sebestien and hernanzez-gil aim
- investigated the phonological loop by using verbal digit span as the measure of the loops capacity
- aimed to confirm the findings of studies with English participants that the digit span increases with age and levels off at 15 years old
sebastien and hernandez gil procedure
- 575 children 5-17 y/o from pre, primary and secondary schools in madrid
- none repeated a year or had hearing, reading or writing difficulties
- sequences of random digits that increased by 1 each time were read. 3 sequences of 3 digits, then 3 of 4 ect
- participants asked to repeat sequence after listening
- digit span defined as the longest sequence the child could recall, 2 out of 3 presented, in order and without error
sebastien and hernandez-gil findings
- youngest group (aged 5) had a significantly lower digit span than the other groups (mean 3.76)
- digit span increased significantly and smoothly up to age 11
- rate slowed and stabilized up to 17 years
sebastien and hernandez-gil evaluation
+ reliability- digits rerad at a constant rate of 1 per second
+ digit span applied to understanding specific cog dissabilities e.g. short digit span is assosiated with dyslexia
- generalisability- all from madrid. language (more sylables) may have contributed to findings for madrid, hard to generalise to other languages e.g. english
- validity- children were not directly tested for hearing, reading, or cognitive inmparements, relied on children and parents
baddley procedure
- 75 young servicemen given a hearing test
- 4 lists of 10 words, as, ad, ss, sd
- lists were presented outloud on a tape, one word every 3 seconds
- 20 Minuit unrelated task (recalling sequences of 8 digits)
- surprise 5th trial, recall the word list again
evaluate baddleys study
+ reliability- word lists read on tape, 1 every 3 seconds
+ validity- lists were matched with each over in terms of how frequently the words appear in English - results can’t be explained by participants being able to remember more familiar words
- generalisability- small sample, 15 in each group. all young servicemen
- ecological validity- lab study, artificial environment
explain the schema theory
mental packages of knowledge based on our beliefs and expectations of the world from our personal experiences
we are born with some schemas but they develop into complexity with experience of the world
explain reconstructive memory
fragments of stored info are reassembled during recall. the gaps are filled in by our schemas so that we can produce a ‘story’ that makes sense
evaluate reconstructive memory
+ realistic- Bartletts study is high in mundane realism as we naturally reproduce stories that we hear
+ application- convictions are now not based on EWT alone as it isn’t trustworthy
- bartlett- lacked controls. no standadised procedures so participants experience was inconsistent
- accuracy- not all memorys are innacurate or affected by schemas e.g. in situations that are distinctive. ppts consistently recalled ‘ black came out his mouth’ because it was unusual
evaluate long term memory
+ HM- semantic intact, episodic damaged. couldn’t recall stroking a dog half an hour earlier but didnt need to have the concept of a dog explained to him
+ sylvie belville- older people with memory imparements undertook a training program to improve their episodic memorys, they performed better on a test of episodic memory after the program than the control group. can improve one type of LTM without affecting the other
- reductionist. episodic memory ‘specialised subcatagory’ of semantic. Tulving’s research into amnesia showed it is possible to have a fully functioning semantic memory with a damaged episodic memory but not the other way round
- lack controls- theses studies involve people who experiences brain damage, which is usually unexpected. so the researcher has no knowledge of the patients memory before the damage so its hard to judge how much worse the memory is
evaluate the msm
S. HM- couldn’t make new memory’s after the labotomy. LTM was damaged but stm was fine. Proving they are located in different areas of the brain
O. KF- damaged his STM but remembered words better if they were presented visually than audatory. suggesting seperate stores for visual and audatory
D. WMM better explains STM
A. capacity of STM can be increased through chunking. by spliting sequences into chunks, number of items can be stored in 5’s for example, well within the STM capacity
evaluate the WMM
S. baddley- dual task performace. when ppts performed 2 tasks using the same slave system (visuospacial scetchpad or phonological loop), performance decreased considerably
O. lack of clarity over the central executive. baddley recognised it is the most important but least understood park of WM. it needs to be more clearly specified than just being ‘attantion’
D. MSM goes into detail about encoding, duration, and capacity. its a more detailed explination of memory
A. KF, could process visual info better than audatory- phonological loop was damaged but visuospacial sketchpad was fine e.g. recall of words was better when he read them (visual) than when they were read out (audatory)
define episodic memory
long term memory system for personal events
includes memory of when events occured (time stamped) and of the people, objects, and places involved
define semantic memory
long term memory system for our knowledge of the world.
mental diary
baddleys procedure
74 young service men
randomly allocated to 4 groups, as,ad,ss,sd
lists presented every 3 seconds
asked to recall
surprise 5 trial after a 20 minute unrelated task
