Fatima Konate - Memory Knowledge Organiser PDF

Memory - Knowledge Organiser Subtopic AO1 (Key Studies and Key Terms) AO3 - Support/Limitations Short and Capacity - a measure of how much can be Limitation: the size of the chunk affects how Long-term held in memory. It is represented in terms of many chunks you c...

Memory - Knowledge Organiser Subtopic AO1 (Key Studies and Key Terms) AO3 - Support/Limitations Short and Capacity - a measure of how much can be Limitation: the size of the chunk affects how Long-term held in memory. It is represented in terms of many chunks you can remember. memory bits of information, such as the number of digits. Simon (1974) - people had a shorter memory span for larger chunks, such Coding (also encoding) - The way as eight-word phrases, than smaller information is changed so that it can be chunks, such as one-syllable words. stored in memory. Information enters the This continues to support the view that brain via the senses (e.g. eyes and ears). It STM has a limited capacity is then stored in various forms, such as visual codes (like a picture), acoustic codes Limitation: The capacity of STM is not the (sounds) or semantic codes (the meaning of same for everyone. the experience). Jacobs also found that recall (digit span) increased steadily with age; Duration - a measure of how long a memory eight year olds could remember an lasts before it is no longer available. average of 6.6 digits whereas the Long-term memory (LTM) Your memory for mean for 19 year olds was 8.6 digits. events that have happened in the past. This This age increase might be due to lasts anywhere from 2 minutes to 100 years. changes in brain capacity, and/or to LTM has potentially unlimited duration and the development of strategies such as capacity and tends to be coded semantically. chunking. Short-term memory (STM) - Your memory for Limitation: Testing STM was artificial immediate events. STMs are measured in seconds and minutes rather than hours and Trying to memorise consonant days, i.e. a short duration. They disappear syllables does not truly reflect most unless they are rehearsed. STM also has a everyday memory activities where limited capacity of about four items or what we are trying to remember is chunks and tends to be coded acoustically. meaningful. This type of memory is sometimes referred sometimes try to remember fairly to as working memory. meaningless things, such as groups of numbers (phone numbers) or letters Capacity: (postcodes). although the task was artificial, the The capacity of STM: study does have some relevance to can be assessed using digit span everyday life. Joseph Jacobs (1887) - He found that the average span for digits was Limitation: STM may not be exclusively 9.3 items and 7.3 for letters. acoustic Why was it easier to recall digits? Some experiments have shown that Jacobs suggests that it may be visual codes are also used in STM. because there are only nine digits Brandimote et al. (1992) - found that whereas there are 26 letters. participants used visual coding in STM if they were given a visual task The magic number 7 ‡ 2: (pictures) and prevented from doing any verbal rehearsal in the retention George Miller (1956) interval the span of immediate memory is verbal rehearsal was prevented, about seven items - sometimes a bit participants used visual codes. more, sometimes a bit less. (Wickens et al., 1976) - has shown people can count seven dots flashed that STM sometimes uses a semantic  Memory - Knowledge Organiser onto a screen but not many more code. applies to recall of musical notes, letters and even words. Limitation: Baddeley may not have tested `people can recall five words as well LTM as they can recall five letters - we Baddeley's methodology has been chunk things together and can then criticised. remember more. STM was tested by asking participants to recall a word list immediately after Duration: hearing it. LTM was tested by waiting 20 minutes. The duration of STM It is questionable as to whether this is Peterson and Peterson (1959) - really testing LTM. studied the duration of STM 24 students. Each participant was tested over 8 trials. On each trial a participant was given a consonant syllable and a three-digit number (e.g. THX 512). They were asked to recall the consonant syllable after a retention interval During the retention interval they had to count backwards from their three-digit number. 90% correct over 3 seconds 20% correct after 9 seconds 2% correct after 18 seconds. STM has a very short duration - less than 18 seconds - as long as verbal rehearsal is prevented. The duration of LTM Harry Bahrick et al. (1975) tested 400 people of various ages (17-74) on their memory of classmates. A photo-recognition test consisted of 50 photos, some from the participant's high-school yearbook. In a free-recall test participants were asked to list the names they could remember of those in their graduating class. Participants who were tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in identifying faces. After 48 years, this declined to about 70% for photo recognition. Free recall was about 60% accurate after 15 years, dropping to 30% after 48 years.. Coding:  Memory - Knowledge Organiser Alan Baddeley (1966a and 1966b) - found that participants had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in STM but not in LTM, whereas semantically similar words posed little problem for STMs but led to muddled LTMs.\ This suggests that STM is largely encoded acoustically LTM is largely encoded semantically. The Multi-store model - explanation of memory Support: Case studies Multi-Store based on three separate memory stores, Psychologists have also shown that Model of and how information is transferred between different areas of the brain are Memory these stores. involved in STM and LTM from their study of individuals with brain damage. Sensory register - the information at the (Scoville and Milner, 1957). HM - His senses = information collected by your eyes, brain damage was caused by an ears, nose, fingers and so on. operation to remove the hippocampus from both sides of his brain to reduce Sensory register the severe epilepsy he had suffered. the place where information is held at HM's personality and intellect each of the senses - the eyes, ears, remained intact but he could not form nose, fingers, tongue, etc., and the new LTMs, although he could corresponding areas of the brain. remember things from before the capacity = very large. surgery. constantly receiving information - This provides support for the MSM's remains in the sensory register for a notion of separate stores, as HM was very brief duration (milliseconds). unable to transfer information from his STM to LTM, but was able to retrieve Attention information from before his surgery If a person's attention is focused on (i.e. from his LTM). one of the sensory stores, then the data is transferred to short-term Limitation: The multi-store model is too simple memory (STM). Attention is the first step in The MSM suggests that both STM and remembering something. LTM are single 'unitary' stores. However, research does not support Short-term memory this. Information is held in STM so it can t working memory (STM) is divided be used for immediate tasks into a number of qualitatively different limited duration - it is in a 'fragile' stores - the kind of memory stored state and will disappear (decay) there. relatively quickly if it isn't rehearsed. The same is true for LTM. Research Information will also disappear from shows there are a number of STM if new information enters STM. qualitatively different kinds of LTM - pushing out (or displacing) the each behaves differently. original information. For example, maintenance rehearsal a limited capacity can explain long-term storage in semantic memory (memory for Maintenance rehearsal knowledge about the world) but Repetition keeps information in STM doesn't explain long-term episodic but eventually, such repetition will memories (memories for things that create LTM. you experienced).  Memory - Knowledge Organiser Atkinson and Shiffrin - proposed the This suggests that the MSM may be more the information is rehearsed, overly simplistic. the better it is remembered. Limitation: Long-term memory involves more Long-term memory than maintenance rehearsal potentially unlimited duration + Craik and Lockhart (1972) - that capacity. enduring memories are created by the evidence suggests that either you processing that you do, rather than actually had never really made the through maintenance rehearsal. memory permanent or it is there, Things that are processed more deeply are more memorable just Retrieval because of the way they are getting information from LTM processed. involves the information passing back Craik and Tulving (1975) - gave through STM. participants a list of nouns (e.g. then available for use. 'shark') and asked a question that involved shallow or deep processing - asked whether a word was printed in capital letters (shallow processing) or asked whether the word fitted in a sentence (deep processing). The participants remembered more words in the task involving deep processing rather than shallow processing. Limitation: How separate are STM and LTM? The multi-store model suggests that STM is involved before LTM. This claim has been questioned by other researchers. Logie (1999) pointed out that STM actually relies on LTM and therefore cannot come 'first. In order to chunk you need to recall the meaningful groups of letters and such meanings are stored in LTM. Ruchkin et al. (2003) - asked participants to recall a set of words and pseudo-words They found that there was much more brain activity when real words were processed indicating the involvement of other areas of the brain than just STM. Suggests STM is actually just a part of LTM and not a separate store. The Working Central executive - Monitors and Support: Evidence from brain-damaged Model of coordinates all other mental functions in patients Memory working memory. Shallice and Warrington (1970) - man Episodic buffer - Receives input from many called KF whose short-term forgetting  Memory - Knowledge Organiser sources, temporarily stores this information, of auditory information was much and then integrates it in order to construct a greater than that of visual stimuli. mental episode of what is being his auditory problems were limited to experienced. verbal material such as letters and digits but not meaningful sounds (such Phonological loop - Codes speech sounds in as a phone ringing). working memory, typically involving his brain damage seemed to be maintenance rehearsal restricted to the phonological loop. SC - generally good learning abilities, Visuo-spatial sketchpad - Codes visual unable to learn word pairs that were information in terms of separate objects as presented out loud. well as the arrangement of these objects in This suggests damage to the one's visual field. phonological loop (Trojano and Grossi, 1995). Working memory model - An explanation of LH - involved in a road accident, the memory used when working on a task. performed better on spatial tasks than Each store is qualitatively different. those involving visual imagery (Farah et al., 1988). Baddeley and Hitch (1974) felt that STM was not just one store, but several different Limitation: Problems with using case studies stores. problems with using evidence from there is one store for visual case studies of individuals who have processing and a separate store for suffered serious brain damage. processing sounds This formed the the process of brain injury is traumatic basis of the WMM where - difficulties paying attention and 'sub-systems' are organised by a therefore underperforming on certain central executive. tasks. unique individuals and cannot be Central executive: generalised to the population. The function of the CE is to direct Support: Evidence for the phonological loop attention to particular tasks. and articulatory process The CE has a very limited capacity; Seems that the phonological loop holds the amount of information that Phonological loop: you can say in 2 seconds (Baddeley et al., 1975). limited capacity. makes it hard to remember a list of deals with auditory information and long words preserves the order of information. longer words that can't be rehearsed The phonological store which holds on the phonological loop because they the words you hear, like an inner ear. don't fit. An articulatory process which is However, the word-length effect used for words that are heard or disappears if a person is given an seen. articulatory suppression task These words are silently repeated (looped), like an inner voice. This is a Limitation: The central executive form of maintenance rehearsal. efficient visuo-spatial processing in Some psychologists feel the concept working memory. is too vague. Wayne Gretzky - He was able to All it appears to do is allocate visualise the spatial relationship resources and essentially be the same between objects even when the as attention. objects were in motion. Critics also feel that the notion of a  Memory - Knowledge Organiser single central executive is wrong and Visuo-spatial sketchpad that there are probably several Used when you have to plan a spatial components. task. Eslinger and Damasio (1985) - EVR, Visual and/or spatial information is had had a cerebral tumour removed. temporarily stored here. He performed well on tests requiring Visual = what things look like. reasoning Spatial = the physical relationship suggested that his central executive between things. was intact. Logie (1995) - visual cache - stores he had poor decision-making skills, information about visual items, e.g. suggests that in fact, his central form and colour. executive was not wholly intact. inner scribe - stores the arrangement of objects in the visual field. Episodic buffer Baddeley (2000) added the episodic buffer because he realised the model needed a general store. an extra storage system integrates information from the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad. The episodic buffer sends information to LTM. Types of Episodic memory - Personal memories of Support: Evidence from brain scans Long-Term events, such as what you did yesterday or a Memory teacher you liked. This kind of memory includes contextual details plus emotional Episodic memory = is associated with tone. the hippocampus, other parts of the temporal lobe (where the Procedural memory - Memory for how to do hippocampus is located) things, for example riding a bicycle or Activity in the frontal lobe. learning how to read. Such memories are Semantic memory = also relies on the automatic as the result of repeated practice. temporal lobe. Procedural memory activation is Semantic memory - shared memories for associated with the cerebellum, which facts and knowledge. These memories may is involved in the control of fine motor be concrete, such as knowing that ice is skills, the motor cortex, The basal made of water, or abstract, such as ganglia and limbic system. mathematical knowledge. Support: Distinguishing procedural and declarative memories Long-term memory (LTIM) Evidence from case studies offers divided into two main types: explicit further support for different types of (or declarative) memory and implicit LTM. (or procedural) memory. case study of HM - his ability to form new LTMs was affected by the destruction of his hippocampus (parts Episodic memory of his temporal lobes were also an event or a group of events destroyed) occurring as part of a larger but he retained his pre-existing LTMs.  Memory - Knowledge Organiser sequence. HM could still form new procedural Finally, you may also recall memories but not episodic or semantic associated emotions that you felt at memories. the time. he was able to learn how to draw a figure by looking at its reflection in a Semantic memory: mirror, a skill called mirror-drawing (Corkin, 2002). This is a procedural knowledge about the world which is memory. However, he had no memory shared by everyone rather than the that he had learned this (an personal kind of knowledge that is episodic/semantic memory). classed as episodic memories. may relate to the functions of objects Limitation: Problems with evidence from what behaviour is appropriate e.g. patients with brain damage social customs the difficulty with studies of may relate to abstract concepts, such amnesiacs, including HM, is that it is as mathematics and language. difficult to be certain of the exact parts of the brain that have been affected Semantic memories generally begin until a patient has died. as episodic memories because we Most studies are conducted with living acquire knowledge based on patients. personal experiences. Damage to a particular area of the the memory slowly loses its brain does not necessarily mean that association to particular events area is responsible for a particular however, people continue to have a behaviour - it may be acting as a relay strong recollection of when and station. Malfunction of the relay station where they learned a particular fact. would impair performance. Procedural memory: Support: Distinguishing episodic and semantic memories concerned with skills Procedural memories are typically Researchers have sought to examine acquired through repetition and the relationship between episodic and practice. semantic memories by studying Implicit - We are less aware of these patients with Alzheimer's disease. memories because they have found some patients who retain the become automatic. ability to form new semantic memories It is important that procedural but not episodic memories (Hodges memories are automatic so we can and Patterson, 2007). This is a single focus our attention on other tasks dissociation while performing these everyday A second dissociation was found by skills. Irish et al. (2011) in Alzheimer's patients who have the reverse - poor semantic memories but generally intact episodic memories. This double dissociation suggests that episodic and semantic memories are separate, and that episodic memories may be a gateway to semantic memory. but it is possible for semantic memories to form separately. Explanations Interference - An explanation for forgetting in Limitation: Research is quite artificial for Forgetting; terms of one memory disrupting the ability to One issue concerns the methodology  Memory - Knowledge Organiser Interference recall another. This is most likely to occur of the studies. when the two memories have some Most of this research has often used similarity. rather artificial lists of words and/or nonsense syllables. Proactive interference (PI) - Past learning Thus the findings may not relate to interferes with current attempts to learn everyday uses of memory, which something. tends not to involve word lists. participants may lack motivation to Retroactive interference (RI) - Current remember the links in such studies, attempts to learn something interfere with and this may allow interference effects past learning. to appear stronger than they really are. Retroactive interference: the research is low in ecological validity. Georg Müller + (Müller and Pilzecker, 1900) - first to identify retroactive Limitation: Interference only explains some interference (RI) effects. situations of forgetting gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes and while interference effects do occur in then, after a retention interval, asked everyday life, they don't occur that participants to recall the lists. often. Performance was less good if Rather special conditions are required participants had been given an for interference to lead to forgetting - intervening task between initial the two memories need to be quite learning and recall (they were shown similar. three landscape paintings and asked interference is considered a relatively to describe them). unimportant explanation for everyday The intervening task produced RI forgetting. because the later task (describing Anderson (2000) - there is no doubt pictures) interfered with what had that interference plays a role in previously been learned. forgetting, but how much forgetting can be attributed to interference Proactive interference remains unclear. Benton Underwood (1957) showed Ceraso (1967) found that, if memory that proactive interference (PI) could was tested again after 24 hours, be equally significant. recognition (accessibility) showed He analysed the findings from a considerable spontaneous recovery, number of studies and concluded whereas recall (availability) remained that when participants have to learn a the same. series of word lists they do not learn interference occurs because the lists of words encountered later memories are temporarily not on in the sequence as well as lists of accessible rather than having actually words encountered earlier on. been lost if participants memorised 10 or more This research supports the view that lists, then, after 24 hours, they interference affects accessibility rather remembered about 20% of what they than availability. learned. If they only learned one list recall was Support: Real-world application to advertising over 70%. The more lists a participant has to There is a considerable body of learn, the worse their overall recall. research on the effects of interference This is explained by proactive when people are exposed to adverts interference because each list makes from competing brands within a short it harder to learn subsequent lists. time period.  Memory - Knowledge Organiser Danaher et al. (2008) - found that both Similarity of test materials: recall and recognition of an advertiser's message were impaired McGeoch and McDonald (1931) when participants were exposed to experimented with the effects of two advertisements for competing similarity of materials. brands within a week. They gave participants a list of 10 They suggest that one strategy might adjectives (List A). be to enhance the memory trace by Once these were learned there was running multiple exposures to an then a resting interval of 10 minutes advertisement on one day rather than during which they learned List B, spread these out over a week. followed by recall. This results in reduced interference If List B was a list of synonyms of List from competitor's advertisements. A, recall was poor (12%) if List B was nonsense syllabus this Limitation: Individual differences had less effect (26% recall) There is evidence that some people if List B was numbers this had the are less affected by proactive least effect (37% recall). interference than others This shows that interference is Kane and Engle (2000) - individuals strongest the more similar the items with greater working memory span are. Only interference, rather than were less susceptible to proactive decay, can explain such effects. interference than others They gave participants 3 word lists to A real-world study: learn Participants with low working memory Baddeley and Hitch (1977) - investigated span showed greater proactive interference effects in an everyday setting of interference (when recallinb the 2nd rugby players recalling the names of the and 3rd list than did participants with teams they had played against over a rugby higher spans. season. A further test suggests having a greater working memory span meant Some players played in all of the having greater resources to games in the season whereas others consciously control processing and missed some games because of counteract the effects of proactive injury. The time interval from start to interference. end of the season was the same for all players but the number of intervening games was different for each player because of missed games. If decay theory is correct then all players should recall a similar percentage of the games played because time alone should cause forgetting. If interference theory is correct then those players who played most games should forget proportionatelv more because of interference - which is what Baddeley and Hitch found, demonstrating the effect of interference in everyday life. Explanations Cues - things that serve as a reminder. They support: research evidence that has  Memory - Knowledge Organiser for Forgetting; may meaningfully link to the material to be documented the importance of retrieval cues Retrieval remembered or may not be meaningfully on memory Failure linked, such as environmental cues (a room) or cues related to your mental state (being or Includes lab, field and natural sad or drunk). experiments, and anecdotal evidence. Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) - lab Retrieval failure - occurs due to the absence experiment, demonstrated the power of cues. An explanation for forgetting based of retrieval clues on the idea that the issue relates to being Abernethy (1940) while a field able to retrieve a memory that is there experiment - demonstrated the (available) but not accessible. Retrieval importance of context-dependent depends on using cues. learning among a group of students studying a course. The encoding specificity principle: the evidence has high ecological validity. Ender Tuling and Donald Thomson (1973): proposed that memory is most Support: Real-world application effective if information was present at use it to improve recall when you need encoding is also available at the time to, for example when you are taking of retrieval. exams. The encoding specificity principle Abernethy's research suggests that states that the closer the cue is to the you ought to revise in the room where original item the more useful it will you will be taking the exams. be. This may be unrealistic, but you could use imagination to achieve this. Tulving and Pearstone (1966): Smith (1979) - showed that just thinking of the room where you did the demonstrated the value of retrieval original learning (mental cues in a study reinstatement) Participants had to learn 48 words was as effective as actually being in belonging to 12 categories. Each the same room at the time of retrieval. word was presented as category + word. Limitation: Retrieval cues do not always work There were two different recall use cues to improve your exam conditions. performance - not very effective. Participants either had to recall as participants learn word lists but when many words as they could you are learning, for example, about or they were given cues in the form Milgram's research into obedience, of the category names (cues recall). you are learning about complex In the free recall condition, 40% of associations that are less easily words were recalled on average. triggered by single cues. This has in the cued-recall condition, been called the outshining hypothesis: participants recalled 60% of the a cue's effectiveness is reduced by the words. presence of better cues. Smith and Vela (2001) - context This is evidence of cues that have been effects are largely eliminated when explicitly or implicitly encoded at the time of learning meaningful material. learning and have a meaningful link to the learning material. Limitation: The danger of circularity Whenever any information is learned, we also often remember where we the relationship between encoding were (environmental context) or how cues and later retrieval is a correlation we felt (the emotional state at the Nairne (2002) - 'myth of the  Memory - Knowledge Organiser time). encoding-retrieval match. sometimes being reminded of a Baddeley (1997) - encoding specificity particular place or mood can act as a principle is impossible to test because trigger (or cue) to help access a it is circular. memory. If a stimulus leads to the retrieval of a memory then it must have been Context-dependent forgetting: encoded in memory, Otherwise it hasnt. One example of context-dependent But it is impossible to test for an item forgetting is a study by Ethel that hasn't been encoded in memory, Abernethy (1940). She arranged for a so this cannot be proved. group of students to be tested before the cues do not cause retrieval, they a certain course began. They were are just associated with retrieval. then tested each week. Some students were tested in their teaching room by their usual instructor whereas others were tested by a different instructor. Others were tested in a different room either by their usual instructor or by a different one. Therefore there were four experimental conditions in this study. Those tested by the same instructor in the same room performed best. Presumably familiar things (room and instructor) acted as memory cues. Abernethy also found that superior students were least affected by the changes and inferior students the most. Godden and Baddeley (1975): investigated the effect of contextual cues. The researchers recruited scuba divers as participants and arranged for them to learn a set of words either on land or underwater. they were tested either on land or underwater four experimental conditions. highest recall occurred when the initial context matched the recall environment, e.g. learning on land and recalling on land. State-dependent forgetting: The mental state you are in at the time of learning can also act as a cue  Memory - Knowledge Organiser Goodwin et al. (1969): asked male volunteers to remember a list of words they were either drunk or sober. asked to recall the lists after 24 hours when some were sober but others had to get drunk again. The recall scores - suggest that information learned when drunk is more available when in the same state later. Accuracy of Eyewitness testimony - The evidence Supporting evidence: Eyewitness provided in court by a person who witnessed Loftus conducted a memorable study Testimony; a crime, with a view to identifying the involving a cutout of Bugs Bunny Misleading perpetrator of the crime. (Braun et al., 2002). College students Information who had visited Disneyland as Leading question - question that, either by its children were asked to evaluate form or content, suggests to the witness advertising material about Disneyland what answer is desired or leads him or her to containing misleading information the desired answer. about Bugs Bunny (not a Disney character) or Ariel (not introduced at Misleading information - supplying the time of their childhood). information that may lead a witness' Participants assigned to the Bugs or memory for a crime to be altered. Ariel groups were more likely to report having shaken hands with these Post-event discussion - conversation characters than the control group (no between co-witnesses or an interviewer and misleading information). an eyewitness after a crime has taken place which may contaminate a witness' memory This shows how powerful misleading for the event. information can be in creating an inaccurate (f alse) memory. Experiment 1: procedure Limitation: EWT in real life 45 students were shown seven films Loftus' research suggested that EWT of different traffic accidents. was generally inaccurate and hence After each film the participants were unreliable, but other researchers have given a questionnaire which asked criticised her research for its lack of them to describe the accident and ecological validity. then answer a series of specific Lab experiments such as those carried out by questions about it. Loftus may not represent real life because one critical question: 'About how fast people don't take the experiment seriously were the cars going when they hit and/or they are not emotionally aroused in the each other?' way that they would be in a real accident. The other 4 groups were given the Foster et al. (1994) found that if participants verbs smashed, collided, bumped or thought they were watching a real-life robbery, contacted in place of the word hit. and also thought that their responses would This critical question = leading influence the trial, their identification of a question because it suggested the robber was more accurate. answer that a participant might give. Yuille and Cutshall (1986) also found that  Memory - Knowledge Organiser witnesses to an armed robbery in Canada Findings: gave very accurate reports of the crime four The findings are shown in the table on the months after the event despite initially being right, which demonstrate that leading given two misleading questions. questions affect the response given by This suggests that misleading information participants. may have less influence on real-life EWT than Loftus' research suggests. Verb - (mean speed estimate) Real-world application Smashed (40.8) A strength of research investigating EWT is its Collided (39.3) application to the criminal justice system, Bumped (38.1) which relies heavily on eyewitness Hit (34.0) identification for investigating and prosecuting Contacted (31.8) crimes. Psycholoqical research has been used to Experiment 2: procedure warn the justice system of problems with eyewitness identification evidence. Recent The leading question may bias a DNA exoneration cases have confirmed the participant's response or may warnings of eyewitness identification actually cause information to be researchers by showing that mistaken altered before it is stored. eyewitness identification was the largest a new set of participants was divided single factor contributing to the conviction of into three groups these innocent people (Wells and Olson, shown a film of a car accident lasting 2003). 1 minute, and again asked questions This demonstrates the important role of EWT about speed. The participants were research in helping ensure that innocent then asked to return one week later people are not convicted of crimes they did when they were asked a series of 10 not commit on the basis of faulty EWT. questions about the accident, A03 Individual differences including another A 'Yes' and 'No' A criticism of research investigating EWT responses concerns individual differences of witnesses. critical question, 'Did you see any An eyewitness typically acquires information broken to the question about glass?' from two sources, from observing the event There was no broken glass in the itself and from subsequent suggestions broken glass. film but, presumably, (misleading information). A number of studies those who thought the car was (e.g. Schacter et al., 1991) have found that, travelling faster might be more likely compared to younger subjects, elderly people to think that there would be broken have difficulty remembering the source of glass. their information, even though their memory Findings for the information itself is unimpaired. As a leading question did change the result, they become more prone to the effect actual memory a participant had for of misleading information when giving the event. testimony. The memory of an event may also be This suggests that individual differences, age altered or contaminated through in particular, are an important factor when discussing events with others and/or assessing the reliability of EWT. being questioned multiple times Conformity effect: Co-witnesses may reach a consensus view of what actually happened. This was investigated by Fiona Gabbert and colleagues (2003).  Memory - Knowledge Organiser Participants were in pairs each partner watched a different video of the same event Pairs in one condition were encouraged to discuss the event. Then each partner individually recalled the event they watched. (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 of events. an interviewer may use leading questions and thus alter the individual's memory for events. This is especially the case when children are being interviewed about a crime (LaRooy et al., 2005). Accuracy of Anxiety - An unpleasant emotional state that Real life versus lab studies Eyewitness is often accompanied by increased heart One of the strengths of the study by Testimony; rate and rapid breathing, i.e. physiological Christianson and Hubinette was that it was a Anxiety arousal. study of anxiety in the context of a real crime. It may well be the case that lab studies do not EFFECTS OF ANXIETY create the real levels of anxiety experienced Anxiety has a negative effect on by a real eyewitness during an actual crime. accuracy Deffenbacher et al. (2004) agree with this but Stress has a negative effect on found, from a review of 34 studies, that lab memory as well as performance studies in general demonstrate that anxiety generally. leads to reduced accuracy and that real-life We saw cm page 50 that automatic studies are associated with an even greater skills are not affected by loss in accuracy stress/physiological arousal but These findings are at odds with the result performance on from Christianson and Hubinette, but suggest that the results from lab studies are valid, as complicated cognitive tasks are reduced by they are supported by most real-life studies. stress. No simple conclusion Critics of the weapon focus effect have Key study: Johnson and Scott (1976) suggested that the violence of a crime may A different account of why anxiety might affect  Memory - Knowledge Organiser reduce the accuracy of EWT is the weapon the accuracy of recall focus effect - the view that a weapon in a The study by Christianson and Hubinette criminal's hand distracts attention (because concerned a violent real-life crime. Many anxiety it creates from other features and other studies of anxiety and accuracy of therefore reduces the accuracy of identification, even the real-life ones, did not identification. involve violence. Like Christianson and Hubinette, Halford and Milne (2005) found Procedure: that victims of violent crimes were more accurate in their recall of crime scene Asked participants to sit in a waiting information than victims of non-violent crimes. room where they heard an argument This shows that there is no simple rule about in an adjoining room and then saw a the effect of anxiety on accuracy of man run through the room carrying evewitness testifmony. either a pen covered in grease (low 3 Individual differences anxiety condition) It has been suggested that one key or a knife covered in blood (high extraneous variable in many studies of anxiety, weapon focus' condition). anxiety is Participants were later asked to emotional sensitivity. identify the man from a set of In a study by Bothwell et al. (1987) photographs. participants were tested for personality characteristics and were labelled as either Findings: neurotic' (tend to become anxious quickly) or Supported the idea of the weapon 'stable' (less emotionally sensitive). It was focus effect. found that the 'stable' participants showed Mean accuracy was 49% in rising levels of accuracy as stress levels identifying the man in the pen increased, whereas the opposite was true for condition neurotics - their accuracy levels decreased as compared with 33% accuracy in the stress increased. Deffenbacher et al. (2004) knife condition. point out that the modest effect sizes shown in many studies of anxiety may be the result Loftus et al (1987) of averaging out low accuracy and high showed that anxiety does focus accuracy scores of sensitive and attention on central features of a non-sensitive participants respectively. crime (eg the weapon). These studies suggest that individual The researchers monitored differences may indeed play an important role eyewitnesses' eye movements and in the accuracy of EWT. found that the presence of a weapon 3 An alternative model caused attention to be physically Fazey and Hardy (1988) suggested a more drawn towards the weapon itself and complex relationship between anxiety and away from other things such as the performance than the Yerkes-Dodson model. person's face. Their catastrophe theory predicts that when physiological arousal increases beyond the Anxiety has a positive effect on accuracy: optimum level, the inverted-U hypothesis predicts a gradual decrease in performance. There is an alternative argument that Self-confidence, says high anxiety/arousal creates Physiological arousal more enduring and accurate However, Fazey and Hardy observed that in memories. fact there is sometimes a catastrophic For example, there is an evolutionary decline, which they suggest is due to argument that suggests it would be Cognitive anxiety adaptive to remember events that are increased mental anxiety (worry) - the emotionally important so that you inverted U only describes increases in could identify similar situations in the physiological anxiety (see diagram on right). future and recall how to respond - This therefore suggests an alternative model,  Memory - Knowledge Organiser such as what you did last time when one that Deffenbacher et al. you escaped from a lion. (2004) believe fits better with research findings, especially those of real-life Christianson and Hubinette (1993): eyewitnesses. found evidence of enhanced recall A At the back of the graph you can see the when they questioned 58 real inverted witnesses to bank robberies in U (Yerkes-Dodson effect) - as arousal Sweden. The witnesses were either increases performance rises to an optimal victims (bank teller) or bystanders point and then decreases. However, as (employee or customer), ie. high and cognitive anxiety increases (closer to the low anxiety respectively. viewer), performance falls off a cliff after the The interviews were conducted 4-15 optimal point and even arousal drops slightly. months after the robberies. This is catastrophe theory. The researchers found that all witnesses showed generally good memories for details of the robbery itself (better than 75% accurate recall). Those witnesses who were most anxious (the victims) had the best recall of all. This study generally shows that anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall. Christianson (1992), in a review of research, concluded that memory for negative emotional events is better than for neutral events, at least for the central details. Resolving the contradiction Kenneth Deffenbacher (1983) reviewed 21 studies of the effects of anxiety on eyewitness memory He found that 10 of these studies had results that linked higher arousal levels to increased eyewitness accuracy while 11 of them showed the opposite. Deffenbacher suggested that the Yerkes-Dodson effect can account for this apparent inconsistency: According to this principle there would be occasions when anxiety/arousal is only moderate and then eyewitness accuracy would be enhanced. When anxiety/arousal is too extreme then accuracy will be reduced.  Memory - Knowledge Organiser Improving the Conelnun et al (1984) developed the Strengths: Accuracy of cognitive interview. Eyewitness Fisher et al. (1990) - found that witnesses Testimony; 1. Mental reinstatement of original reported greater detail in their accounts of The Cognitive context crimes when American detectives had been Interview trained to use the technique. The interview ewer encourages the interviewee to mentally reinstate both Koehnken et al. (1999) - A meta-analysis of the physical and psychological 53 studies found on average an increase of environment of the original incident. 34% in the amount of correct information generated in the CI compared with standard E.g “I would like you to try to think interviewing techniques. back to the day the event happened. Think about that day... what had you Only four studies in the analysis showed no been doing... what was the weather difference between the types of interview. like... try and get a picture of it in your This suggests that overall the CI is an mind. Think of all the objects that effective technique for increasing the were there... think about the colours. accessibility of stored information. How did you feel at the time? When you are ready tel me everything that Mello and Fisher (1996) - CI may be you can remember, in your own particularly useful when interviewing older time.” (Adapted from Dando and witnesses. Milne, 2009) The aim is to make memories Negative stereotypes about older adults accessible. They need appropriate ‘declining’ memory can make such witnesses contextual and emotional cues to overly cautious about reporting information. retrieve memories. However, the CI may overcome such 2. Report everything difficulties because it stretches the importance of reporting any detail regardless of its The interviewer encourages the perceived insignificance. reporting of every single detail of the event without editing anything out They compared to older (mean age 72) and Witnesses should not leave anything younger (mean age 22) adults’ memory of a out even if they believe it to be filmed simulated crime using either a CI or an insignificant or irrelevant. SI. The CI produced more information than E.g “Some people hold back the SI, but significantly the strength of the CI information because they are not over the SI was greater for older than for quite sure that it is important or you young participants. may think the already know this information. Please do not leave This suggests that individual differences anything out. I am interested in matter and that the CI is more effective when absolutely everything that you interviewing older people in comparison to remember, anything that pops into younger people. your head. Even partial memories and things you think may not be Limitations: important. Please just tell me it all”(Adapted from Dando and Milne, Koehnken et al. (1999) - found that 2009) witnesses recalled more incorrect information when interviewed with the cognitive interview 3. Change order compared to the standard interview By reversing the order in which technique, perhaps because more detailed events occurred. The rationale recall increases the chances of making behind this is that our recollections mistakes.  Memory - Knowledge Organiser are influenced by schemas. For example, if you think about when you Koehnken et al. (1999) - Although, most of went to a restaurant a few weeks ago these studies involve volunteer witnesses your recollection will be influenced by (usually college students) tested in a lab your general expectations (schema) (such studies may not reflect the real-world of what is likely to happen at a practices). restaurant - someone seats you at your table, a waitress takes your Milne and Bull (2002) - however, the order, etc. effectiveness of the CI may be due to more to If you have to recall the events some individual elements rather than the starting from the end of the event whole thing. This study found that when backwards this prevents your participants were interviewed using a pre-existing schema influencing what combination of the ‘report everything’ and you recallO. ‘mental reinstation’ components of CI they E.g “I would like to try something were recalled significantly higher than when which sometimes helps people to using just one individual component or the remember more. I would like you to control condition (being instructed simply to tell me what happened backwards. I try again). know it sounds hard but lam going to help you. To start, what is the very Koehnken et al. (1999) - A criticism of the CI last thing that you remember is that it's effectiveness has largely been in happening... what happened before terms of quantity of information rather than that... what happened just before quality. that?” (Adapted from Dando and Milne, 2009) The procedure is designed to enhance the quantity of correct recall without 4. Change perspective compromising the quality (the amount of asked to recall the incident from correct recall as a percentage of total recall) multiple perspectives. of that information. They found an 81% for example by imagining how If increase of correct information but also a 61% would have appeared to other decreasw of incorrect information (false witnesses present at the time. positives) when the enhanced CI was This is again done to disrupt the compared to a standard interview. effect the schemas have on recall. This means that police need to treat all E.g Try to recall the incident from the information collected from CIS with caution it perspective of another person does not guarantee accuracy. involved in the incident. Think about where he/she was and Kebbell and Wagstaff (1996) - Another isolate everything that you can criticism of the CI is the amount of time and remember about them, as if they are training needed to implement it. in a spotlight. Describe what he/she would have seen. From their interviews with police Kebbell and (Adapted from Dando and Milne, Wagstaff report a problem with the CI in 2009) practice. Police officers suggest that this technique requires more time than is often available and that instead they prefer to use deliberate strategies aimed to limit an eyewitness report to the minimum amount of information that the officers feel is necessary. In addition, the CI requires special training and many forces have not been able to provide more than a few hours. More time is needed to establish a rapport with a witness and allow them to relax. Memory - Knowledge Organiser These limitations have meant that the use of the CI police interviews has not been widespread Kebbell and Wagstaff (1996) - One of the problems with evaluating the effectiveness of the CI when it is used in the real world is that it's not just one procedure but a collection of related techniques. Thames Valley police use a version that does not include the ‘changing perspectives’ component. Other police forces that describe themselves as using the CI technique have tended to use only the ‘reinstate context’ and ‘report everything’ components. This means that it is hard to establish the overall effectiveness of the technique when using all the components.