2 - capacity

Question 1

define capacity

Answer 1

the amount of information held in a memory store

Question 2

what is digit span?

Answer 2

items of information, amount of numbers remembered in a row

Question 3

who investigated digit span?

Answer 3

jacobs

Question 4

what strategy did jacobs use to measure digit span?

Answer 4

participants had to repeat back a string of numbers or letters in the same order and the number of digits was gradually increased, until the participants could no longer recall the sequence

Question 5

what did jacobs find the mean digit span was for numbers?

Answer 5

9.3

Question 6

what did jacobs find the mean digit span was for letters?

Answer 6

7.3

Question 7

what was miller’s article called?

Answer 7

the magic number

Question 8

what did miller make observations of?

Answer 8

everyday practice

Question 9

what did miller note through his observations?

Answer 9

things come in sevens (e.g. days of the week, deadly sins)

Question 10

what did miller suggest?

Answer 10

our stm capacity is 7.

the 7+ - 2 rule, we tend to be able to remember 5-9 items in our stm

Question 11

how did miller suggest people recall more letters or numbers?

Answer 11

chunking (grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks)

Question 12

how does jacobs’ study lack validity (specifically temporal validity)?

Answer 12

it was conducted a long time ago (1887), therefore there is doubt over the controls in the experiment. for example, there may have been distractions while the participants were learning their sequences, meaning there could have been confounding variables that were not controlled

Question 13

how did cowen argue that miller was wrong?

Answer 13

he said that miller had overestimated the amount of chunks we can remember. he said the stm can only hold around 4 chunks