Memory
How is information transferred from STM to LTM?
Through rehearsal
What is the difference between an independent variable (IV) and a dependent variable (DV) in an experiment?
✅ Independent Variable (IV): The factor that the researcher changes or manipulates.
✅ Dependent Variable (DV): The factor that the researcher measures to see the effect of the IV.
What is a population in psychological research?
The larger group from which a sample is taken
What is debriefing?
After the experiment, participants are informed about the aim of the study.
What was the aim of the Monster Study?
To see if stuttering could be learned through feedback.
What type of amnesia did HM have?
Anterograde amnesia
Why is it important to control extraneous variables?
To ensure that only the IV affects the results
One strength of opportunity sampling?
It’s quick/convenient
What is the difference between privacy and confidentiality?
Privacy = not being observed without permission; confidentiality = keeping data/info secret.
What was the main finding of the Stanford Prison Experiment?
People quickly adopt abusive roles when placed in positions of power.
How does the case of HM support the idea that short-term memory and long-term memory are separate stores?
✅ HM could still remember information for a few seconds (STM intact).
✅ He could not form new long-term memories after hippocampus removal (LTM damaged).
✅ Shows STM and LTM are separate systems.
A psychologist wants to test whether music affects memory. Describe how they could control extraneous variables to make the experiment fair.
✅ Keep environment constant (room, time, lighting).
✅ Use same task and time for everyone.
✅ Only change type of music (the IV).
A psychologist wants to study how stress affects exam performance.
They decide to use students from their own school as participants.
Identify which sampling technique is being used.
Explain one advantage and one disadvantage of using this method in this study.
✅ Sampling Technique:
Opportunity Sampling — the psychologist is using people who are easily available (students at their own school).
✅ Advantage:
Quick and easy to find participants — saves time and effort.
✅ Disadvantage:
Not representative — results may not apply to students from other schools (bias).
A researcher wants to investigate the effects of temperature on concentration. They plan to get participants to put their faces in ice cold water for 15 seconds, and then ask them to undertake two hours of a boring paper-folding task.
Explain how the researcher can improve this study to meet the ethical guideline of minimising harm for their participants.
✅ The researcher should:
Avoid exposing participants to extreme discomfort or pain (e.g., reduce or remove the ice-cold water task, make the room slightly cold)
Shorten the boring task to a reasonable length (1 hour or less)
Check participants’ consent and allow them to stop at any time
✅ This ensures participants are not physically or psychologically harmed and the study meets ethical standards.
In Watson and Rayner’s Little Albert study (1920), researchers investigated whether fear could be learned through classical conditioning.
Describe what happened in each of the three stages of the experiment:
Before conditioning
During conditioning
After conditioning
✅ Stage 1 – Before Conditioning (Baseline):
Albert was shown various animals and objects (e.g., a white rat, rabbit, dog, masks).
He showed no fear
✅ Stage 2 – During Conditioning:
Each time Albert reached for the white rat, a loud noise (metal bar struck behind him) was made.
He began to associate the noise with the rat
✅ Stage 3 – After Conditioning:
Albert became afraid of the white rat alone
His fear also generalised to similar white, furry objects (e.g., rabbit, fur coat).
A psychologist gives two groups of participants the same list of words.
Group 1 is asked to count the number of letters in each word.
Group 2 is asked to use each word in a meaningful sentence.
Using the Levels of Processing model, explain why one group is likely to remember more words than the other and what this tells us about how memory works. Also mention WHO proposed the LoP model.
✅ Group 2 (meaningful sentence) will recall more words because they used deep, semantic processing.
✅ Group 1 (counting letters) used shallow, structural processing, which produces weaker memory traces.
✅ The LoP model (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) proposes that the depth of processing, not rehearsal or time, determines how well information is remembered.
A psychologist wants to study whether using social media before bedtime affects how well teenagers sleep.
Identify the independent variable (IV) and dependent variable (DV) for this experiment, and suggest how you could operationalise each one so they can be measured accurately.
✅ Independent Variable (IV):
Use of social media before bedtime.
Operationalised as:
Group A uses social media for 30 minutes before bed.
Group B avoids social media for 30 minutes before bed.
✅ Dependent Variable (DV):
Quality or amount of sleep.
Operationalised as:
Number of hours slept (using a sleep app or diary).
Self-rated sleep quality score (1–10 scale) the next morning.
A researcher posts an advert online and also asks friends from school to join. What two sampling methods are being used, and what issue might this cause?
✅ Volunteer sampling (online advert).
✅ Opportunity sampling (friends).
✅ May cause bias — not representative or randomly selected.
A psychologist is studying obedience in a classroom.
They tell students the experiment is about teamwork but secretly instruct the teacher to give unfair punishments to certain students to observe their reactions.
Afterwards, the psychologist plans to use the data without revealing the true purpose of the study to the participants.
Identify two ethical guidelines that have been broken and explain how the researcher could redesign the study to make it more ethical.
✅ Ethical guidelines broken:
Deception – participants are misled about the true purpose of the study.
Informed consent – students cannot give full consent without knowing what the study is really about.
✅ How to make it more ethical:
Give participants full information about the study and obtain informed consent before participation.
If some deception is necessary, ensure a full debrief afterwards explaining the real purpose.
Ensure participation is voluntary and students can withdraw at any time.
✅ Rationale:
This redesign protects participants from emotional harm, upholds honesty, and respects their autonomy in line with ethical standards.
In the Monster Study (1939), researchers worked with 22 orphaned children - half had a stutter, and half did not.
Each half was split into two groups.
Identify all four groups used in the study and explain what the researchers were trying to find out.
✅ The Four Groups:
Children with a stutter – given positive feedback (told their speech was improving).
Children with a stutter – given negative feedback (told their speech was poor).
Children without a stutter – given positive feedback (told their speech was fine).
Children without a stutter – given negative feedback (told they were beginning to stutter).
✅ What the researchers were investigating:
Whether stuttering could be learned through negative feedback and criticism, rather than caused by a physical problem.
A student is asked to remember a list of 15 random words. They can only recall the first few and the last few words.
Using the Multi-Store Model of memory, explain why this happens and what this suggests about how memory works.
✅ This pattern is called the serial position effect (Murdock, 1962).
✅ The primacy effect (first words remembered) occurs because they were rehearsed and transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory.
✅ The recency effect (last words remembered) happens because those words are still in short-term memory.
✅ The words in the middle are often forgotten because they are displaced or not rehearsed enough to move to long-term memory.
✅ This supports the MSM’s idea that STM and LTM are separate stores with different functions and durations.
A psychologist wants to test whether watching emotional videos (sad or happy) affects how well people remember a story.
Should they use an independent measures or a repeated measures design?
Explain your choice and give one strength and one weakness of each design.
✅ Independent Measures Design:
Each group watches a different video (one sad, one happy).
Strength: No order or carryover effects.
Weakness: Participant differences may affect results (e.g., mood, memory ability).
✅ Repeated Measures Design:
Same participants watch both videos.
Strength: Controls for individual differences.
Weakness: Order and emotional carryover effects could affect results.
✅ Justification:
Independent measures is better because emotions from the first video could influence memory in the second.
Randomly assigning participants helps reduce individual differences.
A psychologist wants to study teenagers’ attitudes toward social media.
They could either:
Ask students who happen to be in the school library to take part, or
Post an online advert asking volunteers to sign up.
Explain the type of sampling used in each case and evaluate both methods, including one strength and one weakness of each.
Finally, decide which method would give more representative results and justify your answer.
✅ Opportunity Sampling (library):
Participants are chosen because they are easily available.
Strength: Quick and convenient.
Weakness: May be biased — only includes certain types of students (e.g., those who study in the library).
✅ Volunteer Sampling (online advert):
Participants choose to take part after seeing the advert.
Strength: Participants are more willing and motivated to complete the study.
Weakness: Often attracts a specific type of person — less generalisable (e.g., confident or tech-savvy teens).
✅ Conclusion:
Volunteer sampling may reach a wider group online.
Neither is fully representative, but volunteer sampling might provide slightly better in terms of variety.
A psychologist lies to participants about the study’s purpose. Is this ever acceptable? Explain using ethical principles.
✅ Deception can be acceptable only if it is necessary for valid results.
✅ Participants must be fully debriefed afterward and told the truth.
✅ It becomes unethical if participants are harmed, misled, or cannot give real consent.
Compare the ethical issues in Little Albert and the Prison Experiment. What did psychology learn from these?
✅ Little Albert:
- Psychological harm: child developed a lasting fear response.
- No informed consent from mother.
✅ Prison Experiment:
- Emotional and psychological harm: participants experienced distress, humiliation, and breakdowns.
✅ Lesson learned:
- Psychologists must always protect participants’ wellbeing.