Psychology AS memory notes

Psychology Notes

Multi store model of memory

Developed by Shiffrin and Atkinson (1968)
Attention: information that interests us which we then remember.
Encoding: a process of changing information to be remembered into a form which is suitable for memory to deal with.
Retrieval: when a memory is remembered and bought back to the STM from the LTM.
Capacity: the amount of information that can be held.
Rehearsal: to repeat the information over and over until it is transferred to the LTM.

Study: Conrad (1964). Used strings of letter, the sound of the letters muddled were B and V with the letter P. The sound of the letters matter in encoding in the STM.

Chunking: it increases the capacity of the STM. It is when you group a couple of letters together so that it becomes easier to remember.
Study: Jacobs (1890). 7 plus or minus 2 digits are remembered. Investigated the serial digit span. Used letters and numbers but not 7 and W as they have 2 syllables. Used a metronome which he presented every half a second. Found that the average digit span was just over 9 whereas the average span for letter was just over 7. Also found that the older we get, we remember digits and letters better. So capacity of STM is limited.

Study: Peterson and Peterson (1959). Wanted to know how long information remained in their STM when there was no rehearsal. 24 participant’s→university students. Letter strings of 3 letters presented over headphones. After having heard the trigram, participants were either told to repeat what they heard or told to count backwards in 3’s for a set amount of time. Known as retention interval. Found that recall was good when the retention interval was short, but more mistakes were made when the retention interval was longer. At 0 seconds retention interval recall was required immediately, performance was over 90%. This dropped ...

Study: Peterson and Peterson (1959). Wanted to know how long information remained in their STM when there was no rehearsal. 24 participant’s→university students. Letter strings of 3 letters presented over headphones. After having heard the trigram, participants were either told to repeat what they heard or told to count backwards in 3’s for a set amount of time. Known as retention interval. Found that recall was good when the retention interval was short, but more mistakes were made when the retention interval was longer. At 0 seconds retention interval recall was required immediately, performance was over 90%. This dropped to below 5% when the interval was 18 seconds. But the link between the experiment and real life is unclear. Remembering trigrams in a lab are not tasks which our memory usually carries out everyday. Can’t generalise findings, as only university students were used. As university students are of above average intelligence their memory is better than any other group of people.

Encoding: STM- Mainly based on sounds (acoustic), LTM: Mainly based on meaning (semantic).

Capacity: STM- Limited (7 +/- 2 pieces or chunks of information), LTM: unlimited.
Duration: STM- Short(less than 30 seconds without rehearsal), LTM: long, potentially a life time.
Study: Bahrick et al (1975): Wanted to find the duration of how long term memories last. Used participants from the US because of tradition of the year book. Experiment contained 3 main tasks; first, participants had to remember as many ex class mates names (free recall). Second, pictures from the year book and others mixed together. Then the participants were told to identify those he recognised (visual recognition). Thirdly, participants asked to recognise names of people from school (verbal recognition). Found that free recall was weakest, those having left school within 15 years → only 60% accurate and only 30% accurate for those having left 48 years previously. Verbal and visual recognition was highest → 90% accurate (those who left 15 years previously). Dropped to 70% (verbal) →80%, after 48 years after leaving (visual). We can conclude that LT memories last a very long time.

Working memory model

Study: Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
The Central Executive: controls activity of working memory → has ‘supervisory’ function → ‘manager’ what goes on. In memory the central executive will direct attention towards the most important information.

The Phonological Loop: Auditory store, rehearsing sound based information to prevent decay.

Phonological Store: referred to as the ‘inner ear’ → deals with perception of sounds, in particular speech.

Articulatory Loop: limited to speech production → ‘inner voice’. It is a verbal rehearsal system, used to prevent decay of verbal material. Duration- up to about 2 seconds.

The Visuo Spatial Sketchpad (scratchpad): referred to as ‘inner eye’ →considered visual and spatial version of articulatory loop. Deals with information by visually organising it.