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AQA A level psychology notes on MEMORY + exam questions
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AQA A level psychology notes on MEMORY + questions - condensed with A01 and A03 points for quick revision - includes 16 mark questions
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Sensory registerMemory stores for each of the five senses such as vision (iconic store) and hearing (echoic
store).
Capacity -Sperling
(very large, information is unprocessed, highly detailed).
Procedure- Flashed 3x4 grid of letters for 1/20th of a second, then asked them to recall
letters in a row, he sounded different tones to indicate the row recalled.
Findings- recall of letters in indicated row was high which shows information was originally
there showing the capacity of the sensory register is big.
Evaluation of study- lacks mundane realism as these tasks are unusual for people, only
gives estimates of the capacity
Coding- Crowder
(information stored in raw form with different sensory stores for different sensory inputs).
Echoic—auditory information, Iconic—visual, Gustatory—taste, Olfactory—smell.
If paid attention goes to the STM.
Findings- found that the SR only retains information in the iconic store for a few
milliseconds but in the echoic store for 2/3 seconds, which supports the idea that sensory
information is coded into different sensory stores.
Evaluation of study- sensory memory stores may consist of several sub-stores e.g. visual
persistence in the iconic memory store.
Duration- Walsh and Thompson
(limited duration, decreases with age)
Findings- found that the iconic store has a n average of 500 milliseconds which decreases
as we get older, this proves duration of sensory images is limited to age.
Evaluation- brief duration of the SR is linked to evolution as people only need to focus on
perceptual information and we don’t focus on non- important information.
Short-term memory-
Capacity
Jacobs
(limited capacity, only small amount of information, 5-9 items can be held but can be
increased by chunking information together).
Procedure- used serial digit span method where participants were presented with a long
list of numbers or letters and have to recall them in the right order.
, Findings- When they fail on 50% of the task’s they are seen to reached full capacity.
Capacity was nine and letters was seven.
Evaluation—lacks mundane realism as you rarely ever need to recall lists of numbers/
letters so may not be accurate measure of our capacity in the STM. Capacity also depends
on age and practise.
Coding
Baddeley
(information arrives from the SR in raw form then encoded into STM, visually, acoustically,
semantically—mainly acoustic)
Procedure- 75 participants
List A- acoustically similar
List B- acoustically different
List C- semantically similar
List D- semantically different
STM- list of original words in wrong order- had to rearrange words in correct order.
Findings- List A performed the worst with 10% recall whereas the other lists are between
60-80%.
This shows that STM, as List A did the worst, there’s acoustic confusion, STM coded on
acoustic basis.
Evaluation- makes cognitive sense e.g. acoustically repeating shopping list.
There was little difference between semantically similar and dissimilar suggesting
semantic coding in STM, artificial stimuli.
Duration
Peterson and Peterson
(maximum of 30 seconds, extended by rehearsal which transfers info to the LTM)
Procedure- read nonsense trigrams to participants e.g. ASP, then got them to count
backwards in threes.
Findings- Trigrams were repeated correctly at 90% at 3 seconds but only 5% after 18
seconds—suggests duration is between 20-30 seconds.
Evaluation- flawed methodology because different trigrams were used on each trial, also
lacks mundane realism, artificial stimuli.
Long-term memory
Capacity
Anokin
(unlimited, information may be lost due to decay)
Estimated the number of possible neuronal connections in the human brain is 1 followed by
10.5 million kilometres of noughts and concluded the capacity of the LTM is limitless.
Evaluation- assumed to be limitless as there’s not yet been research that has been able to
determine a finite capacity.
Coding
Baddeley
(mainly semantic coding, but visually and acoustically too, coding of info is stronger)
LTM- same task but had a 20minute interval before recall which they performed a task
unrelated.
Findings- LTM has semantic confusion shown in List C being the most ineffective which
suggests LTM is coded on a semantic basis.
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