Memory Is A Key Aspect Of Psychology - 1856 Words

Memory is a key aspect of psychology and thus much research has been conducted into the way it works. Early research by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) has led to the proposition of models about the nature of memory. Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) proposed the two store model of memory, this included sensory stores, short term memory and long term memory. They also determined that storage and transferal of information to long term memory is encouraged and enabled by the processes of short term methods such as encoding and rehearsal. In short term memory, Miller (1956) found there to be a magic number of pieces of information that could be temporarily remembered and this was 7+/- 2; this broad range of 5-9 chunks of information tends to include†¦show more content†¦It is supported that recognition is much easier than recall as recognition â€Å"is simply memory that something (sight, sound, smell, touch) has been experienced before† however recall tends to require learning (J. Butler, K. Holden, W. Lidwell 2010, p.200). Shepard (1967) supports that recognition is very good for words, sentences and pictures by finding that out of 600 previously seen stimuli when the old stimuli were paired with new, the participants were able to correctly recognise the old stimuli 90% of the time for words, 88% for sentences and 98% for pictures. This shows that recognition of stimuli is high for a number of information however it is highest for pictures. Understanding that recognition is stronger than recall has led to changes in how computers are designed, due to the knowledge that recognition is stronger than recall computers have been designed to allow users to be shown options and choose from them, for example drop down lists, rather than telling the computer what they require; this has led to computers being more user friendly (Johnson et al., 1989). Based on previous research, this study aims to further investigate whether recall or recognition is the superior method of retrieval of memory and thus support previous studies. Therefore, the experimental hypothesis H1 is that memory scores for recognition will be higher than those for recall memory scores. The null hypothesis H0 is that there will