Psychology Memory

Baddeley (1966) – STM & LTM Coding

1. Acoustically similar words (cat, cab)
2. Acoustically dissimilar (pit, few)
3. Semantically similar (large, big)
4. Semantically dissimilar (good, hot)
Immediate recall = worse with acoustically similar words (STM is acoustic)
Recall after 20mins = worse with semantically similar words (LTM is semantic)
- Limitation is that it doesn’t use meaningful material = words had no personal meaning to
participants; when processing meaningful info, semantic coding may be used even for STM
tasks; results of this study have limited application (should be cautious about generalising
findings to different kinds of memory tasks)

Jacobs (1887) – STM Capacity

Digit span = 4 digits are read out & no. is increased until they cannot be recalled
On average, participants could repeat back 9.3 numbers & 7.3 letters correctly immediately after
they were presented
- Limitation is that it was conducted a long time ago = early psychological research often
lacked adequate control of extraneous variables, eg. participants may have been distracted
& didn’t perform as well; this means that results may not be valid, CONFOUNDING
VARIABLES that were NOT CONTROLLED, however, these results have been confirmed in
other research, supporting its validity

Miller (1956) – Capacity of STM

Observations of everyday practice; noted that things come in sevens (7 notes in a musical
scale, 7 week days, etc)
The span of STM is about 7 items (7 ± 2), can be improved by chunking (grouping things in
meaningful units)
- Limitation is it may have overestimated STM capacity = Cowan (2001) reviewed other
research & concluded that the capacity of STM was only about 4 chunks. Suggests that
Miller’s lower estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7

Peterson & Peterson (1959) – STM Duration

24 students were given a consonant syllable (eg. YGC) to remember & a 3-digit number to
count backwards from for 3,6,9,12,15 or 18 seconds
Students recalled (on average) about 80% of the syllables correctly with a 3-second interval. Av.
recall after 18 seconds fell to about 3%; duration of STM without rehearsal is about 18-30 seconds
- Limitation is the artificial stimulus = trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect
most real-life memory activities; could be argued that this study lacked ecological validity –
on the other hand, we sometimes remember meaningless things (eg. phone numbers) so
this study isn’t completely irrelevant
Bahrick (1975) – LTM Duration
392 Americans aged 17-74
Recognition test = 50 photos from their high school yearbooks
Free recall test = list graduation class names
Those tested 48 years after graduation were about 70% accurate in photo recognition – free recall
was less accurate
- Strength is that it had high external validity = real-life meaningful memories (people’s faces)
were studied. Lab studies done with meaningless pictures showed lowered recall rates
(Shepard 1967)
- Limitation is not controlled confounding variables that come with this real-life research =
participants may have looked at their yearbook & rehearsed their memories over the years

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) – Multi-store model (MSM)

Separate memory stores

Rehearsal
Iconic Attention Short-Term Long-Term
Memory
Sensory

Echoic
Other stores
Memory Memory
Store Retrieval
Store

Maintenance

MSM describes how info flower through the memory system – memory is made of 3 stores linked
by processing

Sensory Register (memory) – stimulus from the environment (eg. sound) passing into SR along
with other stimuli (5 stores; one for each sense)
o Very brief duration
o High capacity (eg. over one hundred million cells in one eye)
o Coding depends on the sense = visual, auditory, etc
Short-term Memory (STM) – limited capacity & duration store
o 18-30 secs duration unless rehearsed
o 5-9 items capacity before some forgetting occurs
o Acoustic coding
Long-term Memory (LTM) – permanent memory store, when recall happens, materials in LTM
must be transferred back to STM by retrieval
o Potentially lifetime duration
o Potentially unlimited capacity
o Semantic coding (meaning)

- Supported by research showing STM & LTM are different = Baddeley (1966) found that we
tend to mix up words that sound similar using our STM but mix up words with similar
meaning using LTM; clearly shows coding in STM is acoustic & LTM is semantic. Supports
MSM’s view that there are 2 different memory stores which are separate & independent
- Limitation is that evidence suggests there is more than one STM type = Shallice &
Warrington (1970) studied KF (patient with amnesia). Digit STM was poor when read out
loud to him, but recall was better when reading them himself; suggests that there is one
 short-term store to process visual info & one to process auditory info. MSM states that
there is one type of STM (unitary store). [WMM is a better explanation]
- Limitation is that it only explains one rehearsal type = Craik & Watkins (1973) argued there
are 2 types of rehearsal – maintenance & elaborative (maintenance is described in MSM)
but elaborative rehearsal is needed for long-term storage – occurs when linking info to
existing knowledge or process it; serious limitation of MSM as it’s an important findings that
cannot be explained by the model
- A limitation is that MSM research uses artificial materials = participants are often asked to
recall digits, letters & sometimes words (consonant syllables used by Peterson; no
meaning); all these things have no meaning compared to memories formed in everyday life
(faces, names, facts, places, etc) – suggests that MSM lacks external validity. Research
reflects how memory works with meaningless materials in labs but does not reflect how
everyday memory works

Long-Term Memory Types

- LTM Store 1: Episodic Memory – like daily diary events
Episodic memories are complex; time-stamped (when they happened), involve
several elements (people, places, objects & behaviours = one memory) & you have to make a
conscious effort to recall them (declarative/ explicit)
- LTM Store 2: Semantic Memory – combo of encyclopaedia & dictionary
(knowledge)
Semantic memories are not time-stamped, personal and more about knowledge
- LTM Store 3: Procedural Memory – actions & skills; how we do things
Recall occurs without awareness/ effort; can recall these memories without
conscious awareness (non-declarative/ implicit)

- A strength of episodic memory is it’s supported by case study evidence = clinical

studies of amnesia (HM & Clive Wearing) showed both had happened to them in the
past but their semantic memories were (mostly) unaffected; this supports the view
that there are different memory stores in LTM (one can be damaged and the others
are left unaffected)
- Strength is that brain scan studies show there are different LTM stores = Tulving
(1994) had participants perform memory tasks while doing PET brain scans –
episodic & semantic memories were in the prefrontal cortex, semantic in the left
side & episodic in the right; this shows a physical reality in the brain to the different
LTM types – supports is validity
- Strength is that identifying the different stores had real-life applications =
psychologists can target certain memory kinds to treat patients – Belleville (2006)
found that episodic memories in older people with mild cognitive impairments can
be improved; highlights the benefit of distinguishing between LTM types – allows for
specific treatments to be developed
- Limitation is there are problems with clinical evidence = evidence is often based on
clinical cases (HM & Clive Wearing) about results of damaged memory – there is a
serious lack of control in these studies (eg. cannot control precise location of brain
damage or personality variables); difficult to generalise from these studies to
determine exact LTM nature
Baddeley & Hitch (1974) – Working Memory Model (WMM)
an explanation of how STM is organised & how it functions

Central
Executive
Phonological Loop (PL)

Visuo-spatial Articulatory
Phonological
sketchpad (VSS) Episodic Control
store
System
Buffer

Long Term
Memory

• Central Executive (CE) – monitors incoming data & allocates slave systems (VSS &
PL) to tasks, (very limited storage capacity, flexible coding)
• Phonological Loop (PL) – deals with auditory info (acoustic coding, 2 sec capacity)
& preserves the order in which info arrives; subdivided into:
▪ Phonological store – stores words heard
▪ Articulatory process – allows maintenance rehearsal
• Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad (VSS) – stores visual and/or spatial info (visual & spatial
coding, 3/4 objects capacity) when required; Logie (1995) subdivided the VSS into:
▪ Visual cache – stores visual data
▪ Inner scribe – records arrangement of objects in visual field
• Episodic Buffer (EB) – temporary storage for info (about 4 chunks capacity);
integrate visual, spatial & verbal info from other stores, maintains sense of time
sequencing – records events that are happening (links to LTM)

- Strength of WMM is KF case supports separate STM stores = Shallice & Warrington
(1970) case study of patient KF who had brain damage, poor STM ability for verbal
info but could process visual info; phonological loop had been damaged but other
areas were intact = suggest there are separate visual & acoustic stores, however,
evidence from brain damaged patients can be unreliable as they are unique cases
usually as a result of trauma
- Dual-task performance studies support VSS = Baddeley (1975) found participants had
more difficulty doing two visual tasks than doing a visual task & a verbal task at once
– the greater difficulty is because both visual tasks compete for the same resources
(when doing a verbal & visual task there is no competition); therefore dual-task
performance activity provides evidence. For the existence of the VSS (MSM can’t
explain this)
- Strength is support from brain scanning studies = Braver (1997) participants did tasks
involving the CE while having a brain scan, activity was seen in the prefrontal cortex
 and it increased as the task became harder – makes sense in terms of the WMM: CE
demands increase so it has to work harder to fulfil its function; study proves
evidence the CE may have a physical reality in the brain
- Limitation is the lack of clarity over the central executive = cognitive psychologists
suggest that the CE doesn’t explain anything, it should be more clearly specified than
simply being ‘attention’ (some psychologists believe it may consist of separate
components); WMM not fully explained

Explanations for forgetting – Interference

When two pieces of info are in conflict – occurs in LTM because we can’t get access to
memories even though they’re available, interference is worse when memories are similar
Proactive interference (PI): old interferes with new
Retroactive interference (RI): new interferes with old
Key Study: McGeoch & McDonald (1931) Effects of similarity
Participants were asked to learn a list of words to 100% accuracy (perfect recall)
Were given a new list to learn. New material varied to how similar it was to the
old
Procedure

• Group 1: synonyms – same meanings as original

• Group 2: antonyms – opposite meanings as original
• Group 3: unrelated – completely unrelated to original
• Group 4: consonant syllables
• Group 5: 3-digit numbers
• Group 6: no new list – participants rested (control condition)
Performance depended on second list’s nature; most similar material
(synonyms) produced the worse recall
Conclusions
Findings &

When given very different material (eg. 3-digit numbers), the mean number of
correct recalls increased
Shows interference is strongest when memories are similar

In Group 1, it’s likely that words with the same meanings as original blocked
access or new material became confused with old

- Lab study evidence demonstrates this = many lab experiments have been carried out
and most show that both interference types are very likely causes of forgetting from
LTM; lab experiments control extraneous variable effects & so give confidence that
interference is a valid explanation
- Strength is real-life studies support this explanation = Baddeley & Hitch (1977) asked
rugby players to recall team names they played against in the season, accurate recall
depended on the number of games played and not how long ago the match was;
shows interference applications can apply to at least some everyday situations
- Limitation is the use of artificial materials = stimuli material was often word lists
although it’s more realistic than consonant syllables, it’s still quite different from
everyday things we remember (eg. in real-life we remember faces, birthdays, etc);
use of artificial materials makes interference more likely in the lab, may not be a
likely cause for everyday forgetting
 - Limitation is time allowed between learning = time periods between learning lists of
words & recalling them are short in lab studies (a participant may learn 2 lists in 20
mins), research reduces the learning experience into a short period which does not
reflect how we learn & remember most info in real-life; conclusions generated from
research of forgetting LTM may not generalise outside the lab (role of interference
may be exaggerated)

Explanations for forgetting – Retrieval Failure

Lack of Cues
When info is initially placed in memory, associated cues are stored at the same time
– if they are not available at time of recall, memories that are actually there might not accessible
Encoding specificity principle (ESP)
Tulving (1983) suggested that cues help retrieval if the same cues are present at
encoding (learning) & retrieval (recall) – there closer the retrieval cue to the original cue, the better
the cue works
Some cues may have meaning linked to memory
Some cues are linked to the material-to-be-remembered in a meaningful way (eg.
the cue ‘STM’ may lead to recall of info about short-term memory
Some cues have no meaningful links
Other cues are encoded at time of learning but not in a meaningful way
• Context-dependent forgetting: memory retrieval is dependent an external
environmental cue (eg. weather, place)
• State-dependent forgetting: memory retrieval is dependent on an internal
cue, state of mind (eg. feeling upset, being drunk)

Key Study: Godden & Baddeley (1975) Context-dependent forgetting

Cues were contexts where learning & recall took place – on land/ underwater
Deep-sea divers learned word lists & were asked to recall them:
Procedure

• Group 1: Learn on land – recall on land

• Group 2: learn on land – recall underwater
• Group 3: learn underwater – recall on land
• Group 4: learn underwater – recall underwater
When environmental contexts of learning & recall did not match (ie. Group 2 &
3), accurate recall was 40% lower than when they did match (ie. Group 1 & 4)
Conclusions
Findings &

When external cues available at learning were different from ones at recall, this
led to retrieval failure due to lack of cues
This study demonstrates context-dependent forgetting as info was not
accessible (forgotten) when context at recall did not match context at learning

- Strength is an impressive range of evidence supports this explanation = eg. Godden

& Baddeley’s deep-sea diver research (also Eysenck (2010); supporting evidence
increases validity of explanation, especially when conducted in real-life situations as
well as highly controlled lab conditions
 - Strength is context-related cues have useful everyday applications = when we have
trouble remembering, it’s worth making the effort to revisit the environment in
which it was first experience; a basic principle of the cognitive interview, a method of
getting eyewitness to recall more info about crime by using ‘context reinstatement’
- Limitation is context effects are not very strong in real life = Baddeley (1966) argued
that different contexts have to be very different before an effect is seen (eg. land vs
underwater) – learning something in one room & recalling it in another is unlikely to
result in much forgetting as environments are not different enough; real-life
applications of retrieval failure due to contextual cues don’t explain much
- Limitation is context effects only occur when memory is tested in certain ways =
Godden & Baddeley (1980) replicated the underwater experiment using a
recognition test instead of recall, there are no context-dependent effect –
performance was the same in all 4 conditions whether environmental contexts for
learning & recall matched or not; limits retrieval failure as an explanation because
the presence/ absence of cues only affects memory when recall is tested rather than
recognition

Eyewitness testimony – Misleading information

Leading Questions
Response-bias explanation
Wording a question has no enduring effect on eyewitness’s memory of an
event, but influences the answer given
Substitution explanation
Wording of a question affects eyewitness memory; interferes with original
memory, distorting accuracy

Post Event Discussion (PED)

Memory Contamination
When co-witnesses discuss a crime, the mix (mis)information from other
witnesses with their own memories
Memory conformity
Witnesses go along with other witnesses to win social approval or because
they doubt their own memories

Key Study: Loftus & Palmer (1974) Leading Questions

45 participants (students) watched film clips of car accidents & answered
questions about speed - Critical question: “About how fast were the cards
Procedure

going when they hit each other?”

Five groups of participants were each given a different verb in the critical
question:
hit, contacted, bumped, collided & smashed

The verb ‘contacted’ produced a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph

Conclusions
Findings &

The verb ‘smashed’ produced a mean of 40.5mph

The leading question (verb) biased eyewitness recall of an event

The verb ‘smashed’ suggested a faster speed of the car than ‘contacted’
Key Study: Gabbert et al (2003) Post-event discussion
Paired participants watched a video of the same crime but filmed so each

Procedure
participant could see elements in the event the other couldn’t
Both participants discussed what they saw before individually completing a
recall test
Conclusions 71% of the participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event they didn’t see
Findings &

but picked up in the PED

In a control group, where there was no discussion, there were no errors

- Strength is research into misleading info has real-life application = research has led
to important practical use for police & investigators because the consequences of
inaccurate EWT can be very serious. Loftus (1975) claimed that leading questions can
have such a distorting influence on memory, that police need to be careful how they
phrase questions when interviewing witnesses; research into EWT is one where
psychologists can make a different to the lives of real people (improving the legal
system & acting as expert witnesses)
- Limitation of Loftus & Palmer’s study is artificial material use = participants watched
clips of accidents which is very different from actually experiencing it (less stressful)
– Yuille & Cutshall (1986) found that witnesses of a real traumatic event had very
accurate recall after 4 months; shows that using artificial tasks doesn’t accurately
show how leading questions affect EWT in real crimes/ accidents
- Limitation is that lab studies of EWT suffer from demand characteristics = research
participants usually want to be helpful so when asked a question & don’t know the
answer they guess (especially for y/n questions); this challenges the validity of EWT
research as studies intend to measure the accuracy of eyewitness memory but the
answers given may not actually reflect their memories
- Limitation is that many EWT research studies lack external validity = Foster et al
(1994) argue that what an eyewitness remembers can have important consequences
in the real world, but this is not true in research studies – real eyewitnesses search
their memory with more effort because their testimony can lead to a conviction, this
is not true in research studies; EWT accuracy may be greater in the real world
because of the serious consequences that they know may come upon as a result of
their testimony
Eyewitness Testimony – Anxiety

Key Study 1: Johnson & Scott (1976) Anxiety has a negative effect
Participants sat in a waiting room believing they would take part in a lab study
Each participant heard an argument in the next room
• Low-anxiety condition: a man then walked through the waiting room
Procedure

carrying a pen with grease on his hands

• High-anxiety condition: breaking glass was heard during the argument
& a man then walked through the room holding a paper knife covered
in blood
Participants were then asked to pick the man from a set of 50 pictures
49% of participants in the low-anxiety condition were able to identify him – for
Conclusions
Findings &

the high-anxiety condition this was just 33%

The tunnel theory of memory argues that a witness’s attention is on the
weapon (weapon focus) because it’s a source of danger & anxiety

Key Study 2: Yuile & Cutshall (1986) Anxiety has a positive effect
In a real-life crime a gun-shop owner shot a thief dead – there 21 witnesses, 13
Procedure

agreed to participate in the study

Participants were interviewed 4-5 months after the incident & accounts were
compared to the police interviews at the time of the event
Witnesses rated how stressed they felt at the time of the incident

Witnesses were very accurate & there was little change after 5 months
Conclusions
Findings &

Some detail was less accurate (eg. colours of items, age/weight/height)

Participants who reported the highest stress levels were most accurate (88%
compared to 75% of the less stressed group

Explaining the contradictory findings

‘Inverted U’ theory
Yerkes & Dodson (1908) argue that the relationship between performance &
arousal/stress is curvilinear rather than linear

Affects memory
Deffenbacher (1983) found that lower levels of anxiety produced lover levels of recall
accuracy – recall accuracy increases with anxiety up to an optimal point & a drastic decline in
accuracy is seen when more than optimal stress is experienced
 - Limitation of Johnson & Scott study is it may test surprise and not anxiety =
participants may focus on a weapon because they’re surprised rather than because
they’re scared – Pickel (1998) used scissors, handgun, wallet & raw chicken as
handheld items in a hair salon & EWT accuracy was poorer for high unusualness
(handgun & chicken); the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than
anxiety/ threat & therefore tells us nothing specifically about the anxiety effects on
EWT
- Limitation of field studies is they lack variable control = real-life witnesses are
interviewed sometime after the event and therefore researchers can’t control the
many things that happen to them during that time (they may discuss the event with
others, read/ view police accounts/ police interview may influence their memory
(post-event discussions); these extraneous variables may be responsible for the
(in)accurate recall, not anxiety (difficult to isolate variables)
- The inverted-U explanation is limited because it’s too simplistic = anxiety is difficult
to define & measure because of its many elements (cognitive, behavioural,
emotional & physical) – this explanation assumes that one of these is linked with
poor performance (physical (psychological) arousal); the explanation fails to account
for other factors (eg. emotional experience of witnessing a crime) on the accuracy of
memory
- Limitation is that demand characteristics may affect anxiety lab studies = most
participants in controlled lab studies are aware they are watching a filmed crime for
the study and may work out that they will be asked questions about the films, they
may therefore give responses which they believe are helpful to the researcher; the
research isn’t measuring the accuracy of EWT & this reduces the validity of research
investigating the effects of anxiety

Eyewitness Testimony – The Cognitive Interview

Fisher & Geiselman (1992) claimed that EWT could be improved if police use techniques
based on psychological insights into how memory works

• Report everything
Witnesses are encouraged to include every detail of the event (even if it seems
irrelevant or they’re not confident about it) – can be important & can trigger other memories
• Reinstate the context
Witness returns to the original crime scene ‘in their mind’ & images the environment
(weather, sights, etc) & their emotions – based on the concept of context-dependent forgetting
(cues from the context may trigger recall)
• Reverse the order
Events are recalled in a different chronological order (eg. from end to beginning) – prevents
people from using expectations of how the event happened rather the actual event & also prevents
dishonesty (harder to produce an untruthful account in reverse)
• Change perspective
Witnesses recall the incident from other people’s perspectives (How would it have appeared
to another witness or the perpetrator?) – prevent the influence of expectations & schema on recall
Enhanced cognitive interview
Fisher et al (1987) developed additional elements of the CI
Includes a focus on the social dynamics of the interaction (eg. knowing when to establish/
relinquish eye contact) – also includes ideas like reducing anxiety, minimising distractions, getting
the witness to speak slowly & asking open-ended questions

- Strength is that some elements of the full CI are useful = Milne & Bull (2002) found
that each individual CI element was useful – they also found that a combo of ‘report
everything’ & ‘context reinstatement’ produced better recall than any other
techniques individually; at least those two elements should be use to improve police
interviewing of eyewitnesses even if full CI isn’t used
- Strength is the support for effectiveness of the enhance CI = a meta-analysis by
Köhnken et al (1999) combined data from 50 studies and found the enhanced CI
consistently provided more correct info than the standard police interview; these
studies indicate the real practical benefits to the police using the ECI
- Limitation is it’s time-consuming = police are reluctant to use CI because it takes
more time than the standard police interview (more time is needed to establish
rapport with the witness & allow them to relax), CI also requires special training
(Kebbel & Wagstaff (1997)) & many forces haven’t been able to provide more than a
few hours; it’s unlikely that the ‘proper’ version of CI is used
- Limitation is research may be unreliable because of CI variations used = studies of CI
effectiveness inevitable use slightly different techniques – different researchers may
use variations on the CI or ECI & police forces evolve their own versions; it’s difficult
to draw conclusions about the CI as a result