71821 – Introductory Topics in Psychology

Section B: Memory

Name:
Lesson Topic Date
completed
1 Coding, Capacity & Duration
2 The Multi-store Model of Memory
3 Types of Long-term Memory
4 The Working Model of Memory
5 Explanations for Forgetting: Interference
6 Explanations for Forgetting: Retrieval failure
7 Eye-Witness Testimony: Misleading Information
8 Eye-Witness Testimony: Anxiety
9 The Cognitive Interview
10 Consolidation
11 Assessment

Memory

Pathway

Please bring to every lesson

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71821 – Introductory Topics in Psychology
Section B: Memory

1 – Coding, Capacity and Duration

AO1
Memory refers to the processes that are used to acquire, store, retain and later retrieve information.

Coding: The way in which information is represented in the memory store, e.g. by sound, meaning or
image

Capacity: The amount of information that can be held in memory at any one time.

Duration: The length of time that memories can be held.

Sensory Register: Place where information is held at each of the senses and the corresponding areas
of the brain. The register is constantly receiving information so its capacity is limitless, but most of
this information receives no attention and only remains in the sensory register for a very brief
duration (milliseconds).

Short-term memory (STM): A temporary store where small amounts of information can be kept for
brief periods. It is a fragile store and information can be easily lost.

Long-term memory (LTM): A permanent store where limitless amounts of information can be stored
for long periods of time

AO1 – Research on Coding

Alan Baddeley (1966) investigated coding of words.
He gave 4 different groups of participants 4 different groups of words.
Participants had to recall words immediately afterward, in the correct order (STM) and then again 20
mins later (LTM)
Research methods – Experimental design: This is an example of an independent groups design, as
ppts had different lists of words to recall. They only took part in one condition.
• Group 1 – acoustically similar words
• Group 2 – acoustically dissimilar words
• Group 3 – semantically similar words
• Group 4 – semantically dissimilar words
STM recall task, participants performed worse on acoustically similar words. STM is therefore coded
acoustically.
LTM recall task, participants performed worse on semantically similar words. LTM coded
semantically.

AO3 – Research on coding

 Main limitation of Baddeley’s study was the stimuli are artificial and are meaningless to
participants. It means his findings cannot be generalised to different kinds of memory tasks.
Research Methods: lacks mundane realism
 Brandimote et al (1992) found that participants encode visually if given a visual task and verbal
rehearsal prevented.
 People may encode semantically in STM, if the stimuli have meaning to them (Wickens et
al,1976). Therefore, study has limited application. IDA – Reductionist

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 LTM not always semantic! Frost (1972) showed long term recall related to visual as well as
semantic. Nelson & Rothbart (1972) found evidence of acoustic coding in LTM.
 Coding can vary according to circumstances!

AO1 Research on Capacity

Joseph Jacobs (1887) investigated digit span.
He would give ppts 4 digits to remember and then 5 and so on, until the person cannot recall the
order correctly.
Jacobs found the mean span for digits to be 9.3 items and for letters 7.3.
He also found capacity changes with age, mean = 6.6 for 8 year olds and mean= 8.6 for 19 year olds.

AO3
 It was conducted a long time ago – therefore may not have been adequately controlled. Results
could be affected by confounding variables.
 Results have been replicated by other researchers, therefore supporting its validity

AO1 More Research on Capacity

George Miller (1956) made observations and came to the conclusion that capacity for STM is 7 plus
or minus 2. He also noted that you recall 5 words as well as 5 letters. This is by chunking.

AO3
 Miller may have overestimated capacity of STM. Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and
concluded capacity was only about 4 chunks.
 Vogel et al (2001)found that 4 items was about the limit for visual items.
 Size of the chunk matters! Simon (1974) found people have a shorter span for larger chunks.

AO1 Research on Duration STM

Peterson & Peterson (1959)
Conducted study that presented participants with a trigram (e.g. GHF, TYP) and then were asked to
count backwards for different intervals of time, preventing rehearsal
The participants in this study were 24 University students
Research methods – Experimental design: in this experiment, each participant did ALL conditions.
This is known as repeated measures.

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Section B: Memory

AO3
 Stimuli are meaningless and task is artificial. Therefore results cannot be generalised to other
memory tasks.
 However, we do sometimes try to remember meaningless things such as telephone numbers. So it
may not be totally irrelevant.
RESEARCH METHODS – Task is artificial, therefore lacks mundane realism. The experiment was
conducted in a laboratory, therefore lacks ecological validity
 Has the memory trace spontaneously disappeared without rehearsal? It may have been
displaced by counting backwards. Therefore, the study may lack INTERNAL VALIDITY.
 More recent studies e.g. Nairne et al (1999) found items could be recalled after 96 seconds.
RESEARCH METHODS – INTERNAL VALIDITY: Does the experiment measure what it set out to?

AO1 Research on duration (LTM)

Bahrick et al (1975) studied duration of LTM. He used 392 participants aged between 17 – 74. High
school year books were obtained.
Recall was tested in various ways, such as
1) photo-recognition
2) free recall
Participants tested within 15 years of graduation 90% accurate for photo recognition. After 48 years,
recall declined to 70%. Free recall 60% after 15 years and 30% after 48 years.

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AO3
 Study has high ecological validity
 Confounding variables. Bahrick had no control over how often participants looked at year books
or had contact with high school friends.
Research methods: This is a natural experiment, as the IV has not been directly manipulated. This
means there is high ecological validity. However, the drawback is we are unable to establish a causal
relationship.

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Section B: Memory

2 – The Multi-Store Model of Memory

AO1 Atkinson and Shiffrin Model (1968)

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AO3 – Supporting research: You can refer to studies from previous session as evidence for
separate/distinct memory stores. E.g. Evidence for the MSM comes from Baddeley, who an
experiment into coding of words in STM and LTM. He found that acoustic coding is used in STM and
semantic in LTM. This supports the idea of distinct, separate memory stores.

Glanzer and Cunitz (1966)

• Serial position effect
• Participants were shown a list of 20 words (presented one at a time)
• Participants could best recall words at the beginning and the end of the list
• Primacy effect (words at beginning) due to better rehearsal and transfer to long term
memory
• Recency effect (words at end) due to words still being in short term memory

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AO3 Strengths of MSM. Brain scanning techniques have been used to determine which parts
of the brain are active during memory tasks.
Beardsley (1997) found that the prefrontal cortex is active during STM but NOT LTM tasks.
Squire et al (1992) found hippocampus active when LTM engaged.
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AO1 – Case Study H.M. HM developed severe seizures as a result of epilepsy that remained
resistant to conservative treatment. In 1953, Scoville performed a bilateral temporal lobectomy
including partial removal of the hippocampus. HM's recovery from surgery was uneventful except for
one thing--he could not make any new memories
Research methods – Case Studies: strength – rich detailed information of situations you may not be
able to investigate, weakness – cannot be generalised!

AO3
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AO1 – Case Study Clive Wearing. Clive Wearing is a British musicologist, conductor, tenor
and keyboardist who suffers from chronic anterograde and retrograde amnesia. He lacks the ability
to form new memories, and also cannot recall aspects of his past memories, frequently believing
that he has only recently awoken from a coma. BUT he can still read music and play a piano!

AO3 - However, the case study of Clive Wearing may indicate that the MSM is an over
simplification. Clive Wearing has anterograde and retrograde amnesia, but he is still able to read
music and play a piano. This would suggest that there are different types of LTM, for example
procedural, episodic and semantic. MSM only proposes one LTM store.

AO3 – MSM Separate stores?

Logie (1999) pointed out the STM actually relies on the LTM and therefore cannot come first as
suggested in the MSM.
Ruchkin et al (2003) used real and pseudo- words in a recall task. They monitored brain activity and
found it was significantly higher for real words. If both conditions just used STM then activity should
have been the same. They concluded STM is actually just part of LTM. THIS SUGGESTS THE MSM IF
FLAWED!
AO3 – Depth of processing
Craik and Lockhart (1972)Suggested that lasting memories are created by the depth of processing
you do, rather than maintenance rehearsal.
Craik and Tulving (1975) gave ppts a list of nouns with a processing task to do.
e.g. shark is printed in capitals True/false
fruit can be eaten True/false
They found that ppts recalled more words when the task involved deep processing. This shows that
deep or elaborative processing is essential for making LTM.
Atkinson and Shiffrin did modify their original model to distinguish between elaborative and
maintenance rehearsal, but this may still be an over simplification.

3 – Types of long-term memory

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Section B: Memory

AO1
Long-term memories can be either explicit (declarative) or implicit.
Procedural memory is implicit
Episodic and semantic are explicit (declarative)

Episodic memory: The term episodic comes from the word ‘episode’ – an event or group of events
occurring as part of a larger sequence. This kind of memory is concerned with your personal
experiences.
You may also remember the context surrounding the event, such as what happened just before or
after, or why you were there. Finally, you may also recall associated emotions that you felt at the
time. Episodic memories have 3 elements: specific details of the event, the context and the emotion.

Semantic memory: This is essentially knowing the meaning of different events, feelings or even the
function of objects. Semantic memory is knowledge that is shared by everyone. Semantic memories
may start as episodic, but over time lose their association to a particular event so becomes more
generalised. e.g. I saw Grandad using a shovel to dig dirt – an episodic memory. Gradually, you
dissociate the personal experience from the semantic memory that shovels are used for digging.
You still may recall when and where you learned a fact!

Procedural memory: This is concerned with skills, such as riding a bike, tying your shoelaces or
knowing how to read. It is implicit – we are less aware of them, because they have become
automatic. Procedural memories are made through repetition and practice. Often, if you think too
much about what you are doing it prevents performance. Procedural memories need to be
automatic so that we can focus our attention on other tasks while performing these skills.

AO3

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Brain scanning techniques have supported the distinction between the three different types of
memory. Research has shown that different areas are active when different kinds of LTM are active.
Episodic memory is associated with the hippocampus and other parts of the temporal lobe, where
the hippocampus is located. Episodic memory is also associated with activity in the frontal lobe. The
memories of the different elements of a particular event may be distributed in other areas of the
brain but they are all connected together by the hippocampus to form an episode. Semantic
memory relies on the temporal lobe. Procedural memory activation is associated with the
cerebellum, which is involved in the control of fine motor skills as well as the motor cortex. The basal
ganglia and limbic system are also involved in this kind of learning.

Motor
cortex

Frontal lobe

Basal ganglia and

limbic system

cerebellum

Temporal
lobe

hippocampus

AO3 - Case Study HM.

HM- ability to form new LTMs was affected by destruction of his hippocampus and parts of his
temporal lobes, but he retained his pre-existing LTMs. This is an oversimplification, in fact he COULD
make new PROCEDURAL memories, but not semantic or episodic. He was able to learn how to draw
a shape by looking at a reflection in a mirror, a skill called mirror-drawing (Corkin, 2002). However,
he had no recollection of learning this. This is supporting evidence for the distinction between
procedural and declarative memories.

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AO3
The idea is that episodic memories may be a gateway for forming semantic memories. The question
is, can semantic memories be made independently.
Research has been conducted using Alzheimer’s disease patients.
Hodges and Patterson (2007) found Az patients episodic memory more adversely affected than
semantic.
Irish at al (2011) found Alzheimer’s patients with the reverse – poor semantic but generally intact
episodic memories.
This suggested separate stores for the two. Episodic may be a gateway to semantic, but it is possible
for semantic memories to form separately.

There is some evidence that priming may influence another kind of implicit memory. Memories are
implicit because you are not aware of them.
Research has shown that priming is controlled by a separate brain system.
It has been proposed there is a fourth kind of LTM, known as perceptual-representation system
(PRS).
Spiers et al (2001) studied memory in 147 amnesia patients. In all cases procedural and PRS
memories were intact, but the declarative was affected.

4 - The Working Model of Memory

AO1
This model was proposed by Baddeley & Hitch (1974). They felt that the idea of a single STM was too
simplistic. They wanted to propose a model o explain how you can perform complex tasks.

Their model attempts to explain why you can read a string of individual words yet know the meaning
of a sentence or perform mental arithmetic such as add up 12 + 18 + 25 + 32. This requires you to
store and process information as you go along.

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AO1 Central Executive

Function is to direct the attention to particular tasks, determining at any time how the brain’s
“resources” should be allocated.
Acts as an overseer/coordinator of all processes; including rehearsal, attention, retrieval
Is connected to two slave systems: the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad
Information arrives from the senses and LTM
This allows the central executive to deal with demanding tasks and information processing
Very limited capacity – therefore cannot do too much at once and no storage capacity.

AO1 Phonological Loop

Limited capacity
Responsible for storing verbal information as we hear it, e.g. remembering the tone in which a friend
spoke to you or the order of words
Divided into two sections:
phonological store (inner ear) – holds the words you hear or see
articulatory process (inner voice) – silently repeats words you have heard or seen

AO1 Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Limited capacity
Referred to as the ‘inner eye’
Used when you need to plan a spatial task e.g. route from one room to another.
Logie (1995) suggested that the sketchpad can be divided into
1) A visual cache – stores information visual items e.g. form and colour.
2) An inner scribe – deals with spatial relations which stores the arrangement of objects in the
visual field.

AO1 Episodic Buffer

Baddeley (2000) added the episodic buffer because they realised the model needed a general store.

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The central executive has no storage capacity; so there is nowhere to hold information that relates
to both visual and acoustic information.
The episodic buffer is an extra storage system that has, in common with all working memory units,
limited capacity.
It integrates information from the central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad.
It maintains a sense of time sequencing – recording events that are happening.
Sends information to the LTM.

Evidence from dual task performance

There are a large number of studies to demonstrate dual task performance. Here are some
examples. You need to carefully think about how you could use these to write effective evaluation
points for the working model of memory.

Baddeley and Hitch (1976)

Aim: To investigate if participants can use different parts of working memory at the same time.
Method: Conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to perform two tasks at the
same time (dual task technique) - a digit span task which required them to repeat a list of numbers,
and a verbal reasoning task which required them to answer true or false to various questions (e.g. B
is followed by A?).
Results: As the number of digits increased in the digit span tasks, participants took longer to answer
the reasoning questions, but not much longer - only fractions of a second. And, they didn't make
any more errors in the verbal reasoning tasks as the number of digits increased.
Conclusion: The verbal reasoning task made use of the central executive and the digit span task
made use of the phonological loop.

AO3
Supporting research comes from Baddeley and Hitch 1976 and their study of dual task performance.
They found that participants could do both a verbal reasoning task (which used the central
executive) and a digit span task (which used the phonological loop) at the same time. The number of
errors did not increase when the digit span task increased. They concluded that people are able to
do this complex task because it is utilising different areas of the working model of memory.

Another example is:

Hitch and Baddeley (1976)

There were two different conditions
All participants were given a task to occupy the central executive. This involved giving a list of
statements, followed by a true/false question e.g
AB A is followed by B TRUE/FALSE
AB A is after B TRUE/FALSE
At the same time participants had to either
1) Say “the, the, the” – a task that uses the articulatory loop
2) Saying random digits – a task that uses central executive
and the articulatory loop

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Condition 2 was significantly slower than condition 1. This demonstrates the dual task performance
effect and shows that the central executive has a limited capacity.

Write an AO3 point based on this research:

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It is worth noting that the use of lab studies in this context may cause issues. You must look carefully
at a questions. If it asks you to evaluate the research in WMM, then you could include strengths and
limitations of the methodology used.

E.g. Most the supporting research has been conducted in a controlled laboratory setting. This is an
advantage, in that we can establish a causal relationships but it lacks ecological validity and
mundane realism. This means that we cannot generalise the findings to everyday life and it has
limited usefulness.

If the question asks you to evaluate the theory you must be careful/ Methodological AO3 is seen as
weak. If you include it you must relate it to the strength of the theory!

E.g. Most the supporting research has been conducted in a controlled laboratory setting. This is an
advantage, in that we can establish a causal relationships but it lacks ecological validity and
mundane realism. This means that we cannot generalise the findings to everyday life and therefore
undermines the validity of the theory.

Find another example of dual task performance that involves the visuo-spatial sketchpad.

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AO3 – The phonological loop (PL)

Supporting evidence for the PL comes from the word length effect. Baddeley et al (1975) found that
people have greater difficulty remembering a list of long word compared to a list of short words –
the word length effect. This is because of the limited space for rehearsal (about 2 seconds) in the
articulatory process. This effect disappears if the participant if a person is given an articulatory
suppression task (e.g. repeating “the”). It means you are unable to repeat the shorter words more
quickly than the longer ones. This demonstrates the articulatory process.

AO3 – The Central Executive (CE)

A criticism of the WMM is that the idea of a central executive is too vague and “allocating resources”
is essentially the same as saying attention. Some psychologists believe it may actually consist of
separate components and that this is not explained fully in the WMM. However, there is some
evidence to support the idea of the CE. Braver et al (1997) performed brain scans of participants
whilst they were doing tasks involving the CE. They found that as the task became harder, activity in
the prefrontal cortex increased. This suggests the CE may have some physical reality in the brain.

AO3 – Case Studies

Evidence to support WMM comes from Shallice & Warrington (1970) who studied a man called KF
with brain damage. They noted his short-term memory for auditory information had been greatly
impaired compared to visual stimuli. His auditory problems were limited to verbal material such as
digits and letters but note meaningful sounds (e.g. phone ringing). It was concluded his brain
damage is limited to the phonological loop.

Further evidence to support WMM, is from a patient called SC. He had generally good learning
abilities, but unable to learn word pairs that were presented out loud. It was concluded only the
phonological loop had been affected. (Trojano and Grossi, 1995).

Another patient, LH, who had been involved in a road traffic accident, performed better on spatial
tasks than those involving visual imagery. This suggests separate visual (visual cache) and spatial
(inner scribe) systems.

Evidence to support WMM, has come from case studies of individuals who have suffered serious
brain damage. There is a number of issues when using such evidence. Firstly, the brain injury is
traumatic which may in itself change behaviour. Secondly, case studies focus on INDIVIDUALS, who
may have other difficulties and cannot be used to generalise findings to population as a whole.

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Section B: Memory

5 – Explanations for Forgetting: Interference

AO1
Is the inability to recall or recognise something that has been previously learned.
Forgetting is often explained in term of trace decay – the memory code created in the brain
disappears.
There are two explanations that we are going to learn about:
Interference
Retrieval failure

Interference: An explanation for forgetting in terms of one memory disrupting the ability to recall
another. This is most likely to occur when the two memories have similarity.

Proactive Interference: This is when previously learnt information interferes with the new
information you are trying to store
E.g. you go on holiday and on the first day get a white mark where your watch was. As you don’t
want a white mark you move your watch to your right wrist. For 2 days you keep looking at your left
wrist. This is proactive interference .Old learning is interfering with new

Brenton Underwood (1957) looked at the impact of proactive interference. He analysed the findings
from a number of studies and concluded that when participants had to learn a series of word lists,
they do less well on word lists encountered later on. They remember more of the lists encountered
early on.
Overall, he found that is ppts learn 10 or more lists, after 24 hours they remembered about 20% or
everything they had learned. If they had only learned one list initially, then recall was over 70%.

Retroactive Interference: This is when newly learnt information gets mixed up with the old
information.
E.g. the holiday is over, both wrists are nicely browned and the watch is returned to the traditional
left wrist but now you keep looking at the right wrist. This is retroactive interference. New info is
interfering with old.

George Muller and his student, were the first to identify retroactive interference. They gave
participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes. They were then asked to recall the
words after a retention interval. Performance was less good if the participants had to do another
task between the initial learning and recall. They were shown 3 landscape paintings and asked to
describe them. This task interfered with the information that had been previously learned. (Muller &
Pilzecker, 1900)

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AO3
In support, McGeoch and McDonald (1931) experimented the effects of similarity of materials.
They ppts learned List A had a 10 minute resting interval and then learned List B.
Condition List A List B Recall

1 Adjectives (e.g. big) Synonym of A 12%

(e.g. large)
2 Adjectives Nonsense syllables 26%

3 Adjectives Numbers 37%

This shows the more similar the stimuli the greater the interference.

In support, Baddeley and Hitch (1977) wanted to investigate a real world scenario (high ecological
validity) for forgetting.
• The participants were Rugby players at the end of a season.
• They had to recall the names of all the teams they had played against over the season.
• The start and end date of the season was the same for all players, but some had missed
games due to injury etc.
• If decay theory was correct, then all players should recall a percentage.
• Interference would predict the more games you played in the worse your recall. This is what
they found!

In support, Danaher et al (2008) tested the recognition and recall of advertising messages. He found
when ppts had been exposed to competing brands within a week, recall was reduced. In order to
strengthen the memory traces, he recommended multiple exposures to a campaign in one day
rather than spread them over a week to. This would reduce interference from competing brands.

However Anderson (2000) concluded that there is no doubt that interference plays a role in
forgetting, but how much forgetting can be attributed to interference remains unclear.

However there is evidence that some people are less affected by proactive interference than others.
Kane and Eagle (2000) demonstrated that individuals with a greater working memory span were less
susceptible to proactive interference. Ppts had to learn 3 lists of words. Those participants with low
working memory spans showed greater proactive interference when recalling the second and third
list than did participants with higher spans.

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6 – Explanations for Forgetting: Retrieval Failure

AO1
An explanation for forgetting based on the absence of cues. The memory is there (available) but just
not accessible.

AO1 Encoding Specificity Principle

Tulving and Thomas (1973) propose that memory is most effective if the information present at time
of encoding is also present at time of retrieval. The cue doesn’t have to be exactly right, but the
closer to the original item the better it will be.
Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) demonstrated this experimentally. Each ppt had to learn 48 words
from 12 different categories. The information was presented as the category followed by the word
e.g. fruit – apple. There were then 2 conditions.
1) ppts asked to recall words they could remember - free recall
2) ppts given the categories as cues – cued recall
Ppts in condition 1 recalled 40%, whereas condition 2 recalled 60% of the words.

AO1 Context-dependent forgetting

Context is the general setting in which we do something.
It may be where we were (the environment) when we learned something.
Godden and Baddeley (1975)
Aim: To see if people who learn and are tested in the same environment will recall more than those
who learn and are tested in different environments.
Method: Participants were deep sea divers. They were divided into four groups. All groups were
given the same list of words to learn.
 Group 1: learnt underwater and recalled underwater

 Group 2: Learnt underwater and recalled on shore

 Group 3: Learnt on shore and recalled on shore

 Group 4: Learnt on shore and recalled underwater

Results: Groups 1 and 3 recalled 40% more words than groups 2 and 4.
Conclusion: Recall of information will be better if it happens in the same context that learning takes
place.

Ethel Abernethy (1940), carried out an experiment to see if the classroom and instructor affected
the performance of students on weekly tests.
There were four experimental conditions:
• Usual room and usual instructor
• Usual room and different instructor
• Different room and usual instructor
• Different room and different instructor
Students performed best in their usual room with their usual instructor – presumably the familiar
environment provided cues. BUT higher achieving students least affected by these changes.

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AO1 State Dependent Forgetting

The mental state you are in at the time can also act as cue.
Goodwin et al (1969) investigated this. They recruited male volunteer participants. They had to learn
a list of words whilst sober or drunk. After 24 hours the ppts were then asked to recall the words
again, whilst sober or drunk.
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AO3
There is a large volume of research that has taken place into retrieval failure. This research includes
laboratory, field and natural experiments. It also explains anecdotal evidence, so has relevance to
everyday life.

There are many real world applications. Abernethy’s research suggests that revising in an
examination room could be beneficial – although impractical. However, Smith (1979) showed that
just by thinking of the room that the learning took place in (mental reinstatement) was as effectively
as actually being in the room. Retrieval cues are also used in the cognitive interview (discussed
later).

Unfortunately, retrieval cues do not always work –especially if you are learning complex
information, such as the multi-store model of memory. This means that the memory and
associations cannot always be triggered by a single cue.

There are criticisms of the encoding specificity principle. James Nairne (2002) has said that the cue
and retrieval is a correlational and not causal relationship. The cue is associated with the memory,
which leads to retrieval.

Alan Baddeley (1997) points out that for a cue to be effective it must already be encoded in your
memory. If a cue doesn’t lead to retrieval, then it wasn’t encoded. You cannot test for something
that hasn’t been encoded, therefore the theory cannot be proved.

Tulving and Psotka (1971) demonstrated apparent interference effects are actually due to the
absence of cues. They asked ppts to learn lists of words. On each list there were 24 words divided
into six categories (e.g. names of trees, stones etc). Ppts learned a different number of lists. After
each list was presented they were given a free recall task. The researchers found that the more lists
they had to learn the worse the recall. This would be evidence to support retroactive interference.

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However, after all the lists had been presented the researchers gave ppts the category names and
asked them to recall all the words again. Ppts recalled 70% of words regardless of how many they
had been given. This shows that the information is there (available), we are just unable to access it.
Therefore, retrieval failure is a more important explanation of forgetting than interference.

7 – Eye-Witness Testimony: Misleading Information

AO1 Leading Questions
Loftus & Palmer (1974)
Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate how information supplied after an event(post-event
information) influences a witness's memory for that event. They wanted to investigate the effect of
leading questions.
The study actually consists of two laboratory experiments. They are both examples of an
independent measures design. The independent variable in both of the experiments is the verb
used. The dependent variable in the first experiment is the participant’s speed estimate and the
dependent variable in the second experiment is whether the participant believed they saw glass.

Experiment 1
Procedure
The participants were 45 students of the University of Washington. They were each shown seven
film-clips of traffic accidents. The clips were short excerpts from safety films made for driver
education. The clips ranged from 5 to 30 seconds long.
Following each clip, the students were asked to write an account of the accident they had just seen.
They were also asked to answer some specific questions but the critical question was to do with the
speed of the vehicles involved in the collision.
There were five conditions in the experiment (each with nine participants) and the independent
variable was manipulated by the wording of the questions.

• Condition 1: 'About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?'

• Condition 2: 'About how fast were the cars going when they collided into each other?'

• Condition 3: 'About how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other?'

• Condition 4: 'About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?

• Condition 5: 'About how fast were the cars going when they contacted each other?'

The basic question was therefore 'About how fast were the cars going when they ***** each
other?'. In each condition, a different word or phrase was used to fill in the blank. These words
were; smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted.
The entire experiment lasted about an hour and a half and a different ordering of the films was
presented to each group of participants.
The dependent variable was the speed estimates given by the participants.

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Findings:
Table 1. Speed estimates for the verbs used in the estimation of speed question

VERB MEAN ESTIMATE OF

SPEED (mph)

Smashed 40.8
Collided 39.3
Bumped 38.1
Hit 34.0
Contacted 31.8

__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
Loftus and Palmer give two interpretations/explanations of the findings of their 1st experiment.

1. Firstly, they argue that the results could be due to a distortion in the memory of the
participant. The memory of how fast the cars were travelling could have been distorted by the
verbal label which had been used to characterise the intensity of the crash. The critical verb provides
misleading information

2. Secondly, they argue that the results could be due to response-bias factors, in which case
the participant is not sure of the exact speed and therefore adjusts his or her estimate to fit in with
the expectations of the questioner. (This is also an example of a demand characteristic)

Experiment 2
Procedure
The second experiment they wanted to find out if the participants’ memories really had been
distorted by the verbal label.
A similar procedure was used whereby 150 student participants viewed a short (one minute) film
which contained a 4 second scene of a multiple car accident, and were then questioned about it.
There were three conditions and the independent variable was manipulated by the wording of the
question.

50 of the participants were asked 'How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’
50 of the participants were asked 'How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each
other?'
50 of the participants were not interrogated about the speed of the vehicles.

One week later, the participants returned and, without viewing the film again, they answered a
series of questions about the accident. The critical question was 'Did you see any broken glass?'
The critical question was part of a longer series of questions and was placed in a random position on
each participants question paper. There was in fact no broken glass in the film.

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Findings:

Response Smashed Hit Control

Yes 16 7 6
No 34 43 44

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

Loftus and Palmer propose that there are two sources of

information available to us about an event

1) The event – what we saw at the time

2) Post-event information – supplied by the question containing hit or smashed.

Overtime these two sources of information integrate into another. Those in the “smashed”
condition believe the crash to have been more severe than it was and therefore assume that broken
glass must have been present. This is referred to the reconstructive hypothesis.

AO3 – These require triggers and tails!!

 Laboratory study, artificial situation, lacks ecological validity
 All participants were students
 Other factors, not just leading questions affect your recall of an event.
 Is their recollection really distorted? Could accurate memory be recalled under correct
conditions.
 Real-world applications of research. Devlin repot (1976) recommended convictions should not be
based on a single eye witness testimony alone.
 Use of research in police interviews

AO1 Post-event discussions

Memory of an event may also be influenced by discussion with others or repeat questioning.
Conformity effect
Co-witnesses may discuss an event and reach a consensus of opinion.
This was investigated by Fiona Gabbert and colleagues (2003). They got ppts to individually watch a
unique video of an event. The videos were different perspectives of the same event. In the
experimental condition ppts were encouraged to discuss what they had seen before individually
recalling the event. 71% of witnesses who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall
items acquired during the discussion.

Repeat Interviewing
Each time an eyewitness is interviewed, there is the possibility that comments from the interviewer
will become incorporated into their recollection. It is also possible the interviewer could use leading

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questions, which could alter the individual’s memory. This is especially the case when children are
being interviewed about a crime (LaRooy et al, 2005)

AO3
College students were asked to evaluate advertising material for Disneyland. There were three
conditions:
1) Misleading information about Bugs Bunny (a Warner Bros character)
2) Misleading information about Ariel (Disney character not introduced at time of childhood)
3) No misleading information
All had visited previously Disneyland during childhood.
Those who had seen the misleading information were more likely to (falsely) report shaking hands
with one of these characters than the control group.
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________

Loftus’ research would suggest that EWT was generally inaccurate, but this may not be the case.
Loftus’ research was a laboratory study, the ppts may not have taken it seriously and watching a
video is not the same as witnessing a “real” event.

Foster et al (1994) found that is participants thought they were watching a real-life robbery, and also
thought their responses would influence the trial, their identification of a robber was more accurate.

Yullie and Cutshall (1986) also found great accuracy in real-life. Witnesses to an armed robbery in
Canada, still gave accurate reports of the crime 4 months after it had happened, even though they
had been given 2 misleading questions.

Recent DNA exoneration cases have confirmed Loftus’ warnings regarding EWT. Mistaken EWT was
the largest single factor contributing to convictions of innocent people (Wells and Olson, 2003)

__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________

There are other factors that affect accuracy of EWT.

Age is one of them – a number of studies (e.g. Schacter et al, 1991) have found that elderly people
have more difficulty remembering the source of their information, even though their memory for
information itself may be unimpaired. This suggests that elderly are more prone to misleading
information than younger subjects.

Bekerian and Bowers (1983) showed slides of events leading up to a car crash in chronological order
and found that participants memories remained intact despite being asked misleading questions,
suggesting that post-event information affects the retrieval of memories rather than their storage.
They concluded that the original memory representation wasn’t lost for the participants. The display
of the slides in the correct order provided sufficient cues for the original memory to be retrieved,
despite the misinformation provided.

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__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________

8 – Eye-Witness Testimony: Anxiety

AO1
Anxiety: An unpleasant emotional state that is often accompanied by increased heart rate and rapid
breathing i.e. physiological arousal.

AO1 Johnson and Scott (1976)

Aims - to investigate the weapon focus effect.
Procedure – participants were sat in waiting room, where they overheard an argument in the
adjoining room. They then saw a man running from the room with either a pen covered in grease
(low anxiety condition) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety condition). Participants were then
asked to identify the man from a set of photographs.
Findings – the mean accuracy of low anxiety condition was 49% and the mean accuracy of high
anxiety condition was 33%.
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________

It is suggested that when a weapon is present, people’s attention becomes focused on the weapon
and they do not take in other information. This would suggest that anxiety has a negative effect on
the accuracy of EWT.
AO1 - Loftus (1979) The role of anxiety in eyewitness testimony
Aim: To find out whether anxiety in eyewitness testimony affected later identification.
Procedure:
Exposed to one of two conditions:
1. Overheard a low key discussion in a lab about an equipment failure. A person them emerged from
the laboratory holding a pen in grease covered hands.
2. Overheard a heated and hostile debate between people in the lab. After the sound of breaking
glass and crashing chairs. A man came out of the lab holding a paper knife covered in blood.
Participants were then asked to recall the person from 50 photos.
Findings:
•49% correctly recalled the confederate from 50 photos in the condition where the person emerged
holding a pen in greasy hands.
whereas
•33% correctly recalled the confederate from 50 photos when the person emerged holding a paper
knife covered in blood.
Conclusion:
This demonstrated the 'weapon focused phenomenon' as the participants focused on the weapon
and were less likely to recall the person accurately.

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It was concluded that a weapon focuses the attention and narrows the focus of attention, resulting
in accurate central details but less accurate peripheral details.

AO1 - Christianson and Hubinette (1993)

Aim – to see if anxiety enhanced accuracy of recall.
Procedure – they used 58 real witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden. The witnesses were either
HIGH ANXIETY GROUP victims (bank teller)
LOW ANXIETY GROUP bystanders (other employee or customer)
The interviews were conducted 4-15 months after the robberies.
Findings - Researchers found all witnesses showed generally good recall for details of robbery itself
(75% accurate recall). The victims in the high anxiety group had the best recall of all.
This suggests that anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall.
In a review of research Christianson (1992) concluded memory for negative emotional events is
better than for neutral events, at least for central details.

AO1 - Deffenbacher (1983)

Conducted a meta-analysis of 21 studies
into anxiety and accuracy of EWT. He
found that 10 of these studies had
linked higher arousal levels to eye
witness accuracy and 11 had found the
opposite.
Deffenbacher suggested the Yerkes-
Dodson effect can account for this
inconsistency.

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AO3
Supporting evidence by Loftus & Burns (1982)
Participants were allocated to one of two conditions.
1. Watched a violent short film where a boy was shot in the head
or
2. Watched a non-violent short film of a crime
Participants were less accurate in recall when they saw the violent short film than those who
watched the non-violent movie.
This demonstrates support for Loftus (1979) as it shows that when people witness anxiety provoking
situations they are less likely to recall accurately.

A negative criticism is that anxiety research raises ethical issues.

The participants in Loftus (1979) were deceived as they were led to believe it was a real situation,
this it may have caused psychological harm to the participant. In addition; they did not provide fully
informed consent and were not aware of their right to withdraw from the study. The researchers
attempted to overcome this by fully debriefing participants at the end of the study and allowing
them the right to withdraw.

Loftus et al (1987) showed that anxiety does focus attention on central features of a crime, such as a
weapon. The researchers monitored eyewitnesses’ eye movements and found that the presence of a
weapon caused attention to be physically drawn towards the weapon itself and away from other
things like a person’s face.
A strength of Christianson and Hubinette’s study is the use of a real-life crime. However,
Deffenbacher et al (2004) in another meta-analysis that anxiety reduced accuracy in lab studies and
had an even more negative impact on real-life studies. This contradicts the findings from the
Christian and Hubinette study.

BUT, Christianson and Hubbinette’s study concerned a violent real-life crime.

However, Halford and Milne (2005) also found that victims of violent crimes were more accurate in
their recall of crime scene information than victims of non-violent. Violence may be a key factor in
determining the accuracy of EWT, but there is by no means a simple conclusion.

However, some people cope better with anxiety than others! Bothwell et al (1987) investigated the
difference in accuracy between people who are very anxious (neurotics) and more emotionally
sensitive people (stable). They found that neurotics become less accurate when stressed, whereas
emotionally-stable individuals become more accurate. It is possible that the results from these
people average each other out in many studies.

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However, the weapon-focus effect may be due to surprise rather than anxiety. Pickel (1998)
investigated. She arranged ppts to watch a thief entering a hair salon carrying an object. They object
changed depending on experimental condition.
1) thief carried a pair of scissors (high threat, low surprise)
2) thief carried a handgun (high threat, high surprise)
3) thief carried a wallet (low threat, low surprise)
4) thief carried a whole raw chicken (low threat, high surprise)
She found identification was least accurate in high surprise conditions. This supports the idea that
weapon effect is related to surprise, rather than anxiety.

9 - The Cognitive Interview

AO1
There has been much focus so far about the problems with EWT.
There has also been a large amount of research on how to improve the accuracy of EWT.
The CI is a police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime, which encourages them to
recreate the original context of the crime in order to increase the accessibility of stored information.
Because our memory is made up of a network of associations rather than discrete events, memories
are accessed using multiple retrieval strategies.

AO1 – Standard Interview

Fisher et al (1987) studied real life interviews by detective officers in Florida over 4 month period.
They found that witnesses were frequently bombarded with a series of brief, direct and close-ended
questions aimed to elicit facts.
However, the sequencing of these questions often seemed to be out of sync with the witnesses’ own
mental representation of the event.
Witnesses were often interrupted and not allowed to talk freely about their experiences.

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AO1 - The Cognitive Interview

The cognitive interview as developed by Geiselman et al 1984 as a technique for interviewing
witnesses to crime. It was based on proven psychological principles concerning effective memory
recall. There are 4 key features
1) Mental reinstatement or original context
2) Report everything
3) Change order
4) Change perspective

Feature Outline this feature Why is it used?

Mental
reinstatement of
original context

Report everything

Change order

Change
perspective

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1. Mental Reinstatement
Mentally reinstate the context of the event. The witness is encouraged to recreate both the physical
and psychological environment at the time. This is to provide appropriate contextual and emotional
cues and to make memories accessible.
The interviewer may say things like:
I would like you to try and think back to that day… What had you been doing that day… what was
the weather like…..try and get a picture in your mind….how were you feeling. Tell me when you are
ready everything that you can remember, in your own time.

2. Report everything
The interviewer encourages the witness to report every single detail they can remember. Witnesses
should not leave out anything, even if they believe it is irrelevant. The interviewer might say
something like;
Some people hold back information because they are not quite sure that it is important or you may
believe I already know the information. Please do not leave out anything, just tell me anything that
pops into your head.
Because memories are interconnected, it could be that one detail is a cue to recollecting even more
information.

3. Change Order
The interviewer may try alternative ways around the timeline of an incident, for example reversing
the order. This is to try and prevent distortion due to your expectations of an event (schema). For
example if you witness an incident in a restaurant, you will have a schema or set of expectations –
for example waiter/waitress takes your order etc.
Interviewer may say;
I would like to try something which sometimes helps people to remember more. I would like you tell
me what happened backwards. What is the very last thing you remember happening and what
happened just before that.

4. Change Perspective
The interviewee is asked to recall event from a variety of perspectives to imagine how it may have
appeared to other people at the time. This is also done to disrupt the effect of schema.
Try to recall the incident from the perspective of_________. Think about he/she was an isolate
everything that you can remember about them, as if they are in a spotlight. Describe what he/she
would have seen.

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AO3
In support, Koehnken et al (1999) conducted a meta-analysis of 53 studies and found on average
there was an increase of 34% of correct information generated by the CI compared to standard
interview. However most of the studies reviewed were laboratory studies and ppts used were
students.

In support Fisher et al (1990) demonstrated the effectiveness of CI in a police setting in Miami. They
trained officers to use CI techniques when interviewing genuine witnesses and found that it
produced a significant increase in recall. This give evidence that the technique works in the ‘real
world’ and not just in experimental settings.

The idea behind CI is to increase the quantity of information, without comprising the quality.
However, it may be its effectiveness has largely been in term of quantity. Kohnken et al (1999) found
an 81% increase of correct information, but also a 61% of incorrect information, when the enhance
CI was used against the standard interview. This means that police still need to treat information
with caution as CI does not guarantee accuracy.

However, Milne & Bull (2002) investigated how useful each component of the CI was and found the
most effective parts of the technique was a combination of report everything and reinstatement.

However, Thames Valley Police use a version of CI that does not include changing perspectives.
Other forces only use report everything and reinstate context (Kebbell and Wagstaff, 1996)

However, there are limitations to use of CI in practice. Many police forces report that the technique
requires more time than they have available and that instead officers use deliberate strategies to
limit and eye witness report to the minimum amount of information that the officers feel is
necessary. CI requires specialist training and many forces have not been able to provide more than
few hours (Kebbell and Wagstaff, 1996). For these reasons the use of CI has not been widespread.

In support, the CI may be of particular use when interviewing older witnesses. Due to stereotypes
about age and memory, older people are likely to be overly cautious about information they give.
However, the report everything component may overcome such difficulties. For example, Mello and
Fisher (1996) compared older(mean age 72 years) and younger (mean age 22 years) adults’ memory
of a filmed simulated crime. They were then interviewed using either standard interview or cognitive
interview. The CI did produce more information, but the advantage was more significant for the
older group.

However, Geiselman (1999) found children under the age of six reported things slightly less
accurately when interviewed using the CI. It could be that the children did not understand the
instructions properly. It was found that the CI was effective for children aged 8+.

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PERSONAL CHECKLIST
  
1 – Coding, Capacity & Duration
Sensory register, short-term and long-term memory. Features of each
store: coding, capacity and duration.
AO1 Define key terms: coding, capacity and duration
AO1 Sensory register, short-term and long-term memory
AO1 Research on capacity, coding and duration of STM & LTM
AO3 Research
2 – The Multi-Store Model of Memory
The multi-store model of memory: sensory register, short-term memory and
long-term memory. Features of each store: coding, capacity and duration.
AO1 Multi-store model of memory
AO3 Multi-store model of memory
AO3 Research, including lab experiments and case studies
AO2 Apply knowledge (Q2, Q4)
3 – Types of Long-term Memory
Types of long-term memory: episodic, semantic, procedural.
AO1 Three types of long-term memory
AO1 Outline research
AO3 Evidence from research, including brain imaging & case studies
AO2 Apply knowledge (Q6)
4 – The Working Memory Model
The working memory model: central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad
and episodic buffer. Features of the model: coding and capacity.
AO1 Working memory model
AO1 Dual task research
AO3 Working memory model
AO3 Research including lab experiments and case studies.
AO2 Apply knowledge (Q1, Q3)
5 – Explanations for Forgetting: Interference
Explanations for forgetting: proactive and retroactive interference.
AO1 Proactive and retroactive interference
AO1 Research studies
AO3 Interference as an explanation for forgetting
AO3 Research studies
6 – Explanations for Forgetting: Retrieval Failure
Explanations for forgetting: retrieval failure due to absence of cues.
AO1 Retrieval failure & encoding specificity principle
AO1 Context-dependent & state dependent forgetting
AO3 Research into retrieval failure and absence of cues
AO2 Apply knowledge (Q1, Q2)
7 – Eye-Witness Testimony: Misleading Information
Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: misleading information, including
leading questions and post-event discussion

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  
AO1 Loftus’ research into leading questions
AO1 Post-event discussions
AO3 Research into misleading information
AO3 Reconstructive hypothesis
AO2 Apply knowledge (Q1)
8 – Eye-Witness Testimony: Anxiety
Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: anxiety
AO1 Research into accuracy of EWT and anxiety
AO1 Yerkes-Dodson theory
AO3 Research into accuracy of EWT and anxiety
AO3 Yerkes-Dodson theory
AO2 Apply knowledge (Q1, Q2)
9 – The Cognitive Interview
Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, including the use of the
cognitive interview.
AO1 The four features of the cognitive interview
AO3 Use of the cognitive interview
AO2 Apply knowledge (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q6)

AO1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of scientific ideas, processes,

techniques and procedures.
AO2: Apply knowledge and understanding of scientific ideas, processes,
techniques and procedures:
 in a theoretical context
 in a practical context
 when handling qualitative data
 when handling quantitative data.
AO3: Analyse, interpret and evaluate scientific information, ideas and evidence,
including in relation to issues, to:
 make judgements and reach conclusions
 develop and refine practical design and procedures.

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