3
replacing canoes with boats. Bartlett tested his Cambridge students during tutorials
and carried out one test in the street, two years later.
However, in the ‘70s, Loftus did research into schemas with standardised
procedures and experimental controls. She found schemas about car crashes made
some participants falsely remember broken glass. Loftus followed standardised
procedures that are easily replicated.
You could apply the idea of schemas to helping dementia patients by going
along with beliefs or activities that are meaningful for them. This is Validation
Therapy and it is used at the “dementia village” in Hogeway where residents live in
houses that fit in with their schemas.
Reconstructive memory is similar to Tulving’s idea of semantic LTM. Schemas
seem to be semantic stores and Tulving suggests that semantic memory can cause
episodic memories to change, which is exactly what schemas do. The two theories are
more valid since they support each other.
In conclusion, reconstructive memory is a very important idea because it
suggests that eyewitnesses may not be reliable. However, it is controversial because a
lot of the studies into it are either unscientific or extremely artificial or both. In real
life, our memories may be more reliable than this theory makes out.
Evaluate the classic study (8)
Baddeley had a very reliable experiment. In fact, he replicated it 3 times,
improving the procedures each time. He used the same lists of words, gave the
participants the same amount of time and tested them in the same way. This is called
following standardised procedures.
Baddeley improved the validity of his study by using controls. He added an
interference task (writing down lists of numbers) before each trial to “block” the STM
and make sure only LTM was being used. He also presented the words on slides
because he didn’t want to disqualify people for having bad hearing.
However, Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity because it is unrealistic.
Learning lists of similar sounding or similarly themed words is not an ordinary activity.
replacing canoes with boats. Bartlett tested his Cambridge students during tutorials
and carried out one test in the street, two years later.
However, in the ‘70s, Loftus did research into schemas with standardised
procedures and experimental controls. She found schemas about car crashes made
some participants falsely remember broken glass. Loftus followed standardised
procedures that are easily replicated.
You could apply the idea of schemas to helping dementia patients by going
along with beliefs or activities that are meaningful for them. This is Validation
Therapy and it is used at the “dementia village” in Hogeway where residents live in
houses that fit in with their schemas.
Reconstructive memory is similar to Tulving’s idea of semantic LTM. Schemas
seem to be semantic stores and Tulving suggests that semantic memory can cause
episodic memories to change, which is exactly what schemas do. The two theories are
more valid since they support each other.
In conclusion, reconstructive memory is a very important idea because it
suggests that eyewitnesses may not be reliable. However, it is controversial because a
lot of the studies into it are either unscientific or extremely artificial or both. In real
life, our memories may be more reliable than this theory makes out.
Evaluate the classic study (8)
Baddeley had a very reliable experiment. In fact, he replicated it 3 times,
improving the procedures each time. He used the same lists of words, gave the
participants the same amount of time and tested them in the same way. This is called
following standardised procedures.
Baddeley improved the validity of his study by using controls. He added an
interference task (writing down lists of numbers) before each trial to “block” the STM
and make sure only LTM was being used. He also presented the words on slides
because he didn’t want to disqualify people for having bad hearing.
However, Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity because it is unrealistic.
Learning lists of similar sounding or similarly themed words is not an ordinary activity.
