Define short-term memory and describe the main factors that influence the number of items recalled from short-term memory. Evaluate Nairne's theory relative to traditional theories, clearly stating your criteria for evaluation.

Define short-term memory and describe the main factors that influence the number of items recalled from short-term memory. Evaluate Nairne's theory relative to traditional theories, clearly stating your criteria for evaluation. Memory has always been an area of psychology to receive a great deal of attention. In 1890, William James [2], stated that there were two components to the human memory. He made the distinction between a 'primary' memory, now termed short-term memory and a secondary memory, now termed long-term memory. Eysenck and Keane (2002 [3]) state that the primary memory relates to information that remains in consciousness after it has been perceived and forms part of the psychological present. They then state that secondary memory contains information about events that have left consciousness and are therefore part of the psychological past (Eysenck and Keane 2002 [3]). In the 1960's a major debate surfaced about whether the short-term memory and long-term memory worked independently of each other or whether they were a part of the same unitary system. Many theories were developed on this basis and there is a great deal of evidence to support the fact that they work independently and have very separate functions. As a result of this debate, many researchers became interested in the concept of short-term memory. Through experimental evidence it became apparent

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To retain recall, which is more beneficial, rote rehearsal or imagery?

To retain recall which IS MORE beneficial rote rehearsal Or IMAGERY L. WADE 2.02.02 TRURO COLLEGE TUTOR; DR C.A. DE BRULLER. CONTENTS Pg No. ABSTRACT 1 INTRODUCTION 2 - 4 METHOD DESIGN 5 PARTICIPANTS 5 MATERIALS 5 - 6 TASK & RESEARCH 7 RESULTS BAR CHART- GRAPH 9 SUMMARY OF RESULTS & 9 VERBAL RESULTS 9 DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION 10 -11 APPENDICES APPENDIX 1 STANDARDIZED INSTRUCTIONS 12 APPENDIX 2 LIST OF 20 NOUN SYLLABUS WORDS 13 APPENDIX 3 PARTICIPANTS SIGNATURE SHEET (ROTE) 14 APPENDIX 4 PARTICIPANTS SIGNATURE SHEET (IMAGERY) 15 APPENDIX 5 SUMMARY OF STATISTICS & CALCULATIONS 16-19 APPENDIX 6 WRITTEN EXAMPLE FROM PARTICIPANT (ROTE) 20 APPENDIX 7 WRITTEN EXAMPLE FROM PARTICIPANT (IMAGERY) 21 REFERENCES: 22 ABSRACT This investigation is similar to Bowers (1972) study where he investigated the two conditions of Rote rehearsal and Imagery. An independent groups design was selected to represent in my experiment because there was a restriction in the amount of time available. An opportunity sampling which consisted of a single blind technique was used. Thirty members within the residential area of Helston were chosen to take part in this procedure. This incorporated them taking part within a memory maintenance and elaborative rehearsal

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Craik and Lockhart believed that depth is a critical concept for levels of processing theory.

Levels of Processing Theory Depth of Analysis Craik and Lockhart believed that depth is a critical concept for levels of processing theory. * The depth of processing of a stimulus has a substantial effect on its memorability, i.e. how well it is remembered. * Deeper levels of analysis produce more elaborate, longer lasting and stronger memory traces than do shallow levels of analysis. Craik (1973) defined depth as "the meaningfulness extracted from the stimulus rather than in terms of the number of analyses performed upon it". Rehearsal or repetition is not a form of deep processing because it only involves a repeated "number of analyses", and not and extraction of meaningfulness. Craik and Tulving used semantic processing to represent deep processing and the physical analysis to represent shallower processing. As the theory would predict, participants remembered those words that were deeply processed better than those processed shallowly. The findings of Hyde and Jenkins (1973) also support this theory. Elaboration Craik and Tulving's study also looked at how the elaboration of processing can lead to a greater recall. In a further experiment, the participants were presented on each trial with a word and a sentence containing a blank. They were then asked to decide whether the word fitted into the uncompleted question. Recall was twice as high for words accompanying

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In this essay I am going to contrast and compare three approaches in psychology which are behaviourist, cognitive, and humanist. I am going to show how these psychological approaches contribute to the understanding of the human mind and behaviour.

In this essay I am going to contrast and compare three approaches in psychology which are behaviourist, cognitive, and humanist. I am going to show how these psychological approaches contribute to the understanding of the human mind and behaviour. Human mind and behaviour are affected during moments of transition and change. These are moments in which there is an alteration in an individual's life. They can take a period of time to occur or can take place suddenly. Transitions happen during a period of time. The definition of the word transition confirms it. It is definite as 'the process or a period of changing from a state or condition to another' (Hornby, 2005: 1631). To illustrate, there is a period of changes when individuals leave adolescence and become adults. That period of changes is a transition. Changes are more sudden, and when they occur something is changed. The same dictionary gives the following definitions for change: 'to pass or make sb/sth pass from one state or form into another' (Hornby, 2005: 243) or 'to stop having one state, position or direction and start having another' (Hornby, 2005: 244). These definitions clearly show that a change is instantaneous, occurs in a very short period of time. For example, a sudden death of spouse or other person very close to a certain individual drastic changes the individual's behaviour and way of life; get married

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Are memories permanent and unalterable?

Are memories permanent and unalterable? There has been a large debate over the recent years on whether information stored in long-term memory is permanent and unalterable. There are many people who agree with this assumption either because of personal experiences or scientific findings supporting it. An obvious example would be the sort of cued recall that occurs in contextual situations. Details of a place visited might not be remembered until a time of revisiting, or instances where experiences during school life might have been forgotten and a photograph of a classmate might trigger memories. Also there are several occasions where certain smells evoke certain memories. Several studies over the years indicated that memories become less available as the interval increases between the time of the information's initial acquisition and the time of its attempted retrieval. This phenomenon is named 'forgetting' (Loftus 1980). Despite the agreement on the existence of this phenomenon, the factors that underlie its functioning are shown to be indefinable. The main differentiation on beliefs lies on whether forgetting results in a complete lost of stored information, or consists of a loss to access of that information which was once stored and will always be available. Many theorists and psychologists have opposed on the complete loss of stored information referring to examples of

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Describe and evaluate the Multi-store Model of memory.

Mos Albayaty - LKP Psychology - IGB THE MULIT-STORE MODEL OF MEMEORY Question: Describe and evaluate the Multi-store Model of memory. The multi-store model of memory was the idea of Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968/71. Atkinson and Shiffrin suggested that memory was compromised of three separate stores - the Sensory Memory store, the Short-term Memory (STM) store, and the Long-term Memory (LTM) store. They presented a diagram to show this. According to this model, memory is characterised as a flow of information through a system. The system is divided into a set of stages, and information passes through each stage in a fixed sequence. There are capacity and duration limitations at each stage and transfer between stages may require recoding. When a stimulus impinges our senses (such as reading these words, which are of course, received by the eyes) it goes through the Sensory Store, passing onto the STM store, and then possibly onto the LTM store. This is the order. Much of this information will be lost en route. To recall the information, such as what you have just read, it is needed to pass back from the LTM, to the STM (in reverse order). The Sensory Memory holds information for a very short time. It takes rapidly passing impressions of light, sound, smell etc. and preserves them just long enough for them to be recognised. It is the attention system. Any

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Describe and Evaluate 2 Models Of Memory

Describe and Evaluate 2 Models Of Memory In this essay 2 models of memory will be described and compared. They are the Atkinson and Sniffrin model of memory, the Multistore model, and Crain and Lockhart model, the Levels of Processing Model. Models of memory are primitive diagrams of human memory to help understand the flow of information and how it is stored. In order to evaluate those 2 models appropriately it is important to understand how old they are. The Multistore Model of Memory by Atkinson and Shiffrin is a very primitive model although it does try to explain how the memory works quite well. It recognises 3 memory stores - the Sensory Memory Store, the short-term memory store and the long-term memory store. The environment makes available a variety of sources of information. The information comes in through the sensory system - through one of the five human senses. For a brief time it gets stored in the sensory memory store; 2 seconds for auditory and 0.5 second for visual information. It is an exact copy of the stimulus, although it lasts for a very short time. The experiment done by Sperling in 1960, where he showed a quick image to the participants and asked them to write the answers down, supports the theory of existence of the Sensory memory store, as participants could only remember 36% of the image on average. According to the model, if attention is paid to

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Psychology Revision Notes - list of major experiments

Sub-sections Characteristics of STM and LTM Summary of a study on encoding in STM and LTM Baddeley- Participants were divided into four groups which were acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar and semantically dissimilar. Participants were presented with the list a total of 4 times and each time was interrupted to try to prevent rehearsing. They were then presented with a 20-minute interval task and afterwards were asked to recall their list. Semantically dissimilar words were recalled the most telling us that encoding in LTM is semantic. Summary of study on capacity of STM and LTM Summary of study on duration of STM Peterson & Peterson- Showed PPs a list of nonsense trigrams and asked them to count back from 400 in 3 second intervals for a duration ranging from 3 to 18 seconds. Found that duration of STM was 18-30 seconds maximum. Summary of study on duration of LTM Bahrick- 400 participants aged between 17 and 74 were tested using different methods including free-recall tests, photo-recognition test, name recognition tests and photo-name matching test. PPs performed less well on free recall tests (30% after 48 years) but were much better in the photo-name test (90% after 60 years). Models of memory Description of the multi-store model of memory, plus evaluation inc. research Atkinson & Shiffrin- Multi-Store Model which

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Measurements of Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimonies

Measurements of Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimonies Abstract This study was designed using an account of a car accident. The aim was to measure the affect of re-wording a single sentence, on the estimation of how much alcohol was in the bloodstream of the driver. 20 undergraduate participants (10 male and 10 female) all with clean licences were used. They were randomly given a vignette describing the car accident, where half the subjects read that the driver 'smashed into' a garden wall, and the other half read that the driver 'bumped into' the garden wall. Participants were required to read the vignette and then estimate how much over the British legal alcohol limit the driver was, for example, 200% indicates that the driver was twice the limit, 110% would mean he was 10% over and 50% would mean he was half the limit. The hypothesis predicts that those who received the vignette stating the driver 'smashed into' the wall are more likely to estimate a higher limit, than those who read that the driver had 'bumped into' the wall. The results of this investigation show that the mean estimation for those in the 'smashed into' condition (143%), was significantly greater than those in the 'bumped into' condition (108%), where p<0.05. This means that the experimental hypothesis was accepted, and the null hypothesis was rejected. Furthermore, these results gave further

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To what extent does research support the view that eyewitness testimony is unreliable?

To what extent does research support the view that eyewitness testimony is unreliable? Schemas are knowledge packages which are built up through experience of the world and which enable us to make sense of familiar situations and aid the interpretation of new information. Cohen(1993) suggested a few different ways that schemas might lead to reconstructive memory, some are that we tend to ignore aspects of a scene that do not fit the currently activated schema and also we can store the central features of an even without having to store the exact details. Bartlett (1932) carried out a study of reconstructive memory. The aim was to investigate the effects of schemas on participants recall. Bartlett found that that the distortions increased over successive recalls and most of these reflected the participant's attempts to make the story more like a story from their own culture. The changes included rationalisations, flattening and sharpening, these changes made the story easier to remember. He concluded that memory was forever being reconstructed because each successive reproduction showed more changes, which contradicted Bartlett's original expectation that the reproductions would eventually become fixed. The research is important, because it provided some of the first evidence that what we remember depends in an important way on out prior knowledge in the form of schemas.

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