Coding, Capacity & Duration

Question 1

Describe the coding, capacity & duration of the Short Term Memory

Answer 1

Coding - Acoustic
Capacity - Limited
Duration - Can be held if rehearsed

Question 2

Describe the coding, capacity & duration of the Long Term Memory

Answer 2

Coding - Semanting
Capacity - Potentially unlimited
Duration - Potentially a lifetime

Question 3

What is the digit span test?

Answer 3

Jacobs (1887) used a digit span test to research the capacity of the STM. The mean for the digits was 9.3, and the letters was 7.3

Question 4

What did Miller say?

Answer 4

Miller noted that things come in 3s. We can also remember things using chunking

Question 5

What did Peterson & Peterson look at?

Answer 5

The duration of the STM

Question 6

What did Bahrick et al look at?

Answer 6

The duration of the LTM

Question 7

Evaluate Baddely’s study (Coding)- Strength

Answer 7

Strength - Clear difference between memory stores. STM uses acoustic coding & LTM uses Semantic. Important step for the MSM

Question 8

Evaluate Baddely’s study (Coding) - Limitation

Answer 8

Limitation - Used artificial stimuli. The word list had no meaning to the participant, meaning Baddely’s findings may not have been applicable to everyday life. When having meaningful information, people may use semantic coding for the short term memory

Question 9

Evaluate Jacobs’ study (Capacity) - Strength

Answer 9

The study has been replicated. Some participants may have been distracted in testing (confounding variable). However Jacobs’ studies were proven by better, more controlled studies (Bopp & Verhaeghen 2005). This shows the validity of the study

Question 10

Evaluate Miller’s study (Capacity) - Limitation

Answer 10

Miller may have overestimated the capacity of the STM. Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded the capacity is only 4+/-1 chunks. This suggests Miller’s lower estimate is better.

Question 11

Evaluate Peterson & Peterson’s study on Duration

Answer 11

The stimuli used was artificial
E - Recalling constant syllables does not reflect the majority of everyday memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful
T - Lacks ecological validity

Question 12

Evaluate Bahrick et al’s study on duration

Answer 12

P - High ecological validity
E - Researchers investigated meaningful memories. When LTM studies were conducted with meaningless pictures, the recall rates were lower.
T - Uses semantic coding to prove the duration.