Coding, capacity and duration of memory Flashcards
What is coding?
How information is processed with storage
What is capacity?
The amount of information the memory can hold
What is duration?
How long the memory remains in the memory store
What is the research on SR?
Coding of sensory register is thought to be dependant on the sensory imput/stimuli
e.g echoic(sound)
What was Baddeley’s research on STM?
Participants were given two lists to remember: 1) ACOUSTICALLY SIMILAR – (cat, cab, can) 2) ACOUSTICALLY DISSIMILAR – (pit, few, cow) Recall was tested immediately
- The words remembered least well were those with similar sounds (acoustically similar condition).
What did Baddeley conclude about STM?
-Acoustically similar words were harder to recall
-Acoustically dissimilar words were easier to recall
-Suggests that coding in STM is acoustic.
What was Baddeley experiment on LTM?
Participants were given two lists to remember: 3) SEMANTICALLY SIMILAR – (Big, high, tall) 4) SEMANTICALLY DISSIMILAR – (Wind, Box, Brown)
-Recall was tested after an interval of 20 minutes
-The words remembered least well were those with similar meanings (Semantically Similar condition).
There was only 55% accuracy for semantically similar words compared to 85% accuracy for semantically dissimilar word
What did Baddeley conclude about LTM?
Baddeley concluded that, as the semantically similar words were harder to recall (due to the confusion created by them being similar) and the semantically different words were easier to recall (due to their distinct meanings making it is easier to discriminate between), these findings suggest that the CODING in LTM is SEMANTIC
What are the strengths of research into coding?
-Memory research typically uses highly controlled procedures.
-This allows the research to isolate the feature they wish to study (e.g. Coding of the different memory stores) whilst controlling all other extraneous variables.
-This means psychologists gain a good knowledge of the different features of our different memory stores. E.g. that the coding of STM is acoustic whereas coding in LTM is semantic
What is the limitation of research into Coding?
-Artificial research.
- In real life people rarely learn word lists as something they ‘remember’ day-to-day, instead people need to recall things that are relevant to their life (e.g. what to buy at the shop, what time their meeting at work is, what someone looks like)
- so the recall task in this research is not really representative of everyday memory demands. –This suggests coding in LTM may not be solely Semantic.
What is the duration of the sensory register?
500 miliseconds
What was the Peterson and Peterson STM experiment?
1.Asked Ps to remember a nonsense syllable of 3 consonants (a trigram of letters such as BHJ, GFQ)
2. Gave participants an interference task (counting backwards in 3’s from 100) to stop them rehearsing the trigram. (Preventing rehearsal is important to see STM in its pure form – any rehearsal of items starts to implicate LTM in the learning process).
-Tested their recall after 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18-second intervals. Ø Average recall for trigrams was very good - 80% after a 3 sec interval Ø —-Fewer trigrams were recalled as time intervals lengthened Ø Recall dropped to 10% after an 18 sec interval
What does Peterson and Petersons STM experiment suggest.
-These findings suggest that the DURATION of STM is LIMITED to a APPROX 18 secs to a MAX of 30 secs
What was Bahricks experiment on LTM?
Tested 392 graduates (aged 17-74) from a U.S. High School on face and name recognition of people in their school year (class). Participants were tested using either photo-recognition tests (matching the name to the picture of the person) or Free Recall tests (asking participants to name the person in the picture) Ø Photo-Recognition: Participants tested with 15 Years of graduation demonstrated 90% accurate recall. After 48 Years recall declined to about 70%. Ø Free Recall: after 15 Years, there was 60% accurate recall and after 48 Years recall dropped to 30%.
What do Bahricks discover about LTM?
The findings suggests that the DURATION of LTM can last from a few minutes to years/a LIFETIME
What was a strength of Peterson and petersons research?
This research provided some insight into the fact that decay is the mechanism for forgetting in STM.
What was the limitation of Petersons and Petersons research?
Peterson + Peterson’s research used artificial stimuli to test human memory – memorizing trigrams, which doesn’t really reflect typical items of everyday memory (e.g. faces, songs, events) – therefore it might not be valid to draw conclusions about the duration of our actual STM memory from this research.
