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GCSE Psychology

Memory

Student_____________

Tutor_______________

Unit 1:

Making sense of other people

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Memory

 

 

Ask yourself, how good is your memory?

How often do you use it?

Write down how you have used your memory in the last 30 minutes.

What would life be like if you lost your memory?

 

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Life would be very difficult if we did not have a memory. You wouldn’t be able to get to college, dress yourself or even recognise yourself in the mirror. We take memory for granted. We probably are not even aware of the process that occurs for us to be able to receive, interpret, store and access information in order for us to make sense of the world around us. The process involves three stages. Write a brief definition of the stages below.

Encoding______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Storage_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Retrieval______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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PROCESSES OF ENCODING, STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

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EXPLANATIONS

There are different ideas on exactly how our memory system is organised, we are going to look at three of these explanations.

The first of these is:

1. The Multi-store model – Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968).P5+6

This model states that memory is organised into different stores, the sensory store, the short-term store and the long-term store.

Short‐term memory 

Duration_________ 

Capacity_________ 

Transfer 

Retrieval 

 

Attention

Trace decay Displacement 

Sensory memory 

Duration_________ 

Capacity_________ 

Original  sensory information such as light and sound 

Long term memory 

Duration_________ 

Capacity_________ 

 

Sensory memory – is the start of the process. We pay attention to some of the information that we receive through our senses. This is held very briefly, for __________________ (the duration), in the sensory memory store. The information is stored in its original form (speech is stored as ________, visual is stored as ________). The information is then passed on to the short-term memory for encoding.

Short-term memory – contains any information that has been encoded from the sensory memory. George Miller (1956) claimed that we can hold between _____ and ______ pieces of information in our STM, know as the _________________________.

Any new information that comes along ___________ (displaces) the old information that is already there. Information in the STM is usually encoded _______________ (as we hear it) or __________ (as we see it) and has a __________ of up to 30 seconds. If it is rehearsed, it can transfer into the long-term memory.

Long-term memory – long-term memory holds memories that have passed from our sensory store through to short-term store and then into our long term store. Information here can be changed over time and may be lost; sometimes we need a reminder of an event to bring that memory back.

Rehearsal

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There are ways that we can extend how much information we can hold in our STM such as chunking. This is the process of putting information together to create meaningful chunks of information using information stored in the LTM.

ACTIVITY: Read the description of the study by Bower and Springston (1970) and complete the following. Page 7.

KEY STUDY: Bower and Springston (1970) Chunking.

Aim_________________________________________________________

Method_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Results_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Conclusion___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

RESEARCH METHODS

The Bower and Springston study is an example of a laboratory experiment. Give a definition of a lab experiment and one advantage and one disadvantage. P 70-71.

Definition_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Advantage_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Disadvantage_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

FBI  CIA TWA  USA 

F    BIC    ATW   AUS   A 

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KEY STUDY: Murdock (1962) Primacy/Recency effect free recall experiment.

Aim __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Method ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Results ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Conclusion_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

EVALUATION P 10.

These experiments are evidence of support for the Multi-store model of memory.

Name one positive criticism of the Multi-store model as an explanation for memory. Make sure you explain your answer fully. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Name one negative criticism of this model, again make sure you explain your answer fully.________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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RESEARCH METHODS

Hypothesis: A hypothesis is a precise and testable statement of what the researcher predicts will be the outcome of the study.

Write a hypothesis for Murdock’s primacy/Recency free recall experiment.

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Sampling is the way in which the participants are chosen to take part in an experiment.

How might Murdock have found a random sample for his experiment? See page 77.

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Independent variable (IV) – the variable that is manipulated (controlled) by the experimenter.

Dependent variable (DV) – the measured outcome.

Identify the IV in Murdock’s experiment___________________________________

Identify the DV in Murdock’s experiment___________________________________

Experimental design refers to the way in which the participants are assigned to the experimental conditions.

Repeated measures – an experimental design in which the same participants take part in each condition.

Independent groups – and experimental design that has different participants in each condition.

Matched pairs – an experimental design in which each group has different participants, but they are paired on the basis of their similarity in several characteristics.

Identify the experimental design in Murdock’s experiment – explain your choice.

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The Levels of Processing Model - Craik and Lockhart (1972).

They did not believe that the memory system was made up as stores like the multi-store model suggests. They believe that we remember things because of the level at which we have processed something. The main assumption being the deeper something is processed the more we can recall it. We process information deeper by attaching meaning to it. A study was conducted to test this theory by Craik and Tulving.

Describe the method of this experiment and the results which they obtained.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What were the results in class for our experiment? Fill in the number of words everyone remembered in the corresponding boxes, add up the total for each section and see if our results support the levels of processing theory.

Structural (appearance) Phonetic (sound) Semantic (meaning)

Total Total Total

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EVALUATION P 12.

Name one positive criticism of the Levels of processing as an explanation for memory. Make sure you explain your answer fully. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Name one negative criticism of this model, again make sure you explain your answer fully.______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Exam style question 

Describe and evaluate one study that has 

been done to test levels of processing. Include 

in you answer the reason why the study was 

conducted, the method used, the results 

obtained and the conclusion drawn. 

Ethics – Withdrawal  

When participants agree to take part in research they do not know how much it will affect them 

emotionally. Therefore it is important that participants know that they can leave the experiment 

at any time and that they can withdraw their responses in the experiment so that it is not used in 

the results. 

Question: What can the researcher do to ensure that the participant is aware that they are 

allowed to do this? 

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RESEARCH METHODS The mean (average) is calculated by adding up all of the scores in a condition and dividing it by the number of participants that were in that condition. Calculate the mean for the Craik and Tulving’s experiment. You need to add up all the words remembered in the structural condition and divide that number by how many took part. The number you now have is the mean for the structural condition. Now do the same for the other two conditions. Now fill in the table below.

Heading: mean recall in the levels of processing 

   

structural 

 

phonetic 

 

semantic 

 

mean 

     

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Reconstructive approach

Bartlett (1932) saw memory as something which is active.

He proposed that we use what are called schemas to understand

and acquire new information. A schema is a building block of

information. To test and support this idea Bartlett told

participants a story and then asked them to recall it afterwards.

KEY STUDY

Aim____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Method_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Results__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Conclusion_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

EVALUATION

Identify one positive and one negative criticism for this memory model.

Positive_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Negative______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

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EXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING

When looking at reasons for forgetting it is hard to determine whether or not the information is actually truly forgotten or whether it’s just that you cannot retrieve it. Think of the times it’s taken someone else to remind you of something and then memory comes flooding back.

Interference theory What causes us to forget things? Try to think of an occasion when you just could not recall something you thought you knew. What do you think might have caused that to happen? Turn to page 16 and write a description of both of the following explanations for forgetting.

Retroactive interference

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Proactive interference

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ACTIVITY:

With a small group discuss and write down a real life example of either retroactive interference or proactive interference.

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KEY STUDY page 17

Underwood and Postman (1960)

Aim____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Method___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Results____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Conclusion__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

RESEARCH METHOD

The Underwood and Postman study is an example of a laboratory experiment. An explanation of a laboratory experiment is on page 70-71.

Identify the:

Independent variable___________________________________________

Dependent variable_____________________________________________

ACTIVITY Question: Now that you know how interference can affect memory, what practical applications can you think of for this knowledge?

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Amnesia – evidence for the Multi-store model

A popular subject on the big screen and television is a form of memory loss known as amnesia. Amnesia is a condition in which someone can’t recall stored memories, like their mum’s maiden name or what happened last Christmas, but they may recall the knock-knock joke their little brother told them a few seconds ago.

There are two types of amnesia:

Anterograde amnesia – Inability to remember ongoing events after the incidence of trauma or the onset of the disease that caused the amnesia.

Everyday example___________________________________________

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Retrograde amnesia – Inability to remember events that occurred before the incidence of trauma or the onset of the disease that caused the amnesia.

Everyday example___________________________________________

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Amnesiacs patients

A case study of patient ‘HM’, (he was only known by his initials, why do you think that was so?), who suffered from epilepsy since he was 16 At the age of 27 he underwent a radical surgery to try to cure his epilepsy. This procedure was a success however, because the hippocampus was removed on both sides of his brain, he was left with amnesia. His memory of events prior to the surgery was near normal but he could not remember anything after the surgery.

ACTIVITY Read more about this case on page 18 and identify which kind of amnesia HM suffered from. Give an example of how his memory works to explain why you made this choice.

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EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY

It is often fund that, when several people describe an event that they have all experienced, their accounts can be quite different from each other. This can be worrying in certain situations. For example, if people have witnessed an accident or a crime, how accurate will their descriptions be? They may be asked to give evidence in court. Someone might be convicted on the strength of that evidence. Witnesses might feel very confident about what they have seen. However, research has shown that, even if witnesses are confident, it does not mean that their account of what they saw is accurate.

How do we recognise faces?

Bruce and Young (1986) developed a model that suggests how facial perception, and our memory for faces, works. They suggested that there are three separate stages in the process of looking at a face and remembering it.

Turn to page 19 and briefly outline the three stages they describe.

1. In the first stage_________________________________________

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_______________________________________________________

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2. In the next stage__________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

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3. In the third stage ______________________________________

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

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As you will have seem from the activities we have done, our recall of events is not as reliable as we might think it is, no matter how clear it seems in our ‘minds eye’.

One other way in which our accurate recall can be affected is through the way we are questioned about it.

Reliability of eyewitness testimony

KEY STUDY Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Aim To test the effect of leading questions on a person’s recall of an event.

Method Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer’s study involved splitting participants into three groups (one of these was a control group). They watched a film of a traffic accident. After watching the film they were asked a number of questions about the film, all the same except for a question about the speed of the cards when the accident happened. The question was:

How fast were the cars going when they hit the other car? How fast were the cars going when they smashed the other car? The control group were not asked this question.

The results showed that those participants who had the verb ‘smashed’ reported the seeing the car as going faster.

Hit Smashed

Mean estimated speed

One week later, all the participants answered some more questions. One of the key questions this time was whether they had seen any broken glass (there wasn’t any in the film). Loftus and Palmer wanted to find out whether the different verbs they had used would influence the participants’ memory of the event. The results were as follows:

Smashed Hit Control group

Conclusion: Those participants who were asked about the cars smashing were more likely to report having seen the broken glass.

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People’s memory of an event can be influenced by the questions that they are asked about it. (Remember the ‘spider’ question?). These questions can therefore distort their long-term memory of the event.

Question: Why did 12% of the control group report seeing glass?

ACTIVITY

Identify the independent variable (IV) in this experiment.

Identify the dependent variable (DV in this experiment.

___________________________________________________________

Practical implications for the findings of this research

The practical implications for this suggest that lawyers and police interviews should not use leading questions.

Write an example of a leading question

Now write a non-leading question that a policeman might ask that does not ‘lead’ the witness.

___________________________________________________________

Exam style question 

Describe one study in which eyewitness 

testimony was investigated. Include in your 

answer the aim, method, results and 

conclusion. 

Ethics – Deception 

If participants are aware of the reason for the experiment then this may affect how they respond. Which 

bit of information in Loftus and Palmers experiment do you think it is important that the participants are 

not told? 

 

Deception can be overcome by giving a debriefing. Turn to page 86 and write a brief description of 

debriefing. 

 

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IMPROVING MEMORY

Encoding in detail

You may find that you already have methods in place that you have used in the past to help you recall information. The most obvious and used way would probably be linking of information you have to remember to information you already know. For example, when asked to remember words that are unconnected to one another you could try to make a story out of those words to put it into context that is familiar to you.

KEY STUDY

Organisation – Bousfield (1963) page 24

Aim To see if people ________ information in ____-term memory.

Method He showed participants __ randomly presented words and then asked them to ______ the words in any order they wanted, using free recall. Words came from these four __________: vegetables, animals, professions and names.

Results The results showed that the _____ in which the participants ________ the words was in ________ from the same ________, such as mouse, cat, horse and donkey.

Conclusion He concluded that people _____________ organise information by ________.

Ethics ‐ Distress 

Ethical considerations are the desirable standards of behaviour we use towards others. 

Researchers must ensure that those taking part in research will not be caused distress. They must 

protect from physical and mental harm. This means they must not embarrass, upset, frighten, 

offend or harm participants. For instance if a study involved showing participants gruesome 

pictures, this could upset them. 

Can you think of one way in which distress could have been caused in the experiment by 

Bousfield? 

_________________________________________________________________________________ 

Now can you think of one way in which the researcher could have overcome this problem? 

_________________________________________________________________________________ 

 

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Context

It has been found information is linked to the context in which it was initially learned. Interestingly it has been found that if you learn a new skill/fact when you are drunk you are more likely to recall it when you are drunk again than if you were sober (sorry this is one experiment we cannot do in class). A good technique to use then is if you asked to remember something or you are trying to remember something in your exam then the thing to do is to remember where you were when you learnt that information: put your self back into the situation.

Question: Can you think of a real life application for remembering in context? Think back to eyewitness testimony.

Godden and Baddeley (1975) Page 25 Aim To see if context improved a person’s memory.

Method _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Results The results showed that those who recalled in the same environment as that in which they had learned the words recalled 40 % more than those recalling in a different environment.

Conclusion This concluded that recall of information is improved if it occurs in the context in which it was learned.

RESEARCH METHODS This is a field experiment. Turn to p 71-72 and write a description including an advantage and a disadvantage of field experiments.

Description _________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

Advantage_________________________________________________

Disadvantage _______________________________________________

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KEY POINTS TO STRUCTURE REVISION - Memory

Can you define these terms?

◊ Encoding

◊ Storage

◊ Retrieval

◊ Eyewitness testimony

Do you know the main features of these explanations of memory?

◊ Multi-store model

◊ Levels of processing

◊ Reconstructive

Can you describe and evaluate studies to investigate these explanations of memory.

Can you state at least two factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness testimony?

Can you describe and evaluate studies that investigated each of these factors?

Can you explain at least two practical applications coming from explanations of memory and forgetting? What are their benefits and drawbacks?

Examiners tip: When defining a term, for each extra mark you should add anew point in your answer.

Examiners tip: When you describe a study, remember to state the aim, method, results and 

conclusion. 

Examiners tip: You don not need to remember dates of studies and if you forget the psychologist’s 

name you won’t lose marks. 

Examiners tip: An examination question will never ask you to recall more than two factors. 

Examiners tip: For an application, think about how can we put the knowledge gained from these 

explanations in the real world? 

 

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Useful and interesting websites to look at:

- Your amazing brain – lots of interesting ways to test your memory.

www.youramazingbrain.org

- Atkinson and Shiffrin memory model. This site contains all kinds of memory and forgetting.

http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch06_memory/atkinson-shiffrin_model.html

- This is the multi‐store model sung to the tune of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer for 

festive revision.  

                     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=‐vmpRKsk_nk&NR=1 

- Memory – includes games to help you improve your memory and wow your friends.

http://exporatorium.edu/memory/

- Loftus and Palmer Eyewitness Testimony.

http://www2.qeliz.ac.uk/psychology/Loftus%20and%20Palmer.htm

- How does memory work?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/memory/

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