Coding, Capacity and Duration Flashcards
What is Coding
Coding is the format in which information is processed and stored. It mostly occurs through our 5 senses as well as semantically.
What is Capacity
The amount of information that your brain can hold in the memory store.
What is Duration
The length of time information can be held in our memory
What are the 5 senses
Sight (Visual), Taste (Gustatory), Touch (Tactile), Smell (Olfactory), Hearing (Acoustic).
Explain Baddeley’s (1966) coding experiment. and the 4 different control groups
He gave a list of four groups of words and the participants had to recall them in order. Group 1- Acoustically similar words, Group 2- Acoustically dissimilar words, Group 3- Semantically similar words, Group 4- Semantically dissimilar words.
What were Baddeley’s (1966) experiment on coding’s results.
Immediate recall- Group 1 did worse, He concluded that STM is encoded Acoustically.
Recall after 20 mins, Group 3 did worse, die to the LTM ring encoded semantically.
Explain Jacob’s (1887) experiment on capacity and his findings.
Participants were asked to recall the list in the correct order until they made an error. The mean score for digits was 9.3, and for letters it was 7.3. This suggests that the STM can hold numbers better than letters.
Explain Miller’s (1956) findings on capacity.
He concluded that there as a magic number 7. This led him to say that the capacity of the STM is 7(+/- 2) pieces of information.
How can we improve on Miller’s (1956) conclusion on capacity of the STM
There’s a theory called chunking. As most things aren’t put into groups of 7 we can put them in to 7 smaller groups.
Explain Peterson and Peterson’s (1959) study on the duration of the STM.
24 participants had to sit 8 trials, each trial students had to remember a consonant syllable (trigram, 3 random consonants put together eg gym, pjs) and a three digit number to count back from. Once they counted back they were asked to recall the trigrams so prevent rehearsal
What were the results to Peterson and Peterson’s (1959) study on duration of the STM
The longer the interval the more times they incorrectly recalled info. For example 80% correct recall was after 3 seconds and only 10% correct recall after 15 seconds. This shows that the STM has a short duration of around 18-30 seconds.
What was Bahrick’s (1975) study on the duration of the LTM.
He had 392 participants between the ages of 17 to 74 years old. He tested their recall through using yer books which contained their class photos. It was hypothesised that the 17 year old would do better.
What were the findings from Bahrick’s (1975) study into the duration of the LTM
Those within 15 years of graduation were 90% accurate with their recall for photo recognition. 48 years since graduation, only 70% recall was correct. and after 15 years 30% of recall was correct.
A strength of Baddeley’s coding experiment
His research shows that they’re two distinct stores, the STM and the LTM and their difference in coding
Weakness of Baddeley’s coding experiment is
It’s an artificial task. Remembering a list doesn’t reflect everyday life therefore it lacks external validity and cannot be generalised
A strength of Jacob’s research into capacity is
His experiment is replicable and is valid
A weakness of Jacob’s research into capacity is
Crown, believed that the STM was more like 4 chunks. His experiment is also an example of an artificial task and isn’t generalisable to wider society.
A strength of Bahricks study into duration is
His study is valid, realistic and meaningful. Its also a longitudinal study rather than a snapshot
A weakness of Peterson and Peterson’s study into duration is
It’s an artificial task and therefore it lacks generalisability to everyday memory tasks.
