Cognitive Psychology Types of Memory You must identify three types of memory. You should explain in detail the encoding, duration and capacity of each type of memory. You could apply research to illustrate these findings.

What is memory? The mental process of registering, storing and retrieving information. There are different types of memory. Who can remember what they were wearing on the first day of this term? Do you remember what you ate a week last Friday for tea?

three types of memory Sensory memory Short-term memory Long-term memory Both STM & LTM are studied in terms of: Encoding – Making sense of information Capacity – How much information Duration – How long information can be stored for

Exam Question Jan ‘09 Question 1. (2 marks) The following are all concepts relating to memory: ADuration B Capacity C EncodingD Retrieval

Sensory Memory Duration: Seconds Capacity: Small instant Encoding:

Short Term Memory Duration: seconds Capacity: 7+/- 2 items Encoding: Acoustic

Short Term Memory Duration 18 – 30 seconds Group experiment Task

Short Term Memory Duration 18 – 30 seconds Peterson & Peterson (1959) devised a technique that prevents information from being continually repeated in the STM in order to test how long information will be retained. A Distractor Task Peterson & Peterson suggested that where information is continually rehearsed it can be stored in the short-term memory indefinitely but is lost as soon as interference blocks rehearsal.

Short Term Memory Duration 18 – 30 seconds Ever been given a telephone number and had to keep repeating it avoiding all distractions until you wrote it down to prevent forgetting it then you were experiencing Maintenance Rehearsal? Reitman (1974) Short duration is due to displacement; as new information is coming into the short-term memory it is kicking out the previous information due to its limited capacity (7 +/- 2 chunks). Information decays (fades away) rapidly in short term memory unless rehearsed.

Short Term Memory Capacity 7+/- 2 Miller’s Magic 7 +/-2 Miller (1956) The magical 7 +/-2. The STM can hold on average between 5 & 9 items of information. Chunking: Grouping the items together into chunks. Telephone number: when you remember it you often recite a group of the numbers as together e.g , rather than Meaningful chunks are even easier to remember: BBC, FBI, BAE

Short Term Memory Encoding Acoustically Conrad (1964) The STM encodes ACCOUSTICALLY (that is by sounds). Participants were presented with a list of consonants. For example: P J N R Z D for about ¾ of a second. Participants were then asked to recall what they had seen. Conrad found that errors of recall were linked to letters which had a similar sound. Bs were mistaken for Ps 62 times, Vs were mistaken for Ps 83 times but Ss were mistaken for Ps only 2 times. This suggests that visually presented information is encoded according to acoustics/sounds. Acoustic confusion Task: Acoustic confusion activity.

Short Term Memory Exam Questions

Exam Question

Long Term Memory Duration: Lifetime Capacity: Limitless Encoding: Semantically

Long Term Memory Long term memory practical

Long Term Memory Duration Bahrick (1975) Investigation of the duration of very-long-term memory (VLTM). Tested the duration by testing recall of real-life information. Participants included 392 American ex-high school students aged Recall was tested in four ways: 1.Free recall of the names of as many of their former classmates as possible. 2.A photo recognition test where they were asked to identify former classmates in a set of 50 photos, only some of which were their classmates. 3.A name recognition test. 4.A name and photo matching test. 90% accuracy in FACE AND NAME RECOGNITION after 34 YEARS 80% accuracy for NAME RECOGNITION after 48 YEARS 40% accuracy for FACE RECOGNITION after 48 YEARS 60% accuracy for FREE RECALL after 15 YEARS 30% accuracy for FREE RECALL after 30 YEARS Classmates are rarely forgotten, but cues are sometimes needed. Recognition was better then recall.

Procedural memories that are concerned with how to do things *Declarative memory, which is how we remember what things mean, and can make links between a stimulus and previous experience. SEMANTIC processing: The LTM encodes according to meaning. Long Term Memory Encoding

Class Practical to test encoding in the LTM Long Term Memory Encoding

Baddeley (1966) Recall, in serial order, a list of five words taken from a pool of words in the following categories: Acoustically similar wordsAcoustically dissimilar words Semantically similar wordsSemantically dissimilar words Similar sounds were much harder to recall using STM, than words with dissimilar sounds. Similarity of meaning only had a very slight detrimental effect on STM. Recalling from LTM, was much worse for semantically similar words then for semantically dissimilar words. Recall from LTM was the same for acoustically similar and acoustically dissimilar words. Conclusions: STM relies heavily on acoustic coding LTM primarily makes use of semantic coding Long Term Memory Encoding

Exam Question

Long Term Memory Exam Questions