Coding, Capacity And Duration

Question 1

What is coding

Answer 1

The format in which information is stored in the various memory stores

Question 2

Research on coding

Answer 2

Baddeley (1966)
Gave different groups different lists of words to remember 
-group 1- acoustically similar 
-group 2- acoustically dissimilar 
-group 3- semantically similar 
-group 4- semantically dissimilar 
— info is coded semantically in LTM

Question 3

Evaluation of coding research

Answer 3

Artificial stimuli

-no meaning so results may have been different in every day situation or if given meaningful material.

Question 4

What is capacity

Answer 4

The amount of information that can be held in a memory store

Question 5

Research on capacity

-digit span

Answer 5

Jacobs (1887)
Digit span study
Found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3
And for letters was 7.3

Question 6

Evaluation of digit span

Answer 6

Lacks validity

• it was conducted ages ago
• lack of control
• may have been confounding variables that weren’t controlled

—however when replicated it has the same results- good validity

Question 7

Research on capacity, span of memory and chunking

Answer 7

Miller (1956)
Everything comes in 7’s
Capacity of STM is about 7 items (plus or minus 2)

• 5 words through chunking groups of sets of digits

Question 8

Evaluation of chunking

Answer 8

Cowan 2001
Reviewed it and found that the capacity of STM was only about 4 chunks.

Suggests miller may have over estimated

Question 9

What is duration

Answer 9

The length of time information can be held in memory

Question 10

Research on duration of STM

Answer 10

Margaret and Peterson (2010)

Found that STM has a very short duration unless we conduct verbal rehearsal

Question 11

Research on duration of LTM

Answer 11

Bahrick (1975)
Tested 395 students aged 17-74 ability to recall things about fellow students..

-participants tested within 15 years of grad are about 90% photo recognition
-after 48 years errr about 70% photo recognition
——— very long duration of LTM

Question 12

Evaluation of STM duration

Answer 12

The materials were meaningless
-lacked external validity

-however we do often remember phone numbers, not meaningful info so isn’t totally irrelevant

Question 13

Evaluation of STM duration

Answer 13

High external validity
As meaningful memories were used
-variables were not controlled, ps may have looked in their year book over the years