MEMORY, SCHEMA THEORY

AND THEIR RELIABILITY

IB Psychology LAJM
 TASK
• You have three minutes
• Try to write down all
possible information
that you receive from
the environment
• Engage in conversation
– What kind of things did
you write down?
– What senses did you
mention?
 TASK

• Watch the video clip

and think which acts are
possible for human
information processing
and which are not
 Cognitive approach

• Researches human
information processing
• Cognition
– ”All the processes by
which the sensory input
is transformed, reduced,
elaborated, stored,
recovered and used”
(Ulric Neisser, 1967)
 TASK
• Form five groups
• Co-operative discussion – In the end, groups are
mixed and each member
– Each group is given one
of the group engage in
step in the history of the
conversation from their
cognitive approach
own perspective
(pages 123–128)
– Each member tries to
– Groups familiarise
convince others of their
themselves with the
own approach’s
essential content and
superiority
arguments related to
their historical step
 Cognitive approach
• Principles of cognitive
approach:
– Mental processes can be
studied scientifically
– Mental representations
guide behaviour
– Cognitive processes do
NOT function in isolation
– Biases in cognitive
processing can be
systematic and predictable
 Models of memory

• What is a model?
– Physical representation
what a psychological
phenomenon could
look like
– Hypothetical construct
Models of memory
MULTI-STORE MODEL OF MEMORY
(Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968)
 TASK

• Read pages 132–134

and complete the
teacher’s handout
 TASK

– After showing the grid,

• Prepare yourself for
the teacher will say
Sperling’s test (1960)! ”top”, ”middle” or
– Teacher will show you a ”bottom” indicating the
4x3 grid of characters for line of the grid
an extremely brief – Your job is to remember
moment of time as many characters from
that line as possible
 TASK
• Read pages 135–136
• What were the aim,
procedure and results of
Glanzer and Cunitz
(1966) study?
– What kind of evidence
does serial position
effect provide for the
multi-store model of
memory?
 TASK
• Read pages 136–137
and summarise the
criticism of the multi-
store memory model in
your own words
– What are the strengths
and limitations of this
model?
– Do a TEACUP analysis
Models of memory
WORKING MEMORY MODEL
(Baddeley and Hitch, 1974)
 TASK

• Read page 137 and

summarize the main
functions of the parts in
the working memory
model in your own
words
 TASK
• Read pages 138-139 and
• Conrad and Hull (1964)
the teacher’s handout
• Form groups and choose • Baddeley and Hitch
at least one of the (1974)
studies and try to create • Baddeley, Thompson
a simple replication and Buchanan (1975)
• First, test your • Baddeley, Lewis and
replication(s) on Vallar (1984)
yourselves and then on • Baddeley (1996)
other students • Quinn and McConnel
– Do you get the same (1996)
results?
 TASK

• Read the evaluation of

the working memory
model on page 139
– What are the strengths
and limitations of this
model?
– Do a TEACUP analysis
 REVIEW

• What was meant by:

– synapse?
– neuroplasticity?
 Biological base of memory

• Long-term potentiation
– Strengthening of
synapses based on
frequent activation
– Produces a long-lasting
increase in information
transmission between
neurons
 TASK

• Watch the
Khan Academy video on
long-term potentiation
(LTP)
 TASK

• Watch the
National Geographic vid
eo
on London taxi drivers
 TASK
• Read page 61
• What were the aim,
procedure and results
of Maguire et al. (2000)
study?
– Based on the study, how
does hippocampus relate
to memory functions?
 TASK

• Evaluate the Maguire et

al. (2000) study
– What are its strengths
and limitations?
– Do a MAGEC/GRENADE
analysis
 RESEARCH: Types of experiments
• Quasi-experiment • True experiment
– Allocation into groups is – Allocation into
done on the basis of pre- experimental groups is
existing differences done randomly
– Researchers do NOT – Researchers manipulate
manipulate the IV the IV
– Cause-effect inferences – Cause-effect inferences
CANNOT be made can be made

HOW IS QUASI-EXPERIMENT
DIFFERENT FROM
TRUE-EXPERIMENT
 Biological base of memory
• Maguire et al. (2006)
– Comparison between
London taxi drivers and
bus drivers
– Years of navigation
experience correlated
with hippocampal grey
matter volume only in
taxi drivers
– Ability to acquire new
visuo-spatial information
was worse in taxi drivers
than in bus drivers
 Biological base of memory
• Amnesia
– General term for memory
dysfunctions caused by
brain damage
• Anterograde amnesia
– Failure to store memories
after the trauma
• Retrograde amnesia
– Failure to recall memories
before the trauma
Biological base of memory
 TASK

• Watch the BBC video on

the case of Clive Wearing

• What brain parts are

probably damaged in
Clive’s case?
 TASK

• Watch the TED-Ed video

on the case of HM

• How is the case of HM

similar to the case of
Clive Wearing?
 Biological base of memory
• Dementia
– General term for illnesses
where mental capacities
are deteriorated

• Alzheimer’s disease
– Most common form of
dementia where
semantic and episodic
memories are decreased
 REVIEW

• What were meant by

schemas?
• What could be
examples of different
schemas?
• How do schemas
influence our
behaviour?
 Schema theory

• Cognitive schemas
– Mental representations
– Patterns of knowledge
 Schema theory

ENVIRONMENT

CYCLE OF SELECTS
CHANGES
TARGETS
PERCEPTION

SCHEMA PERCEPTION
DIRECTS
 Schema theory

THREE MAIN STAGES IN MEMORY PROCESSES

ENCODING STORAGE RETRIEVAL

SCHEMA PROCESSING CAN INFLUENCE

MEMORY AT ALL STAGES
 TASK

Read pages 142–145

• What were the aim, • What were the aim,

procedure and results of procedure and results of
Bransford and Johnson Anderson and Pichert
(1972) study? (1978) study?
– How did schemas – How did schemas
influence encoding? influence retrieval?
 Schema theory
• Brewer & Treyens (1981)
– Does stereotypical
schema of an office
influence memory recall?
– Participants were asked to
wait 35 seconds in an
office room
– After the waiting period,
participants were taken
into another room and
were asked to write down
everything they could
remember from the office
room
 Schema theory

– Participants recalled
things from a typical
office
– They did not recall the
wine bottle and the
picnic basket
– Participants schema of
an office influenced their
memory of it SKULL
 Schema theory
• Social schemas
– Schemas about groups
of people
– E.g. stereotypes

• Scripts
– Schemas about
sequences or events
– E.g. grocery shopping
 Schema theory

• Self-schemas
– Schemas about ourselves
– ”I wish I was different”
– ”People don’t notice me”
– ”No matter how hard I
try I will fail for sure”
 TASK

• Teacher will divide the

class in two groups
• Both groups will given a
stimulus material
• Both groups will do a
Kahoot! separately
 Schema theory
TOP-DOWN
PROCESSING

BOTTOM-UP
PROCESSING
 Schema theory

• Pattern recognition
– Matching the current
sensory input to
schemas in memory
 TASK

• Watch the following

video clip experience
pattern recognition in
action
 TASK
• What are the pros and
the cons of schemas?
– How do they facilitate
and/or complicate the
way we process
information and guide
our behaviour?
• What are the strengths
and limitations of
schema theory?
– Do a TEACUP analysis
 Reliability of memory

• Theory of
reconstructive memory
– Memory is an active
process
– Memory is NOT exact, it
is distorted by existing
schemas
 Reliability of memory

• Bartlett (1932)
– Studied the reliability of
memory with serial
reproduction of Native
American legend “The
War of Ghosts”
 Reliability of memory

• Effort after meaning

– Attempt to match
unfamiliar ideas into a
familiar framework
 TASK

• Watch the
instructional video
about Loftus and Palmer
(1974) study

• Focus on the aim,

procedure and results of
this twin experiment
 Reliability of memory
• Loftus and Palmer
suggested that the
findings could be
interpreted in two ways
– Response bias: the verb
biases the response to a
higher estimate
– Memory change: the
verb causes an actual
change in the memory
 TASK

• Read pages 162-164

• What were the aim,
procedure and results of
Loftus, Miller and Burns
(1978) study?
– How was this study
different from Loftus and
Palmer (1974) study?
 Reliability of memory

• Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

– Do real eyewitness accounts
get distorted with misleading
post-event information?
– 13 eyewitnesses of a gun
store robbery were
interviewed four months
after the incident
 Reliability of memory

– Half of the participants

were asked leading
questions with misleading
information
– When compared to the
official police records,
misleading questions had
very little effect on the
participants recall
 Reliability of memory
• Yuille and Cutshall
(1986) study can be
explained in two ways
– Reconstructive memory is
an artificial phenomenon
that takes place only in
laboratory experiments
– Study might be tapped
into a separate memory
mechanism: flashbulb
memory
 TASK

• Watch Elizabeth Loftus

TED-talk
“How reliable is our me
mory?”
 TASK

• Is human memory
reliable?
– On what basis it is?
– On what basis it is not?
– Can you trust your
memory?
 TOK-LINK
• How do the following KQs
relate to the contents we
just covered?
– What features of knowledge
have an impact on its
reliability?
– What constraints are there
on the pursuit of knowledge?
– To what extent is certainty
attainable?
DISCUSS AND EXPLORE THESE KNOWLEDGE QUESTIONS
 TASK

• Read at least one set of • After reading the

sample responses, both responses, pay attention
SAQs and ERQ/essays, to the examiner’s
in peda.net concerning comments
models of memory,
schema theory and • What were you able to
reconstructive memory learn from these
responses?
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