split into two groups.  Both groups had to remember a list of paired words – e.g. cat - tree, jelly - moss, book - tractor.  The experimental group also had to learn another list of words where the second paired word is different – e.g. cat – glass, jelly- time, book – revolver.  The control group were not given the second list. All participants were asked to recall the words on the first list. Results: The recall of the control group was more accurate than that of the experimental group. Conclusion: This suggests that learning items in the second list interfered with participants’ ability to recall the list.  This is an example of retroactive interference. Evaluation Although proactive and retroactive interference are reliable and robust effects, there are a number of problems with interference theory as an explanation of forgetting.  First, interference theory tells us little about the cognitive processes involved in forgetting.  Secondly, the majority of research into the role of interference in forgetting has been carried out in a laboratory using lists of words, a situation which is likely to occur fairly infrequently in everyday life (i.e. low ecological validity).  As a result, it may not be possible to generalize from the findings. Baddeley (1990) states that the tasks given to subjects are too close to each other and, in real life; these kinds of events are more spaced out.  Nevertheless, recent research has attempted to address this by investigating 'real-life' events and has provided support for interference theory. However, there is no doubt that interference plays a role in forgetting, but how much forgetting can be attributed to interference remains unclear (Anderson, 2000). (From https://simplypsychology.org/forgetting.html#inter)

1. Recall was higher when only given one list to learn

1. People who learnt information and then went to sleep would remember more than those who learnt information and then carried out their normal daily activities
2. Concluded the events of the day had interfered with the information

1. Some remembered words on shore, some remembered underwater.
   1. Remembered more when in same environment.

1. A group of participants recalled more at Jorvik when the same smells were present.

1. Gave anti-histamines and a recall task. Recalled more when in same state as encoding.

1. Participants with cues remembered more

1. Low ecological validity

1. Showed university students a video of a car crash. Asked to estimate speed, using differently phrased questions.
   1. When more violent verbs were used, higher speeds were estimated, and vice versa.
      1. After this they asked about seeing broken glass. Again, when more violent verbs were used, more believed they had seen broken glass
2. AO3
   1. Would be different in real life, other factors would affect it, more emotion and stress (low ecological validity)
   2. Sensitive issue, psychological damage

1. Report Everything
   1. Get irrelevant information
2. Report in a different order
3. Recreate the context
   1. Potential stress + psychological damage
4. Report from someone else's PoV

1. Showed a violent video of crime and interviewed with standard and cognitive 48 hours later. Recall of accurate statements was significantly higher with cognitive interview
2. AO3
   1. Psychological trauma, violent videos may cause harm, may need therapy
   2. Low ecological validity, just a video, no anxiety/weapon focus/yerkes dodson effects.

1. Can be used on children
2. Less distraction ensured
3. Witness given control over flow of information
4. Open ended questions
5. Speak slowly, allowed to say I don't know

1. Atkinson and Shiffrin
2. Structural Model
3. Three main stages
   1. Sensory Register
      1. Duration: 0.25-0.5 seconds
      2. Capacity: Very large, all sensory experience
      3. Encoding: Modality Specific
   2. Short Term Memory
      1. Capacity: 7+/-2 items
      2. Duration: 0-18 seconds
      3. Encoding: Mainly acoustic
      4. Can transfer to long term through rehersal
         1. Can be brought back to STM by retrieval
   3. Long Term Memory
      1. Duration: Unlimited
      2. Capacity: Unlimited
      3. Encoding: Semantic

1. Provides a good understanding of structure and the processes
2. The working memory model is better.
3. Over simplistic
4. Suggests the role of rehearsal is more important than it really is

1. The Case of HM
   1. Surgery removed hippocampus, STM was unaffected but LTM no longer worked
   2. Supports MS model in that STM and LTM are separate
2. Jacobs (1887)
   1. Used digit span technique to asses STM capacity
   2. Average span was 9.3 for items and 7.3 for letters
      1. Supports view that STM is limited to 5-9 items

1. Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
2. Four main parts
   1. Central Executive
      1. Episodic Buffer
         1. Backup for both categories
      2. Visuospatial Sketchpad
         1. Contains visual information, has two parts; visual cache, inner scribe (eye)
      3. Phonological Loop
         1. Contains auditory information, has two parts; phonological store (inner ear), articulatory process (inner voice, allows maintenance rehearsal)

1. Supported by dual task studies, hard to do two things of the same system
2. Supported by the case of HF, in a motorcycle accident only the phonological system was affected
3. Little is known about the central executive, its exact is role unclear
4. Doesn't explain the link to LTM, how it is transferred