capacity

Question 1

capacity

Answer 1

the amount of information that can be held in a memory store

Question 2

research on capacity

Answer 2

Jacob developed a technique to measure digit span.The research will call out for example 4 digits and the participants asked to recall these in the correct order.If this is correct the researcher will continue to add a digit until they can no longer recall the correct order.This determines the individual digit span.

Question 3

Findings from Jacob

Answer 3

He found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3.
mean span for letters was 7.3

Question 4

evaluation to Jacobs study

Answer 4

one limitation is that it was conducted a long time ago. Early research often lacked control. e.g participants may have been distracted causing them to not perform to the best of their ability.This makes the results lack validity as confounding variables were not controlled.However the results of this study have been confirmed in other research ,supporting its validity.

Question 5

miller’s study on capacity

Answer 5

he made observations of everyday practises and noted everything comes in sevens.eg 7 days in a week. This suggest the capacity of STM is about 7 items + or - 2. He also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as letters.This is done by chunking

Question 6

evaluation of Miller’s study on spam chunking

Answer 6

one limitation is that he may have over estimated the capacity of the STM. e.g Cowan reviewed other research and concluded the capacity of STM was only 4 chucks. This suggest the lower end of his estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7