Memory Essays

Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968 compared brain to a computer 1950’s. 1st attempt at unifying memory research.
Sensory store, limited & visual 0.5S Echoic: Audio 2S
Sperling in 1960, 4x3 grid of letters recall 4/5 letters. Letters matched to tone recall 9
Treisman in 1964 2 messages, slight delay but recognised as being the same 
STM Miller 1956 18-20 seconds (Peterson & Peterson 1959) longer if rehearsed

P & R effect. Glantz and Cuntiz 1966 counting back for 10S between end of the list & recall virtually eliminates R effect, 2-3 words affected - fragile. 
Brown and Peterson 1959, trigrams, memorize info & count back. 5S 50% of info, 18S 80% info forgotten. 
Milner & HM, normal STM but no new info. Shallice & Warrington, KF bad LTM digit span 2. 

Jenkins 1974 p's remember material but not expected to be tested on it unlikely to rehearsed = memory by-product of learning; depth of our knowledge affects detail upon recall. 

EVAL: EV, MR (some significance, retain chunks) R & SP, all mem same. FB - emotional significance.   LTM focus on semantics & explicit (conscious) Incidental leaning not considered, rehearsal only process that transers STM-LTM

Baddeley and Hitch in 1974 central executive, modality free, limited capacity. VSS visual info, stored spatially not visually. Articulatory loop, audio, visual encoded. Baddeley 1975, 5 word sets recalled easy if words short = limited cap. Additions Salme & Baddeley 1982, primary acoustic store direct audio inputs. Baddeley & Hitch 1974, words sound sim but spelt diff. Judgements made well without suppressing articulation, necessary to vocalise sounds of the word to understand. Non-verbal auditory system operates to help process the written word. 
 E: accounts for findings MSM couldn't, Brain scans highlight seperate stores, diff areas active depending on the task. rehearsing optional, realistic, CE little known, not measured accurately. 

LOP: Craik & Lockhart 1972, depth = meaningfulness extracted from stimulus rather than number of analyses performed upon it” 2 aims: depth of processing of a stimulus has substantial effect on its memorability, deeper levels of analysis produce elaborate, longer lasting and stronger memory traces than shallow analysis levels. 
Elaboration added 1975 Bransford in 1979 recall better for min elaborated similes showing the degree of precision of semantic elaborations relevant when predicating recall.  
Eysenck 1979 distinctiveness, non semantic but distinctive remembered better to non both
  Morris et al recognition in memory better for audio than semantic, only describes memory rather than explain, considered the learning processes and the effect that has on memory. Shallow or deep processing hard to see, not predictive, R and robust 

auto-biographical memory & childhood amnesia

FB: Brown & Kulik 1970's. Neisser 1982 due to repeated exposure = rehearsal. Pearl Harbour bombing & baseball game = fabricated memory, modified not reconstructed.Bohannon 1988: challenge disaster measured 8-9 months after, recall dropped 77% - 58%. Conway 1994 MT resignation, 923 p's 2/3 UK rest other nationalities interviewed within fortnight of event & group interviewed again 11 months later after 11 months 86% of UK participants had vivid memory. cultural relevance but biased & low V diff between samples less generalizable. FB hard to measure, low R. Increased rehersal media. Extra rehearsal = significance? 

Repression: Freud, difficult to retrieve but remain available. Anderson 1995. Event specific amnesia for specific period e.g. violent criminals who claim they cannot remember carrying out the crime. Ethically impossible to make use of traumatic events involved in repression.
Repressors low scores on anxiety, high defensiveness. Measure  time taken to recall negative childhood memories. Repressors slower than other groups, experienced most indifference & hostility from fathers.Herman and Schatzow in 1987 who found that 28% of a group of female incest victims reported severe memory deficits from childhood, and such repressed memories were most frequent among woman who had suffered violent abuse. Raises major ethical and legal issues concerning therapist’s responsibilities & effects of accusations on family members

Amnesia, Anterograde remember new info. retrograde difficulty in remembering events that happened before amnesia. organic: damage to brain structure e.g.frontal lobe & excessive alcohol consumption. Functional amnesia psychological factors e.g. fugue state & loss of explicit memory - deliberately and consciously recalled. Reed & Squire 1989. MRI scans on 4 amnesic all hippo, damage. 2 temporal lobe damage who had severe Retrograde amnesia. Low pop V, no conclusion, no comparison of normal pop. Difficult to generalise. 

 Alzheimer’s, progressive. Impaired memory, thoughts & speech. Plaques and tangles, Amyloid precursor protein broken down into beta amyloid protein 42 = build-up of plaques. Selkoe 2000 plaques start to form before symptoms = problems in the communication between neurones. Build-up of plaque and Alzheimer’s is weak and hard to explain, Murphy & LeVine 2010, presence of β-amyloid protein 42 early in the disease starts a chain of events that leads to the illness, yet to be properly tested. Snyder 2005,  β-amyloid protein 42 interferes with NDMA, NT Alzheimer’s could occur as it is a chemical change which causes your learning to be affected Cleary et al (2005) did an experiment where rats were injected with β-amyloid disrupts memory. Genetic predisposition: Levy-Lahad eta al in 1995 early signs of the Alzheimer’s gene on chromosome 1. Schellenberg et al (1992) chromosome 14 Ertekin-Taner et al 2000 C 10 , not isolated, all genes involved in producung more beta amyloid. St George-Hislop 2000  half of all Alzheimer’s patients have no known relative with disorder = genetic influence is small. 

Childhood amnesia. Unavailable = Ebbinghaus 1885 trace decay & James 1980 supported but cannot measure implicit/ procedural, more resistant? 
Displacement, Miller 1969 chunks forgotten. Glanzer 1979 dis, td & in, dis major factor in forgetting. Jenkins & Dallenhach 1924, sleep vs no sleep. Improved if no sleep, what you do between learning & recall that affects it, CV. Recent = dream = consolidation = night better.
Interference LTM. retroactive new interfere with old. Proactive = old replace new. Underwood 1957 word lists illustrate this, low MR, effects may not be same if semantics used. Explicit used a lot - meaningful assumptions made may not be easily applied to other memory types.

Inaccessible, Retrieval failure, fundamental 1 condition but not the other. ToT info not accessed.
Cue dependent forgetting, Tulving 1976, retrieval cues encoded with the information that needs to be remembers. Psychological states, state of mind internal cues & environment external e.g. drunk. Cue dependent forgetting Godden and Baddeley 1975 & 1980 replication differed context dependent forgetting applies to recall only & dramatic environmental change. Recent = learning in diff environments does improve recall. 
Repression difficult to retrieve and are deemed as inaccessible. Anderson 1995 little doubt raumatic experiences produce memory disturbances. Levinger & Clark 1961, list of - & neutrally charged words recall - words less likely to be remembered after a week - charged words were remembered better repression could only be short term or temporary.

Alzheimer’s

Amyloid precursor protein is broken down into beta amyloid protein 42 causing the build-up of plaques; plaques cause problems in the communication between neurones

Selkoe in 2000 found that plaques start to form before symptoms of Alzheimer's.

cerebral cortex to shrink

Snyder in 2005, found that β-amyloid protein 42 interferes with NDMA, a neurotransmitter which produces changes in neurons when we learn, supporting the fact that if this is disrupted then Alzheimer’s could occur as it is a chemical change which causes your learning to be affected and as a consequence you may not be able to remember things affectively

Cleary et al (2005) did an experiment where rats were injected with β-amyloid disrupts memory. So if beta amyloid is changed then in turn memory will also be affected and things are more likely to be forgotten or remain in stores that cannot be retrieved.  

Korsakoff's, chronic alcoholics, frontal cortex damaged, more impaired than other amnesiacs. Shinamura and Squire 1986. Recall answers to general info Q. Subjects indicated extent to which they felt they knew the answers & recognition memory test for items. Korsakoff’s patients less accurate than those other amnesic patients with other amnesiacs performing as normal controls. They concluded that Korsakoff’s syndrome typically produces a more widespread cognitive deficit than is observed in other forms of amnesia.

Repression: Anderson in 1995, Levinger and Clark (1961) found supporting evidence for Freud’s repression theory of emotional material. The results showed that participants had poorer recall ability for emotionally negative words. When they were asked to give free associations to neutral and negatively-charged words, they tended to have longer response latency for the latter, suggesting that the negative words had been repressed

Fugue state Kopelman described the case of a man who had experienced 10-12 prior fugue episodes, he suffered from depression and claimed that amnesia was to blame for in him causing a road traffic accident when driving disqualified, uninsured and drunk.