ALL Psychology AQA level Memory 16 Mark Essay Plans
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Course
Memory
Institution
AQA
Detailed psychology AQA memory 16 mark essay plans, written by an A* student in 2023. These essay plans have been marked by a psychology teacher and many awarded 16/16.
Memory 16 Mark Essay Plans
Discuss the Working Memory Model
AO1 This is an alternative ST memory model to the MSM, it was developed by Baddeley and Hitch.
It was developed due to the dual- task effect which refers to the fact that when activities that
are similar are performed at the same time e.g two acoustic activities, performance was
impaired however this was not the case when the activities are different.
Central executive- this receives sensory information and divides the information between the
two slave groups- the phonological loop and the visuo- spatial sketchpad. It has a limited
capacity and is only able to focus on one piece of information at a time.
Phonological loop- this store is responsible for processing acoustic information and has a
limited capacity. This is further divided into two stores, the articulatory process (silently
repeats information) and the phonological store (holds information)
Visuo- spatial Sketchpad- this is responsible for processing visual/ spatial information, it has
a limited capacity and can be further divided into two stores, the visual cache (stores
information about visual objects) and the inner scribe (stores the arrangement of objects)
Episodic Buffer- this is a general store for all information and sends it on to the LTM (was
added on later)
AO3 1. Lack of clarity over the central executive as psychologists don’t fully understand what
the true role of it is, meaning the WMM has not fully been explained.
2. Explains dual task effect as Baddeley conducted a study using participants who were
asked to complete two visual tasks and then a visual and a verbal task. He found that
participants had more difficulty in completing the two visual tasks than the visual and
verbal task, this is because the two visual tasks use the same slave system so were
competing for the same resources. Therefore, he concluded that there must be two
separate stores in the STM.
3. Research support from KF who had brain damage by Shallice and Warrington. They
found that he had poor STM ability for verbal information but his STM ability for visual
information was normal. Providing evidence that the phonological loop and the visuo-
spatial sketchpad are separate stores. However, this research is limited as it is a case
study, so only one participant who had brain damage, meaning the results are not
generalisable to the public as the results can be easily influenced by participant
variables. Furthermore, due to the researchers getting heavily involved, the results
lose subjectivity as they could be subject to researcher bias which would decrease the
validity of the findings.
4. Evidence from brain scans from Braver who got participants to complete tasks
involving the CE while they were having brain scans. They found greater activity in the
pre-frontal cortex and activity in this area increased when the task got harder,
showing the CE is its own separate store. Research using brain scans is highly scientific
and objective, increasing the validity of the findings and contributing the concept of
psychology as a science.
Discuss the Multi- Store Model of Memory
, AO1 This model was developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin. It describes memory as having separate stores.
Sensory register:
- This is where the information originally is processed in the brain, if the information is paid
selective attention to, it will go into the short-term memory store.
Capacity- very large due to the large amount of information the senses receive.
Duration- very short
Encoding- modality specific as it depends on which sense the information has been received from.
Short term memory
- If the information has been paid attention to, it will be transferred into the short-term
memory, or it can be retrieved from the long- term memory. Information can be kept in the
short-term memory by maintenance rehearsal or go into the long-term memory by elaborate
rehearsal. If he information is not rehearsed, it will decay.
Capacity- 5-9 chunks
Duration- less than 18 seconds.
Encoding- acoustically
Long- term memory
- If information in the short-term memory is rehearsed, it will be transferred into the long-term
memory, for the information to be used, it needs to be retrieved into the STM. There are three
types: semantic, episodic and procedural.
Capacity- unlimited, forgotten information is inaccessible.
Duration- unlimited
Encoding- semantic
AO3 1. Evidence for the capacity of the STM from Jacob’s who found that recall for lists of letters and
numbers was between 7 and 9 items, supporting the facts that the capacity for STM is 7-9 chunks.
2. Evidence for coding by Baddeley who conducted an experiment which involved showing 4 groups
a list of 10 words, groups 1&2 were shown lists with acoustically similar and dissimilar words and
groups 3&4 were shown lists of words that were semantically similar and dissimilar. He found that
immediate recall was worse with the acoustically similar words and recall was worse 20 minutes
after with semantically similar words, showing STM is encoded acoustically and LTM is encoded
semantically as similar worse creates confusion in recall.
3. Evidence for the duration of the STM by Peterson and Peterson who conducted an experiment
where he gave participants three letters and asked them to recall the letters at set time intervals,
he also made them count down from 100 during this time to prevent rehearsal, he found that
recall was less than 10% accurate after 18 seconds, showing the duration of STM is less than 18
seconds. However, this is an artificial task so lacks ecological validity.
4. Simplistic- this model has been criticised for assuming that the long-term memory is a unitary
store when we know through research done on Clive Wearing that there are three distinct long
term memory stores; episodic, semantic and procedural.
5. Limited explanation- Craik and Lockhart have argued against the idea that information enters the
long-term memory due to rehearsal as sometimes information is transferred into the long- term
memory, despite not rehearsing it. They instead suggested that information was transferred into
the long-term memory due to deeper processing. This is a limitation for the MSM as it cannot
explain why information can enter the long-term memory without being rehearsed.
6. Fixed capacity- the capacity of the short-term memory can be altered and affected significantly by
factors such as age and memory practise, however, this model does not take into account these
factors and instead suggests that the capacity of the STM is fixed which is incorrect, showing the
model is oversimplified and lacks validity.
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