Age & anxiety & EWT

Age & eyewitness are two big factors that affect the reliability of eyewitness testimony. We discussed a number of studies today, you need only to be able to summarise them, and then evaluate them as a whole.

Today's ppt is here and this is all well covered in the textbook. 

Types of long-term memory

Today we discussed types of long-term memory, partly derived by Tulving to offset the criticism that the multi-store-model is too simplistic. Procedural memories are how to do things ie ride a bicycle, semantic memories  are memories for facts and knowledge and episodic memories are memories for personal events.

Evidence for these three types of memories comes largely from the study of brain-injured patients who have deficits in one of these areas of memory and not another e.g HM, whose procedural memory was OK but whose semantic memory was severely damaged.

Today's ppt is here. The handout with research evidence is here. 

Evaluating the MSM

Today we polished off the Multi-Store-Model by evaluating it and discussing it's strengths and weaknesses. It is important that you are able to use the supporting/opposing evidence (Glanzer & Cunitz, case-studies etc) really well, and explain what their implications are for the model.

Today's ppt is here. 

Stats and the MSM

This week we've covered descriptive statistics (ppt here) and the multi-store model of memory (ppt here).

You need to know how to calculate the mean, mode, median and range. We went through through how to calculate the standard deviation, but you wouldn't ever have to do this in full. Don't stress if Maths isn't your strong point; the important thing is that you know what the standard deviation is (a measure of the spread of the data about the mean) and when it is used. 

Descriptive statistics

Today we looked at some descriptive statistics - ways to describe data. We defined the mean, mode and median and practised calculating them, including on an exam paper. Today's ppt is here.

Please do comment on the blog if you see any interesting articles/films/TV articles relating to Psychology. 

Capacity and Encoding

Today we discussed classic research into the capacity of STM - Jacobs & Miller. We replicated the digit span technique in class.

The capacity of LTM is understood to be unlimited.

We also looked at how information is stored in memory - this is called Coding. We looked over the Baddeley (1966) study into coding in STM and LTM.

The capacity ppt is here and the encoding ppt is here. 

Hypotheses

An extra lesson today to make sure we were all up to speed with the different type of hypotheses.

Make sure you are able to define and use the following terms:

• Null hypothesis
• Alternative hypothesis
• Research hypothesis
• Experimental hypothesis
• Two-tailed (non-directional) hypothesis
• One-tailed (directional) hypothesis

I think that's it! Make sure your RM booklet is completed for pages 12-16.

Duration of LTM plus some research methods

Today we started by discussing LTM and the difference between recognition and recall. It is likely that most long-term memories need some sort of cue or trigger to be recalled. Bahrick et al used memories from high school to test the visual and verbal LTM of 400 participants, and found good evidence for the life-time duration of these memories, thought there was some decline. Interestingly, names were recalled better than faces, and recognition was always better than free recall.

Today's ppt is here. After every lesson (I won't always remind you) you need to find the relevant section in your textbook and the memory booklet and use these resources to annotate your class notes.

We then went on the discuss the nitty gritty of how psychologist 'do' research, ie research methods. This will be a familiar strand throughout your two years of studying Psychology. I handed out booklets (electronic version here) which need to be brought to every lesson. I will source some floppy folders to keep them safe. We discussed aims, hypotheses and variables (again). The mini-sheet on hypotheses is here.

PLEASE let me know if any of the links don't work, or if you are struggling with the blog in any way. 

The man who kept falling in love with his wife

Today we began our study of memory by briefly discussing the fascinating case of Clive Wearing, who has lost most of his long-term memories, and cannot create new ones either. There's lots of information out there (too much? is his privacy being respected?) - but here is an interesting article to start with.

We then got a big technical and tested the duration of our short-term memories, with varying levels of success. The class results were not quite as expected but we had a good discussions as to why this might be.

Today's powerpoint is here.

We also discussed some fairly dry research methods - independent variables and dependent variables. The worksheet is here.