capacity Flashcards
what is capacity?
capacity is the AMOUNT of information which can be held in the memory store
Who did research on capacity?
Jacobs, but Miller did a similar study too.
what was Jacobs procedure on capacity?
got participants to read out digits/letters, in order to measure their digit span.
he would then increase the digits one at a time, until the participants could only remember the information correctly on 50%.
what were the findings?
found that the mean span for digits was 9.3, and for letters was 7.3.
what were millers findings on STM capacity?
that STM has a capacity of between 5 and 9 (7+/-2) chunks of information.
what is the capacity of LTM?
the capacity is unlimited
what is one problem with Jacobs study on the capacity of STM?
it was conducted a LONG TIME AGO, where researched lacked CONTROL.
Therefore, there may be CONFOUNDING variables such as distractions in the study, affecting the PERFORMANCE.
this lowers the IV, making us UNSURE whether we’re measuring what we should be
