coding, capacity and duration of memory Flashcards
AO1: coding
coding is the format in which information is stored in the various memory stores.
STUDY: Baddely’s study is giving acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar and semantically dissimilar groups of words to participants. Found that in STM they did worse recalling acoustically similar words and in LTM they did worse recalling semantically similar words. Suggested information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.
AO1: capacity
capacity is the amount of information that can be held in a memory store.
STUDY: Miller made observations of everyday things e.g. 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, seven notes on the musical scale. He thought this meant that the capacity of STM was 7 items plus or minus 2. Also found out about chunking, grouping sets of digits or letters into chunks (people can recall five words as easily as recalling 5 letters).
AO1: duration
duration is the length of time information can be held in memory.
STM STUDY: Peterson & Peterson gave participants a trigram of 3 letters and a 3 digit number to remember. They then had to count back from this number which prevented any mental rehearsal. Each trial they were told to stop at different periods of time 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds. After 3 seconds average recall was 80% and after 18 seconds it was 3%. Suggested STM duration is 18 seconds.
LTM STUDY: Bahrick tested LTM by showing photos to 17 to 74 year olds from their graduation book. Participants tested within 15 years of graduating were 90% accurate and after 48 years were 30% accurate. Suggests LTM lasts a lifetime.
AO3: CODING strength- Baddeley identified a clear difference between the two memory stores
limitation: used artificial stimuli
P: one strength of research into coding and Baddeley’s research is he identified a clear difference between two memory stores.
E: he found this out through is experiment
E: this was an important step in the understanding of the memory system, which led to the MSM
L: this is a strength of the research into coding because it has had an impact on research into the memory system.
HOWEVER,
P: the study uses artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material
E: the word list had no personal meaning to the participants.
E: So doesn’t tell us about coding in different types of memory tasks, especially in everyday life.
L: suggests the findings from this study have limited application
AO3: CAPACITY strength- study can be replicated
Limitation: miller overestimated STM capacity
P: one strength of research into capacity is that Jacobs study has been replicated
E: the study is very old and may have not been controlled well. e.g . some participants’ digit spans may have been underestimated because they were distracted, this is a confounding variable.
E: despite this his findings have been confirmed as his study has been replicated in controlled conditions.
L: suggests his study is a valid test of digit span is STM
HOWEVER,
P: miller may have overestimated STM capacity.
E/E: another psychologists reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM is only about 4 plus or minus 1 chunks
L: this suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate is more appropriate.
AO3: DURATION strength- high in external validity
limitation- stimuli was meaningless
P: one strength of research into duration is that Bahricks study is high in external validity
E: because the researched investigated meaningful memories
E: when studies were done on LTM and meaningless pictures were used, recall rates were lower.
L: suggestd Bahricks finding reflect a more real estimate of the duration of LTM
HOWEVER,
P: peterson and petersons stimuli was meaningless as the stimulus material was artificial
E/E: as recalling constant syllables does not reflect everyday memory activities
L: this means the study lacked external validity
