Blocking rehearsal time with an interference task Essay

The theories of memory and how much, or how bulky we can remember things, and why, is a greatly studied area of Psychology as a science. Psychologists extradite created and recreated numerous tastes and research methods in effect to prove that their particular guess is correct. There are two main theories of memory Levels of Processing (L.O.P.) and the Multi-store Model.The L.O.P. approach was pioneered by two psychologist Craik and Lockhart (1972), who believed that the mind allow remember things better if the randomness is processed on a deeper level, ie. thought ab forth more, taking into number the amount of work that is put into processing the entropy sure. From research they detect that the deeper the processing required the longer and more durable the memory is probable to be. They also identified what they believed to be three levels of processingStructural What something calculates like.phonetic What something sounds like.Semantic What something means.From e xperiments and tests carried out, they dance orchestra in motion that the deepest level was semantic, and their fence for this, they argued, was beca intake in order to survival of the fittest the meaning from a intelligence operation, and to consider its relevance in a sentence of quarrel, requires a lot of processing. They decided that hearing a word and then trying to opthalmicize it also requires some extensive cognitive processing, but not as much as semantic processing, and the to the lowest degree amount of mental work was required for structural processing, ie. what the letters look like. A test carried out by Craik and Tulving (1975), Depth of processing and memory board of words in episodic memory supported their theory.Another feign which is highly regarded as one of the most influential theories of memory is the Multi-store model, in particular the two-process model, conventioned and tested by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968, 1971). Their theory was that informati on received by the senses is primarily stored in the sensory store for a rattling short period of eon before it is transferred to the short precondition memory. Atkinson and Shiffrin believed that when the information is in the short term memory (STM), it could either be rehearsed for a certain amount of time and then stored in the long term memory (LTM), or alternatively lost. Figure 1.1 illustrates the theory in an easier to experience way. Perhaps this is also an example of how the L.O.P. theory is flawed as although the plat is seen to be structural information, it will probably provoke strong visual imagery.Atkinson and Shiffrin believed that chunks of information received by the sensory store could be held in the STM for around 20 seconds, but only 5 to 9 (on average) chunks of info can be remembered without tale. However, if rehearsed the chunks of information can be transferred into the long term memory and more items can be remembered. The theory of the report loop in terests me, so I decided to look further into it and make up that psychologists Brown (1958) and Peterson and Peterson (1959) independently discovered a method for testing the conception of the description loop called the Brown-Peterson technique.This basically involves a list of trigrams (three letter words made up of consonants with no immediate meaning ie. BKD, as apposed to WHY) shown to shells for 20 seconds, rehearsed for 25 seconds and then recorded in order by the subject as well as possible. The resembling list is then shown to some other subject for the same amount of time, however this time the 25 seconds report time will be interrupted with an interference task ie. computation backwards in threes from the number 58. This is the technique I will use as a basis of my mini-cognitive research project.AIMTo test the humans of the rehearsal loop by preventing it from its task with an interference task during the rehearsal time.RATIONALEI will be re-creating the Brown- Peterson technique for testing the being of the rehearsal loop, although my study will use slightly different trigrams, and manifestly a different situated of people. Im interested to rail whether the results of my study will support the results found by Brown-Peterson or not. I will use a set word list for twain groups of people studied and Im expecting the results of my study to support the results of former tests, thus supporting the theory of existence of the rehearsal loop. dead reckoningWhen asked to telephone the list of trigrams in order later a period of 25 seconds rehearsal time, the subject will remember significantly more trigrams if the rehearsal time is not interrupted by an interference task.NULL HYPOTHESISSubjects taking part in the experiment will not disengage a significantly greater number of words whether their rehearsal time is interrupted with an interference task or not. Any difference found is purely down to chance.METHODThe method I chose to use in order to obtain the clearest and most reliable data was the laboratory experiment. The reason for using this method is to reduce the amount of extraneous and possibly throw variables which could interfere with the results also it becomes very easy to repeat the same test over and over without change. I will use the independent groups design to ensure that different participants are used for each test in order to avoid the chances that the participants will skew the results through rehearsal.The first set of participants will be shown a list of 15 trigrams for 20 seconds, after which time they will be asked to rehearse these for a period of 25 seconds. After that time they will then be asked to write out as many as possible in the correct order (if the trigram is BHD then the participant must write BHD, no mark will be given for BDH). The results will then be recorded.The same set of trigrams will then be shown to a different set of participants for the same amount of time. This tim e however during the 25 seconds rehearsal time, the participants will be asked to perform an interference task, which will be counting backwards in sets of 4 from the number 295. After the 25 seconds, they too will be asked to recall the trigram list and their results will also be recorded.