Coding,Capacity and duration of memory Flashcards
1
Q
What is short term memory?
A
- The limited capacity memory store. Coding is mainly acoustic and between 5-9 items and is 18 seconds
2
Q
What is Long term memroy?
A
- Permanent memory store. Coding is mainly semantic. It has unlimited capacity and can store memory for a life time
3
Q
What is coding?
A
Format in which info is stored
4
Q
What is capacity?
A
- Amount of information held in a memory store
5
Q
What us duration?
A
The length of time information can be held in memory
6
Q
Explain research on coding?
A
- Information is stored in memory in diff forms. The process of converting information is called coding.
- Baddeley gave 4 different groups words to remember. G1 had acoustically similar, G2 acoustically dissimilar, G3 Semantically similar and G4 semantically dissimilar
- Participant were asked to recall same words in correct order. STM tend to do worse with acoustically similar words. LTM did worse than semantically different words
7
Q
Explain research on Capacity?
A
- How much can STM hold at one time.
- Jacob found out by measuring digit span e.g Researcher reads out 4 digits and the participant recalls these out loud in order. If correct researcher reads out 5 and then so on until participant can’t recall correctly. This shows individuals digit span.
- Mean digits for all participant was 9.3 and letters was 7.3.
- Miller made observations of everyday practice. he said everything comes in sevens and thought the span was ±2. But saw people can recall 5 words than digits
8
Q
Explain the duration of STM?
A
- Margret and Peterson 24 students in 8 trials. The students were given constant syllables such as YGG. They were also given a 3 digit number and told to count backwards until told to stop. It was to stop the mental rehearsal.
- they were told to stop after periods of time 3,6,9,12,1,5,18 seconds. After 3 seconds average recall was 80% and after 18 it was 3%.
- They concluded that STM is around 18 seconds unlesswe reharse
9
Q
Explain duration of STM?
A
- Bahrick studied 392 American participants between 17 and 74. They were tested on high school yearbooks where they were tested on photos and name recalling of those who graduated their class.
- After 15 years were 90% accurate, after 48 years dropped to 30% and free recall was less accurate than recognition.
- Shows LTM can last up to a lifetime
10
Q
Evaluate One strength of Baddeley study?
A
- Showed a clear difference between two memory stores.
- Shows STM uses mostly acoustic coding and LTM mostly semantic has stood test of time.
- This lead to multi store model
11
Q
Explain one limitation of Baddeley study?
A
- Used artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material.
- Words had no meaning to participants so tells us little about coding in different memory tasks especially in everyday life.
- When processing people may even use semantic coding this shows it has limited application
12
Q
Evaluate on strength of Jacob’s study?
A
- has been replicated as it is very old study research in psychology lacked adequate controls.
- Some people digit span may be underestimated because they were distracted during testing.
- Since then has been proven by better controlled studies.
13
Q
Evaluate one limitation of Millers research?
A
- May have over estimated STM capacity. Cowan reviewed other research and concluded capacity of STM is only about 4 chunks. This suggest 5 is more appropiate.
14
Q
One limitation of Peterson and Patterson study?
A
- Stimulus material was artificial
- Study not completely irrelevant as recalling syllables is not things we do everyday and meaningful so it lacks external validity.
15
Q
One strength of Bahrick?
A
- Has high external validity. Because they investigated meaningful memories (peoples faces and names). When meaningless pictures were asked to be recalled recall rates were lower. This shows Bahrick reflects a more real estimate of LTM.
