revision cards for aqa psych paper 1 memory topic. please excuse spelling or grammar mistakes! made entirely by me using the standard year 1 textbook, for reference i achieved an a* :)

1. Coding, capacity, and duration
 Coding: the format in which information is stored in the various memory stores
 Research on coding: Baddeley (1966) acoustic/semantic word lists – acoustic STM,
semantic LTM
 Capacity: the amount of information that can be held in memory store
 Research on capacity: Jacobs (1887) STM digit span – mean span across ppts was 9.3
items, 7.3 for letters; Miller (1956) span and chunking – suggested STM span is 7 +/- 2,
chunking is grouping sets of digits or letters into units
 Duration: the length of time information can be held in memory
 Research on duration: Petersons (1959) STM duration – found duration was about 18
seconds with no rehearsal; Bahrick et al. (1975) LTM duration – highschool recall, found
after 48 years free (no cue) recall was at 30% and face recall was at 70%
 Eval: Baddeley – artificial stimuli; Jacobs – lacking current world validity, confounding
variables; Millers – cowan (2001) suggested was only about 4 chunks not 7 +/- 2; Petersons
– meaningless stimuli, more a study on interference; Bahrick et al – higher external validity,
lack of confounding variable control

2. MSM
 Coined by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968, 71)
 Sensory register/memory stores for all five senses, large capacity but extremely short duration
 Short term memory – capacity around 7 +/- 2, coded acoustically, duration of about 30 seconds
 Maintenance rehearsal is repeating the information until it is passed to the LTM
 Long term memory – supposed unlimited capacity, coded semantically, supposed unlimited duration but
memory degradation occurs after about 48 years
 Eval: MSM is supported by many clinical studies, there is more than one type of STM (oversimplifies) – KF
Shallice and Warrington (1970) amnesia study, more than one type of rehearsal – Craik and Watkins
(1973) maintenance and elaborative (elaborative allows for LTM transmission), many studies to support
use artificial material, LTM also has more than one type

3. Types of LTM
 Tulving (1985) combatted the MSM claiming it too oversimplified, creating three
base types of LTM
 Episodic memory: a LTM store for personal events, such as someone’s birthday.
Has a ‘time stamp’ attached to it and requires conscious effort to retrieve
 Semantic memory: a LTM store for knowledge of the world, such as the capital of
Denmark. No time stamp, needs to be recalled consciously
 Procedural memory: a LTM store for knowledge of ‘how-to’s’/practical skills, such
as driving a car. No time stamp, can be recalled unconsciously
 Eval: has clinical evidence – Clive Wearing’s brain damage (procedural
untouched); MRI and Pet scanners prove that different types of LTM activate
different parts of the brain; real-life application; problems with clinical evidence –
lack of variable control; Cohen and Squire (1980) suggest there are two types of
LTM, not three

4. WMM
 Baddeley and Hitch (1974) developed this model of memory to combat what they thought was the underdeveloped MSM,
focusing on STM
 Central executive: the co-ordinator, assigns tasks and controls the three ‘slave systems’, very limited processing capacity
 Phonological loop: first of the slave systems. Deals with auditory information and preserves the order in which info is
received- split into the phonological store (stores the data) and the articulatory process (allows maintenance rehearsal by
repeating the words back with two seconds of capacity)
 Visuo-spatial sketchpad: second slave system. Stores visual and/or spatial information, Logie (1995) divided the VSS into
the visual cache (stores visual data) and the inner scribe (records arrangement)
 Episodic buffer: third slave system, added in 2000. Brings together material from other subsystems into a single strand of
memory, and also provides abridge between STM WMM and the LTM
 Eval: has support from clinical evidence – Shallice and Warrington (1970) KF study, phonological loop damage but VSS
intact; Baddeley et al (1975) dual task performance shows that the subsystems have limited capacity; the central executive
is underdeveloped; brain scans support WMM

5. Interference theory
 Interference is the process of forgetting because one memory blocks another –
causing one or both memories to be distorted or forgotten
 Two types: proactive – forgetting occurs because old memory disrupts recall of
newer memory; retroactive – forgetting occurs because new memory disrupts the
recall of older memory
 McGeoch and McDonald (1931) studied similarity’s effects on retroactive
interference. Found that the most similar lists (two lists of words, second list was
the IV) produced worst recall, showing interference is strongest when memories
are similar
 Eval: evidence supported by lab studies; many lab studies contain artificial
material that lacks external value; real-life studies such as Baddeley and Hitch
(1977) rugby player experiment support it; time in experiments is not long enough
to be considered valid in some cases; cues are important in forgetting and
interference theory negates that

6. Retrieval Failure
 A form of forgetting that occurs when one does not have access to cues needed to retrieve
a memory. The memory is available but not accessible
 Tulving (1983) Encoding specificity principle – if a cue is to help recall information it must be
present at both encoding and at retrieval. Two types of cues that can be used are external
(leads to context-dependent forgetting) and internal (leads to state dependent forgetting)
 Context Dependent: Godden and Baddeley (1975) deep-sea diver experiment – accurate
recall was 40% lower in non-matching conditions
 State Dependent: Carter and Cassaday (1998) anti-histamine word list experiment –
performance on memory test was significantly worse in non-matching conditions
 Eval: much research support- Eysenck (2010) argues retrieval failure is biggest cause of
forgetting in LTM; Baddeley (1997) said context effects are not as strong as they seem;
underwater experiment- recognition had no CDE but recall did; ESP cannot be accurately
tested, cannot be proven; CDE and SDE have real-life applications, external validity
(cognitive interview etc.)

7. Misleading Information
 The theory that misleading information such as leading questions can heavily effect the accuracy of
eyewitness testimony in any scenario, but specifically for court use
 Leading questions Loftus and Palmer (1974): student ppts watched clips of a car accident and then were
asked questions about it in five groups (leading verbs- ‘about how fast were the cars going when they
hit/contacted/bumped/collided/smashed each other?’); mean speeds were different for every group- ex.
contacted 31.8mph, smashed 40.5mph
 Second experiment: wording changing ppt’s memory of the film- ppts who heard ‘smashed’ were more
likely to report broken glass than those who heard ‘hit’; there was never any glass
 Post event discussion (Gabbert et al, 2003): studied ppts in pairs- each watched same crime but from
different perspectives. Both ppts discussed what they had seen before having individual recall tests- 71%
had inaccurate recall, compared to 0% from control group with no PED
 Eval: use in real life- improving police interviews/legal system; tasks were artificial- missing the emotions
that come with witnessing accidents/crimes; individual differences- researchers often use young people,
inaccurate to the entire population as older people are less accurate; demand characteristics- Zaragosa
and McCloskey (1989) argued many answers given in lab studies are due to demand characteristics, as
ppts want to be helpful

8. Anxiety
 Anxiety can have both a positive and negative effect on EWT according to the Yerkes-Dodson Law (1908): there is an
optimum level of anxiety that leads to optimum accuracy in recall, but anything above and below that level will lead to
inaccuracies in EWT- applied to EWT by Deffenbacher in 1983
 Negative anxiety effects, Johnson and Scott (1976): fake lab study, ppts sat in a room whilst an argument took place next
door. Low-anxiety condition, man walked through with a pen in his hand; high-anxiety condition, he had a knife covered with
blood. Ppts later had to pick the man out of 50 photos- 49% accuracy from low anxiety, 33% from high-anxiety- tunnel
theory, ppts did not notice face b/c of weapon
 Positive anxiety effects, Yuille and Cutshall (1986): study after a real shooting in a gun shop, where the owner shot a thief-
13 agreed to take part in study. Asked to rate their emotional distress due to the event on a 7 point scale, then recount what
happened- this was compared to original police interviews. 88% accuracy for more stressed group, compared to 75% for
the less stressed group
 Eval: WFE not relevant- surprise rather than fear, Pickel (1988) handgun chicken salon advert; field studies lack control-
PED and misinformation can easily occur, anxiety overwhelmed by other factors; ethical issues- risky to maybe cause
psychological harm within lab studies; Yerkes-Dodson is too simple- bell curve may be inaccurate and oversimplified;
demand characteristics- ppts may be aware of aim of study

9. Cognitive Interview
 Fisher and Geiselman (1992) argued that EWT was too unreliable with current police methods, and so recommended
techniques that coincided with cognitive psychology, the cognitive interview (CI)
 Four main techniques: report everything- include every detail, no matter how irrelevant; reinstate the context- go back and
recite everything that one can remember from the scene of the event; reverse the order- report events again, but this time
from middle to beginning, or from the end to the start; change perspective- recite events from someone else’s perspective
 Enhanced cognitive interview (ECI): Fisher et al (1987) developed additional elements of the CI to focus on the social
dynamics of the interaction
 Eval: CI is time consuming- takes a long time to do, and to train interviewers with proper techniques; some elements are
more valuable- Milne and Bull (2002) found combination of report everything and reinstate context produced best recall;
effectiveness of ECI- Kohnken et al (1999) 50 study metanalysis, ECI consistently produced better results; variations of CI-
each study varies the technique, which is also true for real life, enhanced external validity; increase in inaccurate
information- metanalysis found 81% increase of correct info, but also a 61% increase of incorrect info with enhanced CI