Coding, capacity & duration of menory

Question 1

What is coding?

Answer 1

The format in which information is stored in memory stores

Question 2

What is duration?

Answer 2

The length of time information can be held in memory

Question 3

What is capacity?

Answer 3

The amount of information that can held in a memory store

Question 4

What list of words did the group 1 in Baddeleys study have to remember?

Answer 4

acoustically similar ( cat cab etc)

Question 5

What list of words did group 2 in Baddeleys study have to remember?

Answer 5

Acoustically dissimilar ( pit, few, cow)

Question 6

What list of words did Group 3 in Baddeleys study have to remember?

Answer 6

Semantically similar words ( great, large, big)

Question 7

What lists of words did Group 4 in Baddeleys study have to remember?

Answer 7

Semantically dissimilar ( good, huge,hot)

Question 8

What did Baddeley find about recall from the STM immediately?

Answer 8

participants tended to do worse with acoustically similar words

Question 9

What did Baddeley find about recall from the LTM after 20 minutes ?

Answer 9

participants did worse with semantically similar words

Question 10

What do Baddelys findings suggest?

Answer 10

That information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in the LTM

Question 11

How did Jacobs find out how much information the STM can hold at one time?

Answer 11

By measuring participants digit span

Question 12

What was the procedure for Jacobs digit span test?

Answer 12

• The researcher read out four digits and participants had to recall this out loud in the correct order
• digits increased until participants can no longer remember

Question 13

What was the mean span for digits across all participants ?

Answer 13

9.3 items

Question 14

What was the mean span for letters across all participants ?

Answer 14

7.3

Question 15

What did Miller make observations of?

Answer 15

everyday practices

Question 16

What did Miller note from his observations?

Answer 16

Things come in sevens, 7 notes on musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins

Question 17

What did Miller think that span of the STM was ?

Answer 17

7 items plus or minus two

Question 18

Why can people recall five words as easily as they can recall five letters?

Answer 18

By chunking information- grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks

Question 19

Who measured duration in the STM?

Answer 19

Peterson & Peterson

Question 20

How many students did Peterson & Peterson test?

Answer 20

24 students

Question 21

What was Peterson & Peterson procedure?

Answer 21

• 8 trials & each trial the student was given a consonant syllable to remember
• also given a 3 digit number
• student counted backwards from number until told to stop out loud (prevent mental rehearsal of syllable)
• told to stop after varying times

Question 22

What did Peterson & Peterson find?

Answer 22

• after 3 secs average recall was 80%
• after 18 secs it was about 3%

Question 23

What does Petersen & Petersen suggest about the duration of STM?

Answer 23

• 18 seconds unless information is repeated over and over

Question 24

Who measured duration in the LTM?

Answer 24

Bahrick et al

Question 25

How many participants were in Bahrick’s study and age range?

Answer 25

392 American participants aged 17-74

Question 26

Outline Bahricks study

Answer 26

• high school yearbooks were obtained from participants or directly from schools
• recall was tested in various ways:
  1) photo recognition test consisting of 50 photos
  2) free-recall test where participants recalled all the names of their graduating class

Question 27

What were Bharick’s findings & conclusions?

Answer 27

• 48 years= recall was 70% for photo recognition
• 48 years= recall was 30% for free recall
• This shows that the STM may last up to a lifetime for some material

Question 28

What is a strength of Baddeley’s study?

Answer 28

• It identified a clear difference between two memory stores
• the idea that the STM is mainly coded acoustically & LTM mainly semantic has stood the test of time
• important step in our understanding of the memory system ( led to MSM)

Question 29

What is a limitation of Baddeley’s study?

Answer 29

• uses quite artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material
• e.g. world lists had no personal meaning to P’s
• findings do not tell us much about coding in different kinds of memory tasks, especially in everyday life
• limited application

Question 30

What is a strength of Jacobs’ study?

Answer 30

• has been replicated
• old study so lacked adequate controls e.g. some participants digit spans might have been underestimated because they were distracted during testing ( CV)
• however, better controlled studies have confirmed Jacobs findings (Bopp & Verhaeghen)
• valid test of digit span

Question 31

What is a limitation of Miller’s research?

Answer 31

• may have overestimated STM capacity
• Cowan reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of the STM is only about 4+-1 chunks
• suggest the lower end of Miller’s estimate is more appropriate than 7 items

Question 32

What is limitation of Peterson & Peterson’s study?

Answer 32

• stimulus material was artificial
• recalling consonant syllables does not reflect most everyday memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful
• lacks external validity

Question 33

What is a strength of Bahrick’s stduy?

Answer 33

• has high external validity
• researcher investigated meaningful memories (names & faces)
• When studies were conducted with meaningless pictures to be remembered recall rates were lower (Shepard)
  -Bahricks findings reflect a more ‘real’ estimate of duration in the LTM