Memory

Short Term & Long Term differ in three ways:

• Duration
• Capacity
• Encoding  

Techniques to help recall:  Chunking, Verbal rehersal, Association

Lloyd & Margaret Peterson:

-Students given three unrelated letters followed by a three digit number

- Asked to count down from a number in 3s or 4s for around 3-18seconds

-Intervals: 90% remembered after 3s, 2% after 18seconds

Jacobs 1887:

• number recall 9.3 compared to letters 7.3

Miller 1956:

• capacity of STM- immediate memory is 7 but more if information chunked together

Cowan 2001:

• STM is limited. Only 4 chunks could be recalled

Studied the way the brain stored information in both STM and LTM

• Found that LTM relied more on acoustically similiar whereas STM relies on semantically similiar or different.

Frost 1972:

• Also found that LTM is related to visual codes

Wickens 1976:

• found that some STM relies on semantic code

Sensory Store:

• Information collected by senses
• information retained for brief period

Evidence: 

Sperling 1960- participants saw a grid for 50milliseconds. 42% could only recall 5 items. Information decays rapidly. 

Short Term Memory:

• Lasts for very short time and can decay if unrehersed
• Limited capacity and duration

Evidence:

Petersons worked on techniques for measuring STM

Long Term Memory:

• events that have happened in past
• lasts anywhere from 2mins to 100years
• Store has potentially unlimited capacity and duration

Evidence:

In America a psychologist used a yearbook to see how many names and faces people could remember, testing LTM

Central Executive:

• directs attention to particular tasks
• determines how resources are allocated to tasks
• limited capacity- can't attend to too much at once

Phonological Loop:

• Limited capacity
• auditory information

Baddeley divided this into two groups:

The phonological store- holds words you hear

The Articulatory Process- for words heard or seen

Visuo-spatial Sketchpad:

• Used when planning a spatial task
• visual/spatial stored here temporarily

Episodic Buffer:

• General Store
• Limited capacity
• integrates information from phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad, central executive and long term memory

• High amounts of evidence to support models
• The Model helps to prove that memory is not just one activity
• Emphasis on process rather than the MSM is more about structure

• The central executive is the same as 'attention'- too vague and doesn't explain much
• key evidence comes from case studies from individuals who have suffered brain damage

- cannot make before or after comparison

- cannot show behaviour is caused by damage

- injury is traumatic and may change behaviour

Interested in the ACCURACY of memory after witnessing an event

• leading questions can distort eyewitness immediate recall
• 45 students shown 7 films of accidents
• Given questionnaires to describe accident and answer specific question
• One critical question: How fast were the cars going when they 'blank' each other?
• verbs like hit, smashed, collided e.t.c were used
• mean speed group was calculated for each- 'smashed' highest at 40.8mph

A police technique used to help memory recall by increasing the accessibility of stored information.

Fisher and Geiselmen 1992

• Report Everything
• Mental Reinstatement
• Changing Order
• Changing Perspective

Kohnken et al 1999- Meta-analysis of 53 studies had an increase of 34% of correct information using CI

Milne & Bull 2002- examined effectiveness for different componants

• undergraduates and children used
• recall similar across all componants but when report everything and mental reinstatement used together recall higher 

Kebbell & Wagstaff 1996- police don't use all techniques

Memon et al 1994-

• Greater demands on interviewer
• quantity and quality of training CI interviewers becomes a critial issue
• detectives only have brief training (4 hours)
• meaning recall isn't that significally higher than standard interview

Individual Differences- Mello and Fisher 1996

• compared older (72) to younger (22) people's memory
• used a filmed crime and interviewed using either SI or CI
• CI produced more information than SI
• CI greater advantage for older people

Real-World Applications- Stein and Memon 2006

• tested CI in Brazil
• used cleaning staff (women) for sample
• watched film of abduction, CI increased the correct amount of information given
• CI gave Brazil a new approach to interviewing to reduce miscarriages of justice