Pearson BTEC National Applied Psychology: Revision Guide

AO1 Description Nikita was daydreaming again. Her friend said to her, ‘Did you hear what I just said?’ Nikita immediately replied, ‘Yes, you said something about going out tonight.’ 1. Name the memory store that allowed Nikita to give this reply. (1 mark) Later that day, Nikita heard a song on the radio that she liked. The presenter said the title of the song and the name of the band. Nikita thought, ‘I must make a note of that on my phone.’ But by the time she found her phone, she could only remember the name of the band. 2. Using your knowledge of shortterm memory, explain one reason why Nikita could not remember all of the information. (2 marks) The name of the band was ‘The Cars’. But when Nikita recalled the name the next day, she thought it was ‘The Motors’. 3. Using your knowledge of encoding in long-term memory, explain why Nikita made this error. (2 marks) 4. Discuss one characteristic of Nikita’s memory. (3 marks) Apply it Ear is echoic memory. Eye is iconic memory. SPEC SPOTLIGHT Characteristics of sensory, shortterm, and long-term memory (encoding, capacity, duration). Key concept 1: Characteristics of three memory stores A1: Cognitive approach Duration Sensory memory (SM) All stimuli pass into SM, which is made up of five stores, one for each sense, e.g.: • Iconic memory – visual stimuli last less than 0.5s. • Echoic memory – auditory (sound) stimuli last 2–4s. Short-term memory (STM) Temporary memory store lasts up to 30s (Peterson and Peterson). Maintenance rehearsal increases duration and information may then pass into LTM. Long-term memory (LTM) Potentially permanent store for rehearsed material (lifetime). E.g. recognising names/faces after 50 years (Bahrick et al.). Capacity Sensory memory Very high capacity, e.g. over one hundred million cells in each retina (eye) with each cell storing visual data. Short-term memory Limited-capacity store, between five and nine items (‘magic number 7 ± 2’, Miller). Long-term memory Practically unlimited, LTM stores everything we learn so forgetting is due to lack of appropriate retrieval cues. Encoding Sensory memory All stores convert information into a form that can be stored. SM has different forms of encoding depending on the sensory store, e.g.: • Visual encoding in iconic store. • Acoustic (sound) encoding in echoic store. Short-term memory Uses mainly acoustic encoding (sounds of words). Baddeley’s study Participants learned lists of words and recalled them immediately (STM). Errors were based on mixing up sounds (e.g. recalling ‘cat’ instead of ‘cap’), therefore acoustic. Long-term memory Uses mainly semantic encoding (meaning of words). Baddeley’s study Participants learned lists of words and recalled them after 20 minutes (LTM). Errors were based on mixing up meanings (e.g. recalling ‘big’ instead of ‘large’), therefore semantic. Unit 1 Psychological approaches and applications Content area A 12 Copyright: Sample material

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