Coding, Capacity and Duration of memory Flashcards
Define Coding:
The format in which information is stored in the various memory stores.
Define Capacity:
The amount of information that can be held in a memory store.
Define Duration:
The length of time a piece of information can be held in a memory store.
Define Short-term Memory:
The limited-capacity memory store, mainly acoustic (sounds) and has a capacity between 5 and 9 items with duration up to 30 seconds.
Define Long-term Memory:
The permanent memory store, mainly semantic (meaning) and has unlimited capacity with duration of a lifetime.
How is visual information stored?
Iconic memory - visual info stored as images.
How is auditory information stored?
Echoic memory - auditory info stored as sounds.
How is tactile information stored?
Haptic memory - tactile info stored as feelings.
What sense is stored in the Echoic?
Sound (from the ears)
What sense is stored in the Iconic memory?
Visual (from eyes)
What sense is stored in the Haptic memory?
Tactile (from skin/fingers)
Where is information about the feeling of a rug stored?
Tactile information is stored in the Haptic memory.
Where is information about the sound of a door knock stored?
Auditory information is stored in the Echoic memory.
Where is information about the shape of a building stored?
Visual information is stored in the Iconic memory.
Where is information about the color of a dog and the sound of its barking stored?
The color is visual information and is stored in the Iconic memory, while the sound of its barking is auditory information and is stored in the Echoic memory.
What experiment did Alan Baddeley (1966) do to investigate coding of memory?
He gave participants one of four lists of words to remember and asked them to recall the words in the correct order. He found that performance was worst with acoustically similar words.
What did Baddeley’s research (1966) suggest about coding in the LTM?
That information is coded semantically in the LTM.
AO3 - Baddeley’s research into coding.
In Baddeley’s study he used artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material. The word lists had no personal meaning to participants which makes it hard to generalise into real-life situations due to the low ecological validity.
What did Jacobs (1887) find in his study on capacity of the STM?
He found the mean digit span was 9.3 items and letter span was 7.3 items.
In Jacobs experiment (1887) did he find that numbers or letters where easier to recall from the STM?
He found that mean digit span was 9.3 items whilst letters was only 7.3 items.
AO3 - Jacobs (1887).
A limitation of Jacob’s study was that it was conducted a long time ago, early research often lacked variable control which may have affected the results.
What is memory?
The process of encoding, storing and retrieving information.
What is semantic coding?
In terms of meaning.
What is acoustic coding?
What information sounds like.
What did Baddeley (1966) find in his experiment?
Baddeley (1966) found we tend to mix up words that sound similar when using our STM and mix up words that mean similar things in the LTM, supporting the idea they are different stores.
What is the serial position effect?
Murdock (1962) found that words at the beginning and end of a list are best recalled whilst the words in the middle tend to get ‘lost’, this is often called the primary-recency effect?
