...MEMORY ACCURACY: THEORETICAL MODELS AND EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION Human memory has been on many occasions compared to the operations of a computer on the basis of their multifunctional systems. Memory is critical and plays a central role in our everyday information processes. Several models of information processes have in-time being proposed. The Atkinson-Shiffrin model (1968) is the most popular is and widely used by many memory researchers. The model indicates the transfer of information from the environment into the sensory memory which is very brief that some information is forgotten before it reaches the second storage. Short-term memory is the second temporary store which is also fragile. The short-term memory is very similar to working memory responsible for higher cognitive functioning which is also temporary. Information is then finally encoded onto the long-term memory where it is assumed to be a permanent storage for longer periods. Baddeley (2000) proposed the episodic buffer as the new forth component of the working memory model. This model was initially proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) with three components, the central executive assisted by the phonological loop and the visuo-sketchpad assumed to be temporary storage faculties. The episodic buffer is assumed to play a very central role of binding features into objects and it is assumed to be a temporary limited store which links all systems together for the purposes of multi-dimensional coding (Baddeley...
Words: 2170 - Pages: 9
...crime and studying this unit, there is one trick for giving your memory a boost, Is to use mnemonic devices to encode items a special way. Three popular techniques is the Method of loci, peg words, and acronyms. There are other reasons for memory distortions, for instance epinephrine and cortisol are natural hormones in the body that affect the amygdale. The powerful effect of these hormones produce what is known as “flashbulb memories”, flashbulb memories are memories that are produced with surprising or emotional events in life. Another reason that could affect memory is the sleeper effect. The sleeper effect is like when students cram for a final the day before. Trying to memorize a lot of information at the same time really doesn’t help your memory it actually impedes it. You wouldn’t learn or remember as much unless you did a distributed practice which is spacing out you learning, you tend to retain more information a little bit at a time instead of trying to remember all at once. [4] If, I was a juror and I knew about this information then I would definite bring it to light, the fact that we create our own memories to make life more efficient. There are numerous ways that people forgot information without even realizing it. Elizabeth Loftus did studies on manufacturing memories to bring this topic to light because a lot of people were serving time in prison because of these types of memories. She did a study about people visiting Disney World and asks about what type of characters...
Words: 479 - Pages: 2
...reactions can lead to undue distress and be manifested in psychological disorders such post-traumatic stress disorder as well as anxiety disorders. One source of unwanted emotional reactions is memories of stressful or traumatic events. Past research has found that highly emotional memories can be difficult to forget, and can be frequently brought into conscious awareness without volition. Traumatic memories may well be remembered due to unique organizational and structural features in memory. Whether such memories lack proper coherence and organization, or whether they are overly integrated into the life story, stressful memories appear to differ from everyday memories their structure and organizational features. As a result, once a stressful experience has ended, the experience can continue to affect an individual through his or her memory of the event. In spite of the ongoing controversy surrounding how the organizational aspects of stressful and traumatic events differ from those of non-traumatic memories; most researchers agree that emotion is a central aspect of traumatic events. Many factors influence which moments from our past are remembered best, and the affect experienced during an event is an important contributor. “Flashbulb memories” which are events of emotional significance are more likely to be recalled vividly than mundane experiences, and neurobiological research has confirmed...
Words: 1296 - Pages: 6
...decision making studies have found that people have make a choice under anxiety they are impaired. This is fascinating because it shows how people can influence by outside stimulus and that keeping calm is a good idea. The second interesting portion was sadness decision making. Scientist has found that we people are sad and have to make decisions they typically people process strategy with a lot of attention to details. This is an interesting fact for a lot of decisions we tend to make when were sad. For example how people respond to decisions after a bad break up in a relationship. The last part of the chapter that was interesting was positive mood decision making. I found this to be stimulating because research has shown that people...
Words: 619 - Pages: 3
...RUNNING HEAD: SOURCE MEMORY AND THE IMPLICATION OF THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Memory has a multitude of facets that comprise what a memory is and how a memory is characterized. Some memories are recollections, hazy moving pictures; some are unconscious working memories, while others are a bit more in depth. A source memory is a type of memory in which we remember who, what, where, when and how of a specific event. It is what gives our memories relative meaning to both time and the significance of the events that occurred in our life. A memory is generally meaningful regardless, but when we can recollect the sources of that memory, it fine tunes the events surrounding it as well as future recollections. The ability to source our memories comes full circle within our lifetime, developing in early adolescence throughout early and late adulthood, and eventually the ability becomes more tasking for our cortex within old age. Time is one of life’s few constants, a never ending stream of information in this space-time continuum. The ability of our mind to capture moments of this past in an almost capsule like photograph is astounding, being able to source these times shows how powerful memory is and the capture of moments in this never-ending continuum. Myriads of studies on source memory have been conducted and more recently within the past few decades. The studies herein focus on various source memory tasks throughout age groups, examining the differences...
Words: 2925 - Pages: 12
...Module 24 Memory Behavioural Perspective * Concentrates on OVERT behavior * Stress S – R relationship and argues that this one “STAMPED IN” Cognitive Perspective O Predict Expect Evaluate Memory Predict Expect Evaluate Memory S R Chimpanzees Experiment: Waiting at the place where the drone went pass to get it down Insight – the sudden understanding of how to solve a problem as a result of re-organizing the problem. Memory – the learning that persists overtime. Measuring Memory * Recall – retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time. (i.e. Fill-in-the-blank question) * Recognition – identifying items previously learned. (i.e. Multiple choice question) * Relearning – learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time. (i.e. measures the time you save when learning the same thing the second time) Tests of recognition and of time spent relearning demonstrate that we remember more than we can recall. As rehearsal increases, relearning time decreases. Information processing model * Encoding – get information into our brain * Storage – retain that information * Retrieval – later get the information back out Parallel processing – the processing of many aspects...
Words: 1647 - Pages: 7
...multi-store model of memory The multi-store model of memory is a representation of the flow of information through the memory system. The information first flows through the sensory memory, then the short-term memory, and then the long-term memory. Information is detected by the sense organs and enters the sensory memory. If the information is not given attention then it is forgotten through trace decay. If the information is given attention then it goes to the short-term memory. If you repeat the information then it stays in your short-term memory due to the process of maintenance rehearsal. This means that if the information is repeated then it stays refreshed in our minds. But items can also be forgotten in the short-term memory due to displacement. This is the process by which items in the STM are pushed out to make room for incoming new ones. However, if the information has remained in the STM due to maintenance rehearsal and links are made, then the information is transferred to the long-term memory through the process elaborative rehearsal. Making links is when you subconsciously compare information to something you have seen before therefore making it easier to remember. When you think of a memory then you retrieve it from your LTM and bring it to your STM. This is called retrieval. Each part of the multi-store model of memory has a different amount of capacity, duration and encoding. The capacity is the amount of information that can be held in a memory store, for example...
Words: 777 - Pages: 4
...model of memory (12 marks) Information from the environment is transferred through one of our five senses into the sensory memory (encoded depending on the type of information we receive). The sensory memory is a store suggested to be large in capacity but the duration the information is held for is the problem, lasting only fractions of a second. When attention is paid to information it enters the short term memory. According to Miller, the short term memory has a capacity of 7+-2 items. The duration of the short term memory last between 18 and 30 seconds, the STM is encoded mainly acoustically but sometimes visually. If maintenance rehearsal takes place it will remain in the STM or will be lost through decay or displacement. Elaborative rehearsal will then transfer information into the long term memory, which has an unlimited capacity and duration (without interference such as memory decay). The LTM encodes mainly semantically (through meaning). Information can be retrieved from the LTM to be used in the STM when needed. One strength of the model is that is it supported from clinical/empirical research based on real people rather than laboratory experiments. This makes it high in ecological validity and can be applied to everyday life within the real world. For example, the study of HM, a brain damaged patient underwent an operation to cure a severe case of epilepsy but this resulted in the ability to transfer from the STM to the LTM, HM could not form long term memories and could...
Words: 517 - Pages: 3
...Witnesses rely on their memories to testify as to what they believe is a true account of the event. However, memories have been found to be fallible with no guarantee of corresponding with objective reality (Johnson, 2001). Research has found that false memories (FM), where a person recalls an event that did not occur and mistakes it to be a true representation of that event (Gleaves & Smith, 2004; Johnson, 2001) exists within the realm of eyewitness testimony (ET) (Loftus, Miller & Burns, 1978). This raises the issue of how well does ET reflect reality. Some theories that explain FM include the source monitoring failure theory (Johnson, Hastroudi & Lindsay, 1993), activation monitoring theory (Roediger, Balota &Watson, 2001) and fuzzy trace theory (Brianerd & Reyna, 1998; Reyna & Brainerd, 1995). Due to word count limitations, this paper will explore the concept of FM using fuzzy trace theory, source monitoring errors and the misinformation effect to explain how FM occurs in the context of ET and why ET can never the representation of the complete truth. The FTT proposes that there are two parallel memory traces, the verbatim trace and the gist trace (Brianerd & Reyna, 1998; Reyna & Brainerd, 1995). The verbatim trace stores information item-by-item and is a verdicial representation of an event. The gist trace stores a generalised meaning based representation of an event. The FTT proposes that verbatim trace decays quickly whereas the gist trace lingers in memory longer resulting...
Words: 1529 - Pages: 7
...the BEST answer) (1) The ‘nature-Nurture issue’ is the question of how the development of behavior depends on : A. Heredity & environment B. The external situation and an internal will C. The physical environment and the social environment D. Health and nutrition (2) What education degree does a psychiatrist hold ? A. M.S. B. M.D. C. Ph.D. D. B.A. (3) What type of psychologist specializes in the study of thought and knowledge ? A. Quantitative psychologist B. Behavioral psychologist C. Physiological psychologist D. Cognitive psychologist (4) Who established the first psychological research laboratory ? A. Wilhelm Wundt B. William James C. SIgmund Freud D. John Watson (5) What event led to the rise of psychology as we know it today ? A. The computer revolution B. The great depression C. The civil rights movement D. World War 2 (6) When someone conducts a research study, which of these comes first ? A. Methods B. Hypothesis C. Results D. Interpretation (7) Scientist’s preference for a theory that makes the fewest unfamiliar or untested assumptions is the principle of : A. Parsimony B. Statistical significance C. Normal distribution D. Informed consent (8) An ‘Operational definition’ is one that : A. Explains where the term came from B. Describes the underlying cause of something C. Tells...
Words: 1656 - Pages: 7
...of that research. 2003 (c) The study participants (number, sex, ethnicity, age, demographics, SES) The participants of this study were 1,481 undergraduate students from the University of Alberta. They were of both genders and multiple demographics. The final set of participants, however, was 142 grad students. 2. Identify the study design as one of the following: Naturalistic observation, Case study, Quasi-experimental, Experimental Briefly explain why. This study can be considered quasi-experimental because the groups were not randomly assigned to their IV groups and the time after the attacks was the IV being manipulated by the researchers....
Words: 586 - Pages: 3
...Midterm Study Guide Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8 Chapter 5 - Consciousness 1. Definition of arousal, awareness, and consciousness 2. Know and distinguish between the Levels of Consciousness (e.g. controlled processes, automatic processes, altered states of consciousness, etc.) 3. Know elements of the subconscious (i.e. incubation) 4. Define circadian rhythm and circumstances that might disrupt it. 5. Know the different stages of sleeping and when dreaming occurs. 6. Know and identify sleeping disorders (i.e. sleep apnea, sleep walking, narcolepsy, night terrors) 7. Know about dream interpretation. a. Psychodynamic (Freud) – latent and manifest dream content. b. Cognitive interpretation of dreams c. Activation-synthesis interpretation of dreams 8. Know definition of drug addiction and tolerance Example questions: It is the end of the month and Cindy has several bills yet to pay, but she does not have much money left. She spends most of the day thinking how she is going to make the payments. Later, while watching TV, she finds a solution to her problem. Cindy is demonstrating: A. metacognition. B. awareness. C. controlled processing. D. incubation. Which of the following statements is true of the cognitive theory of dreaming? A. The theory rests on the idea that dreams are essentially conscious noncognitive processing. B. According to the theory, there is an essential search for the hidden, symbolic content of dreams. ...
Words: 810 - Pages: 4
... The effect of Word Processing on Memory ability Tutor: Mary Christopoulou Student: Panagiotis Moschonas Submission Date: 25/3/13 The effect of Word Processing on Memory ability Many researchers have done experiments or had conducted studies about the memory and our ability to storage information inside our brain and recall them when we need them. We divide our memory in three “pieces” the short-term memory and the long-term memory and the sensory memory. This memory model was explained by the researchers Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968. First is the sensory memory, it can memorize things only for a few seconds. The visual system possesses iconic memory for visual stimuli like the shape, the size and the color of an object. Second is the short-term memory, in this case we can store some information for a longer period so that we can be able to use them for example we can memorize a telephone number long enough to dial it and use it, after that we are giving away the information if we don’t need it. According to Peterson & Peterson (1959) the duration of the short-term memory is approximately fifteen to thirty seconds. The third one is the long-term memory, which is the type of memory that makes us remember information from the minute that we learn something for the rest of our lifetime. Some memories may be stored from sensory...
Words: 1914 - Pages: 8
...Test 2 Notes (Ch. 5,6,7,10) Ch. 5 consciousness- an individuals awareness of external events and internal sensations under a condition of arousal meta cognition- thinking about thinking. The 5 levels of consciousness: Higher-level- highly focused; selective attention Lower-level- automatic processes; little attention, daydreaming Altered States- trauma, drugs, fear, fatigue, meditation, prayer biorhythms- are periodic physiological fluctuations in the body. Circadian rhythms- daily behavioral or physiological cycles (exs: sleep/wake, body temp, blood sugar, and blood pressure). Why we need sleep: For physical restoration, adaptation, growth, and memory. What it does for us: Sleep rests the body and mind. The effects of chronic sleep deprivation: Have trouble paying attention to tasks and solving problems, decreases brain activity. The 5 stages of sleep: Stage 1: drowsy sleep; myoclanic jerk; (theta waves) Stage 2: Muscle activity decreases Stage 3 & 4: delta waves; deep sleep Stage 5: (REM) dreaming occurs (Rapid Eye Movement) Major sleep disorders: insomnia- inability to sleep Nightmares- occur during REM Night Terrors- occur in kids, during stage 4 Narcolepsy- sudden urge to sleep Sleep Apnea- stop breathing during sleep Psychoactive drugs- act on the nervous system to alter states of consciousness, modify perceptions and change moods. Tolerance- the need to take increasing amounts of a drug to get the same effect physical dependence- the physiological...
Words: 1550 - Pages: 7
...PSY 100 STUDY GUIDE EXAM #3 CHAPTER 8 Memory Retrieval Serial Position Effect: Recall is superior for the items at the beginning and end of a list Primacy Effect: superior recall for items at the beginning of a list Recency Effect: superior recall for items at the end of a list Retrieval Cues Recall: individual must retrieve previously learned information (essay test) Recognition: individual only has to identify (“recognize”) learned items (multiple choice test) Encoding Specificity Principle: associations formed at the time of encoding or learning tend to be effective retrieval cues (ex. Mnemonics, semantic encoding) Priming: activating particular connections or association in memory Flashbulb Memories: memories of emotionally significant events that people often recall with more accuracy and vivid imagery than everyday events Factors involved in forgetting Challenges of Forgetting 1. Absent-mindedness: inattention to details produces encoding failure 2. Transience: storage decay over time 3. Blocking: inaccessibility of stored info Challenges of Distortion 4. Misattribution: confusion about source of info 5. Suggestibility: lingering effects of misinfo 6. Bias: belief-colored recollections Challenge of Intrusion 7. Persistence: unwanted memories Proactive Interference: info learned earlier interferes with recall or newer material; material that was learned earlier disrupts the recall of material learned later Retroactive Interference:...
Words: 1427 - Pages: 6
