Coding, Capacity and Duration Flashcards
What are the three main types of memory?
Sensory Register
Short term memory
Long term memory
What is the order of events in how we process the enviroment?
Perception
Attention
Memory
Language
What is duration of memory?
Length of time information can be kept in store
What is the duration for the sensory register
It has five stores, one for each of our senses.
The duration of the sensory memory is very brief, for example information in the visual store only lasts for less than half a second.
Information in the auditory store (sound) lasts for about 2-4 seconds.
The SR is under no cognitive control, but it is the automatic response to the reception of sensory information via the environment.
What is the duration for short-term memory
Information lasts up to 18-30 seconds before it disappears, this was found by researchers Peterson & Peterson (1959)
We can keep information in STM for longer if we repeat it over and over again (maintenance rehearsal).
If we do this for long enough, the material may pass into long-term memory.
For example, when you learn new topics at college – you need to repeat the information by revising for it to pass into your long term memory.
What is the duration for the long-term memory
Material in the LTM may last up to a lifetime.
Researcher Harry Bahrick (1975) found that may people could recognise names and faces of their class mates after almost 50 years.
What is the capacity of the sensory register
Sensory memory – very high.
There are over one hundred million cells in the retina of each eye and each of these cells stores sensory data.
What is the capacity of the short term memory?
Short-term memory – limited capacity.
It can only contain a certain number of ‘things’ before forgetting occurs.
Researcher Miller (1956) noted that the capacity is between 5 & 9 (7+/-2) items of information, but this can be increased through chunking.
This is where the size of the units of info in storage is increased by giving them collective meaning.
Example: SOSABCITVFBI into 4 chunks of SOS/ABC/ITV/FBI will increase capacity.
What is the capacity of the long term memory?
Long-term memory – unlimited capacity.
We store everything we have learned in our LTM.
When you forget information in LTM, it may still be there but you just can’t access it because you don’t have the right cues.
What is the coding/encoding of the sensory register?
Sensory memory – involves converting information from the environment (sights, sounds, smells etc) into a format in which it can be stored in memory.
Encoding in each SR store depends on the sense.
Example: in the visual store it stores information received from the eye etc.
Echoic: auditory info
Iconic: visual info
Haptic: tactile info
Gustatory: taste info
Alfactory: smell info
What is the coding/encoding of the short term memory?
Short-term memory – is mainly acoustic (based on sounds).
Researchers found that when people recall words from a list immediately after hearing them, any mistakes are more acoustic.
Example – recalling cap, instead of cat, this was found by researcher Baddeley (1966) who conducted experiments into coding within the short-term and long-term memory store.
What is the coding/encoding of the long term memory?
Long-term memory – is mainly semantic (based on meaning).
Researchers found that mistakes in recalling words from LTM tended to involve substituting a word that means the same thing.
Example – recalling big, instead of large, this was found by researcher Baddeley (1966) who conducted experiments into coding within the short-term and long-term memory store.
What is the most efficient way of coding for STM and for LTM?
Encoding acoustically is generally thought to be the dominant method for coding information stored in STM.
Semantic encoding tends to be dominant when storing and retrieving information in LTM, although it can also be represented acoustically or visually.
Sensory Register (SR) Coding: Sperling (1960)
Sensory Register (SR) Coding: Sperling (1960)
Aim:
To investigate the capacity and duration of the iconic memory (visual part of the sensory register).
Method:
Procedure: Participants were shown a grid of 12 letters (3 rows of 4) for just 50 milliseconds.
Whole Report Condition: Participants were asked to recall as many letters as possible; they typically recalled 4-5 letters.
Partial Report Condition: Participants heard a tone (high, medium, or low) immediately after the grid was shown, indicating which row to recall. Here, they could recall 3-4 letters from the indicated row.
Findings:
The Partial Report Condition suggested that the sensory register could hold all 12 letters, but information faded quickly.
This supported the idea that coding in the iconic memory is visual and has a high capacity but a very brief duration.
Conclusion:
Information in the sensory register is coded in a modality-specific manner, maintaining the original form of the sensory input.
