AQA A Level Psychology 3.1.2 Memory Exam Questions

About AQA A Level Psychology 3.1.2 Memory

Memory is a Paper 1 topic in AQA A Level Psychology and a core part of the cognitive approach. You study how information is encoded, stored and retrieved, comparing the multi-store model with the working memory model and Tulving's types of long-term memory. You also learn why we forget, through interference and retrieval failure, and apply this to eyewitness testimony and the cognitive interview. The topic links to Approaches (the cognitive approach and cognitive neuroscience) and to research methods, since most evidence comes from lab experiments. Examiners like to ask about capacity, duration and coding, case studies such as HM and KF, and evaluation of the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.

What you need to know

• Multi-store model Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) proposed sensory register, short-term memory and long-term memory, linked by attention, rehearsal and retrieval. STM has a capacity of about 7 plus or minus 2 items (Miller, 1956), a duration of about 18 to 30 seconds (Peterson and Peterson, 1959) and mainly acoustic coding; LTM has unlimited capacity and duration and mainly semantic coding (Baddeley, 1966).
• Types of long-term memory Tulving (1985) distinguished episodic memory (personal events, time-stamped), semantic memory (facts and knowledge) and procedural memory (skills, often unconscious). Case studies such as HM and Clive Wearing support separate stores.
• Working memory model Baddeley and Hitch (1974) replaced unitary STM with a central executive, phonological loop (phonological store and articulatory process), visuo-spatial sketchpad (visual cache and inner scribe) and the episodic buffer added in 2000. Dual-task studies and the case of KF support separate components.
• Interference Proactive interference is when old learning disrupts new learning; retroactive interference is when new learning disrupts old learning. McGeoch and McDonald (1931) found that recall was worst when the interfering words were similar in meaning (synonyms).
• Retrieval failure Forgetting occurs when cues present at encoding are absent at retrieval (Tulving's encoding specificity principle). Godden and Baddeley (1975) found divers recalled more when learning and recall environments matched (context-dependent forgetting); state-dependent forgetting involves internal cues.
• Eyewitness testimony and the cognitive interview Loftus and Palmer (1974) found the verb 'smashed' gave higher speed estimates than 'contacted'. Anxiety can reduce accuracy (Johnson and Scott, 1976, weapon focus) or improve it (Yuille and Cutshall, 1986). The cognitive interview (Fisher and Geiselman, 1992) uses report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order and change perspective.

Common mistakes in 3.1.2 Memory

• Mixing up capacity, duration and coding; capacity is how much, duration is how long and coding is the form information is stored in.
• Getting proactive and retroactive interference the wrong way round; remember proactive works forwards (old disrupts new) and retroactive works backwards (new disrupts old).
• Describing the episodic buffer as part of long-term memory; it is a limited-capacity temporary store in working memory that links the other components and LTM.
• Saying all anxiety makes eyewitness testimony worse; research is contradictory and real-life studies like Yuille and Cutshall found high accuracy.
• Listing the four cognitive interview techniques without explaining how each one improves recall.

Try three 3.1.2 Memory exam-style questions