GCSE Psychology
Memory
Student_____________
Tutor_______________
Unit 1:
Making sense of other people
1
Memory
Ask yourself, how good is your memory?
How often do you use it?
Write down how you have used your memory in the
last 30 minutes.
What would life be like if you lost your memory?
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PROCESSES OF ENCODING, STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
Life would be very difficult if we did not have a memory. You wouldn’t be able to get to college,
dress yourself or even recognise yourself in the mirror. We take memory for granted. We
probably are not even aware of the process that occurs for us to be able to receive, interpret,
store and access information in order for us to make sense of the world around us. The process
involves three stages. Write a brief definition of the stages below.
Encoding___________________________________________________________________________________
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Storage____________________________________________________________________________________
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Retrieval___________________________________________________________________________________
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EXPLANATIONS
There are different ideas on exactly how our memory system
is organised, we are going to look at three of these
explanations.
The first of these is:
1. The Multi-store model – Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968).P5+6
This model states that memory is organised into different stores, the sensory
store, the short-term store and the long-term store.
Rehearsal
Original
sensory
information
such as light
and sound
Sensory memory
Attention
Short-term memory
Duration_________
Duration_________
Capacity_________
Capacity_________
Trace decay
Transfer
Long term memory
Duration_________
Retrieval
Capacity_________
Displacement
Sensory memory – is the start of the process. We pay attention to some of the information
that we receive through our senses. This is held very briefly, for __________________ (the
duration), in the sensory memory store. The information is stored in its original form (speech
is stored as ________, visual is stored as ________). The information is then passed on to
the short-term memory for encoding.
Short-term memory – contains any information that has been encoded from the sensory
memory. George Miller (1956) claimed that we can hold between _____ and ______ pieces of
information in our STM, know as the _________________________.
Any new information that comes along ___________ (displaces) the old information that is
already there. Information in the STM is usually encoded _______________ (as we hear it)
or __________ (as we see it) and has a __________ of up to 30 seconds. If it is rehearsed,
it can transfer into the long-term memory.
Long-term memory – long-term memory holds memories that have passed from our sensory
store through to short-term store and then into our long term store. Information here can be
changed over time and may be lost; sometimes we need a reminder of an event to bring that
memory back.
3
There are ways that we can extend how much information we can hold in our
STM such as chunking. This is the process of putting information together to
create meaningful chunks of information using information stored in the LTM.
ACTIVITY: Read the description of the study by Bower and Springston (1970)
and complete the following. Page 7.
KEY STUDY: Bower and Springston (1970) Chunking.
FBI CIA TWA USA
F BIC ATW AUS A
Aim_________________________________________________________
Method______________________________________________________
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Results______________________________________________________
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Conclusion____________________________________________________
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RESEARCH METHODS
The Bower and Springston study is an example of a laboratory experiment. Give a
definition of a lab experiment and one advantage and one disadvantage. P 70-71.
Definition_________________________________________________________
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Advantage_________________________________________________________
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Disadvantage_______________________________________________________
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KEY STUDY: Murdock (1962) Primacy/Recency effect free recall experiment.
Aim
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Method
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Results
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Conclusion_________________________________________________________
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EVALUATION P 10.
These experiments are evidence of support for the Multi-store model of memory.
Name one positive criticism of the Multi-store model as an explanation for memory.
Make sure you explain your answer fully.
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Name one negative criticism of this model, again make sure you explain your answer
fully._____________________________________________________________
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5
RESEARCH METHODS
Hypothesis: A hypothesis is a precise and testable statement of what the
researcher predicts will be the outcome of the study.
Write a hypothesis for Murdock’s primacy/Recency free recall experiment.
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Sampling is the way in which the participants are chosen to take part in an experiment.
How might Murdock have found a random sample for his experiment? See page 77.
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Independent variable (IV) – the variable that is manipulated (controlled) by the
experimenter.
Dependent variable (DV) – the measured outcome.
Identify the IV in Murdock’s experiment___________________________________
Identify the DV in Murdock’s experiment___________________________________
Experimental design refers to the way in which the participants are assigned to the
experimental conditions.
Repeated measures – an experimental design in which the same participants take part
in each condition.
Independent groups – and experimental design that has different participants in each
condition.
Matched pairs – an experimental design in which each group has different participants,
but they are paired on the basis of their similarity in several characteristics.
Identify the experimental design in Murdock’s experiment – explain your choice.
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6
The Levels of Processing Model - Craik and Lockhart (1972).
They did not believe that the memory system was made up as stores like the multistore model suggests. They believe that we remember things because of the level at
which we have processed something. The main assumption being the deeper something is
processed the more we can recall it. We process information deeper by attaching
meaning to it. A study was conducted to test this theory by Craik and Tulving.
Describe the method of this experiment and the results which they obtained.
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What were the results in class for our experiment? Fill in the number of words
everyone remembered in the corresponding boxes, add up the total for each section
and see if our results support the levels of processing theory.
Structural (appearance)
Phonetic (sound)
Semantic (meaning)
Total
Total
Total
7
EVALUATION P 12.
Name one positive criticism of the Levels of processing as an explanation for
memory. Make sure you explain your answer fully.
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Name one negative criticism of this model, again make sure you explain your answer
fully.___________________________________________________________
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Ethics – Withdrawal
When participants agree to take part in research they do not know how much it will affect them
emotionally. Therefore it is important that participants know that they can leave the experiment
at any time and that they can withdraw their responses in the experiment so that it is not used in
the results.
Question: What can the researcher do to ensure that the participant is aware that they are
allowed to do this?
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RESEARCH METHODS
The mean (average) is calculated by adding up all of the scores in a condition and
dividing it by the number of participants that were in that condition. Calculate the
mean for the Craik and Tulving’s experiment. You need to add up all the words
remembered in the structural condition and divide that number by how many took
part. The number you now have is the mean for the structural condition. Now do the
same for the other two conditions. Now fill in the table below.
Heading: mean recall in the levels of processing
Exam style question
Describe and evaluate one study that has
been done to test levels of processing. Include
in you answer the reason why the study was
conducted, the method used, the results
obtained and the conclusion drawn.
structural phonetic
mean
semantic
8
Reconstructive approach
Bartlett (1932) saw memory as something which is active.
He proposed that we use what are called schemas to understand
and acquire new information. A schema is a building block of
information. To test and support this idea Bartlett told
participants a story and then asked them to recall it afterwards.
KEY STUDY
Aim_________________________________________________________
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Method______________________________________________________
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Results______________________________________________________
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Conclusion____________________________________________________
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EVALUATION
Identify one positive and one negative criticism for this memory model.
Positive______________________________________________________
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Negative_____________________________________________________
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EXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING
When looking at reasons for forgetting it is hard to
determine whether or not the information is actually
truly forgotten or whether it’s just that you cannot
retrieve it. Think of the times it’s taken someone else
to remind you of something and then memory comes
flooding back.
Interference theory
What causes us to forget things? Try to think of an occasion when you just
could not recall something you thought you knew. What do you think might have
caused that to happen? Turn to page 16 and write a description of both of the
following explanations for forgetting.
Retroactive interference
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Proactive interference
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ACTIVITY:
With a small group discuss and write down a real life example of either
retroactive interference or proactive interference.
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10
KEY STUDY page 17
Underwood and Postman (1960)
Aim_________________________________________________________
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Method______________________________________________________
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Results______________________________________________________
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Conclusion____________________________________________________
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RESEARCH METHOD
The Underwood and Postman study is an example of a laboratory experiment. An
explanation of a laboratory experiment is on page 70-71.
Identify the:
Independent variable___________________________________________
Dependent variable_____________________________________________
ACTIVITY
Question: Now that you know how interference can affect memory, what
practical applications can you think of for this knowledge?
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11
Amnesia –
evidence for the Multi-store model
A popular subject on the big screen and television is a form of
memory loss known as amnesia. Amnesia is a condition in which
someone can’t recall stored memories, like their mum’s maiden name
or what happened last Christmas, but they may recall the knockknock joke their little brother told them a few seconds ago.
There are two types of amnesia:
Anterograde amnesia – Inability to remember ongoing events after the
incidence of trauma or the onset of the disease that caused the amnesia.
Everyday example___________________________________________
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Retrograde amnesia – Inability to remember events that occurred before the
incidence of trauma or the onset of the disease that caused the amnesia.
Everyday example___________________________________________
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Amnesiacs patients
A case study of patient ‘HM’, (he was only known by his initials, why do you think
that was so?), who suffered from epilepsy since he was 16 At the age of 27 he
underwent a radical surgery to try to cure his epilepsy. This procedure was a
success however, because the hippocampus was removed on both sides of his
brain, he was left with amnesia. His memory of events prior to the surgery was
near normal but he could not remember anything after the surgery.
ACTIVITY
Read more about this case on page 18 and identify which kind of amnesia HM
suffered from. Give an example of how his memory works to explain why you
made this choice.
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12
EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY
It is often fund that, when several people describe an
event that they have all experienced, their accounts can be
quite different from each other. This can be worrying in
certain situations. For example, if people have witnessed an
accident or a crime, how accurate will their descriptions
be? They may be asked to give evidence in court. Someone
might be convicted on the strength of that evidence.
Witnesses might feel very confident about what they have
seen. However, research has shown that, even if witnesses are confident, it
does not mean that their account of what they saw is accurate.
How do we recognise faces?
Bruce and Young (1986) developed a model that suggests how facial
perception, and our memory for faces, works. They suggested that there are
three separate stages in the process of looking at a face and remembering it.
Turn to page 19 and briefly outline the three stages they describe.
1. In the first stage_________________________________________
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2. In the next stage__________________________________________
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3. In the third stage ______________________________________
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As you will have seem from the activities we have done, our recall of events is
not as reliable as we might think it is, no matter how clear it seems in our ‘minds
eye’.
One other way in which our accurate recall can be affected is through the way
we are questioned about it.
Reliability of eyewitness testimony
KEY STUDY
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Aim To test the effect of leading questions on a person’s
recall of an event.
Method Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer’s study involved splitting participants
into three groups (one of these was a control group). They watched a film of a
traffic accident. After watching the film they were asked a number of
questions about the film, all the same except for a question about the speed of
the cards when the accident happened. The question was:

How fast were the cars going when they hit the other car?

How fast were the cars going when they smashed the other car?

The control group were not asked this question.
The results showed that those participants who had the verb ‘smashed’
reported the seeing the car as going faster.
Hit
Smashed
Mean estimated speed
One week later, all the participants answered some more questions. One of the
key questions this time was whether they had seen any broken glass (there
wasn’t any in the film). Loftus and Palmer wanted to find out whether the
different verbs they had used would influence the participants’ memory of the
event. The results were as follows:
Smashed
Hit
Control group
Conclusion: Those participants who were asked about the cars smashing were
more likely to report having seen the broken glass.
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People’s memory of an event can be influenced by the questions that they are
asked about it. (Remember the ‘spider’ question?). These questions can
therefore distort their long-term memory of the event.
Question: Why did 12% of the control group report seeing glass?
ACTIVITY
Identify the independent variable (IV) in this experiment.
Identify the dependent variable (DV in this experiment.
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Practical implications for the findings of this research
The practical implications for this suggest that lawyers and police interviews
should not use leading questions.
Write an example of a leading question
Now write a non-leading question that a policeman might ask that does not ‘lead’
the witness.
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Ethics – Deception
If participants are aware of the reason for the experiment then this may affect how they respond. Which
bit of information in Loftus and Palmers experiment do you think it is important that the participants are
not told?
Deception can be overcome by giving a debriefing. Turn to page 86 and write a brief description of
debriefing.
Exam style question
Describe one study in which eyewitness
testimony was investigated. Include in your
answer the aim, method, results and
conclusion.
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IMPROVING MEMORY
Encoding in detail
You may find that you already have methods in place that you have used in the
past to help you recall information. The most obvious and used way would
probably be linking of information you have to remember to information you
already know. For example, when asked to remember words that are
unconnected to one another you could try to make a story out of those words to
put it into context that is familiar to you.
KEY STUDY
Organisation
– Bousfield (1963)
page 24
Aim To see if people ________ information in ____-term memory.
Method He showed participants __ randomly presented words and then asked
them to ______ the words in any order they wanted, using free recall. Words
came from these four __________: vegetables, animals, professions and names.
Results The results showed that the _____ in which the participants
________ the words was in ________ from the same ________, such as
mouse, cat, horse and donkey.
Conclusion He concluded that people _____________ organise information by
________.
Ethics - Distress
Ethical considerations are the desirable standards of behaviour we use towards others.
Researchers must ensure that those taking part in research will not be caused distress. They must
protect from physical and mental harm. This means they must not embarrass, upset, frighten,
offend or harm participants. For instance if a study involved showing participants gruesome
pictures, this could upset them.
Can you think of one way in which distress could have been caused in the experiment by
Bousfield?
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Now can you think of one way in which the researcher could have overcome this problem?
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Context
It has been found information is linked to the context in which it was initially
learned. Interestingly it has been found that if you learn a new skill/fact when
you are drunk you are more likely to recall it when you are drunk again than if
you were sober (sorry this is one experiment we cannot do in class). A good
technique to use then is if you asked to remember something or you are trying
to remember something in your exam then the thing to do is to remember where
you were when you learnt that information: put your self back into the situation.
Question: Can you think of a real life application for remembering in context?
Think back to eyewitness testimony.
Godden and Baddeley (1975) Page 25
Aim To see if context improved a person’s memory.
Method
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Results The results showed that those who recalled in the same environment as
that in which they had learned the words recalled 40 % more than those
recalling in a different environment.
Conclusion This concluded that recall of information is improved if it occurs in
the context in which it was learned.
RESEARCH METHODS
This is a field experiment. Turn to p 71-72 and write a description including an
advantage and a disadvantage of field experiments.
Description
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Advantage_________________________________________________
Disadvantage _______________________________________________
17
KEY POINTS TO STRUCTURE REVISION - Memory
Can you define these terms?
◊ Encoding
◊ Storage
◊ Retrieval
◊ Eyewitness testimony
Examiners tip: When defining a term, for each extra mark you should add anew point in your answer.
Do you know the main features of these explanations of memory?
◊ Multi-store model
◊ Levels of processing
◊ Reconstructive
Can you describe and evaluate studies to investigate these explanations of memory.
Examiners tip: When you describe a study, remember to state the aim, method, results and
conclusion.
Can you state at least two factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness
testimony?
Examiners tip: An examination question will never ask you to recall more than two factors.
Can you describe and evaluate studies that investigated each of these factors?
Examiners tip: You don not need to remember dates of studies and if you forget the psychologist’s
name you won’t lose marks.
Can you explain at least two practical applications coming from explanations of
memory and forgetting? What are their benefits and drawbacks?
Examiners tip: For an application, think about how can we put the knowledge gained from these
explanations in the real world?
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Useful and interesting websites to look at:
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Your amazing brain – lots of interesting ways to test your memory.
www.youramazingbrain.org
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Atkinson and Shiffrin memory model. This site contains all kinds of
memory and forgetting.
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch06_memory/atkinsonshiffrin_model.html
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This is the multi-store model sung to the tune of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer for
festive revision.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vmpRKsk_nk&NR=1
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Memory – includes games to help you improve your memory and wow
your friends.
http://exporatorium.edu/memory/
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Loftus and Palmer Eyewitness Testimony.
http://www2.qeliz.ac.uk/psychology/Loftus%20and%20Palmer.htm
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How does memory work?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/
memory/
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