A-Level Psychology: Memory & Cognition Revision

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What is the capacity of short-term memory according to Miller?

Memory & Cognition is a core part of A-Level Psychology. Revise the key concepts and common mistakes below, then lock them in with the free games.

Key concepts

EpisodicTime-stamped autobiographical events with context and emotion.

SemanticGeneral knowledge of facts, meanings and concepts.

ProceduralMemory for motor skills — implicit and hard to verbalise.

InterferenceForgetting where similar memories disrupt each other.

Retrieval FailureCue-dependent forgetting when cues at encoding are absent at recall.

Encoding SpecificityTulving 1983 — recall is best when cues match encoding context.

EWTEyewitness testimony — recall of a witnessed event.

Leading QuestionA question whose form suggests a particular answer.

Post-Event DiscussionTalking after an event, which contaminates memory.

Weapon FocusAnxiety narrows attention onto a weapon, away from face.

Cognitive InterviewGeiselman's four-stage technique improving EWT accuracy.

Yerkes-Dodson LawPerformance peaks at moderate arousal — inverted-U.

MSMMulti-Store Model — sensory register, STM, LTM in a linear chain.

WMMWorking Memory Model — STM as multiple active components.

Where Memory & Cognition sits in each exam board's specification. Tap a board to see what it lists.

AQAMemorySpec 7182

Learn Memory & Cognition step by step

Free interactive mini-lessons: short screens, worked examples and quick checks. Pick your exam board:

Other boards:Edexcel OCR

Questions where students often pick the tempting wrong answer — make sure you know the right one:

What is the capacity of short-term memory according to Miller?✗ 7 plus or minus 2 seconds. ✓ 7 plus or minus 2 items (chunks).

Which component handles visual and spatial information?✗ The phonological loop. ✓ The visuospatial sketchpad.

Who proposed the Multi-Store Model in 1968?✗ Baddeley & Hitch ✓ Atkinson & Shiffrin

KF's case argues against which MSM assumption?✗ LTM is permanent ✓ STM is unitary

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