June 10 – unit 1
Memory
1.
Secondary memory
Long-term memory B
Recognition
Rehearsal loop C
Central executive
Sensory memory A
Short-term memory

2. One strategy for memory improvement is an acronym, which is a mnemonic (verbal). An acronym is a word that is produced from the initial letters of the sentence/phrase needed to be remembered. For example, the word “Lol” is said to remember the phrase “laughing out loud”. Mnemonics can also be visual, for example, loci which derived from the Greek meaning of ‘place’. This strategy is simply associating parts of the material needed to be remembered with places, for example, different rooms in your house. So trying to remember the components of the working memory model you could mentally imagine a ‘central executive’ sitting in your bathroom.
3a. There will be a difference between the amount of numbers adults (aged between 30 – 40) can immediately recall compared to children (aged between 5 – 15)
3b. The experimenter used independent group design because the independent variable being tested was age and therefore required two age groups.
3c
Age group Mode
Children 6
Adults 7

3d. The frequency distribution shows that on average adults recalled more correct digits than children.

3e. These results do support other research because brain capacity is said to increase with age and we develop strategies such as chunking (Miller) also increasing with age.
4. An experiment by Peterson and Peterson was conducted on 24 students into the duration of short-term memory. Participants were given nonsense trigrams followed by a 3 digit number. In the retention interval they were asked to count backwards in 3’s from this 3 digit number to prevent rehearsal of the trigram. Each time the retention interval increased, for example, 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds and were asked to recall the nonsense trigram immediately after the retention interval. Findings concluded that on average the duration of short-term memory is about 20 seconds.
5a. There are four aspects of the cognitive interview. Firstly, the students would have encouraged eyewitnesses to recall everything even if they believed it was irrelevant, this was to aid the recall of details. Mental reinstatement is the next step where eyewitnesses mentally take themselves back to the event and the environment where it happened. The next step is that the students would ask eyewitnesses to change the order of the incident because memory is retrieved through different routes in our brains so changing the order of the event is a productive technique. Lastly, eyewitnesses would be encouraged to change their perspective of the event.
5b. Anxiety is an unpleasant feeling which increases arousal and stress. According to Deffenbacher’s meta-analysis increased stress and anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of eyewitness recall. Other psychologists suggest however, arousal merely enhanced the recall. This was supported when findings of research suggested people who are threatened and who are more emotionally aroused are more accurate in recall than those who are present at the event but weren’t threatened. Deffenbacher explains these contradictory findings in a curvilinear nature, suggesting that moderate anxiety results in more accurate recall than high or low levels of anxiety.
5c. Research conducted in a laboratory into eyewitness testimony lack mundane realism because participants will not be emotionally aroused like they would be in ‘real life’. Therefore research lacks validity and results cannot be generalised to real situations.

Question Mark
1 3
2 3
3a 2
3b 2
3c 2
3d 1
3e 0
4 3
5a 4
5b 4
5c 3

Attachment
6a.
Characteristic one – Become extremely distressed when separated from caregiver
Characteristic two – show seeking and resisting behaviour
6b. Participants self-volunteered to fill in the questionnaire. The sampling technique is therefore a volunteer sample. A limitation to this sampling technique is that the participants share similar characteristics, different to people who saw the add/questionnaire and didn’t fill it in. Therefore this sample is biased.
6c. Some of the questions, particularly for insecurely attached people may be quite sensitive and invade privacy. Running the questionnaire by ethics committee should reduce the likelihood that the questionnaire will be published with these ethical debatable questions.
6d. Advantage - Questionnaires are less likely to be effected by investigator effects than interviews and therefore the participant will be more honest.
Disadvantage – stick normally to closed questions, so therefore unlike an interview, questionnaires lack in rich detail
7a. Observations (non-experiment) are more ecologically valid than experiments because they aim to observe rather than test behaviours and participants therefore are more like they would be in everyday life, especially if they don’t know they are being observed.
7b. Rothbaum made comparisons between attachment types in the US (an individualistic society) and attachment types in Japan (collectivist society). Rothbaum found that secure attachments in the west (US) promote independence whereas secure attachment in the east (Japan) promote dependence, Rothbaum suggests that this could be why insecure-resistant attachments are highly common in Japan and not so much so in US. Rothbaum also found that in the US secure attachments lead to high social abilities and ability to control feelings, whereas in Japan secure attachment lead to hiding feelings and more dependent oriented behaviours.
8a. Childminding and day nurseries would both be suitable for Ali

8b. The best day care for Ali would be childminding because they are registered by local authorities and Ali will receive emotional care like he would at home more so than at a day nursery where there are poor staff – to – child ratios and frequent staff turnovers. Childminders provide more consistent care and may perhaps become a secondary attachment figure.
9.children in institutions often experience privation which is the failure to form an attachment. If emotional care is not provided the effects can be long lasting and severe. However some psychologists have argur=ed that the effects can be reversed with emotional care. For example, Romanian orphans who were adopted by British families and given emotional care were 3 times more likely to form an attachment, than British adopted children, If adopted before 6 months old. However Romanian children still, even with this emotional care were found to have a disorganised attachment, disinhibited attachment to be precise. This attachment is characterised by over friendliness and no preferred primary attachment figure.
Another effect is that children in institutions develop to be poor parents and their children often spend time in care. This is supported by Harlow’s study where monkeys, who had only had one attachment as infants grew up to be poor, rejective parents. However, we cannot generalise the results of Harlow’s study to humans.
Furthermore children in institutions are found to be physically small, which would suggest that emotional deprivation reduces growth hormones.