Coding, Capacity and Duration: AO3

Question 1

What is a strength of Baddeley’s study?

Answer 1

• P: Strength = clear difference between the two memory stores
• E: Later research showed that there were some exeptions to Baddeley’s findings
• E: But the idea that STM uses mostly acoustic coding and LTM uses mostly semantic coding has stood the test of time
• L: This is an important step in the understanding of the memory system which led to the MSM

Question 2

What is a limitation of Baddeley’s study?

Answer 2

• P: Limitation = artificial stimuli not meaningful stimuli
• E: Word lists had no personal meaning to PPs. Baddeley’s findings may not tell us much about coding in different kinds of memory tasks
• E: When processing more meaningful information people may use semantic coding, even for STM tasks
• L: Findings have limited application

Question 3

What is a strength of Jacob’s study?

Answer 3

• P: Strength = Jacob’s study has been replicated
• E: Study is very old and early research lacked adequate controls e.g some PPs digit spans might have been underestimated because they were distracted during testing (confounding variable)
• E: However, it has been confirmed by otheer better controlled studies (Bopp & Verhaeghen (2005))
• L: Valid test of digit span in STM

Question 4

What is a limitation of Miller’s study?

Answer 4

• P: Limitation = it may overestimate STM capacity
• E: Cowan (2001) reviewed other research
• E: He concluded that the capacity of STM was only about 4 plus or minus 1 chunks
• L: Suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (5 items) is more appropraite than 7 items

Question 5

What is a limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study?

Answer 5

• P: Limitation = meaningless stimuli
• E: We can sometimes try to recall meaningless things so the study is not completely irrelevant
• E: But recall of consonant syllables does not reflect meaningful everyday memory tasks
• L: Study lacked external validity

Question 6

What is a strength of Bahrick et al’s study?

Answer 6

• P: Strength = high external validity
• E: Everyday meaningful memories (e.g of peoples’s faces and names) were studied
• E: When lab studies were done with meaningless pictures to be remembered, recall rates were lower e.g Shepard (1967)
  L: Bahrick et al’s findings reflect a more “real” estimate of the duration of LTM