coding, capacity and duration of memory

Question 1

one strength of baddeleys study on coding

Answer 1

p- identified a clear difference between the two memory stores
E- idea that sim is acoustic and ltm is semantic has stood its test of time
T- important step in our understanding of the memory system, which led to MSM

Question 2

One limitation of baddeleys study on coding

Answer 2

P- it used artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material
E- word list had no meaning to participants
E- findings may not tell us much about coding in different kind of memory tasks(everyday life)
E- processing meaningful tasks uses semantic coding even for stm tasks
T- findings have limited application

Question 3

One strength of Jacobs study on capacity

Answer 3

P- a valid study that has been replicated
E-study was old so lacked adequate controls
E- eg. participants could have been distracted by confounding variables
E- however Jacobs findings have been confirmed by other better controlled studies since (2005)
T- Jacobs study is a valid test of digit span in stm

Question 4

One limitation of millers research on capacity

Answer 4

P- may have overestimated stm capacity
E- cowan(2001) reviewed other research and concluded the capactiy of stm is only 4 +- 1 chunks
T- lower end of millers estimate 5 is more appropriate than 7 items

Question 5

One limitations of Petersons & Petersons study of duration

Answer 5

P- stimulus material was artificial
E- study is not completely irrelevant as we sometimes learn meaningless material(phone numbers)
E-recalling constant syllables does not reflect most everyday memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful
T- lacked external validity

Question 6

One strength of bahrick study of duration

Answer 6

P- it has high external validity
E- researchers investigated meaningful memories
E- when studies on ltm which had meaningless pictures, recall rates were lower
T- findings reflect a more ‘more’ estimate of the duration of ltm