Coding, Capacity And Duration

Question 1

Short- term memory

Answer 1

The phase or the of memory responsible for the temporary storage of information

Question 2

Long-term memory

Answer 2

The phase or type of memory responsible for the storage of information for an extended period of time

Question 3

Coding

Answer 3

The process of converting information between different forms e.g. taking an event and turning it into a memory
You can code information; semantically, acoustically and visually

Question 4

Semantically

Answer 4

The meaning of the information

Question 5

Acoustically

Answer 5

How information sounds

Question 6

Visually

Answer 6

How information can be seen

Question 7

Baddeley’s research;

Answer 7

He split participants into 4 groups and created 4 groups of word lists.
- group 1- words sounded similar (acoustically similar group)
- group 2- words didn’t sound similar (acoustically dissimilar group)
- group 3- words had similar meanings (semantically similar)
- group 4- words with different meanings (semantically dissimilar group)

Participants were asked to recall the word at different time intervals, immediately after seeing them and then 20 minutes after seeing them.

Question 8

Baddeley’s results

Answer 8

• short-term memory codes acoustically
• long-term memory codes semantically

Question 9

Strengths of Baddeley’s research;

Answer 9

• very well controlled, all participants received exactly the same instructions and procedure
• means the experiment is easily repeatable,so is reliable
• this is a strength because both of these are important in making research scientific

Question 10

Limitations to Baddeley’s research;

Answer 10

• lacks ecological validity
• the word lists were artificial in the sense that they included random words that do not have specific links to everyday life
• it may be that the STM and LTM coded these lists this way, but in everyday life, it may differ
• this mental Baddeleys work may not link to wider context

Question 11

capacity

Answer 11

how much information can the STM hold at one time

Question 12

duration

Answer 12

how long can information be kept in your memory both stm and ltm

Question 13

Peterson and Peterson (AIM)

Answer 13

aim- to investigate the duration of stm

Question 14

Peterson and Peterson (METHOD)

Answer 14

method- 24 students were tested 8 seperate trials. on each trial the student was given a constant to remember. they were also given a three digit number and were asked to count backwards form that three digit number. on each trial they were asked to stop at different times e.g. after 3,6,9,12,15,18. they were then asked to recall the constant

Question 15

Peterson and Peterson (RESULTS)

Answer 15

results- after 3 seconds the average recall was around 80%, after 18 seconds it was about 3%

Question 16

Peterson and Peterson (CONCLUSION)

Answer 16

conclusion- the results tell us that the duration of short term memory is very short, and the shorter amount of time you have to remember it for, the easier it is to remember/ the more you remember

Question 17

Jacob

Answer 17

he investigated the capacity of memory by measuring the digit span, he said that the mean digit span was between 3 and 9 items

Question 18

Miller

Answer 18

he said that the mean digit span was 7+/- 2, he concluded that we can remember 5 words just as easy as remembering 5 letters and concluded we must do this by chunking

Question 19

Bahrick et al (AIM)

Answer 19

aim- to investigate the duration of LTM

Question 20

Bahrick et al (METHOD)

Answer 20

method- they studied 392 american participants between 17 and 74, their high school yearbooks were obtained
1. a photo recognition test consisting of 50 photos, some from participants high school year book
2. free recall test where participants recalled all the names of their graduating class

Question 21

Bahrick et al (RESULTS)

Answer 21

results- participants who were tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in photo recognition. after 48 years, recall declined to about 70% for photo recognition. free recall was less accurate than photo recognition- about 60% after 15 years and dropping to 30% after 48 years

Question 22

Bahrick et al (CONCLUSION)

Answer 22

conclusion- ltm decreases over time (duration). the duration of long term memory is improved with a stimulus

Question 23

Evaluation- Duration (+)

Answer 23

strength of Bahrick et al research is that it has high external validity, because real life meaningful memories were studied

Question 24

Evaluation- Duration (-)

Answer 24

a limitation of Peterson and Peterson research is that its stimulus was artificial, it lacked external validity
a limitation of Bahrick et al research is that the confounding variables are not controlled i.e. unsure when people last viewed their yearbook

Question 25

Evaluation- Coding (+)

Answer 25

strength of Baddeley’s research is that it identified at clear difference between two memory stores, the idea that the stm codes mostly acoustically and ltm codes mostly semantically is mostly true

Question 26

Evaluation- Coding (-)

Answer 26

limitation of Baddeley’s research is that it was artificial stimuli used, and due to the words being unimportant to the participants, the processing and information remembered may differ, if the information is important to them

Question 27

Evaluation- Capacity (-)

Answer 27

limitation to Jacob’s study is that is was conducted a long time ago,and psychology lacked adequate control of the confounding variables

limitation to Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of the stm. Cowan (2001) research showed stm was around 4 not 7 chunks