I need some ideas for my psychology coursework. Relating to memory?

Question

Im doing an experiment on memory for my psychology coursework and I am stuck for ideas as to what I should do. Please does anybody have any valid suggestions? I would be very grateful, thanks

Answer 1

Why don't you get something together on memory chains?

This is a process where people can remember things by attaching a picture or story to whatever they wish to remember and when they need to recall it they simply run through the story in their minds and the items, names etc they wished to recall come back by association with the story they created.

example, suppose you wanted to remember a list of things to buy such as:

Bread - Milk - Eggs - Runner Beans, cheerios and coffee

You could picture in your mind a 40 stone baker squeezed in to the tiny cab of a milk float eating a giant egg sandwich - He stops the milk float and stares in disbelief at a group of marathon runners dressed up as green beans (for charity he thought)

He serves his last customer with a big cheerio see you tommorrow and heads back to the depot for some well earned coffee.


Read the story and picture every part of it in your mind. When you go shopping replay the story in your head and you will remember each item.

This technique of memory by association can have major physcological benefits to people with dreadful memopries (for remembering names and faces, things to do etc), so should make a good topic for some physcology coursework.

You could then broaden the subject from this into why the brain can remember pictorial sequences better. You could also cover the short term memory effect of inconsequential information (easily forgotten because it is unimportant) to the long term memory effect of dramatic images that are never forgotten.

(The more important something is and the more visually dramatic the less likely we are to forget it - hence some causal factors of post traumatic stress etc.

This would be quite an interesting experiment to set up, testing one group of people with words to remember only, another group with words and memory chain techniques and perhaps a further group with dramatic visual images only.

Which would impact the memory most and why.


Hope this gives you a little nudge in a direction that could get you started! Best of luck with it.

Answer 2

the book total recall 1984 by joan minninger, she has on page 90

registration-you get information

retention-you file the information

retrieval-recall/recognition

page 123- synaptic connections
she says by the time we reach adulthood that half of these connections are lost.most weathered away and were never used.peak memory is between twenty and thirty years of age.by then we have so many circutes that the missing half of our abilities are unnoticed because of the amount of use we are incuring with what we have page 125 use it or lose it
the three steps to remembering

Answer 3

Give middle aged women a series of items to recall and change the list periodically, have them repeat them back but do not tell them they have to remember them only that they might be needed. I understand 7 is an easy number of things to remember, try 20.

Also the use of middle aged women is to test the theory that middle aged women sometimes lose memory ability because of menopause. (something I have been accused of LOL)

Answer 4

The world is your oyster on this one; the trouble is there's too much out there!
How about family memories, eg, how differnet siblings remember the same family event in totally different ways?
Or what makes us remember things? Is it smells, noises, faces, places?
or can we improve memory with certain exercises, or by certain dietary suppements?

Answer 5

How about the effect omega 3 has on memory. Hoped I helped.

Answer 6

The human mind is complex. It remembers so often the trivia and forgets the most painful.......a self defence.......there is much stored in there never re examined until perhaps a trigger brings it to the surface.

Answer 7

Rip off Conrad and Baddeley's sensory memory study. It's really quick to do (if you actually don't intend to fabricate results) and pretty reliable.