Coding, Capacity and Duration

Question 1

who is the researcher involved in the research of coding of memory?

Answer 1

Baddeley

Question 2

what did Baddeley do to test the coding of memory?

Answer 2

• gave different lists of words to 4 groups to remember
• groups: semantically similar, semantically dissimilar, acoustically similar and acoustically dissimilar
• ppts were shown original words and asked to recall in correct order
• when they were asked to do this immediately, recalling from STM they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words
• when asked to recall words after 20 mins, they tended to do worse with semantically similar words

Question 3

what does Baddeley’s research on coding show?

Answer 3

• STM = acoustically
• LTM = semantically

Question 4

who is the researcher involved in the research of capacity of memory?

Answer 4

Jacobs

Question 5

how did Jacobs research capacity?

Answer 5

measuring digit span

Question 6

what did Jacobs do to test the capacity of memory?

Answer 6

• read out 4 digits and asked ppts to recall in the correct order and if they did he’d move to 5 and so on

Question 7

what did Jacobs find the mean digit and letter spans to be?

Answer 7

9.3 items = digits
7.3 items = letters
this is because there are more letters than digits

Question 8

what is chunking?

Answer 8

grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks

Question 9

what is the capacity of STM?

Answer 9

7 plus or minus 2

Question 10

who investigated chunking?

Answer 10

Miller

Question 11

how did Miller investigate chunking?

Answer 11

• made observations of everyday practices: 7 days of the week, seven deadly sins and seven notes on musical scale

Question 12

who is the researcher involved in the research of duration of memory(STM)?

Answer 12

Peterson and Peterson

Question 13

how did Petersons investigate the duration of STM?

Answer 13

• tested 24 students in 8 trials
• each trial they were given a consonant syllable and a 3 digit number they had to count backwards from this number until told to stop
• and on each trial they were told to stop at varying times = 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds

Question 14

what would counting backwards from do when researching the duration of STM?

Answer 14

prevent any mental rehearsal of the consonant syllable

Question 15

what was the findings of Petersons’ study?

Answer 15

• 3 seconds = average recall was 80%
• 18 seconds = average recall was 3%

Question 16

what did the findings of Peterson and Peterson suggest about the duration of STM?

Answer 16

18 seconds unless we repeat the information(verbal rehearsal)

Question 17

who is the researcher involved in the research of duration of LTM?

Answer 17

Bahrick et al

Question 18

how did Bahrick et al investigate the duration of LTM?

Answer 18

• studied 392 American ppts aged between 17 to 74
• high school yearbooks were obtained and recall was tested in various ways
  1) photo-recognition test consisting of 50 photos some from the ppts high school yearbooks
  2) free recall test where ppts would recall all the names of their graduating class

Question 19

what was the findings of Bahrick et al?

Answer 19

• ppts tested within 15 yrs of graduation = 90% accuracy in photo recognition
• after 48 yrs = recall declined 70% accuracy for photo recognition
• free recall was less accurate, about 60% after 15 years, dropping to 30% after 48

Question 20

what did the findings of Bahrick’s et al suggest about the duration of LTM?

Answer 20

lasts for a lifetime

Question 21

what are the evaluations for research of coding?

Answer 21

+ clear difference between two memory stores
- Baddeley uses quite artificial stimuli

Question 22

what are the evaluations for research of capacity?

Answer 22

+ can be replicated
- Miller may have overestimated STM capacity

Question 23

what are the evaluations for research of duration?

Answer 23

+ high external validity
- stimulus material was meaningless