coding,capacity and duration

Question 1

coding Definition

Answer 1

Format which information is stored in various memory stores

Question 2

research into coding

Answer 2

Baddeley:
Gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember.
Group 1: acoustically similar 
Group acoustically dissimilar
Group 3: semantically similar 
Group 4:semantically dissimilar

Question 3

findings of coding research

Answer 3

Ppt were shown original words and asked to recall them in correct order. When people had to do the task immediately after hearing the words (STM recall) they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.

If ppt were asked to recall the list after 20 mins they did worse with semantically words.

Suggests that STM encoded acoustically while LTM encoded semantically

Question 4

Capacity definition

Answer 4

The amount of info that can be held in a memory store

Question 5

Research on capacity and findings

Answer 5

Jacobs (digit span):
Gave 4 digits and then ppt were asked to recall in correct order. If they get it write the list increases by 1. He found that mean span fro digits was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3

Miller (7 plus or minus 2):
Miller observed everything comes in 7s. This suggest that capacity of STM is about 7 items plus or minus 2. He also noted that people can remember 5 words and letters at the same time. They do this by chunking

Question 6

Duration definition

Answer 6

How long info can be held in memory

Question 7

Research into duration of STM

Answer 7

Peterson and Peterson:
Tested 24 undergrads and they were given a trigram to remember and also a 3 digit number. The students were then asked to count backwards to prevent maintenance rehearsal. They had retention intervals of 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds. They found duration of STM was 18 seconds as this produced the worst recall

Question 8

Duration of LTM research

Answer 8

Bahrick:
Studied 392 ppts from American university aged between 17 and 74. They obtained their yearbook from the ppts or directly from the school. Recall was tested using two methods:
1) photo recognition
2) Free recall of names from graduating class.
Those who were tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in photo recognition and after 48 years recall declined to 70%. Free recall after 15 years was 60% accurate and it fell to 30% after 38 years. This shows that LTM is long lasting