AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES THE MULTI STORE MODEL OF MEMORY ATKINSON AND SHIFFRIN (1968) They

y believed that there are three memory stores: sensory, short term and long term. The model believes that there are three memory stores: sensory, short term and long term Information from the environment is initially received by the sensory stores Some of the information is attended to, and processed further, by the short term store In turn some of the information processed in the short term store is transferred to the long term store The reason given for transfer of information between the STM and LTM is rehearsal The more information is rehearsed, the stronger the memory trace.

EVALUATIONS OF THE MULTI STORE MODEL

One criticism of the model is that it proposes that the transfer of information from short term to long term is made through rehearsal. However in day to day most people devote very little time to active rehearsal, even though they are constantly storing away new information in long term memory. Rehearsal may describe what happens when psychologists conduct experiments in laboratories but this isnt always what happens in real life. Another criticism of the model is that it over simplifies STM and LTM. It assumes that there is a single short term store and a single long term store. These assumptions are not correct. For example, the evidence from brain damaged patients such as KF suggest that his memory deficit was limited to letters and words but he could remember sounds. This suggests that there is not just one short term memory but a number of different parts, each represented in different parts of the brain. A positive criticism of the model is that it provided a systematic account of the structures and processes involved in human memory. This allowed other researchers such as Baddeley and Hitch to develop aspects of the model such as STM. Most psychologists agree that there is a difference between memory stores in terms of encoding, duration and capacity.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES THE MULTI STORE MODEL OF MEMORY - ATKINSON AND SHIFFRIN (1968)

Outline the multi store model of memory. (6 marks) EVALUATIONS OF THE MULTI STORE MODEL

Give two criticisms of the multi store model of memory. (3 + 3 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES THE WORKING MEMORY MODEL BADDELEY AND HITCH (1974)

Baddeley and Hitch (1974) described their model of short term memory as that area of memory which is used while working on things. The working memory system consists of three components central executive: has limited capacity; is a modality free component visuo spatial sketchpad: (sometimes called a scratch pad) the inner eye and deals with visual and spatial coding. A kind of writing pad for visual information. articulatory phonological loop: the loop is divided into the inner ear and the inner voice. The articulatory loop is linked with speech production and holds as many words as can be read out loud in two seconds. The phonological loop is linked with speech perception The articulatory phonological loop is used in everyday life for reading difficult material, making it easier for readers to retain information about the order of words in the text.

EVALUATIONS OF THE WORKING MEMORY MODEL

One limitation of the working memory model is that we know least about the central executive yet it is also the most important. It has a limited capacity but no one has been able to measure it accurately. Richardson (1984) argues that there are problems in specifying the precise function of the central executive, he believes that the terminology is vague and that it can be used to explain any kind of results. One positive criticism of the working memory model is that it is an advance over the account of short term memory provided the multi store model. The working memory model is concerned with active processing rather than the passive process described by the multi store model. E.g. it views verbal rehearsal as an optional process that occurs within the articulatory or phonological loop. It also places more emphasis on visual aspects of STM unlike the multi-store model.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES THE WORKING MEMORY MODEL - BADDELEY AND HITCH (1974)

Outline the working memory model of memory. (6 marks) EVALUATIONS OF THE WORKING MEMORY MODEL

Give two criticisms of the working memory model of memory. (3 + 3 marks)

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES LEVELS OF PROCESSING MODEL CRAIK AND LOCKHART (1972)

Craik and Lockhart put forward an alternative to the multistore model of memory. They argued that the concept of rehearsal is not sufficient to account for long term memory. They believed instead on emphasising the cognitive processes that are operating at the time of learning therefore they concentrate on the processes involved in memory and not the stores. The model suggests that information is processed at one of three levels Structural level (what a word looks like e.g. capital letters of lower case) Phonological level (what a word sounds like e.g. what does it rhyme with) Semantic level (what does a word mean?) The model emphasises what it calls shallow (Type 1) processing which occurs at the structural level and deeper (Type 11) processing that occurs at the semantic level. The deeper the information is processed, the better it is recalled.

EVALUATIONS OF LEVEL OF PROCESSING A positive criticism of the levels of processing model is that although it appears to deal with something that is obvious processes of learning few studies before 1972 had considered this approach. This model could be applied to improving memory. If you find it hard to remember someones name, dont just repeat it over and over again elaborate on it or make the memory distinctive. This enhances the depth of processing and will make it more memorable. A limitation of the model is the use of levels. It is not clear exactly where one level ends and the next one begins. Where does the structural level end and the phonological level begin? This problem occurs because of the lack of any independent measure of processing depth. Another limitation is that the model describes rather than explains. Craik and Lockhart argued that deep processing leads to better long term memory than shallow processing. However, they failed to provide a detailed account of why deep processing is so effective. Why is something that is

elaborated or more distinctive be more likely to result in long term storage? It does happen (a description) but why?

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES THE LEVELS OF PROCESSING MODEL CRAIK AND LOCKHART (1972)

Outline the levels of processing model of memory. (6 marks) EVALUATIONS OF THE LEVELS OF PROCESSING MODEL

Give two criticisms of this model. (3 + 3 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES DEFINITIONS OF: ENCODING: when psychologists talk about encoding they are referring to the way information is stored in memory. It can be stored acoustically (using sound) or semantically (looking at meaning). When a person is given a list of words to remember they will encode them and place the words in memory. STM mainly uses an acoustic code and LTM a semantic code. STORAGE: as a result of encoding, the information is held in memory until it is needed After the person has encoded the words for the memory test they will hold the words in memory until the end of term. This is called storage. RETRIEVAL: the recovering of stored information from the memory system. The words of the test must be located and re-accessed if they are to answer the end of term test. This is known as recall or remembering. When the test is given, if retrieval has been successful, the words are written down on the test paper. SHORT TERM MEMORY ACOUSTIC ENCODING Evidence suggests in STM information is stored by the way it sounds acoustically. When a person is presented with a list of numbers or letters, they will try to hold them in STM by rehearsing them. Rehearsal involves saying items over and over to themselves. Rehearsal is a verbal process, whether the list is read out acoustic or visual (on a sheet of paper). SHORT TERM MEMORY: RESEARCH INTO ENCODING: BADDELEY (1966): Procedure: Participants were given four sets of words to recall: Set A: acoustically similar (e.g. man cap, can, cab) Set B: acoustically dissimilar (e.g. pit, few, cow, pen) Set C: semantically similar e.g. (great, large, big, huge) and Set D: semantically dissimilar (e.g. good, huge, hot, safe). Results: If participants were asked to recall the word list immediately (STM), they did less well with acoustically similar words then with acoustically dissimilar words. Recalling the words after an interval (LTM) they performed the same on the acoustic lists but there were differences on the semantic lists, Conclusion: This suggests that STM uses an acoustic code and LTM uses a semantic code. SHORT TERM MEMORY DURATION: It is thought that information is held in STM for a limited amount of time (about 18 seconds). Its as if the information is written on a magic slate and, as time passes. The writing fades away. Of course, if you rehearse the information (repeat it over and over) you can remember it for longer. RESEARCH INTO DURATION IN STM - PETERSON AND PETERSON (1959): Procedure: Participants were shown trigrams

(BVM, CTG) they were then asked to recall the trigram either after 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds. They were given an interference task (counting backwards in threes from a three digit number) between being presented with the trigram and recalling it. This stopped them rehearsing the trigram. Results: Recall after three seconds was good (80% of the trigrams were recalled) but after 18 seconds only about 10% were recalled. The memory trace seems to disappear after about 18 seconds. AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES DEFINITIONS OF: ENCODING:

STORAGE:

RETRIEVAL:

What is meant by the terms encoding and retrieval? (3 + 3 marks) SHORT TERM MEMORY ACOUSTIC ENCODING

Explain what is meant by the term encoding in STM. (3 marks) SHORT TERM MEMORY RESEARCH INTO ENCODING: BADDLEY AND HITCH (1966)

Describe the procedures and findings of one piece of research into encoding in STM. (6 marks) SHORT TERM MEMORY: DURATION

Explain what is meant by the term duration in memory? (3 marks) RESEARCH INTO DURATION IN STM PETERSON AND

PETERSON (1959)

Outline the procedures and findings into one study of duration in STM. (6 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES SHORT TERM MEMORY: CAPACITY: Miller (1956) put forward the idea that the capacity of STM centred around the magic number 7 + - 2. He suggested STM can store between 5 and 9 pieces of information. STM can only store a limited number of items because it has a limited number of slots. Miller suggested we can increase the amount of information in STM by chunking the material e.g. grouping letters together into words or abbreviations that have meaning for us. SHORT TERM MEMORY: RESEARCH INTO CAPACITY - JACOBS (1887) Procedure: Participants were presented with a sequence of letters or digits which they were required to repeat back in the order they were presented. The letters or digits were presented at half second intervals using a metronome. Each participant started with three items and these were increased each time by one until they consistently failed to reproduce the sequence correctly. The sequence length that was recalled correctly on at least 50% of the trials was taken to be the participants digit span. Findings: Jacobs found that the average STM digit span was between 5 and 9 items. Digits (9.3) were recalled better than letters (7.3) He also found that the span increased with age. 6.6 was the average for 8 year olds compared to 8.6 for 19 year olds. ENCODING IN LONG TERM MEMORY It is thought we primarily use a semantic encoding in long term memory. Semantic encoding is done on the basis of meaning. If we can give meaning to numbers, letters and information we are more likely to remember them over a long period of time. LONG TERM MEMORY RESEARCH INTO SEMANTIC ENCODING BADDELEY (1966): Procedure: Participants were given four sets of words to recall: Set A: acoustically similar (e.g. man cap, can, cab) Set B: acoustically dissimilar (e.g. pit, few, cow, pen) Set C: semantically similar e.g. (great, large, big, huge) and Set D: semantically dissimilar (e.g. good, huge, hot, safe). To test LTM encoding participants were asked to recall their list after a time delay. Results: Recalling the words after an interval, (LTM), participants performed better on words that were semantically dissimilar than words that were semantically similar and there was no difference on the acoustic lists. Conclusion: This suggests that STM uses an acoustic code and LTM uses a semantic code. LONG TERM MEMORY CAPACITY: People are able to remember a vast amount of information in long term memory. The kind of

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information people can remember is also extremely varied: your route home from school, what your previous school looked like, the names of all the people you know, the letters of the alphabet, the rules of arithmetic, the names of capital cities in the world, etc. There may be some limit to the actual brain cells available but it seems that we never reach this upper limit in LTM.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES SHORT TERM MEMORY CAPACITY

Explain what is meant by the term capacity in STM. (3 marks) SHORT TERM MEMORY RESEARCH INTO CAPACITY JACOBS (1887)

Describe the procedures and findings of one study into capacity in STM. (6 marks) ENCODING IN LONG TERM MEMORY

Explain what is meant by the term encoding in LTM. (3 marks) LONG TERM MEMORY RESEARCH INTO SEMANTIC ENCODING BADDELEY (1996)

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Describe the procedures and findings of one study into encoding in LTM. (6 marks) LONG TERM MEMORY CAPACITY

Explain what is meant by the term capacity in LTM. (3 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES LONG TERM MEMORY DURATION It is difficult to prove how long a memory lasts, as we may have forgotten a piece of information today but we may be able to recall it tomorrow, or next week. Psychologists have conducted research into Very Long Term Memory. It has been found that the elderly rarely lose their childhood memories and many skills such as riding a bike are never forgotten RESEARCH INTO THE DURATION OF LONG TERM MEMORY BAHRICK, BAHRICK AND WITTINGER (1975) Procedure: They used photographs from high school year books (an annual publication in American High schools where everyones picture is shown with their name and other details). They asked 392 ex-highschool students of various ages to freely recall the names of any of their classmates and also showed them a set of appropriate photographs and asked them to identify individuals. Results: Even after 34 years ex-students were able to name 90% of the photographs, thus supporting the view that people do have very long-term memories. EPISODIC AND SEMANTIC MEMORY TULVING (1972) He suggested that episodic memory has an autobiographical flavour. It contains memories of specific events or episodes occurring in a particular place at a particular time e.g. what you did yesterday or what you had for lunch last Sunday. Semantic memory contains information about our knowledge of the world e.g. rules and words of our language, how to calculate percentages and how to fill your car with petrol. EVALUATION: It is clear that there is difference in content between semantic and episodic memory, however it is less clear that there is a difference in the processes involved. Episodic and semantic memory may depend heavily on each other. Remembering what you had lunch last Sunday involves episodic memory, however semantic memory is involved, in that your knowledge of the world is needed to identify the different kinds of food you ate. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN STM AND LTM STM LTM Duration Short 18 secs Long potentially Forever

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Capacity Encoding Serial Position is

Limited by duration Unlimited Acoustic Semantic Recency effect Primacy effect Last material is Earlier material better remembered better because it is better

remembered because of interference. rehearsed.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES LONG TERM MEMORY DURATION

Explain what is meant by the term duration in LTM. (3 marks) RESEARCH INTO THE DURATION OF LONG TERM MEMORY BAHRICK, BAHRICK AND WITTINGER (1975)

Outline the procedures and findings into one study of duration in long term memory. (6 marks) EPISODIC AND SEMANTIC MEMORY TULVING (1972)

What is meant by the terms episodic and semantic memory? (3 + 3 marks) DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LTM AND STM LTM STM

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Outline three differences between long term and short term memory. (2+2+2 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES EXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN SHORT TERM MEMORY 1. TRACE DECAY One explanation of of forgetting in STM is trace decay. This is based on the idea that memories have a physical basis (a trace) and that this will decay in time unless the trace is passed to long term memory. Rehearsal prevents forgetting because it replenishes the trace before it decays completely. The trace disappears just like a photographic image that is not fixed with chemicals. Information in short term memory certainly does disappear but this may not be because of trace decay, it could disappear because of interference. RESEARCH INTO TRACE DECAY PETERSON AND PETERSON (1959) Procedure: Participants were shown trigrams (BVM, CTG) they were then asked to recall the trigram either after 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds. They were given an interference task (counting backwards in threes from a three digit number) between being presented with the trigram and recalling it. This stopped them rehearsing the trigram. Results: Recall after three seconds was good (80% recall) but after 18 seconds only about 10% recall. Conclusion: The memory trace seems to disappear after about 18 seconds. EVALUATION OF RESEARCH One limitation of the study is that participants were asked to recall a very artificial type of data. It is not a very common task for people to remember trigrams. It could be argued that STM is longer lasting when people are asked to remember more meaningful data such as telephone numbers or street names that are important to them. A strength of the study is that it is a lab experiment and we can clearly identify the independent variable (the time people were

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given to recall the trigrams) and the dependant variable (the number of trigrams people were able to recall). This means that we can clearly identify the effect of time delay on recall. 2. DISPLACEMENT Another explanation of forgetting in STM is displacement. STM has seven slots (=2-2) and when these slots are full, some of the old information is knocked out, or displaced, by the new information. It follows that this would lead to forgetting, as you put the new information into STM and the old information is then lost.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES EXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN SHORT TERM MEMORY TRACE DECAY

Outline one explanation of forgetting in STM. (3 marks) RESEARCH IN TRACE DECAY PETERSON AND PETERSON (1959)

Outline the procedure and findings of one piece of research into trace decay in STM. (6 marks) EVALUATION OF RESEARCH

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Give two evaluations of this research into trace decay in STM. (3+3 marks) DISPLACEMENT

Outline two explanations of forgetting in STM. (3 + 3 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES EXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN LONG TERM MEMORY 1. INTERFERENCE One explanation of forgetting in long term memory is interference. The idea behind this theory is that memories may be interfered with either by what we learned before, or by what we may learn in the future. There is proactive interference (earlier data interferes with new data) and retroactive interference (new data interferes with recall of old data). Interference is most likely to occur when two sets of data are similar. RESEARCH INTO INTERFERENCE McGEOGH AND MacDONALD (1931) Procedure: They asked participants to learn a list of adjectives, they were then given another task (this was called the interpolated task) and after this were asked to recall the original list of adjectives. Results: They found that forgetting was greatest when the interpolated task was similar to the list of adjectives. There was little effect on recall from interference when the interpolated task involved unrelated material. Most forgetting occurred when the interference task involved synonyms of the original list. EVALUATION OF RESEARCH INTO INTERFERENCE McGEOGH AND MacDONALD (1931) One limitation of interference theory is that it doesnt have much applicability to everyday life. It is rare that two different responses are attached to the same stimulus and therefore much of our forgetting is unlikely to be due to interference. Baddeley pointed out interference doesnt apply widely outside of the laboratory. There is

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some disagreement as to whether interference should be thought of as lack of accessibility or lack of availability. There is some evidence that its due to lack of accessibility. Another view is that interference does happen occasionally in everyday life. In the 19th century the German psychologist Hugo Munsterberg conducted a simple experiment by moving his pocket watch from one pocket to another. When asked What time is it? he would often fumble about in confusion and put his hand in the wrong pocket e.g. proactive interference past experience is interfering with current recall..

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES FORGETTING IN LONG TERM MEMORY INTERFERENCE

Outline one explanation of forgetting in LTM (3 marks) RESEARCH INTO INTERFERENCE McGEOGH AND MacDONALD (1931)

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Outline the procedures and findings into one study of forgetting in LTM. (6 marks) EVALUATION OF RESEARCH INTO INTERFERENCE McGEOGH AND MacDONALD (1931

Give two criticisms of this research into forgetting in LTM. (3 + 3 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES EXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN LONG TERM MEMORY 2. CUE DEPENDENT FORGETTING Another explanation of forgetting in long term memory is called cue dependent forgetting. The idea behind this theory is that the memory has been stored it just isnt accessible until an appropriate cue is given and suddenly it pops up. Such information is said to be available because it is stored, but not accessible because it cant be retrieved. It needs a cue hence the following conversation: Mary: What was that boys name? Susan: It was something like Ted or Frank. Mary: Oh, thats it. It was Fred. RESEARCH INTO CUE DEPENDENT FORGETTING TULVING AND PSOTKA (1971) Procedure: Participants were given word lists. There were six different word lists, each with 24 words. Each set of words was divided into six categories so there were 4 words in each category. E.g. one list would be cat, tiger, dog, whale: ruby, diamond, sapphire, emerald: chair, table, sofa, bed : apple, pear, orange, lemon: oak, maple, birch, elm: lake, river, sea, pond. Some of the participants only learned one list and some learned two and so on. After each list had been presented participants tried to remember as many words as possible. This was called free call. After all the lists had been presented participants tried to recall the words from all the lists they had heard. This was called total free recall. Finally all the category names were presented e.g. animals / precious stones / fruit and the participants tried again to remember as many words as possible. This was called total free cued recall cued because

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they were given the category names. Results: They found that in the total free recall situation there was evidence of retroactive interference - new data interferes with recall of old data. Participants who were only given one or two lists were able to recall a higher percentage of words than those with five or six words. This would seem to support the idea of interference. When the participants were given the cued recall test, the effects of interference disappeared. No matter how many lists the participants were given recall was the same for each list about 70% when they were given category cues. This means that interference had not caused forgetting because the memories were available, they werent able to be accessed until the cues were given. EVALUATION OF RESEARCH INTO CUE DEPENDENT FORGETTING TULVING AND PSOTKA (1971) One limitation of this research is that the improved performance of the participants on the cued recall task might be due to the practice effect. The participants had completed at least two free recall tests before doing the cued recall test and this may have led to better recall. However, this cannot explain all of the results, such as why recall was much the same on all lists no matter how many were given. AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES EXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING IN LONG TERM MEMORY CUE DEPENDENT FORGETTING

Give two explanations of forgetting in LTM. (3 + 3 marks) RESEARCH INTO CUE DEPENDENT FORGETTING TULVING AND PSOTKA (1971) Procedure:

Results:

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Outline the procedures and findings into one piece of research of forgetting in LTM. (3+3marks) EVALUATION OF ONE PIECE OF RESEARCH INTO CUE DEPENDENT FORGETTING TULVING AND PSOTKA (1971)

Give one limitation of this research. (3 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES EMOTIONAL FACTORS IN FORGETTING DEFINITION OF FLASHBULB MEMORY: The term flashbulb memory describes long-lasting and vivid memories of highly important and dramatic events. Brown and Kulik (1977) found that people were likely to remember six kinds of information in memories of this kind: (1) Where they were when they heard the news (2) what they were doing at the time (3) the person who gave them the news (4)how they felt about it (5) how others felt about it (6)the aftermath of the event. The most important factors in triggering a flashbulb memory were that the event was surprising, was seen to be important and was associated with a high level of emotional arousal. These ideas were demonstrated in their findings that of the 80 people asked about their memories of the assassination of President Kennedy 79 remembered where they were and what they were doing at the time. PILLEMER (1984) Procedure: In this American research, people were asked about their memory for the attempted assassination of the American president Ronald Reagan in 1981. They were asked about this event a month after it happened, and again six months later. Results: People had vivid memories of where they were when they heard the news, and who told them about it. They reported strong visual images. The amount of emotional arousal people experienced was related to the

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vividness, elaboration and consistency over time of the memory. Conclusion: Flashbulb memories are associated with an event being unexpected, seen as important, and creating strong emotional arousal. As well as public events, we can also have flashbulb memories of personal events. Rubin and Kozin (1984) asked people to describe their three clearest memories. Many of these related to accidents or injuries to themselves or those close to them, others related to love affairs, sports, and experiences when starting college. National events made up only 3% of the sample. Surprise was an important factor, the number of times people had rehearsed the memory, i.e. gone over it in their minds, was also important. There is conflicting evidence about how reliable flashbulb memories are. Evidence to suggest they are not reliable comes from McCloskey, Wible and Cohen (1988) who interviewed people shortly after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and then re-interviewed those people nine months later. They found that participant did forget some elements of the event and they also showed some inaccuracies in their recall. This finding suggests that flashbulb memories are subject to forgetting in the same way that other memories are. Conway et al (1994) felt the Challenger explosion wasnt a good example because it didnt have important consequences in the lives of those interviewed. They looked at peoples reactions to Mrs Thatchers resignation and found that 86% of UK participants still had memories after 11 months compared with 29% of people from other countries. Suggesting that when an event has a distinctive meaning it will be more memorable. AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES FLASHBULB MEMORY definition BROWN AND KULIK (1977) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Explain what is meant by the term flashbulb memory. (3 marks) PILLEMER (1984) Procedure: Results:

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Conclusion:

Outline the procedures and findings of one study into flashbulb memory. (6 marks) EVALUATION OF FLASBULB MEMORY AGAINST

FOR:

Give two criticisms of the reliability of flashbulb memory. (3 + 3 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES EMOTIONAL FACTORS IN FORGETTING DEFINITION OF REPRESSIOON. FREUD (1915) suggested that material that caused anxiety may be dealt with in a number of ways that will reduce ones feelings of anxiety repression is one of these methods of ego defence. A simple example would be someone who dislikes going to the dentist. If they told you that they forgot their appointment you might think of this as repressed memory the anxiety caused by the memory in some way made it inaccessible to conscious thought. EVIDENCE FOR: Some convincing evidence for repression has come from repressors, individuals who have low scores on trait anxiety ( a personality factor relating to how likely you are to become anxious) and high scores on defensiveness (the tendency to protect oneself from anxiety and embarrassment). MYERS AND BREWIN (1994) REPRESSED MEMORIES Aim: Do people who are repressors i.e. those people with low anxiety and high defensiveness, have restricted access to negative childhood memories ? Participants: 27 female undergraduates tested on anxiety and defensiveness. The participants were grouped as repressors, or other types. Method: Natural experiment, semistructured interviews. The participants were asked to recall unhappy childhood

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memories as quickly as possible. Participants were also questioned about the quality of their relationships with their parents using a semistructured interview. This was necessary in order to check that the repressors had something to repress. Results: The repressors took twice as long to recall unhappy childhood memories as positive ones. The repressors free-recalled fewer negative childhood memories than non-repressors, and the age of first memory was older in both free-recall and cued-recall conditions. Repressors were more likely to report poor or negative relationships with their fathers. Conclusion: This suggests that individuals with anxiety provoking memories are more likely to repress such memories. The reason why repressors took longer to recall unhappy childhood memories and fewer were recalled was repression rather than lack of unhappy memories. Evaluation: One problem with this research was the lack of scientific rigour. It is hard to test Freuds theory as it is not a scientific theory and difficult to find empirical evidence to support it.It is not justifiable to reach causal conclusions where the independent variable has not been directly manipulated or where participants have not been randomly allocated to groups. There is also the issue of participants being reluctant to reveal certain memories in an experimental situation. There are also ethical issues in dealing with research that deals with the recovery of repressed memories. Is it right to encourage participants to recover painful memories which may upset the balance of their family life? Should a researcher place themselves in this situation or undertake the responsibility of conducting research in this sensitive area? AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES DEFINTION OF REPRESSION

What is meant by the term repression ? (3 marks) MYERS AND BREWIN (1994) REPRESSED MEMORIES Aim: Procedure:

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Results:

Conclusion:

Describe the procedures and findings of one study into repression. (3 + 3 marks) EVALUATION

Give two criticisms of this study (6 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES BROWN (1986) suggests that there is a paradox to eyewitness testimony: judges, defence attorneys and psychologists believe it to be about the least trustworthy kind of evidence of guilt, whereas jurors have always found it more persuasive than any other sort of evidence. RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY BARTLETT (1932) argued that memory is affected by the store of relevant prior knowledge we have, and not just by what information is presented. He regarded memories not just as reproductions of information but as reconstructions influenced by prior knowledge. He asked people to read The War of the Ghosts and found that a number of changes to the story occurred as it was recalled. People gave shorter simpler versions People retold the story more as a standard English one rather than a Native American story e.g. substituting boat for canoe. Sometimes new information was introduced to make the story more logical This type of reconstruction Bartlett termed rationalisation. Such distortions are used to make sense of unfamiliar things. But the

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most important thing was that the central ideas of the story were not really changed at all. Bartlett suggested that what happens is that people store a few main facts about the story and then reconstruct it from those facts. This act of reconstruction Bartlett referred to as effort after meaning. EVALUATION Support for Bartlett (1932) has come from several studies. SULIN AND DOOLING (1974) asked their participants to read a story, having told them it was either about Adolf Hitler or Gerald Martin (a fictitious character). Afterwards, they were given a test of recognition memory and asked to decide whether each sentence in the test had been presented in the story. The key sentences were those that had not been presented but which referred to well known facts about Adolf Hitler. Those participants who had been told the story was about Hitler were more likely to claim mistakenly that these key sentences had been in the original story. Thus, their prior knowledge about Hitler produced distortions in their recall. Another criticism of Bartlett is that his approach lacked objectivity. Some psychologists believe that well-controlled experiments are the only way to produce objective data. Bartletts methods were casual. He simply asked the group to recall the story at various intervals and there were no special conditions for the recall. It is possible that other factors affected their recall such as the conditions around them at the time they were recalling the story. On the other hand one could argue that his research is more ecologically valid than those studies that ask participants to recall lists of unrelated words. At least Bartlett attempted to look at everyday memory an aspect of memory that is now being actively researched.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES BROWN (1986)

RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY BARTLETT (1932)

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Describe the procedure ad findings of one study into reconstructive memory. (6 marks) EVALUATIONS

Give two criticisms of this research (6 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES LOFTUS AND PALMER (1974) Leading Questions Procedure: 150 participants were shown a film of an accident between two cars and then asked to fill in a questionnaire about the accident. The important question involved the speed of the cars at the point of impact. The question was phrased differently for different groups of participants some were asked How fast were the two cars going when they hit each other; others were asked the same question but with smashed, collided, bumped or contacted replacing the word hit. Results: The average speeds the participants gave in their answer to the question were: Hit 34mph : Smashed 41mph : Collided 39mph : Bumped 38mph : Contacted 31mph. Conclusion: The speed at which participants thought the cars were going was affected by the verb used. Recall can be distorted by the wording of a question. LOFTUS (1979) Weapon Focus : Procedure: Loftus asked participants to wait in a room outside a laboratory, during this wait

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some participants were allowed to overhear a low key discussion about equipment failure a person then emerged from the lab holding a pen he uttered a single comment and walked past the participant. In the other condition participants overheard a heated exchange, the sound of breaking glass and a man emerged holding a paper knife covered in blood, made a single statement and walked on. Results: When the participants were given 50 photographs and asked to identify the man they had seen. The man holding the pen was correctly identified 49% of the time and the man with the knife only 33%. Conclusion: Participants in the knife condition focused on the knife rather than the mans face. This shows that emotion, particularly high emotion can affect the accuracy of memory recall. LOFTUS (1975) The barn experiment Procedure: Loftus showed 150 participants a film in which there was a car accident. After the film was shown the group were divided in two conditions and each group were asked ten questions about the film. They were both given the same questions except that the second group had one different question: How fast was the white sports car going when it passed the barn? There was no barn. After one week the participants were all given another questionnaire the last question for both groups was: Did you see the barn? Results: In the first condition only 2.7% answered Yes. You would not expect this to be high because the idea of the barn did not feature on their questionnaire. In the second group 17.3% answered Yes. Conclusion: The idea here is that false information can be fed to people early on in an investigation and then becomes embedded in the memory and accepted as real information.

AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES

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LOFTUS AND PALMER (1974) LEADING QUESTIONS Procedure:

Results:

Conclusion:

Outline one study into eyewitness testimony. (6 marks) LOFTUS (1979) WEAPON FOCUS Procedure:

Results:

Conclusion:

Outline the procedures and findings of one study into eye witness testimony. (3 + 3 marks) LOFTUS (1975) THE BARN EXPERIMENT Procedure:

Results:

Conclusion: Outline one study into eyewitness testimony. (6 marks) AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES

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EVALUATION OF EYEWITNESS RESEARCH A major limitation of most studies on the effects of post event information is that they have focused on memory for peripheral details (e.g the presence or absence of broken glass). As Fruzetti et al (1992) pointed out, it is harder to distort eyewitness memory by misleading post-event information for key details (e.g. the murder weapon) than for minor details. The studies also lack ecological validity. In the leading questions experiment participants were watching a video clip. This is far removed from a real life incident in which a person would have an emotional reaction and as we have seen from repression and flashbulb memory research emotions can help or hinder peoples ability to recall. WAYS IN WHICH EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY CAN BE MADE MORE RELIABLE: FACE RECOGNITION Human beings seem to have an amazing ability to recognise faces. STANDING (1973) showed participants 10,000 faces over 5 days. When they were shown pairs of faces, one of which they had previously been shown, together with a new one, they were able to identify the face that they had seen 98% of the time. This ability is also impressive when people are asked to identify faces which they have not seen for some time. BAHRICK et al. (1975) Procedure: Fifteen years after their graduation participants were shown five pictures from year books. One picture of the five was a person with whom they had graduated from high school. Results: The participants were accurate in identifying 90% of their groupmates. It was found that even those participants who had graduated more than 40 years previously could identify 75% of their groupmates correctly. Conclusion: People have a well-developed ability to recognise faces. ELLIS et al (1979) investigated what information is most important when recognising familiar and unfamiliar faces. They found that recognition of unfamiliar faces depends more on external features, such as the shape of the face and the hairline. For familiar faces, internal features are more important. According to ROBERTS AND BRUCE (1988) the area round the eyes is the most important, while the area round the nose is of the least importance. HAY AND YOUNG (1982) suggested that familiar faces are stored in the brain in neural circuits known as Face Recognition Units (FRUs) When we see a face we scan our FRUs for a match, to decide whether or not a face is familiar. If a match is found, we can then access the information about the person, such as their job and biographical information which may in turn generate their name.

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AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES EVALUATION OF EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY

Give two criticisms of eyewitness research. (6 marks) WAYS IN WHICH EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY CAN BE MADE MORE RELIABLE: FACE RECOGNITION STANDING (1973)

BAHRICK et al (1975) Procedure:

Results:

ELLIS et al (1975)

Outline the procedures and findings of one study into face recognition. (6 marks) HAY AND YOUNG (1982)

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AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY FULL NOTES A system called FRAME (Facial Retrieval And Matching Equipment) uses verbal descriptions given by witnesses to retrieve possible matches from mug shots. The advantage of this system is that it uses the information which witnesses can give, while making use of our well developed capacity to recognise faces. ELLIS et al (1989) Procedure: Each participant saw a target face for 10 seconds, which they were later asked to identify. Using a database of 1000 male faces a comparison was made between the effectiveness of the FRAME system and a mug shot album search. Results: The FRAME system produced 69% correct matches compared to only 44% for the album search. There was also a much higher percentage of false alarms when mug shot albums were used. Conclusion: The use of verbal descriptions together with mug shot albums is more effective in leading to face recognition than theuse of mug shot albums alone. THE COGNITIVE INTERVIEW Geiselman et al (1984) developed a technique called the basic cognitive interview, based on two principles of memory research. Firstly, that there may be a number of retrieval paths to a memory, and that a memory may be accessible if a different retrieval clue is used and secondly, that a memory trace is made up of several features and the effectiveness of a retrieval cue depends on how much it overlaps with the memory trace. The basic cognitive interview technique involves: An eyewitness mentally reinstating the environmental and personal context of the crime. This includes reporting what was going on at the time, both in terms of the events witnessed and the witnesss own thoughts and feelings. The eyewitness being asked to report everything they can recall about the event, regardless of how unimportant it might seem Encouraging an eyewitness to recount what happened in a variety of orders Asking them to report from a variety of perspectives and points of view

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AS PSYCHOLOGY MODULE 1 MEMORY BLANK NOTES FRAME

THE COGNITIVE INTERVIEW :

THE BASIC COGNITIVE INTERVIEW

Describe two factors of the basic cognitive interview technique. (6 marks)

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HOW TO WRITE A02 Question (c) will always be worth 18 marks. 6 marks for AO1 accurate description and 12 marks for A02. AO2 requires that you analyse and evaluate. To analyse you need to:
(a)

point out what may seem obvious to you, but spell out to the examiner that you understand the conclusions that can be drawn from a particular study or point of view.

For this you need to start sentences with these phrases. This would imply.. This would imply that the capacity for short term memory is limited but the capacity for long term memory is never reached. This suggests that. This suggests that if the capacity in short term memory is exceeded e.g. eight items, then we will forget some of the information. So we can see.. So we can see that short term memory has a very small capacity. One consequence of this would be One consequence of this would be that if people wanted to retain more information in short term memory they would need to chunk the information. An alternative explanation might be. An alternative explanation for short term memory is provided by Baddeley and Hitch who suggest it has a phonological and visual aspect. Evaluation is not just negatively criticising the study/theory that you have described. Psychology would be a pointless discipline if all the knowledge was as flawed as some students essays would indicate. Remember that positive comments that support the research/theory are also relevant. To evaluate you need to:
(b)

demonstrate that you appreciate the degree to which a study or theory has been backed up by actual research evidence.

For this you need to start sentences with these phrases. This is supported by.. This is supported by evidence from Peterson and Peterson who found that when participants counted backwards, this information displaced the trigrams they were trying to remember. This is challenged by This is challenged by flashbulb memory that suggests that distinctiveness and emotional factors,

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rather than depth of processing are important in retaining memories. Not everyone reacts in the same way, for example. Some people may be visual learners and therefore will not do very well on in laboratory tests that require them to learn list of words. There may be cultural variations. There may be cultural variations to flashbulb memory that would affect the strength of the memory trace. People in India may not have been so shocked by Margaret Thatchers resignation as people in England. USING AO2 EFFECTIVELY To give your commentary impact, you should identify and then develop the point. This study lacked ecological validity. Here the candidate has only identified the point but not developed it. This study lacked ecological validity because we are really asked to remember lists of unconnected words in everyday life. What the participants were being asked to do was a strange task. It would have been better to ask them to remember items such as telephone numbers or addresses that we are required to learn during the course of a year. This study only used students. Again there is no development of the point. This study only used students. There is evidence (Sears, 1986) that students react differently to other sections of the population when participating in psychological research. In studies of altruism, for example, they are more likely to see tasks as a challenge to be overcome individually, and are therefore less likely to ask others for help. This may, therefore, limit the validity of Western models of altruism, based largely on such laboratory studies, particularly when these models are used to contrast with research in non-Western cultures, which generally show a greater willingness to seek and give help. The study was unethical. To develop this much more needs to be added. This study was unethical in that Zimbardo, by allowing the guards to engage in anti social behaviour against the prisoners effectively gave the pursuit of scientific knowledge priority over the welfare of his participants. A consequence of this decision has been a tightening of ethical guidelines to give other psychologists shared responsibility for the research behaviour of their colleagues. AO2 needs to be sustained do think about the number of points that you are going to make and how much you are going to elaborate on them. A few points coherently elaborated will always get more marks and than a long list of points with little or no elaboration.

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MEMORY A02 ANSWERS QUESTION 1 Eyewitness testimony differs from many other aspects of memory in that accuracy is of much greater importance. Consider what psychological research has told us about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. (18 marks) Elizabeth Loftus has demonstrated the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony in a number of different experiments. In the weapon focus study (1979) participants were asked . Complete the A01 In the barn experiment she demonstrated that participants could be lead to imagining that they had seen a barn in a film when in fact no barn existed. Providing you plant false information at an early stage and give it time to embed in the memory, Loftus suggested that false information could become real. However, Loftus has been criticised for lacking ecological validity. Complete this A02. There is also evidence to suggest that there is a special area of the brain that deals with face recognition and that humans use a sophisticated system to identify faces. Although Loftus suggests that eyewitness testimony can be manipulated and altered there is also evidence to support the view that, given the right techniques, it can be strengthened and made more reliable than was at first thought develop this A02.

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MEMORY A02 ANSWERS QUESTION 2 Some psychologists believe that there are two memory stores, short term memory and long term memory. To what extent does research support the view that there are two different memory stores? (18 marks) There is considerable evidence to support the idea that there are two memory stores. Atkinson and Shiffrins (1968) multi store model of memory was the first to suggest that memory could be divided into three stores, sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory. They put forward the idea that short term memory had a limited capacity and a short duration. Miller suggested that the capacity of short term memory was based around the magic number seven, plus or minus two. The capacity could be improved by using a process called chunking. Atkinson and Shiffrin also put forward the idea that you could hold information in STM for longer periods of time if you rehearsed it. This was also a way of moving STM information into LTM. Now use some of these phrases to start and develop your A02: Evidence in support of this idea comes from The main problem with this idea is Atkinson and Shiffrin seem to concentrate on However, Craik and Lockhart believe A strength of this idea A weakness of this idea

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Not everyone remembers in the same way

MEMORY A02 ANSWERS QUESTION 3 Critically consider insights into face recognition that have been provided by psychological research (theories and/or studies). (18 marks) How do people recognise faces? Template theorists suggest that we have a store of templates for different patterns and these are matched with the incoming stimulus. The problem with this explanation is that we would need a huge number of templates and it would take a long time to find the right match. An alternative model is feature detection, which proposes that we look for certain features of an object. For instance when we are looking for the letter A in a list of letters we look for straight lines and it is easier to find the letter A in a list of rounded letters such as O and G. When recognising faces there is evidence that people do use information about individual features (such as eye colour) but they also use information about the overall arrangement of the features. In fact configuration may be more important for recognition of features. Hay and Young (1987) constructed faces by using the top half of a famous persons face and the bottom half of another famous persons face. When these two pictures were aligned as closely as possible, participants found it more difficult to identify the two people. Bahrick (1984) suggested that familiarity plays an important part in recognising faces. He tested the face recognition accuracy of

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college lecturers for their students, who they taught three to five times a week over ten weeks. They were asked to pick out their students from photos. After eleven days recognition was reasonable 69%, but after a year it had dropped to 48% and after eight years it was no better than chance. This suggest that familiarity plays an important part but there could also be an interference effect at work, as lecturers would be seeing a huge amount of students over their working life. Distinctiveness is also a factor. Valentine and Bruce (1986) suggested that we are likely to recognise faces much more quickly if there is something distinctive about them. Yarmey (1993) found that there is a readiness to link facial features with underlying personality characteristics. They showed participants videos of white males between 25 and 30 and asked them to select the young men who best fitted good guys e.g. doctor, clergyman and bad guys e.g. mass murder, armed robber. They found that there was considerable agreement about which young men fitted which stereotypical role. This has implications for the reliability of juries when looking at the person in the dock.

MEMORY AO2 ANSWERS QUESTION 4 Consider the extent to which research into the process of repression enables us to explain forgetting. (18 marks) Freud believed that certain memories become inaccessible as a result of repression. According to Freud repression is an unconscious process that ensures that life threatening or anxiety provoking memories are kept from conscious awareness. A simple explanation would be of someone who dislikes going to the dentist. If they are told that they forgot their appointment, you might think that this is repressed memory the anxiety caused by the memory in some way made it inaccessible to conscious thought. Some convincing evidence for repression comes from repressors. These are individuals who have low scores on trait anxiety (a personality factor relating to how likely you are to become anxious) and high scores on defensiveness (the tendency to protect oneself from anxiety and embarrassment). Myers and Brewin (1994) conducted a natural experiment to compare repressors with other personality types. They measured the time it took for participants to recall negative childhood memories. Repressors were much slower than other personality types. There is some concern with experiments in this area of memory. Is it right to expose anyone to anxiety-producing situations in order to study the effects on their memory? There are major ethical and legal issues concerning such issues as the therapists

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responsibilities and the effects of accusations on other members of the family. Also Freuds theory regarding repression is difficult to prove. As it relies on unconscious and largely inaccessible processes, it is not possible to explore the concept of repression in a scientific or objective manner. Herman and Schatzow (1987) found that 28% of a group of female incest victims reported severe memory deficits from childhood and such repressed memories were most frequent among women who has suffered violent abuse. However, there is no concrete evidence to confirm the accuracy of repressed memories. As with all memory that is retrospective it is open to exaggeration, editing and reconstruction. Freud maybe right in suggesting that repression is a way of forgetting unpleasant memories. There are links here with the role emotion plays in distorting memory traces. However, it does not explain why we forget pleasant or neutral memories. Trace decay, displacement and interference, more straightforward explanations of forgetting, may be more useful for suggesting why we forget in more normal situations.

MEMORY AO2 ANSWERS QUESTION 5 Give a brief account of the multi store model of memory and consider its strengths and weaknesses. (18 marks) Atkinson and Shiffrins multi store model of memory proposed that the memory system is divided up into three stores. They suggest that external stimuli from the environment first enter sensory memory, where they can be registered for very brief periods of time, before decaying or being passed on to short term memory. They believed that memory traces in STM are fragile and can be lost in about 20 seconds unless they are repeated (rehearsed). They also believed that the capacity of STM was small around seven items, although this could be improved by chunking. Material that is rehearsed is passed on to the long term store where it can remain for a lifetime, although loss is possible due to decay or interference. Coding in LTM is assumed to be in terms of meaning i.e. semantic. A crucial aspect of the multi store model is that there are distinct short term and long term stores. There are several other studies that support this idea and the model served as a basis for other models to elaborate on.

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However there are problems with the model. It is too simple and fails to take account of factors such as the strategies that people employ to remember things. It also places emphasis on the amount of information that can be processed rather than its nature. Some things are simply easier to remember than others, perhaps because they are more interesting, more distinctive, funnier, etc. The multi store model cannot account for this. It is also criticised for focusing on the structure of the memory system at the expense of adequately explaining the processes involved. For example, visual stimuli registering in sensory memory are thought to be changed to an accoustic code for access to STM. In order to translate the pattern of the letter M into the sound em, the individual needs to access knowledge about letter shapes and sounds which is stored in LTM. This means that information from LTM must flow backwards through the system to the re-coding stage prior to STM. This suggests that the flow of information is interactive rather than in a one way sequence as suggested by Atkinson and Shiffrin. Their idea of rehearsal as the only means of transferring information from STM to LTM has also been criticised. The levels of processing approach by Craik and Lockhart suggests that there are not three stores but one and information is remembered by how deeply it is processed. Finally their idea of STM having limited capacity is countered by Baddeley and Hitchs model of working memory as having an inner voice, ear and eye, all controlled by the central executive.