PSYA1 - COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY - MEMORY Memory is studied within the branch of Psychology known as Cognitive Psychology.

This research field focuses on the mental processes that humans use to acquire, store, retrieve and use their knowledge about the world. Definitions Psychologists believe that there are three processes involved in memory: ENCODING Put in memory Encoding is the transformation of a sensory input into a form which allows it to be held in memory. This is either acoustic (what it sounds like) or visual (what it looks like) or semantic (based on meaning). Encoding is the creation of a memory trace. STORAGE Keep in memory RETRIEVAL Recover from memory Information is held for differing lengths of time. This is called the duration of the memory. Locating and extracting information from memory. Also known as recall or remembering.

Models of Memory
A model is a way of representing a psychological process. Models are not exact diagrams of what is happening biologically within the human brain, but a way of explaining an idea so that it can be experimentally tested. Each part of the idea can be tested to provide experimental evidence to support (or not) that model. You need to know two models of memory. 1. The Multi-store Model of memory by Atkinson and Shiffrin 2. The Working Memory Model by Baddley and Hitch Note both of these models can be illustrated by an accurate and carefully labelled diagram. This could be included in an exam answer to a question which asked you to outline the main features of one of the models.

1. The multi-store model of memory by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)

This is called the multi-store model because it contains 3 separate memory stores Sensory memory (SM), Short-term memory (STM) and Long-term memory (LTM). The model suggests that information comes from one of the five senses and enters a sensory memory (SM). A small fraction of this information is paid attention to and this enters the short-term memory(STM). If no attention is paid to it the information quickly fades away. Three things can happen to the information in the STM: 1) Rehearsal helps keep the information in short term memory. (Maintenance rehearsal) 2) The information is rehearsed and goes into long term memory (Elaborative rehearsal). 3) The information is not rehearsed and is forgotten. When information is retrieved from long term memory it goes back through the short-term memory store. The memory stores are UNITARY, i.e. each has just one part. Short-term memory is limited in both capacity (7 2 chunks) and duration (about 18 seconds). Long-term memory is thought to have limitless capacity and last a lifetime.

Capacity (How much information can be stored) Duration (How long information can be stored for) Encoding (The way in which information is stored)

Short-term memory (STM) Very limited capacity about 7 chunks of information Very short about 18 seconds

Long-term memory (LTM) Potentially unlimited capacity

Potentially lasts a whole lifetime

Thought to be mainly acoustic

Thought to be mainly semantic

Differences between STM and LTM Research into STM 1. Capacity of STM The capacity of short-term memory is thought to be between 5 and 9 chunks of information. Often written as 7 2. This means that if a participant was read a list of letters, numbers or words and asked to recall them immediately most people can recall between 5 and 9 items. An experiment that gives support for this is: Simon (1974) (Note dates are often given to indicate when research was published. If you remember them you can include them in your work, but you dont need to learn them.) The aim of this laboratory experiment was to investigate the capacity of STM and to test out Millers chunking theory which suggests that we can hold 7 2 chunks of information in STM. Participants were presented with lists of either one word chunks, two word chunks or eight word chunks. For example: cheese, kangaroo, yellow, dairy, heaven, hollow, friend, lamp, train OR green-man, fried-egg, burnt-toast, blacksock etc OR They built a sandcastle then ate a sandwich etc. They were then asked to recall as many of these as possible. It was found that the larger the chunks, the less could be remembered. On average, participants could hold 7 of the one word chunks, 4 of the two word chunks and 3 of the eight word chunks. This supports the idea of a limited capacity, but suggests that the size of the chunks affects how many chunks can be recalled.
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Size of chunk Number recalled One word 7 Two word 4 Eight word 3 Findings of Simons research (Simon says size does matter!) Criticisms of Simons experiment. (Note criticisms can be positive (+) as well as negative (-) This laboratory experiment is artificial. It was done under controlled conditions using a task which participants are unlikely to encounter in everyday life. We can say the experiment lacks external validity. + This is a well-controlled experiment that used a repeated measures design. The independent variable the length of the word chunks is under the control of the experimenter. It provides good evidence that short-term memory has limited capacity. + The results of the experiment are reliable because the experiment has been repeated. 2. Duration of STM Information is held in short-term memory for only a short time, around 18 seconds. This time can be increased by rehearsal repeating things over and over again in your head. A laboratory experiment which supports this idea is Peterson and Peterson (1959). The aim of this experiment is to investigate the duration of short-term memory using the Brown Peterson Technique, by investigating whether trigrams can be recalled following an interference task of varying length. Participants were briefly shown a trigram (3 consonants e.g. VBM) and asked to recall it after a period of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds. They were given an interference task of counting backwards in 3s between the initial presentation of the trigram and recall. This was to prevent rehearsal, which is known to increase the duration of short-term memory. The procedure was repeated several times with each participant using different trigrams. The findings were that as the time between presentation and recall increased, successful recall decreased. After 3 seconds, participants recalled 80% of trigrams. After 6 seconds, there was 40% recall. After 18 seconds, there was only 10% recall. As expected, this experiment suggests that if rehearsal is prevented, information can be retained in short-term memory for only a short period of time. The memory trace has more or less disappeared after 18 seconds. Criticisms of Peterson and Petersons experiment. The recall of trigrams is not representative of everyday memory demands and so the research lacks external validity. The trigrams are not meaningful information and so may be remembered less well than more meaningful information. Thus, the duration of short-term memory may be longer for everyday memories. + An advantage of the highly controlled environment of the laboratory is that the independent variable (the time from initial learning of the trigram) is
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under the direct manipulation of the experimenter. Consequently, cause and effect can be inferred - the time delay causes recall to decline. 3. Encoding in STM The evidence suggests that the main way of encoding information into shortterm memory is acoustic (based on sounds). A laboratory experiment that supports this idea is: Conrad (1964): The aim of this experiment is to investigate the main form of encoding in STM by identifying errors in the recall of similar sounding letters and similar looking letters. Participants were shown lists of 6 printed letters for 0.75 seconds (chosen from B C F M N P S T V X ) and asked to write down as many as they could remember as they appeared. Presentation was too fast for participants to keep up so information had to be held in short term memory. It was found that participants tended to make mistakes as a result of mixing up the sounds of the letters rather than mixing up their appearance (i.e. more acoustic errors were found). For example, participants typically mixed up B and V because they sound similar but not F and E, even though they look similar. Conrad concluded that participants made more errors with acoustically similar letters because they said them to themselves, rather than just looked at them. When letters are sounded out, similar sounding ones are likely to get confused. This implies that the main form of encoding in STM is acoustic, not visual. Criticisms of Conrads experiment. (Note Criticisms do not need to be original. You should use the same criticisms for different experiments if they are appropriate.) This experiment is artificial. It was done under controlled conditions using a task which participants are unlikely to encounter in everyday life and therefore lacks external validity. + This is a well-controlled experiment in which the independent variable the letters sounding the same or different is under the control of the experimenter. It provides good evidence that encoding in short term memory is acoustic. Research into long-term memory 1. Capacity of LTM It is very difficult to research the capacity of long-term memory since it is thought to be unlimited. 2. Duration of LTM This is also difficult to investigate because, even if we are not able to recall something, it is hard to prove that it is not stored somewhere. It could be that we are unable to retrieve it, although the memory trace is there. Also, we may confabulate or make up memories from other cues and more recent memories. A study that gives support to the idea that long-term memory lasts for many years is Bahrick (1975). He aimed to investigate the duration of long term memory by identifying whether or not people can still remember the names and faces of their class mates many years after they have left school.

This was a cross-sectional study using 392 ex-high school students of various ages. They had graduated from their high school anywhere from 2 weeks to 57 years ago. They were asked to free recall the names of any of their classmates. They were also shown sets of photographs of their classmates from high school yearbooks and had to match names with faces or select a classmate from a set of 5 photos (where 4 were decoys). 90% of faces were successfully recognized up to 35 years after participants had left school. When recognizing names, 90% were successful up to 15 years after leaving and then the figure dropped. When matching names to faces, there was a 90% success rate until about 48 years later and then there was a decline in memory. This suggests memories can be held in long-term memory without distortion for a very long period of time. However, after a period of time, there may be some degeneration, possibly as a result of old age rather than the age of the memory itself. Criticisms of Bahricks study. Only one type of long-term memory was being investigated i.e. recognition of classmates faces. Classmates faces are a very particular type of information that might have emotional significance and there will have been opportunity for a great deal of rehearsal given the daily contact classmates will have experienced. The same is not true of other types of information and so the findings cannot be generalised to other types of information the study tells us nothing about the duration of semantic memories. + Compared to the vast majority of memory research, which takes place in the laboratory, Bahricks research has high external validity. Asking participants to recall their class mates tests real life memory. (Although there was less control than in a laboratory study e.g. participants may have looked at the yearbook or even met up with their classmates). 3. Encoding in LTM It is thought that we encode into our long-term memory semantically according to the meaning of words. A study which gives support to this is: Baddelely (1966). The aim of this experiment is to investigate the main form of encoding in long term memory by identifying errors in the recall of semantically similar and dissimilar words and errors in the recall of acoustically similar and dissimilar words. Participants were presented with 4 sets of words and then asked to recall them. 1. Acoustically similar words e.g. man, mad, cap, can, cat, map. 2. Acoustically dissimilar words e.g. pit, few, cow pen, bar, day. 3. Semantically similar words e.g. great, large, big, huge, wide. 4. Semantically dissimilar words e.g. good, huge, hot, safe, thin. When participants were asked to recall the word lists after a time interval (so that recall would be from long term memory, not short term memory) performance was the same for lists 1 & 2, the acoustically similar and dissimilar words. However, there were marked differences in lists 3 and 4, the semantically similar or dissimilar words. Participants were more likely to make errors in list 3. This points to the importance of meaning and suggests the information in longterm memory is encoded semantically. Words with similar meanings cause
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confusion as opposed to words with distinct meanings. The fact that there was no difference in the recall of acoustically similar and dissimilar words from long-term memory implies that they were not encoded acoustically but rather semantically. Criticisms of Baddeleys study. This experiment lacks external validity as it doesnt resemble the way that memory is used in every day life. + There is good control over the independent variable - words that are similar or dissimilar in sound or meaning - in this experiment and therefore it is easier to suggest a cause and affect relationship. This study provides good evidence that encoding in long-term memory is semantic.

Strengths of the Multi-store model of memory.

1. The serial position effect - Murdoch (1962) supports the idea of different memory stores and the role of rehearsal. When individuals are given a long list of words, those at the beginning of the list are remembered better because they have been rehearsed and passed in to long term memory (this is called the primacy effect). The words at the end of the list are better remembered because they are still in the short term memory store (this is called the recency effect). The words that are in the middle are less well remembered as they have not been rehearsed enough to transfer to LTM and have been pushed out of the STM. Support from brain damaged patients, e.g. Clive Wearing suffered brain damage as a result of a virus. He is unable to lay down new long-term memories but can hold a conversation and has a working short-term memory. This supports the Multi Store Model as it suggests that there are separate short term and long term memory stores. Studies that suggest a difference in capacity and duration between short term memory and long term memory can be used to support this model e.g. Simon, Peterson and Peterson, Bahrick.

2.

3.

Weaknesses of the Multi-store model of memory.

1. The multi-store model puts too much emphasis on rehearsal and ignores the role of incidental learning things that we have learnt without rehearsal e.g. gossip.

2. The case of Clive Wearing suggests that the long-term memory store is more complicated than just a UNITARY store. Clive Wearing had some longterm memories intact he was still able to play the piano but was unable to recognise photographs of his Cambridge College. This suggests a distinction in LTM between procedural memories (how to do something) and declarative memories (memories of things and events). 3. The Multi Store Model assumes that information must flow through the short-term memory to reach the long-term memory. The case study of KF does not support this model. KFs short-term memory was severely impaired but his long-term memory was unaffected, suggesting that information can pass directly to the long-term memory. Also, some parts of KFs short-term memory still functioned suggesting that short-term memory is not a unitary store.

2. The Working Memory Model (1974):

Baddeley and Hitch thought that short term memory was more complex than Atkinson and Shiffrins MSM suggested. They believed that short term memory was divided in to several different components. The Central Executive: This is an important part of the model which directs attention to particular tasks. It has a very limited capacity and so can attend to a limited number of things at any time. Phonological Loop: This also has a very limited capacity. It stores a limited number of speech based sounds for brief periods . This component is subdivided into the phonological store (holds the words you hear, like an inner ear) and an articulatory process (silently repeating words you hear, like an inner voice). Visuo-Spatial Sketch pad: this is used when you have to plan a spatial task. It involves holding visual and spatial information and can be thought of as the inner eye.

In 2000, Baddeley suggested an additional component, the Episodic Buffer: This enables the central executive to access information in the LTM it integrate it with information in the other systems.

Strengths of the Working Memory Model: 1. Support for the WMM comes from dual task experiments.
The model predicts that it will be harder to do 2 things at the same time if they are both visual tasks or both verbal tasks, because both will be using the same store at the same time. However, if you are doing 2 things at the same time but one is a visual task and one is a verbal task you should be able to do them as well simultaneously as you would separately, because they use different stores. Support for this came from an experiment by Baddeley. All participants were given a visual task (tracking a moving light with a pointer). They were then given another task to do at the same time. i) Imagining a hollow letter F and going round it saying whether each of the angles was inside or outside of the shape. ii) Repeating words. Task i) impaired performance on the pointer task, but task ii) did not.

2. Other supporting evidence for the WMM comes from brain scans. Cohen
(1997) put participants in a brain scanner and asked them to carry out different tasks. When the central executive was working, there was activity in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. The occipital lobe of the brain was active when a task was visual. This suggests tasks using different parts of the WM use different parts of the brain.

Weaknesses of the Working Memory Model:

1. The central executive is a very important part of the model, but the model doesnt give enough information on how it allocates resources. Some psychologists feel it is too vague to suggest it is attention, and dont think this actually explains its role adequately. 2. The model suggests there is a single central executive but there is evidence for several components. EVR had a cerebral tumour removed. He performed well on tests requiring reasoning which suggested that his central executive was intact, but he had poor decision-making skills e.g. deciding where to eat) which suggests that his central executive was not wholly intact.

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Eyewitness Testimony (EWT)

Eyewitness testimony refers to the description given by people of an event they have experienced, including that given in a criminal trial by individuals present at the time of the crime. It includes the identification of people as well as details such as speed of vehicles, weather conditions etc. Psychologists have investigated how reliable this information is.

There are three factors which can influence the accuracy of EWT: These are anxiety, age of the witness and misleading information.
1. Anxiety: Loftus (1979) investigated the effects of anxiety on EWT. She used two conditions; 1. Participants overheard a low-key discussion in a laboratory about an equipment failure. A person then emerged from the laboratory holding a pen and with grease on his hands. 2. Participants overheard a heated and hostile exchange between people in the laboratory. After the sound of breaking glass and crashing chairs, a man emerged from the laboratory holding a paper knife covered in blood. Participants were then shown 50 photos and asked to identify the person who had come out of the laboratory. Loftus found that the participants who had witnessed the man holding the pen accurately identified the person 49% of the time. The participants who had witnessed the man with the bloodstained paper knife were successful only 33% of the time. Loftus and Burns (1982) showed participants a violent or non-violent short film. Those who saw the violent film, in which a boy was shot in the face, were less accurate in recalling information about the crime than those who saw the non-violent film. This finding from Loftuss research is known as weapon focus. The witness concentrates on the weapon and this distracts attention from the appearance of the perpetrator. Loftus concluded that the fear or anxiety brought about by the sight of the weapon narrows the focus of attention and gives rise to very accurate recall of the central details of the scene, but less accurate details of peripheral details. Christianson and Hubinette (1993) questioned 58 real witnesses to bank robberies. Witnesses were either on-lookers present at the time, or bank staff who were actually threatened by the robbers. Witnesses who had been threatened in some way (and therefore suffered more anxiety) were more accurate in their recall, and remembered more details than those who had been onlookers and less emotionally aroused. This superior recall continued to be evident, even after a 15 month interval.

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It has been suggested that the relationship between anxiety and accuracy of EWT is like an inverted U. This means that medium arousal improves accuracy of EWT, but high arousal makes it worse.

2. Age of witness: Parker and Carranza (1989).found primary school children were less likely to correctly identify a criminal than college students. Participants were asked to identify a target individual following a slide sequence of a mock crime. In the photo identification task, child witnesses had a higher rate of choosing somebody, and they were also more likely to make errors of identification than the college students. Yarmey stopped 651 adults in public places and asked them to recall the physical characteristics of a young woman to whom they had spoken for 15 seconds just 2 minutes earlier in a staged event. Although young (18-29) and middle-aged (30-44) adults were more confident in their recall than the older (45-65) adults, there were no significant differences in the accuracy of recall that could be attributed to the age group of the witnesses. Other research has found that older adults show poorer performance on tests of EWT and face recognition in particular. However this may be because of the own-age bias which exists in many studies. Often researchers ask students to identify faces of similar aged targets but studies of older adults have also tended to present photographs of college-aged individuals. As a result, much of the work done on age differences in EWT has ignored the possibility that participants may simply have a superior memory for faces in their own age group. Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) researched this and found that young and middle-aged adults were still significantly more accurate than the older adults in recognising target individuals. They used individuals from three age groups (18-25, 35-45, and 55-78) who were shown 24 photographs (representing the three different age groups), which they had to rate for attractiveness. After a short filler activity, they were then presented with 48 photographs, 24 of which had been seen previously and 24 acted as distracters. Corrected recognition rates (hits minus false) showed that the young and middle-aged participants were significantly more accurate than the older participants, but all age groups were more accurate in identifying photographs from their own age group. 3. Misleading information Loftus and Palmer (1974) investigated the effects of participants hearing different words when asked about their memory of a car crash. Participants
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were shown a 30 second videotape of 2 cars colliding. They were then asked a question about the speed that the cars were travelling. All participants were asked the same question, but with a different verb ending the sentence. The question was about how fast were the cars going when they..................? The conditions were hit, smashed, collided, bumped and contacted. In addition, a week later participants were asked if they had seen any broken glass on the road. In fact there was no broken glass. The average estimated speed was found to increase as the strength of the verb increased. For smashed it was 41mph, for collided 39mph, for bumped 38 mph, for hit it was 34mph, and for contacted 32mph. As a separate finding Loftus found that when asked a week later about the broken glass 32% said yes if they were in the smashed condition compared to 14% in the hit condition.

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Summary of findings from Loftus and Palmer Smashed Collided Bumped Hit Collided Estimation of speed 41 39 38 34 32 Broken glass 32% yes 14% yes

This experiment shows how the way questions are asked can affect memory. It suggests that eyewitness testimony may not be reliable. Yuille and Cutshall (1986), carried out in a real life setting has suggested that eyewitness testimony may be more accurate than Loftus suggested. Their research involved interviewing 13 witnesses to an attempted theft from a gun shop in Vancouver, Canada, during which the shopkeeper shot and killed the thief. Four months later, the witness accounts remained highly accurate and were not affected by misleading information. (It is possible that misleading information may not affect real life memories to the same extent as laboratory produced memories, perhaps because of the emotional significance of the events. However, the participants had already been interviewed by the police at the time of the crime so that the extra rehearsal may have helped witness fix accurate memories.) Criticisms of research into eye-witness testimony: - Loftus and Palmers experiment focused on memories of peripheral details. Fruzetti (1992) suggested it is much harder to distort eyewitness testimony by misleading post-event information for key details (e.g. the murder weapon) than it is for minor details such as the presence of broken glass. - Laboratory experiments lack external validity. E.g. Loftus and Palmers experiment involve watching a video of a car crash which participants make decisions about. It lacks the emotional elements that occur when present at the scene of a crime/accident and the participants judgments have no consequences. Yuille and Cutshall found real life witnesses were less affected by misleading information. - Some experiments raise ethical issues about the welfare of the participants who were deceived and who may have also been upset by witnessing e.g. a bloodstained paper knife or a violent film. + Controlled laboratory experiments allow conclusions about cause and effect. + This research has practical implications for real life situations such as police interviews and court cases.

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The Cognitive Interview:

Research has looked at ways in which the accuracy of EWT can be improved. Traditional interviews tended to ask witnesses what had happened. The Cognitive Interview was developed in response to results of psychological research which had shown EWT can be inaccurate. Fisher and Geiselman developed the cognitive interview. The cognitive interview has four distinct components. 1. Report everything the interviewer encourages the reporting of every single detail even those details which may seem irrelevant e.g. uninvolved on-lookers. 2. Mental reinstatement of the original context the interviewer encourages the interviewee to mentally recreate the environment. This could include sounds, smells, weather conditions etc. 3. Changing the order when recalling the interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident e.g. reversing the order by recalling the end of the incident first then working backwards. 4. Changing the perspective the interviewee is asked to recall the incident from different perspectives, e.g. imagining how it would have appeared to other witnesses present at the time. Evaluation of Cognitive interviews + A meta-analysis of 53 studies found, on average, an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information generated in the CI compared with standard interviewing techniques. However, most of these studies tested volunteer witnesses (usually college students) in the laboratory. A similar study was done by Stein and Memon (2006) in Brazil. They recruited women from the cleaning staff of a large university and asked them to watch a video of an abduction. The Ps who had a CI provided far superior data which was rich in detail, compared to the Ps who had the standard interview procedure. - One of the problems with evaluating the effectiveness of the CI is that it is no longer just one procedure but a collection of related techniques. Different police constabularies use different parts of the CI and therefore it is difficult to draw comparisons between those constabularies. In practice, many officers feel that the CI takes too long, and they deliberately use techniques that limit an eyewitnesss account to save time. The effectiveness of CI depends on officers getting the right quantity and quality of training in using the techniques involved in the CI.

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Strategies for memory improvement:

We can use different techniques to help us remember information. You might want to remember a shopping list, learn foreign vocabulary, link names and faces or learn a topic area in AS Psychology. A mnemonic is any technique used to help people remember. 1. Chunking STM has a capacity of 7+/- 2. However, chunking can increase the amount of information stored. E.g. it is easier to remember 100 1000 10 10000 than 10010001010000. 2. Verbal mnemonics. An acronym is forming words from initial letters e.g. ROY G BIV can be used to help remember that the colours of the rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. An acrostic is making up a sentence using initial letters e.g. Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain can also be used to help remember colours of the rainbow. 3. Visual imagery mnemonics There are a number of techniques which involve forming a mental image of what you are trying to remember. Techniques include method of loci and linking an image with a word. i) Method of loci involves imaging a journey through a familiar route, e.g. round your house. Each item to be remembered is imagined in one place on the route. To recall the items imagine walking round the same route and recall each item on the way. It is important to use visualisation and form a clear image in your minds eye. E.g. to remember the working memory model There is a work bench outside my front door. (working memory) There is a man in a suit working at a desk in the middle of my hall. (central executive) In my kitchen there is an old fashioned with the same music playing over and over. (phonological loop) In my dining room there is a large whiteboard with shapes drawn on it. (visuospatial sketch pad) In my sitting room there is a TV playing an episode of East Enders with an old man in it. (episodic buffer) ii) Key word method is used to associate 2 pieces of information. E.g. the Spanish word for horse is Caballo (pronounced cob-eye-yo). You could visualise a horse with a large eye riding on its back. Thinking of the horse should trigger recall of the Spanish word. This could also be used to remember names. E.g. if you were introduced to someone called Henry, image there is a hen on his head.

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Using strategies for memory improvement can seem like a time consuming process. However, research shows that they lead to better recall than simple rote rehearsal.

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