Unit 1 psychology revsion notes (memory, attachment, research methods)

Authors Avatar by ellouise1997hotmailcom (student)
AS and A Level Psychology

Memory

Multi-store model

Atkinson and Shiffrin

  • 3 separate unitary  stores
  • Information processing system
  • Sensory, short-term, long-term
  • Sensory - Decays rapidly unless paid attention – STM – linear way
  • capacity of STM is just 7 +/- 2 - Information at this stage is typically encoded acoustically
  • rehearsal within STM – passed to LTM – unlimited capacity
  • Support from neurophysiological  case studies –Clive Wearing  – STM can function normally while transfer to and retrieval of LTM is impossible – KF had normal LTM but impaired STM
  • Laboratory experiments have provided support for the existence of two separate stores, STM and LTM – Glanzer and Cuntiz
  • Overemphasises the role of rehearsal in forming LTM – not the only way – craik and lockhart

Sperling – Capacity

  • Chart, P’s asked to recall letters
  • P’S recall single rows when tones where heard
  • P’s could recall 4/5 in first stage
  • P’s could recall 3 in second stage
  • Image of each item fades during the time it takes to recall back
  • High levels of control – lab experiment
  • Lack of ecological validity, external validity

Peterson and Peterson – Duration

  • Showed consonant trigram
  • Count backwards – prevents rehearsal
  • Recall 80% with 3 second intervals
  • Got worse as intervals lengthened
  • Information decays rapidly without rehearsal
  • High levels of control – lab experiment
  • Confused with other Trigrams
  • Low ecological validity

Bahrick et al – duration - LTM

  • Graduates from high school – memory tests – matching pictures to names
  • Good at 34 years
  • Dip at 47 years
  • loss of memory over time

Conrad – encoding of STM

  • showed random sequences of six consonants  
  • 1 – acoustically similar
  • 2 – acoustically dissimilar
  • Had to write them in serial order
  • P’s made errors by substituting letters that sounded the same rather than looked the same
  • Letters are encoded by sound even when presented visually
  • Lack of ecological validity
  • Reliable – lab setting – highly controlled and can be repeated

Baddeley – LTM Encoding

  • List of familiar words
  • Acoustically similar and dissimilar
  • Semantically similar and dissimilar
  • Worlds that sounded the same where harder to recall
  • STM codes acoustically
  • LTM codes semantically
  • Lab – reliable – high control
  • Lacks ecological validity

Working memory model – For short term memory

Baddeley and hitch 

  • Multi- component short term memory system – replaces unitary stores in MSM
  • Active processing system
  • Central executive which controls and coordinates the operation of two slave systems
  • Phonological loop - deals with spoken and written material (acoustic material)
  • Phonological Store – holds spoken information
  • Articulatory control process – uses sub-vocal repetition and repeats information from the phonological store and recodes written information into articulatory code
  • Visuo-spatial sketchpad - Stores and processes information in a visual or spatial form. (coded in visual form)
  • Visual cache – a passive temporary visual store
  •  Inner scribe – acts as rehearsal mechanism
  • More detailed than multi store- operationalised
  • lack of clarity about the central executive
  • model for STM
  • research including Baddley

Baddely et al – evidence for the phonological loop

  • Brief visual presentations of lists of words either short or long
  • Asked to recall in serial order
  • Could recall more short words than long
  • Loop can hold as many items as can be said in 1.5-2 seconds
  • Loop has a time limit
  • Reliable - lab
  • Lack ecological validity  
  • Longer words are less easily to remember

Baddeley and hitch – STM must have different components

  • Dual tasks
  • 1- reasoning task
  • 2- reading aloud
  • Could do both easily simultaneously
  • STM must have different components that can process more than one type of information

Baddeley et al STM must have different components

  • Dual task
  • Tracking task and visual imagery task
  • Poor at the dual task performed alone
  • Both tasks needed to be done in visual-spatial sketchpad so were competing for the same limited resources

Eyewitness testimony

Misleading information – Loftus

  • Film of events leading to a car crash
  • Control group
  • experimental group (misleading question)
  • Asked questions to what they had seen
  • 17% experimental group recalled a barn
  • Misleading information absorbed into their memory and they believed it
  • Reliable – lab
  • Ecological validity
  • Demand characteristics

Anxiety – Christianson and Hubinette  

  • Surveyed 110 people who between them had witnessed 22 different bank robberies wither as victims or bystanders
  • Victims with higher levels of anxiety were more detailed in the recall than the bystanders
  • Suggests people react to anxiety-inducing events differently when they occur in real life rather than in a laboratory
  • Against Loftus

Anxiety – Loftus

  • Conversation 1 –friendly conversation man with greasy hands holding a pen
  • Conversation 2- violent conversation with a blood stained knife
  • People who experienced the more violent conversation were less accurate at recalling the man from a picture
  • Christianson and Loftus  - 6m after seeing a traumatic film  they remember the essence but had grossly impaired memory of the details surrounding it
  • Lab –reliable , can be repeated
  • Lacks ecological validity

Age – Yarmey 

  • Showed young and old adults a film of a staged event then asked questions
  • 80% elderly but 20% of young failed to mention key details
  • Elderly cannot recall as much
  • Lacks ecological validity
  • Generalising
  • Reliable – lab
Join now!

Age – Poole and Lindsay 

  • Engaged  children aged 3 to 8 in a science demonstration
  • Parents of the children then read them a story which contained some elements of the science demonstration but also included normal information
  • Children were then questioned about the science demonstration
  • The children had incorporated information from the story into their original memory
  • They were asked to think about where they had gotten this information
  • Some of the older children revised their account of the science demonstration and extracted the post-event information
  • Younger children didn’t do this
  • High control ...

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Unit 1 psychology revsion notes (memory, attachment, research methods)
Document Details
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    Authors Avatar ellouise1997hotmailcom
  • Author Type
    Student
  • Word Count
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  • Level
    AS and A Level
  • Subject
    Psychology
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