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AQA A-Level Psychology Paper 1

MEMORY
Evaluation Points

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Coding

Findings led to development of MSM

Artificial stimuli, lacks mundane realism

Capacity

Poor control, Jacob’s, 1887
CA: been replicated by BOPP 2005

Miller overestimated capacity - COWAN
COWAN reviewed research, found capacity is 5 + or - 1, so the
lower end of Miller’s estimate is more accurate

Duration

High ecological validity - BAHRICK et al
...
- low control - ppts still in contact/look at yr book

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Research support - Baddeley, Peterson + Peterson

CA: artificial stimuli, doesn’t reflect real life using memory

Research support - HM (Scoville and Milner)
HM had epilepsy, his hippocampus was removed during surgery
LTM was damaged (read same magazine every day, couldn’t recall
what he had eaten)
STM intact, performed well on tests of immediate memory

More than 1 type of STM: SHALLICE + WARRINGTON = KF
Amnesia patient KF, recall worse when words read to him, better
when read himself
Other model - WMM is better
Bygone model - more types of LTM - TULVING
More than 1 type of LTM - episodic, procedural + semantic
Elaborative rehearsal not prolonged rehearsal - CRAIK +
WATKINS

Types of
Long-Term
Memory

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Research support - HM + Clive Wearing
Both had damaged episodic memories but semantic was fine, HM
couldn’t remember stroking a dog but did know what one was
Had fine procedural memory - both could walk and talk, Clive was a
pro musician + could still play piano and read music

CA: no control and case studies
Don’t know their memory capacity before, can’t measure extent of
change

Real life application - BELLEVILLE
Knowing types of LTM, can develop treatments to help people
BELLEVILLE: created intervention improving episodic memory in
alzheimer patients, trained patients performed better on episodic
memory test than control ppts (not trained)

No agreement on where types of LTM are
BUCKNER + PETERSON episodic is right prefrontal cortex,
semantic is left prefrontal cortex (PFC)
TULVING: ENCODING episodic is left PFC, episodic retrieval is right
PFC
Separate semantic/episodic stores?
TULVING believes episodic is just specialised store of semantic argued you can’t have damaged semantic and normal episodic
But, HODGES + PATTERSON: alzheimer patients can form new
episodic memories and not semantic

Working
Memory Model

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Clinical evidence - KF - SHALLICE + WARRINGTON
Visuo-spatial sketchpad was fine, but phonological loop damaged,
good recall when read digits himself, bad when read to him

CA: case studies, lack control, not generalisable
KF in motorcycle accident, trauma could have affected his cognitive
ability

Dual-task performance studies - BADDELEY
Performance was better when doing visual task and verbal task at
same time (and separately) vs when they were both visual/verbal
tasks - low competition for the separate stores = more efficient at
processing

CA: low ecological validity

Central Executive is too vague
BADDELEY: ‘CE is most important but least understood part’
Cognitive psychologists believe it needs to be described as more
than just attention
Some think it has many subcomponents
= damages integrity

Interference

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Real life interference - Baddeley and Hitch, Rugby players

CA: not all studies are like this though
Many are in labs where effects of interference are more pronounced,
info to recall is more similar - McGeoch + McDonald
Low ecological validity - only recalling info after 10/20 mins

Research support from drug studies - COENEN + LUIJTELAAR
Info learnt before drug taken + tested a week later was better
WIXTED - drugs prevent new info from reaching parts of brain
involved in memory
= prevent forgetting by preventing interference
Interference is temporary, can be overcome by cues - TULVING
+ PSOTKA
Gave ppts lists of words organised into categories, told to learn
words (not given categories) recall was 70%, deteriorated after every
new list given - proactive
At end, given names of categories, recall rose to 70%

Retrieval Failure

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Research support - GODDEN + BADDELEY
Deep-sea divers, recall was 40% higher in matched context
conditions

CA: lacks ecological validity
Hard to find contexts as different as land is from underwater, learning
in one room, recalling in another - not much different

Research support - CARTER + CASSADAY
Antihistamines, state-dependent

Tulving’s Encoding Specificity Principle isn’t testable
Can’t know if cue has been encoded at learning, only assume it has
if successful at recall

Practical applications
Remember back to where you first learnt something to remember
(context-dependent)

Recall vs recognition - GODDEN + BADDELEY
Follow up study, asked ppts instead just to recognise words, no
difference between the conditions

Misleading Info

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Practical applications

Low ecological validity - lab experiments

Both

Leading
Questions

Post-Event
Discussion

Cognitive
Interview

Psychologists can warn judges of the unreliability of eye-witness
testimony in court, can prevent innocent people paying for crimes
due to faulty eyewitness testimony
Led to reforms in way police interview eyewitnesses - cognitive
interview (Gieselman 1985)

Ppts responding to demand characteristics, want to please
researcher so guess answers to questions
= low internal validity

Research support - LOFTUS + PALMER
45 students, watched clip of car crash
Changed verb: Contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed
Contacted - 31
...
5 mph (highest estimate)

Low ecological validity
In real life, EWT matters a lot more, may be more accurate if it were
real
FOSTER - if thought they were watching real life robbery where
EWT affected trial they were more accurate in identifying culprit
YUILLE + CUTSHALL - Canada, 13 EWs, very accurate

Support for substitution explanation
Those who responded to smashed more likely to report seeing
broken glass than ‘hit’ group (even tho there was no glass)

SUTHERLAND + HAYNE
Recall of central details unchanged by leading questions

Research support - GABBERT et al

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