Coding, Capacity And Duration Of Memory

Question 1

Baddeley’s study

What year?

Answer 1

1996

Question 2

Baddeley’s study

Name of study?

Answer 2

Coding in STM and LTM

Question 3

Baddeley’s study

Procedure?

Answer 3

Asked participants to learn a list of acoustically similar words (e.g. Cat, bat) or a list of dissimilar words (e.g. Cat, dog)

Asked participants to learn a list of semantically similar words (e.g. Large, big) or a list of dissimilar words (e.g. Large, yellow)

Question 4

Baddeley’s study

Findings and conclusions?

Answer 4

Immediate recall worse with acoustically similar words, STM is acoustic.

Recall after 20 mins worse with semantically dissimilar words, LTM is semantic.

Question 5

Jacobs’ study

Year?

Answer 5

1887

Question 6

Jacobs’ study

Name of study?

Answer 6

Capacity of STM

Question 7

Jacobs’ study

Procedure?

Answer 7

Digit span: researcher reads four digits and increases until the participants cannot recall the order correctly.

Question 8

Jacobs’ study

Findings?

Answer 8

On average participants could repeat back 9.3 numbers and 7.3 letters in the correct order immediately after they were presented.

Question 9

Baddeley’s study

Limitation?

Answer 9

• didn’t use meaningful material - can’t generalise findings - people may use semantic coding for more meaningful tasks
• only 20 mins for long term memory

Question 10

Jacobs’ study

Limitation?

Answer 10

It was conducted a long time ago - early researcher often lacked adequate control of extraneous variables - participants could have been distracted? - results would be because confounding variables were not controlled - however results have been confirmed in other experiments supporting the validity

Question 11

Miller’s study

Year?

Answer 11

1956

Question 12

Miller’s study

Name of study?

Answer 12

Capacity of STM

Question 13

Miller’s study

Procedure?

Answer 13

Noticed that lots of everyday things come in sevens e.g. Seven notes in a scale, seven days in a week etc

Question 14

Miller’s study

Findings

Answer 14

The span of STM is about seven items (+/- 2) but can be improved by chunking

Question 15

Miller’s study

Limitation?

Answer 15

It may have overestimated the capacity of the STM - Cowan (2004) reviewed other research and concluded that the STM capacity was more likely to be about 4 chunks - lower end of millers estimation (5) is more likely than seven

Question 16

Peterson and Peterson’s study

Year?

Answer 16

1959

Question 17

Peterson and Peterson’s study

Name of study?

Answer 17

Duration of STM

Question 18

Peterson and Peterson’s study

Procedure?

Answer 18

24 students were given a consonant syllable (e.g. YCG) to remember and a three digit number to count backwards for 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.

Question 19

Peterson and Peterson’s study

Findings?

Answer 19

Students recalled on average about 80% of the syllables correctly with a three second interval. Average after 18 seconds fell to 3%.
The duration of the STM must be about 18-30 seconds

Question 20

Peterson and Peterson’s study

A limitation?

Answer 20

The stimulus is artificial - not everyday activity- lacks external validity - however sometimes we do need to remember irrelevant things like phone numbers

Question 21

Bahrick et al.’s study

Year?

Answer 21

1975

Question 22

Bahrick et al.’s study

Name of study?

Answer 22

Duration of LTM

Question 23

Bahrick et al.’s study

Procedure?

Answer 23

392 American participants aged between 17 and 74

1. Recognition test - 50 photos from participants high school year book
2. Free recall test - participants listed names of their graduating class

Question 24

Bahrick et al.’s study

Findings

Answer 24

Participants tested 48 years after graduating were about 70% accurate in photo recognition. Free recall was less accurate.

Question 25

Bahrick et al.’s study

Strength?

Answer 25

High external validity - something that would happen in real life - when lab tests were done with more meaningless photos recall rates were lower - BUT confounding variables cannot be controlled such as some participants may have looked at their yearbook more often than others