Memory — AQA A-Level Psychology
Test yourself on Memory with AQA A-Level practice questions.
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Memory explained
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) pictured memory as three boxes: information arrives at the senses, attention passes it on, and rehearsal transfers it.
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The sensory register codes by modality (e.g. iconic, echoic), has a huge capacity (Sperling), but a duration under half a second. Coding: Baddeley (1966) found short-term memory codes acoustically and long-term memory codes semantically. Capacity: Miller (1956) put the short-term span at seven plus or minus two chunks, against an effectively unlimited long-term store. Duration: Peterson and Peterson (1959) found short-term recall collapsed after 18 seconds without rehearsal, while Bahrick (1975) found 70% accuracy on faces after 48 years. Evaluation carries most marks: patient KF had a damaged verbal span but an intact visual one, so the short-term store cannot be one box.
The working memory model: central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer. Features of the model: coding and capacity.
Baddeley and Hitch (1974) replaced the single short-term box with a work space of three parts, later adding a fourth. The central executive directs attention and allocates tasks; it is modality-free and stores virtually nothing. The phonological loop codes sound, with a store holding what you hear and an articulatory process rehearsing roughly two seconds of speech. The visuo-spatial sketchpad codes visual and spatial information, holding three or four objects. The episodic buffer binds information, holds about four chunks, and links to long-term memory. Dual-task findings show two visual jobs at once interfere, but a visual and a verbal job do not. However, the central executive is described so vaguely that it cannot be tested.
Explanations for forgetting: proactive and retroactive interference and retrieval failure due to absence of cues.
Two very different accounts. Interference says memories compete, and the damage is worst when the material is similar. Proactive means older learning blocks newer; retroactive means newer learning blocks older. McGeoch and McDonald (1931) taught a word list to perfection, then gave a second list, and recall of the first fell to 12.5% when the new words were synonyms against 37.1% when they were numbers, which shows similarity is the active variable. Retrieval failure says the trace is still there but the cue has gone. Encoding specificity predicts that a cue only works if it was present at learning, and Godden and Baddeley (1975) had divers learn and recall on land or underwater, with recall about 40% worse whenever the two settings mismatched. Carter and Cassaday (1998) showed the same for internal state using antihistamines.
Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: leading questions, post-event discussion, and anxiety; the use of the cognitive interview.
Eyewitness testimony (EWT) accuracy is influenced by several factors. Leading questions suggest a desired answer; this causes response bias (altering the answer without changing memory) or substitution (altering the memory trace, e.g., Loftus and Palmer's 'smashed' increasing speed estimates). Post-event discussion causes memory contamination when co-witnesses converse. Anxiety has a complex effect: the Yerkes-Dodson law suggests moderate anxiety improves recall, but extreme anxiety impairs it (weapon focus effect). To improve EWT, police use the Cognitive Interview (CI): reporting everything, reinstating context, reversing order, and changing perspective. These disrupt schemas and provide multiple retrieval pathways, enhancing recall.
Your focus
- Describe the three stores in order and name the process that carries information between each pair.
- Explain the coding, capacity and duration of each store, citing Sperling, Baddeley, Miller, Peterson and Bahrick.
- Evaluate the model using patient KF and the evidence that rehearsal alone does not guarantee a lasting memory.
Show all 13 objectives
- Describe the four components of working memory and state the coding and capacity of each.
- Explain why two visual tasks interfere with each other while a visual and a verbal task do not.
- Evaluate the model using dual-task evidence against the charge that the central executive is too vague to test.
- Explain proactive and retroactive interference in the right direction and name similarity as what makes each worse.
- Describe retrieval failure and separate context-dependent from state-dependent forgetting, with a study for each.
- Apply the two explanations to a scenario, deciding whether the loss is competition between memories or a missing cue.
- Evaluate interference research on artificial word lists, given that forgotten material returns once a cue is supplied.
- Explain how leading questions and post-event discussion affect eyewitness testimony accuracy.
- Evaluate the contradictory effects of anxiety on eyewitness recall using psychological theories.
- Describe the four main techniques used in the cognitive interview to improve eyewitness testimony.
Memory exam tips
Marking Points
- Names the three stores in order and the two processes between them, attention into the short-term store and rehearsal into the long-term store.
- Sensory register: codes by modality (e.g. iconic for visual, echoic for auditory), has a very large capacity (Sperling), and a duration of less than half a second.
- Coding stated separately for the other stores, credited with Baddeley (1966): acoustic confusions immediately, semantic confusions after a delay.
- Capacity stated as seven plus or minus two chunks for the short-term store (Miller) and as unlimited for the long-term store.
- Duration stated as roughly 18 to 30 seconds unrehearsed (Peterson and Peterson) against up to a lifetime (Bahrick, 48 years).
- Evaluation: KF had poor recall of spoken digits but normal recall of visual material, so the short-term store is not one unitary thing.
- Evaluation: the single rehearsal route is too simple, since prolonged rehearsal can leave no lasting trace and elaborative processing produces one without it.
- central executive described as a limited-capacity attentional controller that allocates the subsystems and is modality-free, holding virtually no material of its own
- phonological loop split into the phonological store and the articulatory process, coding acoustically, with about two seconds of capacity and the word-length effect as evidence
- visuo-spatial sketchpad described as coding visual and spatial information with a capacity of three to four objects
- episodic buffer described as a limited general store with a capacity of about four chunks that binds information from the other components and links it to long-term memory
- evaluation: dual-task studies, where two tasks competing for one subsystem impair each other and tasks in different subsystems do not
- evaluation: the central executive criticised as vague and unfalsifiable, or KF used to support separable short-term stores
- interference defined as competition between memories, with the direction stated: proactive is older on newer, retroactive is newer on older
- an everyday example each way, and similarity named as the condition that makes the effect worse
- McGeoch and McDonald's synonym condition quoted as evidence that similarity, not merely extra learning, causes the loss
- retrieval failure explained as material that is available but not accessible, with encoding specificity and the missing cue
- context-dependent forgetting separated from state-dependent forgetting, with Godden and Baddeley and with Carter and Cassaday
- evaluation: artificial word lists and short intervals limit generalisation, and interference cannot explain why forgotten material returns once the right cue is given
- Explain how leading questions affect EWT through response bias (altering reporting) or substitution (altering the memory trace).
- Describe how post-event discussion reduces EWT accuracy due to memory conformity or source monitoring errors.
- Outline the inverted-U relationship between anxiety and EWT accuracy, noting optimal anxiety enhances recall.
- Identify and explain the four components of the cognitive interview: report everything, reinstate context, reverse order, change perspective.
- Explain the theoretical basis of the cognitive interview, such as context-dependent cues.
Examiner Tips
- 💡In extended essays, evaluation carries more weight than description, so keep the tour of the three stores concise to leave time for analysis.
- 💡Use a case study as an argument rather than a story: say what the patient could and could not do, then say what that proves about the model.
- 💡If the command word is 'outline', evaluation earns nothing, so do not spend time on it.
- 💡in an application question, take each activity in the scenario, name the component it loads, and say why performance suffers or survives
- 💡a comparison with the multi-store model counts as evaluation only if you state what this model explains that the older one cannot
- 💡quote the word-length effect or the articulatory suppression finding rather than asserting that the loop has limited capacity
- 💡if the question names one explanation, the other earns credit only as a comparison inside the evaluation
- 💡in a scenario, decide first whether a cue is missing or another memory is competing, because everything you write follows from that choice
- 💡quote a figure from one study rather than three study names, since a named result is what separates a top band answer
- 💡Use Loftus and Palmer's verbs to illustrate how leading questions affect memory reconstruction or response bias.
- 💡Contrast the cognitive interview's effectiveness and time-consuming nature with standard police interviews.
Common Mistakes
- Giving one feature for one store and moving on; the marks are for coding, capacity and duration named for the sensory register, the short-term store and the long-term store.
- Confusing maintenance rehearsal, which holds material in the short-term store, with the prolonged rehearsal that Atkinson and Shiffrin said transfers it.
- Quoting Miller's span as seven items rather than seven chunks, which loses the point that chunking is what makes the span stretch.
- Using KF as evidence against the long-term store when the case is about the short-term store having more than one part.
- listing the four components without their coding and capacity, which is exactly what the specification names as the features to know
- calling the central executive a store, when it directs attention and is modality-free, holding almost nothing
- treating this as a model of all memory rather than of short-term memory, which wrecks any comparison with the multi-store model
- saying dual-task studies 'prove' the model, when they support the separation of the subsystems and nothing more
- reversing the two forms of interference; 'pro' runs forwards, so the older memory acts forwards onto the newer one
- writing that interference destroys the memory, when the studies show a blocked route to it rather than an erased trace
- describing the divers study without saying which conditions matched and which did not, so the finding has nothing to attach to
- offering decay or displacement, which are not the explanations this part of the specification asks for
- Conflating substitution and response bias; correction: response bias affects answers, substitution alters the memory trace.
- Oversimplifying anxiety's effect; correction: explain the Yerkes-Dodson inverted-U hypothesis where moderate anxiety improves recall.
- Confusing cognitive interview components; correction: memorise the specific four techniques and avoid inventing steps.