PSYA1

Memory Stores

STM - 

• Capacity - 7 +/- 2 chunks (Baddeley, 1998)
• Duration - 15/18 seconds (Peterson and Peterson, 1959)
• Encoding - Acoustic (Baddeley et al)

LTM - 

• Capacity - Unlimited
• Duration - Seconds to a Lifetime (Bahrick et al, 1975)
• Encoding - Semantic  (Baddeley et al)

Multi-Store Model - Atkinson and Shiffrin

• Information is registered through the sensory systems
• A limited amount of info is held in STM for a limited amount of time
• Rehearsal allows info to be moved to LTM for long term storage

Strengths:

• Distinguishes between STM and LTM. Clive Wearing supports MSM and idea of separate stores
• Baddeley supports two stores - two different types of encoding
• Clive Wearing, KF, HM

Weaknesses:

• Over simplified/reductionist
• Doesn't account for different types of information - some types may be more interesting, therefore easier to remember

MSM Support:

Anterograde - inability to form new memories after trauma
Retrograde - inability to remember anything from before trauma

KF:
Motorbike accident, resulting in brain damage. STM severely damaged, LTM left unimpaired

HM:
Severe epilepsy. Surgery in 1953 on the brain. Seizures were alleviated, but STM was severely impaired. Unable to form new memories. Little effect on memory of events before operation.

Clive Wearing: 
Damage to frontal lobes led to repetitive speech and highly emotional behaviour
Can still play music, sing and conduct. Procedural memory intact - episodic and declarative severely impaired 
ALL ANTEROGRADE 

Working Memory Model - Baddeley and Hitch
Describes STM - necessary, to show why/how people multitasking occurs

1 control system - Central Executive
3 slave systems - Phonological Loop
  - Visuo spatial sketch-pad
  - Episodic Buffer

Phonological loop:
- Receives auditory information
- Stores limited no. of words for brief period
- Limited capacity
2 components:
Articulatory Control System:
verbal rehearsal of words to maintain them AKA. Inner Voice

Phonological Store:
stores word for a brief period AKA. Inner Ear

Working Memory Model cont.

Central Executive
- Controls attention
- Controls the subsidiary (slave) system
- Limited capacity - cannot attend to too many things at once 

Visuo Spatial Sketch-Pad
- Stores visual and spatial info AKA. Inner Eye
- Spatial tasks - getting from one room to another, counting windows in a house.
- Visual info - appearance of things
- Limited capacity 

Episodic Buffer
- Temp. storage system - allows info. to be 'chunked'
- Only place where visual and acoustic info. can be stored together
- Allows us to integrate info. from LTM with info. from STM 
- Baddeley - Imagine an elephant playing ice hockey. EB allows us to integrate what we know about elephants and hockey to create a new scenario.

Working Memory Model Evaluation
Strengths:

• Explains not just storage, but processing of model
• Consistent with records of brain-damaged patients - KF
• Explains the ability to multi-task
• More detailed account of STM that the MSM
• Evidence that WM has multiple components

Weaknesses:

• Simplistic and vague
• Doesn't really explain the role of the Central Exec. except that it controls the slave systems
• The component we know the least about is the most important
• Episodic buffer isn't explained in enough detail - isn't fully explained how it processes info. from parts of the model to LTM
• Only explains STM

Elizabeth Loftus

Problems with the stages:

One:
- Poor viewing conditions
- Focus on weapons
- Effects of expectations

Two:
- Misleading information
- Source misattribution errors

Three:
- 'Best guess' in line up identification
- Guess work?
- Leading questions 

Factors affecting:

1. Anxiety

2. Age of witness

3. Leading questions

4. Consequences

5. Method of testing witnesses

6. Misleading information

7. Schemas

8. Cognitive Interview

(A schema - expectations, knowledge of certain aspects of the world.)

The Role Of Anxiety - Loftus, 1979

PP's were exposed to one of two situations.
1. A discussion in a lab, followed by a man exiting with a pen and greasy hands.

OR

2. An argument in a lab, followed by a man exiting with a bloody knife.  

They found that those who witnessed scenario 1 identified him correctly 49% of the time, and those who witnessed scenario 2 identified the man correctly only 33% of the time.

Weapon Focus

Evaluations:
- Ethics and PP welfare
- Not realistic 

Real Life Events/Studies:

Yuille and Cutshall, 1986
13 witnesses to real life shooting. Some were near, others further away.
Those closest to shooting provided most detail. Witnesses still gave detailed, accurate accounts months later. Misleading questions had no affect on anxiety.

Christianson and Hubinette, 1993

110 witnesses, real life bank robbery. Some were onlookers, others bank staff. Staff were more accurate about behaviour, clothing and weapons of attackers than the witnesses.

Evaluation (applies to both):

One off, case studies. High ecological validity. Ethical issues. Not replicable in an ethical way. Time - dated - relevant? Sample size. Demand characteristics - i.e. witnesses can change information, etc. 

The Role of Leading Questions, Loftus et al:
Loftus showed PP's a film of a car collision and asked them: 
'How fas were the cars going when they hit each other?' 
The word 'hit' was changed regularly'.
The word used lead PP's to be influenced on the speed of the cars.

Leading Questions evaluation:

• Showed that people can be easily led/manipulated

• Low ecological validity
• Demand characteristics
• Time - relevant?
• Low sample likely

Improving Reliability of EWT:

Cognitive Interview:
Four main techniques used to recall information:
1. Recreating the context:
Ask witness how they felt before and during event, perhaps evoking sounds smells

2. Focused concentration:
persuade witness to concentrate and focus on all sensory details, even those considered irrelevant or trivial 

3. Multiple retrieval attempts:
if a witness feels they have mentioned everything, asking them to attempt another recall can recover previously unmentioned detail

4. Varied retrieval:
asked to recall details in a different order, or from a different point of view 

Effectiveness of Cognitive Interview, Gieselman:
C.I. was compared to Standard Interview techniques
89 students - shown police training videos of violent crimes
48 hours later, students were interviewed individually
Interviewers had all been trained in either C.I. or S.I. interview techniques 

Significantly more items were recalled using C.I. than S.I.
C.I. Evaluation:

• Bekerian and Dennett, 1993 show that C.I. is more successful
• Modified C.I. has been shown to be effective with children. Holliday, 200
• Sample - size, age, students.   

Visual Images:

Rosie = Rose
Mike = Microphone
Lorayne (1958):
1. Make name more concrete.
2. Make association with name - Hurricane Higgins

Sentences:

In which the first letter of each word is part of, or represents, the initial of what you want to remember. 
'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain'. 

Privation: Never had Monotropy
Deprivation: Had Monotropy and lost it

Strange Situation, Mary Ainsworth

100 middle-class American mothers and infants
Observation
Noted:
separation anxiety 
infant's willingness to explore
stranger anxiety
reunion behaviour 

Found:
Secure (70%)
Insecure - avoidant (20%)
Insecure - resistant (10%) 

Ainsworth stated that attachment type was determined by PCG behaviour

1. Observer, Mother and Baby
2. Mother and Baby 
3. Stranger, Mother and Baby
4. Stranger and Baby
5. Mother and Baby
6. Baby
7. Stranger and Baby
8. Mother and Baby

Type B: Securely Attached:
-Upset, but subdued when mother left
- Positive on return
- Avoidant of stranger when alone 

Type A: Avoidant Insecure:
- Unconcerned by mother's absence
- Unresponsive on return
- Strongly avoidant of mother and stranger 

Type C: Resistant Insecure:
- Intense distress on mother's absence
- Fear of stranger
- Clinginess mixed with rejection on mothers return

Conclusions:
- significant differences
- distinct association between mothers behaviour and infants attachment types - suggests mothers behaviour may be important in determining attachment type
-  most US children are securely attached

Evaluations/Criticisms:
- sample; only US, middle class, 100, etc
- considerable research support - with much larger samples
- observed - demand characteristics
- ETHICS
- low eco validity
- a child may be attached to father as PCG, not mother 

Privation: Never had Monotropy
Deprivation: Had Monotropy and lost it

Strange Situation, Mary Ainsworth

100 middle-class American mothers and infants
Observation
Noted:
separation anxiety 
infant's willingness to explore
stranger anxiety
reunion behaviour 

Found:
Secure (70%)
Insecure - avoidant (20%)
Insecure - resistant (10%) 

Ainsworth stated that attachment type was determined by PCG behaviour

1. Observer, Mother and Baby
2. Mother and Baby 
3. Stranger, Mother and Baby
4. Stranger and Baby
5. Mother and Baby
6. Baby
7. Stranger and Baby
8. Mother and Baby

Type B: Securely Attached:
-Upset, but subdued when mother left
- Positive on return
- Avoidant of stranger when alone 

Type A: Avoidant Insecure:
- Unconcerned by mother's absence
- Unresponsive on return
- Strongly avoidant of mother and stranger 

Type C: Resistant Insecure:
- Intense distress on mother's absence
- Fear of stranger
- Clinginess mixed with rejection on mothers return

Conclusions:
- significant differences
- distinct association between mothers behaviour and infants attachment types - suggests mothers behaviour may be important in determining attachment type
-  most US children are securely attached

Evaluations/Criticisms:
- sample; only US, middle class, 100, etc
- considerable research support - with much larger samples
- observed - demand characteristics
- ETHICS
- low eco validity
- a child may be attached to father as PCG, not mother 

Theories:
- Learning Theory (Behaviourists)
- Evolutionary Theory (Bowlby)

Learning:
Classical Conditioning:

- infants learn to associate feeding/comfort with PCG
- PCG acquires comforting properties by association
Operant Conditioning:

 - infant learns that crying, smiling, brings positive response from adults (reinforcement)
- PCG learns that responding to cries, etc, brings relief from noise. baby has power over PCG 

Harlow's Monkeys - two 'mothers', one with food, one with comfort.
Monkey's run to comfort when scared - EVALUATE

Evolutionary: (Bowlby, 1953)

- Attachment is biologically pre-programmed into children at birth
- Encoded in human genes
- Evolves and persists because of its adaptiveness
- Infants emit social releasers - smiling, crying, laughing, etc - to which adults are biologically attunded
- Infants are programmed to attach to whoever responds to their releasing stimuli
- Monotropy with PCG
- primary attachment is template for future social relationships
- attachment behaviour is innate - we're born with it
- sensitive period up to 2 1/2 years, where attachments are formed

Privation:
1. Institutional Care
2. Extreme Isolation

1. Institutional Care:
- Rutter et al (1998) 111 Romanian orphans adopted in UK before age of 2. The later children were adopted, the slower their progress.

2. Extreme Isolation:
- Genie. Locked in a room, strapped to a child's potty. Was allowed no verbal contact. Was slapped if she made a noise. At age 13, had the appearance of a 7 year old.  

Deprivation:
1. Hospitalization 

Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis, Bowlby, 1953:

'If the child is unable to develop a warm, reciprocal, intimate and continuous relationship with his PCG, then the child will have difficulty forming relationships with other people.'
Monotropy
Child has to form bond with PCG for healthy emotional development.
1. Focuses on close relationship with PCG - otherwise other relationships will be unstable
2. Has to occur before age 2 1/2 in critical period
3. Bowlby said 'mother', but didn't mean the mother, simply meant 'mothering'. 

Research Support:
Spitz and Wolf (1946)
100 babies, South American orphanage. They were fed, clothed, warm, but had no love and were dying. Researchers employed women to cuddle, tickle, love the children - they recovered.