2.1: Short-term memory (STM)

Question 1

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks)

Answer 1

Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:

1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM

Question 2

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

First AO3 PEEL paragraph

Answer 2

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli

Question 3

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although

Answer 3

Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants

Question 4

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
What does this mean?

Answer 4

This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks

Question 5

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
What does this suggest?

Answer 5

This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application

Question 6

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Answer 6

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM

Question 7

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

Second AO3 PEEL paragraph

Answer 7

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago

Question 8

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.

Answer 8

Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control

Question 9

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
Example

Answer 9

For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done

Question 10

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
What would this mean?

Answer 10

This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled

Question 11

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However,

Answer 11

However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity

Question 12

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

Answer 12

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks

Question 13

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

Third AO3 PEEL paragraph

Answer 13

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM

Question 14

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
Example

Answer 14

For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks

Question 15

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
What does this suggest?

Answer 15

This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items

Question 16

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this,

Answer 16

As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this

Question 17

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
Example

Answer 17

For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension

Question 18

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
What does this suggest?

Answer 18

This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all

Question 19

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Answer 19

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it

Question 20

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

Fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph

Answer 20

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial

Question 21

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
Why is this?

Answer 21

This is because trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities, where what we are trying to remember is meaningful

Question 22

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
This is because trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities, where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
Therefore,

Answer 22

Therefore, Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked external validity and mundane realism

Question 23

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
This is because trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities, where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
Therefore, Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked external validity and mundane realism.
However,

Answer 23

However, we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless information, such as phone numbers, so Peterson and Peterson’s study is not totally irrelevant and does indeed have some real world application

Question 24

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
This is because trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities, where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
Therefore, Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked external validity and mundane realism.
However, we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless information, such as phone numbers, so Peterson and Peterson’s study is not totally irrelevant and does indeed have some real world application.

In addition,

Answer 24

In addition, one explanation for why we forget things in STM is spontaneous decay

Question 25

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
This is because trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities, where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
Therefore, Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked external validity and mundane realism.
However, we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless information, such as phone numbers, so Peterson and Peterson’s study is not totally irrelevant and does indeed have some real world application.

In addition, one explanation for why we forget things in STM is spontaneous decay.
What is spontaneous decay?

Answer 25

Spontaneous decay is that the memory trace simply disappears if not rehearsed

Question 26

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
This is because trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities, where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
Therefore, Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked external validity and mundane realism.
However, we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless information, such as phone numbers, so Peterson and Peterson’s study is not totally irrelevant and does indeed have some real world application.

In addition, one explanation for why we forget things in STM is spontaneous decay.
Spontaneous decay is that the memory trace simply disappears if not rehearsed.
An alternative explanation

Answer 26

An alternative explanation was suggested by Reitman (1974), who argued that the brief duration of the STM is due to displacement - the information in STM is displaced

Question 27

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
This is because trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities, where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
Therefore, Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked external validity and mundane realism.
However, we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless information, such as phone numbers, so Peterson and Peterson’s study is not totally irrelevant and does indeed have some real world application.

In addition, one explanation for why we forget things in STM is spontaneous decay.
Spontaneous decay is that the memory trace simply disappears if not rehearsed.
An alternative explanation was suggested by Reitman (1974), who argued that the brief duration of the STM is due to displacement - the information in STM is displaced.
What does this mean?

Answer 27

This means that STM has a limited capacity and any new information will push out what is currently there

Question 28

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
This is because trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities, where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
Therefore, Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked external validity and mundane realism.
However, we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless information, such as phone numbers, so Peterson and Peterson’s study is not totally irrelevant and does indeed have some real world application.

In addition, one explanation for why we forget things in STM is spontaneous decay.
Spontaneous decay is that the memory trace simply disappears if not rehearsed.
An alternative explanation was suggested by Reitman (1974), who argued that the brief duration of the STM is due to displacement - the information in STM is displaced.
This means that STM has a limited capacity and any new information will push out what is currently there.
In Peterson and Peterson’s study,

Answer 28

In Peterson and Peterson’s study, participants immediately counted down during the retention interval

Question 29

Outline and evaluate research related to the features of short-term memory (coding, capacity and duration) (16 marks).
Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
1. Group 1 (acoustically similar) - words sounded similar (for example cat, cab and can)
2. Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) - words sounded different (for example pit, few and cow)
3. Group 3 (semantically similar) - words with similar meanings (for example great, large and big)
4. Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) - words that all had different meanings (for example good, huge and hot).

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Baddeley’s study is that it used quite artificial stimuli, rather than meaningful stimuli.
Although his laboratory experiment shows causality (a cause and effect relationship), the words had no personal meaning to participants.
This means that we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task, as Baddeley’s study lacks ecological validity, since it is not representative of real-life activities and an example is that when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
This suggests that findings from Baddeley’s study have limited application.

Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit span.
The digit span method is where the researcher gives a number of digits and the participant has to recall them all in order.
The researcher then increases the amount by one digit and the participant has to recall them all again until they cannot recall the correct order.
This determines their digit span.
Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3, which illustrates the limited capacity of STM.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Jacob’s study is that it was conducted a long time ago.
Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested, so they didn’t perform as well as they might have done.
This would mean that the results might not be valid, because there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
However, the results of this study have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller noted that many things come in sevens - there are 7 notes on a musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, ect.
This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus two).
However, Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters by chunking, which is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items.
As well as this, there may be individual differences in STM capacity and there is research evidence to support this.
For example, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that STM capacity varied between 5 and 20 items between those with advanced reading comprehension and those with poor reading comprehension.
This suggests that the findings from Miller’s research cannot be applied to all.

Peterson and Peterson (1959) gave participants sets of 3 letters (consonant syllables, also known as trigrams) to remember, for example KLT or GYD, but they were immediately asked to count backwards in threes from a large 3 digit number for different lengths of times, which were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
This was done to prevent rehearsal.
Participants were then asked to recall the letters in the correct order.
The results of the study showed that participants had forgotten virtually all of the information after 18 seconds.
It was concluded that we cannot hold information in the STM store, unless we can rehearse it.

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that one limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
This is because trying to memorise consonant syllables does not reflect most real-life memory activities, where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
Therefore, Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked external validity and mundane realism.
However, we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless information, such as phone numbers, so Peterson and Peterson’s study is not totally irrelevant and does indeed have some real world application.

In addition, one explanation for why we forget things in STM is spontaneous decay.
Spontaneous decay is that the memory trace simply disappears if not rehearsed.
An alternative explanation was suggested by Reitman (1974), who argued that the brief duration of the STM is due to displacement - the information in STM is displaced.
This means that STM has a limited capacity and any new information will push out what is currently there.
In Peterson and Peterson’s study, participants immediately counted down during the retention interval.
What could this have done?

Answer 29

This could have caused displacement and led to decreased recall, meaning that Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked internal validity