coding, capacity, and duration of memory

Question 1

what was study 1 by baddely (66) with coding in STM and LTM?

Answer 1

• used acoustically similar and dissimilar words, and semantically similar and dissimilar words
• immediate recall worse with acoustically similar (stm is acoustic)
• recall after 20 minutes worse with semantically similar (LTM is semantic)

Question 2

what was study 2 by Jacobs (87) into capacity of STM?

Answer 2

• digit span where researcher reads 4 digits and increases until person cant recall correctly
• average people could recall 9.3 numbers and 7.3 letters immediately after

Question 3

what was study 3 by Miller (56) into capacity of STM?

Answer 3

• oberseved everyday pracctice and noted things that come in sevens (7 notesin music, 7 days, 7 sins)
• span of STM is about 5 - 9 items but can be improved by chunking

Question 4

what was study 4 by Peterson and Peterson (59) into duration of STM?

Answer 4

• 24 students given consonant syllable (e.g GYS) and a 3 digit number to count back from for 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds
• students recall about 80% of syllables on average with 3-second gap
• after 18-second intervals recall fell to 3%
• duration of STM about 18 - 30 seconds

Question 5

what was study 5 by Bahrick et al (75) into duration of LTM?

Answer 5

• 392 Americans between 17 and 74: recognition test of 50 photos from yearbook + free recall where people just listed names of classmates
• participants tested 48 years after graduation was about 70% accurate in photo recognition - free recall was a lot less accurate

Question 6

• what was wrong with Baddeleys coding theory having artificial stimuli?

Answer 6

words used had no personal meaning like in real life so bad for generalising (bad application)

Question 7

• How was Jacobs theory on capacity lacking value?

Answer 7

• happened long time ago in 1987

- lacks control as some participants may have been distracted so didn’t do well (confounding variables not controlled)

Question 8

• How was Miller’s theory on capacity an overestimation?

Answer 8

Cowan (01) found capacity was only about 4 chunks - Milers 7 was an over estimation

Question 9

+ how does the theory on capacity of LTM have high external validity?

Answer 9

+ real life meaningful memories were studied and remembered better than meaningless ones
- however confounding variables in real life research are hard to control (participants could have previously studied year book to get advantage)

Question 10

• what was wrong with Peterson and Peterson’s theory on STM?

Answer 10

• material was artificial and doesn’t reflect real life memory activities as it wasn’t meaningful so harder to remember