coding capacity and duration

Question 1

What is encoding

Answer 1

The format of the information

Question 2

What is the sensory register for encoding?

Answer 2

Multiple stores ; main are echoic (auditory) and iconic (visual)

Question 3

stm for encoding?

Answer 3

acoustic encoding (baddeley - acoustic intereference in stm)

Question 4

ltm for encoding

Answer 4

semantic encoding (baddeley - semantic interference in ltm)

Question 5

what is capacity

Answer 5

amount of information that can be held

Question 6

what is the stm for capacity

Answer 6

7 + 2 items of information
jacobs - digit span technique
miller - chunking 7 items

Question 6

what is the sensory register for capacity

Answer 6

large capacity

Question 6

whats the ltm for capacity

Answer 6

potentially unlimited

Question 7

what is duration

Answer 7

the length of time information is held

Question 8

what is the sensory registry for duration

Answer 8

milliseconds (1/2 second)

Question 8

whats the stm for duration

Answer 8

up to 18 seconds without rehearsal (Peterson and Peterson )

Question 9

what is the ltm for duration

Answer 9

up to a lifetime

Question 10

what is a sensory register

Answer 10

• composed of multiple sections,
• capable of holding large amounts of information ,
• only able to retain for a very short time
• for information to pass further into memory system, attention is required

Question 11

what is ltm

Answer 11

• continual storage of information which is largely outside of our awareness, but can be recalled when needed
• info stored semantically, meaning it can hold potentially unlimited amount of information for up to a lifetime

Question 11

research on capacity - stm

Answer 11

jacobs (1887)
- used serial digit span - ppts are given a string of letters.numbers to learn and repeat back
- found that the capacity of stm is limited

• average recall - digits
  9.3 letters = 7.3
• so we can only roughly remember 7 items in stm

miller (1956) chunking may help with this e.g 5932180 = 593/2180

miller found that the average digit span/capacity of items in stm is 7 (plus/minus 2)

Question 12

what is the stm

Answer 12

• the info we are currently aware of/ thinking about
• info from stm found in from paying attention to sensory information
• info stored acoustically (sounds) for 18 to 20 seconds without rehearsal
• has a limited capacity so can only hold only 7+2 items (miller 1956)

Question 13

research on during for stm

Answer 13

Peterson and Peterson 1959

P presented with trigrams (string of 3 consonants e.g xqf) and asked to recall the after 3, 6 ,9 12 15 or 18 seconds, counted in 3’s to prevent rehearsal

found that 80% of accuracy rate for trigram recall after 3 seconds, 10% accuracy y after 18 seconds

suggests that stm duration is limited to roughly 18 seconds when rehearsal is prevented

Question 14

evaluation for capacity - stm

Answer 14

study out of date
lack of control
replicated

Question 15

evaluation for duration on stm

Answer 15

highly controlled, reliable (can be replicated)

low external validity (not applicable to real life)

Question 16

research on duration for ltm

Answer 16

barrack et al 1975

• 392 graduates aged 17-74
• recall tested using high school year book by photo recognition and free recall

results. - with photos - 90% accuracy after 15 years, 50-60% accuracy after 48 years , free recall even less (60% and 30%)

supports idea that ltm has a lifetime duration and is semantically encoded

Question 17

evaluation for duration on ltm

Answer 17

limited duration or affected by other factors e.g age

high external validity (application to real life)

Question 18

research on coding

Answer 18

baddeley - 1966
-acousticallly similar words e.g cat cab can
-acoustically dissimilar words e.g pit few cow

-sematically similar words e.g great large big
-semantically dissimilar words e.g good huge hot

stm - acoustically similar words were harder to recall than words with dissimilar sounds

ltm - recall was worse for semantically similar words than semantically dismillar words

conclusion - stm codes acoustically, ltm codes semantically

Question 18

evaluation for research on coding

Answer 18

artificial stimuli, no personal meaning

lack of gerenalisability

high control of extraneous variables - reilability