Cognitive Psychology AO1

The Multi-Store Model, Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)

• Sensory memory is taken in from the environment, it lasts 1-2 seconds and then if no
attention is given to it, then the information is forgotten
• If information is given attention then it is passed on into the short term memory, which
can hold 5-9 items at a time
• There the information lasts 15-30 seconds before it is either forgotten by displacement
or moved on into the long term memory
• Information is moved to the long term memory by rehearsal and there, the capacity is
infinite so can hold a great deal of information
• However, this information can be lost through lack of use (decay) or interference
(confusing information)

The Working Memory Model, Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

• Proposed as an alternative for MSM, challenging the concept of a single unitary store
for STM
• Four Components: central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad,
episodic buffer
• Central Executive: controls the slave systems, directs attention to particular tasks,
involved with problem solving and decision making, limited capacity so has a limited
number of things it can attend to at a time
• Phonological Loop: controls auditory information, further broken down into the
phonological store/primary acoustic store (inner ear) and articulatory loop (inner
voice)
• Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad: processes visual and spatial information (how things look and
where they are – inner eye)
• Episodic Buffer: general store, recalls information from LTM and integrates it into STM
when required

Explanation of Long Term Memory: Episodic and Semantic, Tulving (1972)

• Semantic Memory: structured record of facts, meanings, concepts and knowledge about
the external world
• Episodic Memory: stored information about events that we have experienced in our
lives
• Procedural Memory: involves the knowledge of knowing how to do things (memory of
motor skills)
• Time Referencing: believed that episodic memory was dependent on time referencing:
memories about events that happened to you are linked to the time in which they
 occurred, applies to episodic memories as the memory is linked to the date in which it
took place
• Spatial Referencing: episodic memory is continuous as we experience the event at one
time in some temporal frame of reference, whereas semantic memory is fragments of
different pieces of information learnt at different points of time
• Retrieval: episodic memory can be contextual, meaning that people can have different
interpretations of the same event and would therefore have different memories of it,
whereas semantic memories are factual and therefore cannot be disputed
• Semantic memories can act independently of episodic memories, however we need
semantic memories to assist episodic memories as they help with facts such as objects,
people, and events that occurred
• Both semantic and episodic are declarative and rely of the medial temporal lobe,
whereas procedural memory is non-declarative and does not require the revelation of
memories
• Declarative memory is highly flexible, involving the association of multiple pieces of
information into a unified memory of representation
• Semantic memory mainly activates the frontal and temporal cortexes whereas episodic
memory activity is concentrated in the hippocampus initially

Reconstructive Memory, Bartlett (1932)

• Effort after meaning: trying to make sense of an event in terms of what they already
know
• Information may be remembered in a distorted way because they are imaginative
reconstructions of the original information in light of each individual’s past experiences
and expectations
• Schema: the mental structures that hold past experiences and expectations, stated that
these could influence memories
• Rationalisation: altering something to make it make sense to the individual
• Confabulation: making up certain parts of an event to fill in a memory that is missing
certain parts
• Perception: an active construction of what we think we see using prior knowledge
• Imaging: Bartlett used ink blots and asked the participants to describe what they
imagined in the image, your own knowledge and experiences will influence what they
saw, for example a child who grew up loving Batman films would more likely identify the
blot with something related to Batman compared with a child who has never seen a
single Batman film
Baddeley’s Classic Study (1966)
• Previous research has shown that STM for word sequences is affected by acoustically
similar words but less affected by semantically similarity
Aims:
• To test whether LTM will be similarly affected as STM by word sequences
• To test the effect of semantic and acoustic similarity on the learning and recalling of
word sequences in LTM, using a control to prevent rehearsal between presentation and
testing to minimise STM effects
Participants:
• Males and females selected from the Applied Psychology Research Unit
• Condition A: 21 participants, 10 acoustically similar words
• Condition B: 20 participants, 10 acoustically dissimilar words
• Condition C: 16 participants, 10 semantically similar words
• Condition D: 21 participants, 10 semantically dissimilar words
Procedure:
• The four conditions were each given the 10 words, shown one at a time for 3 seconds
each on a slide show
• After they saw the words, they were given a numerical interference task where they had
to write down three different number sequences after they were read aloud, being given
8 seconds to write down each sequence
• The participants were then given 1 minute to write down the word order of their 10
words, the words were still available around the room so the test was not to learn the
words but to learn the order in which they appeared
• Having completed this task 4 times, they were then given another interference task, but
this time for 15 minutes
• Finally, they were given a 5th surprise recall task
Results:
• There was only a 6 percent difference between acoustically similar and dissimilar word
lists
• However, there was a significant 27 percent difference between the semantically similar
and dissimilar words by the 5th recall task, suggesting that LTM encodes semantically
• Semantically similar words showed a 59 percent accuracy by the 5th trial whereas
semantically dissimilar words showed an 86 percent accuracy
Conclusion:
• LTM is different to STM in terms of how it encodes information as encoding in STM is
largely acoustic whereas encoding is LTM is largely semantic
Sebastian and Hernandez-Gil, Contemporary Study (2012)
Digit Span: memory span and capacity of STM without rehearsal: it can be tested by reading a sequence
of numbers to someone which increases each time
Aims
• To study the developmental pattern of working memory over time, including changes
from ageing or dementia
• To analyse the developmental pattern of the phonological loop in children aged 5-17 –
this involved looking at the age the digit span stopped increasing in
adulthood/adolescence
• To look at the decline of the digit span in older people, including those with two types of
dementia – Alzheimer’s and fronto-temporal dementia
• To see if Anglo-Saxon data, which found 15 years to be the age at which digit span stops
developing further, were replicated or whether digit span would be higher for Spanish
speakers, as word length may affect digit span
Procedure
Part 1
• Primary data gathering to test the hypothesis
• Sample: 570 volunteers, from various schools in Madrid. Extraneous variables ruled out
as no ppt had repeated a school year/had learning difficulties
• Separated into 5 groups: ages 5, 6-8, 9-11, 12-14 and 15-17 years.
• IV: age of the participants DV: digit span
• Task: Sequences of digits were read aloud, one per second. Each correct sequence
meant the sequence increased by 1 digit. Began with 3 sequences of 3 digits. The digit
span measure was the number of digits in the sequence where they recalled at least two
of the three sequences correctly.
Part 2
• Secondary data from their previous study in 2010
• Sample: 25 healthy older people (control group), 25 Alzheimer patients, 9 dementia
• Data was gathered for the three groups with the same task as above
Results Part 1 – mean number of digits recall by year group and developmental period
Age Group Mean Digit Span
Preschool (5 years) 3.76
Primary school (6-8 years) 4.34
Primary school (9-11 years) 5.13
Secondary school (12-14 years) 5.46
Secondary school (15-17 years) 5.83

Shows that digit span increased with age

Part 2 – digit span from the previous study
 Group Gender Mean Digit Span
Alzheimer’s dementia 7m/18f 4.20
Fronto-temporal dementia 5m/4f 4.22
Healthy older people 6m/19f 4.44

• Older ppts had a higher digit span than 5 year olds (sig level 0.0001) and 6 year olds
(0.03) however lower digit spans than ages 9+
Conclusion
• Study proved that digit span increases ages 5-17; this contrasts with Anglo-Saxon data as
that showed digit span to stop increasing at 15
• Highlighted the difference in word length between Spanish and English words
• Baddeley found that memory span is affected by lists using long words vs short words
• Sub-vocal rehearsal: the longer the digit takes to say, the more the trace would decay
• Sub-vocal rehearsal doesn’t start until the age of 7 so there should be little difference
between English and Spanish children under the age of 7
• Digit span is one digit lower for Spanish children over the age of 7
• Dementia did not significantly impact the digit span, therefore the capacity of the
phonological loop is affected by age, not dementia

The Case of HM (1953)

• Had brain surgery to alleviate the severe symptoms of epilepsy which involved removal
of the hippocampus
• Suffered anterograde (can’t store new memories) and retrograde amnesia (loss of
memory of events)
• Retrograde amnesia meant he was unable to retrieve memories from 19 months to 11
years prior to operation (partial memory after 16 but almost nothing after 25)
• Interviews of HM provided qualitative data
• ‘Dimly aware of his father’s death’, unable to describe his work place but could draw a
detailed floor plan of his house (semantic)
• Identified the president Kennedy and recalled his assassination (semantic)
• IQ before operation: 104, IQ two years after operation: 112

Developmental Psychology in Memory

 • Sebastian and Hernandez-Gil (2012): developmental issues in memory span development
• Children ages between 5-8 years old have a digit span of around 4 items, which
raises to around 5 items by the age of 17, when it stops developing
• Digit span is additional evidence that memory capacity might develop with age and
helps to show that children with dyslexia might have particular difficulties in learning
if their working memory is effected
• Dyslexia is a developmental disorder usually diagnosed in childhood…
• Dyslexia is a reading disorder which affects up to 10 percent of children
• May have problems with: auditory STM and phonological awareness, processing
speed, language skills, naming objects, distinguishing left and right, distracted by
background noise
• They may only be able to use one slave system at a time, so can’t do a written task
whilst a teacher is talking to them for example, and their processing speed may be
slower
• McDougall (1994): split 90 children into 3 reading groups – poor, moderate, good
readers. Good readers could articulate words quickly meaning greater number of
words in STM, poor readers sound out words slowly meaning fewer words in STM
• Alloway (2009): suggested children cannot hold all speech sounds for long enough
in WM to be able to bind them together to form a word
• Smith-Spark (2010): found that adults with dyslexia had unimpaired spatial working
memory but verbal working memory was impaired
• Holmes (2009): suggested tasks should be broken down into small steps so there is
less resilience on STM and instructions kept short and reinforced by writing them
down/restating them
• often combined with other learning difficulties (ADHD) making it hard to study alone
• Alzheimer’s disease is a developmental issue as it develops as we age…
• Symptoms: memory loss, challenges in planning/solving problems, difficulty
completing familiar tasks, confusion with time/place, trouble understand visual
images
• most commonly occurs after the age of 65 and focused on the memory of new
events and information
• unable to recall autobiographical information from episodic memory and make new
memories, so affects STM and LTM
• depletion of brain matter, especially hippocampus and temporal cortex
• Baddeley (2001): conducted attentional tests with sufferers of Alzheimer’s against a
control group. One task involved looking for a letter ‘Z’ within difficult distracter
letters and another was a dual task procedure – sufferers performed worse,
particularly in dual task

Individual Differences in Memory

 • Processing Speed and Capacity: different due to the speed at which they process
information and their ability to stretch the capacity of their STM
• Miller: magic number 7 – we can hold 7 plus or minus 2 items of information in STM
• Chunking: grouping together connected items so that they can be processed or stored
together as single concepts, increasing the capacity of STM
• McDougall and Alloway (as above) support chunking
• Digit Span: memory span and capacity of STM
• Schema: file of information based on our past experiences
• How we perceive an object or event is strongly influenced by our past experiences,
knowledge gained, attitudes and beliefs
• Reconstructive memory criticised for lacking ecological validity as it should be testing
your prior knowledge, not knowledge learnt in a lab
• Steyvers and Hemmer (2012): wanted to see if they could create a more ecologically
valid study. Asked ppts what they would expect to see in 5 different scenes (kitchen,
office, hotel etc.) and measured this against a control group who were asked to look at
the scenes in pictures and describe it. When the study is asking about more realistic
information memory recall is good
• Episodic Memory: a memory of an event or significant moment in your life
• Palombo (2012): conducted a survey of autobiographical memory assessing individual
differences in naturalistic autobiographical memory. Considered the following:
• Episodic
• Semantic
• Spatial: remembering way around an area after visiting
• Prospective: imaging events in the future and picturing it clearly
• Questionnaire contained 102 items, ppts scored on a 5 point Likert Scale
• High/low score on episodic showed same high/low score on semantic, so we either have
a good or poor memory recall, regardless of memory style
• Found men scored higher on spatial memory
Individual Differences:
• Dyslexia
• Age
• Gender
• Episodic Memory
• Schemas