Coding, Capacity And Duration

Question 1

Define capacity

Answer 1

The amount of information a memory store can hold

Question 2

Define coding

Answer 2

The format in which the information is stored

Question 3

Define duration

Answer 3

The amount of time the information is stored

Question 4

Name and outline the study which investigated the duration of LTM

Answer 4

Bahrick et al. (1979):
-400 participants aged between 17 and 74 years were shown a set of photos and a list of names
-asked to identify ex-school friends
-those who’d left high school in the last 15 years identified 90% of faces and names
-those who’d left 48 years previously identified 80% of names and 70% of faces
-suggest that memory for faces is long lasting

Question 5

Name and outline the study which investigated the duration of STM

Answer 5

Peterson and Peterson (1959):
-participants were given nonsense trigrams (eg. ZFB)
-had to count backwards in threes from a large three digit number for varying periods of time
-correct recall of trigrams after 3 seconds= 80%
-correct recall of trigrams after 18 seconds= 3%
-suggests STM duration= about 18 seconds

Question 6

Name and outline the study which investigated the coding of STM and LTM

Answer 6

Baddeley (1966):
-gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:
Group 1- words sounded similar
Group 2- words sounded different
Group 3- words with similar meanings
Group 4- words with different meanings
-participants were shown original words and asked to recall them in correct order
-when recalled immediately (recall from STM), they did worse with acoustically similar words
-when recalling list after 20 minutes (recall from LTM), they did worse with semantically similar words
-suggest that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM

Question 7

Name and outline the study which investigated the capacity of STM using digit span

Answer 7

Jacobs (1887):
-4 digits read out and participants had to recall these out loud in correct order
-if recalled correct, researcher reads out 5 digits and so on until participants cannot recall order correctly= individual’s digit span
-mean span for digits= 9.3 items
-mean span for letters= 7.3 items