June 8, 2010 by Adrian Frost.
There’s a useful presentation on experimental design to be found here
But equally interesting is the software that has been used to produce it – you can have a play here – it’s really easy to use, and you have to agree the presentations look pretty slick..
I was wondering – this could be used for a quick class experiment: Ask one group to present information using powerpoint (i.e. in a linear fashion), ask another to present the same info using the more hierarchical prezi software, to see if the way in which information is organised affects recall in independent groups of subjects?
The online magazine Slate has been running a series about memory distortions and false memories (see here) There are 8 articles all together – at the top of the web page there are links to previous articles.
The first article describes a recent mass experiment conducted by Slate where they used some of Elizabeth Loftus’ techniques to plant false political memories.
May 19, 2010 by Adrian Frost.
Dreams, drugs, intelligence, memory, infant brains, psychoanalysis, human evolution and many more – Loads of online broadcasts from Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ Radio 4 series to be found here – all free – it makes one proud to be a licence payer….
November 12, 2009 by Cara Flanagan.
I am again grateful to an enquiry from a teacher about an apparent contradiction – this time between our AS Complete Companion and another AS book. Logie (1995) proposed that the visuo-spatial sketchpad (a component of the working memory model) could be further divided into a visual cache and inner scribe. In the Complete Companion we have said that the cache is a store and the scribe deals with spatial relations, whereas another AS book says that the cache is a store and the scribe is a rehearsal mechanism. Both versions are correct and both lack detail.The visual cache is a passive store. It holds information about form and colour. However some research evidence (e.g. Coleman and LeFevre, 2002) has found that information is actively rehearsed.The inner scribe is an active rehearsal component. It is proposed to deal with spatial and movement information. There also may be some storage component.Any further comments welcome!
October 26, 2009 by Cara Flanagan.
I was recently asked by a teacher to explain an apparent contradiction in the text on working memory. On page 12 of the AS Complete Companion the text says that the central executive component of the Working Memory Model has a ‘very limited capacity’ but later, on the same page the text says the central executive has ‘no storage capacity’. Sounds like a contradiction! But on closer inspection there isn’t a contradiction – of course the the central executive has to have some capacity to direct attention but it has no extra storage capacity. I did double check this with Professor Alan Baddeley, who says ‘I assume that the executive has limited attentional capacity, but does not act as a store. Central storage in working memory is now assumed to depend on the episodic buffer’.
Keep your queries coming in!
September 3, 2009 by Cara Flanagan.
Many of you will be familiar with the excellent BBC radio series called Mind Changers which has included programmes on Milgram, Piaget, Ainsworth, Bartlett, Kohlberg, Zimbardo, Harlow, Asch. Some of these are currently available as podcasts here or you can go to PsychBLOG where Jamie has downloaded some and there are also some available on Spokenword (free subscription for teachers).
If anyone finds copies elsehwere, let us know!
July 8, 2009 by Adrian Frost.
Very nice little interactive diagram to be found here. You click on an activity such as ‘speech’ or ‘memory’ and the diagram indicates which part of the brain governs such activity.
June 26, 2009 by Evie Bentley.
Research done by Ley (1988) suggested that to enable patients to remember what advice they had been given doctors and nurses should give the most important information first, thus exploiting the primacy effect. Information also needs to be understandable ( well, what a surprise!) so simple sentences and language are appropriate. Instructions need to be explicit, and prefaced by their category, e.g. “this is the problem …”, or “this is what you need to do”, and “this is how you can do it”. Repetition is also helpful in accurate recall.
Now in 2009 similar information is being given by Fischhoff who has pointed out the relevance of psychological research to addressing the current health issue. He has told USA authorities that health communications should
- Be truthful, factual, even is this is worrying, i.e. demonstrate that you trust your audience.
- Focus only on the most critical facts as people can retain only so much information. (Remember Miller’s magic number and chunking?)
- Emotions can interfere with memory (Loftus showed this a long time ago) so communicators should be calm and positive in their manner.
- Recommendations need to be reasonable for the target population so they can see that they can be successful in complying and therefore carry on listening and remembering ( locus of control v learned helplessness; cognitive consistency).
I do wonder if these recommendations could be spread more widely – Westminster comes to mind!
April 17, 2009 by Adrian Frost.
I’ve just found an excellent article for one of those ‘Introduction to Psychology’ induction style activities. It concerns Jill Price, a woman who appears to have exceptionally accurate recall for dates and events. As the author explains:
“I first saw Price last May in a YouTube clip of her on 20/20. Diane Sawyer asks Price, an avid television viewer, to identify certain significant dates in broadcast history. When did CBS air the “Who shot JR?” episode of Dallas? When was All in the Family‘s baby episode shown? And so on. Price nails every question. She not only gives the date for the final episode of MASH but describes the weather that day”.
As is so often the case with such case studies, the truth behind the simple headline is at once more complex and more mundane than it initially appears.
I think that the article is a good one for use with classes because it starts off with consideration of cognitive and biological factors, veers into psychopathology and ends up with conclusions that are more psychodynamic in tone. On the way it touches upon a range of research methodologies and ethical issues – all in an accessible tone well suited to an introductory lesson.
April 7, 2009 by Adrian Frost.
From Ben Goldacre’s excellent ‘Bad Science’ column for the Guardian a while back:
“Some researchers in Bologna demonstrate the spectacular hopelessness of memory. One morning in 1980, a bomb exploded in Bologna station: 85 people died, and the clock stopped ominously showing 10.25, the time of the explosion. This image became a famous symbol for the event, but the clock was repaired soon after, and worked perfectly for the next 16 years. When it broke again in 1996, it was decided to leave the clock showing 10.25 permanently, as a memorial. The researchers asked 180 people familiar with the station, or working there, with an average age of 55, about the clock: 173 knew it was stopped, and 160 said it always had been, ever since 1980. What’s more, 127 claimed they had always seen it stuck on 10.25, ever since the explosion, including – fairly excellently – all 21 railway employees. In a similar study published last year, 40% of 150 UK participants claimed to remember seeing closed circuit television footage of the moment of the explosion on the bus in Tavistock Square on July 7th 2005. No such footage exists”.
