Cognitive

What is “Cognitive” Psychology?
How our mind deals with information, and abilities to use that information.

What is “Memory”?
Process of storing and retrieving information

What is a model?
Not exact copy, but a representation of something
Helps us understand how something works 

Proposes that the memory system is made up of 3 permanent stores

1.Sensory store – holds information in a relatively unprocessed form – for fractions of a second after the physical stimulus is no longer available

2.Short term memory (STM) – stores information for brief periods of time (7 +/- 2)

3.Long term memory (LTM) – holds vast quantities of information, which can be stored for long periods of time.

1.External information (input) is received through the senses (sound, sight, touch, smell),enters sensory store
2.If attention is paid, information is transferred and processed further by the STM store
3.If no attention is paid to it, the sensory information is immediately lost or not even processed 4.Material that is rehearsed is passed on to the LTM store, where storage takes place
5.Retrieval takes place when we transfer this information from the LTM store to the STM store 6.Loss can take place from the STM store via decay or displacement, and from the LTM store via decay or interference Pay attention to it, this gets it from the SM to the STM Rehearse it, Maintenance rehearsal keeps it in our STM Elaborative rehearsal can get it to our LTM

SM Encoding-Iconic memory-visual info from the eyes –things you SEE. Stored as images.
Echoic memory- auditory input from the ears – things you HEAR. Stored as sounds.
Haptic memory- tactile input from the body – things you’ve TOUCHED. Stored as feelings. 
SM Capacity-Sperling (1960):Presented grid of letters for less than a second. People recalled average 4 letters. When Sperling used “partial report” technique,showed that iconic memory held up to 10 items!But decays before we can report them all.
SM Duration
Info decays within about 2 secs (or less) 
STM Encoding-Conrad (1964): Acoustically similar letters (rhyming) are harder to recall  from STM than acoustically dissimilar (non-rhyming). Suggests that STM mainly encodes things acoustically (as sounds), although items were presented visually.
STM Capacity-Miller (1956):STM can hold ‘the magic number seven, plus or minus two’ (7+/-2) Capacity of STM could be  increased by combining/organising separate ‘bits’ of information,into chunks. 
STM Duartion-Temporary.Peterson & Peterson (1959):Got students to recall combinations of 3 letters (trigrams), after longer and longer intervals. During intervals, students prevented from rehearsing by counting task! 3secs, 80% recalled correctly. Recall got progressively worse as the delaygrew longer! 18secs, fewer than 10% recalled correctly.
LTM Encoding-Baddeley (1966):Lists of 10 short words at a time. Some lists semantically similar, others not. Tested immediately & then after 20 min delay. Found that after 20 mins, did poorly on semantically similar words. We encode LTMs according to what they mean – so we get similar-meaning things confused! 
LTM Capacity-Potentially unlimited
LTM Duration- Anything up to a lifetime. Bahrick et al. (1975): tested US graduates.Shown classmate photos years later. 90% accuracy for remembering faces & names 34yrs after graduation. Declined after 48yrs, particularly for faces.

Supporting Evidence
Glanzer & Cunitz (1966):Read out list of words to Ps. Asked them to recall as many as possible. Findings: recalled more from start and end of list. Supports the idea of there being a separate STM & LTM, because of the 'Primacy Effect:The first heard- they’ve been rehearsed, so we can recall them from our LTM. 'Recency Effect' most recently heard - scan recall them as they’re still in our STM.

Case Study
Cases of patients who have suffered brain damage to their hippocampus & have memory deficits:H.M, Clive Wearing, K.F. Their memory loss tends to be selective. This again supports the idea of separate stores for different types of memory.

MRI
Show which parts of the brain are being used when certain tasks are carried out: These findings back up the existence of different stores for different memories. Hippocampus is active during this task, which requires your LTM, the prefrontal lobes are active now, when using your STM.

Triangulation›
The use of two or more methods of data collection in the study of some aspect of human behaviour.
Reduces experimenter bias
Gives more evidence for the hypothesis, which increases the reliability ›More research methods means more participants, increasing the generalizability. ›Reduces culture-bound theories- some theories are based on the observation of one culture. Some critics claim that the term “depression” is derived from observations of western behavior and is not applicable to all groups. 

Opposing
Clive has an impaired STM this is shown as he has a poor duration in STM of 7 seconds. Poorer than an average person-18-30 seconds of information. 
Clive is unable to rehearse new information as he looses the sentence he is in and cannot remember the question when giving an answer.
Clive has not been able to transfer any new long term memories since his illness and hence always feels like he has just awoken from unconsciousness.
Furthermore Clive has difficulty retrieving his existing Long term memories as he is unable to distinguish between the tastes of foods. Interestingly however he is able to remember procedural memories.
This case study demonstrates how the Short-term memory and long term memory are different stores as one store is more impaired than the other illustrating that these therefore must be independent of one another

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Components
Central Executive: Directs attention to particular tasks. It controls the other systems by determining how resources will be allocated. (Think a control tower at an airport.) This is very limited and can only attend to a small amount of things at once.
The slave systems:
Phonological loop: Controls auditory information. Further subdivided into the phonological store (inner ear) and articulatory process (inner voice). The phonological store holds the words you hear, and the articulatory process is used for words that are heard or seen (kept via maintenance rehearsal in your head)
Visuo-spatial pad: Processes visual and spatial information  (how things look and where they are). 
Episodic Buffer (Added later):It is a general store, added later to the model to account for things that use both visual and acoustic information.This is because the central executive has no storage, and their needed somewhere to store both visual and acoustic information.It still has a limited capacity, but integrates info from the central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and he LTM. 

Strengths
+The working memory model explains a lot more than the multi-store model. It makes sense of a range of tasks e.g. verbal reasoning, comprehension, reading, problem solving and visual and spatial processing.
+The multi-store model could not explain memory impairment in certain brain-damaged people. For example, K.F’s STM was impaired for verbal information but not visual information. This can be explained in terms of the multi-component WMM. 
+ According to the MSM rehearsal is the only way that info can pass from STM to LTM. Rehearsal plays a relatively small part in the WMM which seems to reflect real life as people rarely rehearse information. 

Weaknesses
-The model tells us little about the ways in which processing in the working memory system relates to long-term storage of information.
-Relatively little is known about the central executive. It has limited capacity, but this capacity has not been measured with precision.
-It was originally proposed that the central executive was unitary (one function). However, it now appears that it fulfils at least three functions. As yet the nature and number of its functions are unclear.

Mnemonics
A mnemonic is something taht is used to assist or aid menmory, it can be either verbal or visual.

Verbal Mnemonics
Acronym- A word or phrase formed from the initial letters.
Acrostic-A poem or sentence where the first letter of each word or line helps us recall sequence.
Rhyme-
Chunking- When a series of words or numbers are condensed down into short chunks.

Visual Mnemonics
Method of Loci:This requires the learner to associate different parts of the material to be recalled with different places.
Keyword method:This is used when we try to associate two pieces of information, to try to remember information.  If I wanted to remember a foreign word and its English equivalent, I could think of an image to link the two words.
Mind maps and spider diagrams:This involves making notes of information in the form of a drawing, and then linking it to other information. Main topic is in the middle, and then the links off can include drawings, colours and a few words. Adding the visual cues with the verbal material is ‘mind-mapping’.  

Geiselman et al. (1984)
Problems with Standard Interview
Encoding challenges-Setting, distractions, stress, guilt
Retrieval challenges-Schemas, emotional factors
Interviewer challenges-Types of questions, body language, schemas, emotions 
Components of Cognitive Interview
Context reinstatement-Recall the scene, the weather, what you were thinking and feeling. Recalling how you felt  and the context enhance recall, these details act as cues to recall.
Report everything-Report every detail you can even if they seem irrelevant or trivial. Witnesses might not realise that some details are important  and details might help them recall significant information.
Recall from a changed perspective-Describe the event as it would have been seen from different viewpoints. Encourages many retrieval paths
Changing the order-Describe the event in reverse order.When events are recalled in forward order, witnesses reconstruct based on their schemas. If the order is changed they are more accurate
No distractions
Active listening
Open questions 

Kohnken et al (1999):Meta-analysis of 53 studies. Found on average a 34% increase in amount of correct information generated in CI

Milne and Bull (2002):Found that when they used a combination of “report everything” and “mental reinstatement”,participants’ recall was significantly higher.

Stein and Memon (2006):Compared normal interviewing technique and CI in Brazil, with Female Cleaning staff.CI increased the amount of correct information obtained and the richness (detail) of information.

Mello and Fisher (1996):When CI and normal interview techniques were tested on both older adults’ (72 years) and younger adults’ (22 years) memory, CI was better for both.But was more significantly an advantage for the elderly. 

It is widely used by police forces sometimes with variations on the original version proposed by Gieselman. Police personnel have to be trained and this can be expensive and time consuming. It leads to extensive recall but the information recalled by the witnesses take a long time to for the police to “sieve through”
The technique is time consuming if it is to be used in its entirety. 

Definition
This is the evidence provided in court by a person who has witnessed a crime, with a view to identifying the culprit.

Effected By
Encoding, storage and retrieval.

Leading Questions
A question that, by either its form or content, suggests to a witness what answer is desired or leads them to the desired answer