coding, capacity, duration STM

Question 1

How many groups were there in Baddeley (1966)’s study?

Answer 1

4

Question 2

What was the procedure of Baddeley (1966)’s study?

Answer 2

-4 groups
-given different word lists to remember

-Group 1: acoustically similar
-Group 2: acoustically dissimilar
-Group 3: semantically similar
-Group 4: semantically dissimilar

-The groups were then asked to recall the words from the list in the correct order immediately after

Question 3

How can duration of STM be increased?

Answer 3

Maintenance rehearsal

Question 4

What was the procedure of Peterson and Peterson (1959)’s study?

Answer 4

-24 students tested in 8 trials
-On each trial, the participant was given a consonant syllable (e.g CYH) and 3 digit number to remember
-the student counted backwards from this number until asked to stop (after varying periods of time) to prevent mental rehearsal of the consonant syllable

Question 5

How did Miller propose STM capacity be increased?

Answer 5

chunking

Question 6

What was the procedure of Miller’s study?

Answer 6

-Miller observed everyday practice
-He observed that things come in sevens such as the days of the week and the deadly sins.

Question 7

What were the findings from Baddeley (1966)’s study? What did this suggest about STM

Answer 7

On average, they did worse with the acoustically similar words
-that information is coded acoustically in STM.

Question 8

Who studied duration of STM?

Answer 8

Peterson & Peterson (1959)

Question 9

What did Miller conclude from his study?

Answer 9

-the span of STM was about 7 items plus or minus 2
-people can recall 5 words as easily as they can recall 5 letters through chunking

Question 10

How long did Baddeley (1966) wait before asking the group to recall the word list? Why?

Answer 10

-Immediately After
-So that they would be recalling from their STM

Question 11

Weaknesses?

Answer 11

-Peterson and Peterson’s (1959) study had artificial stimulus material

Question 12

What is chunking?

Answer 12

grouping sets of digits or letters into units/chunks

Question 13

What were the findings of Peterson and Peterson’s study?

Answer 13

-On average, after 3 seconds, recall was approx. 80%
-On average, after 18 seconds, recall was approx. 3%

Question 14

Strengths of STM coding capacity duration?

Answer 14

-Jacobs’ study has been replicated
-Baddeley’s study identified a clear difference between two memory stores

Question 15

What is the duration of STM?

Answer 15

18 seconds

Question 16

Explain the strength that Jacobs’ study has been replicated?

Answer 16

-Early research and studies often lacked adequate controls.
- there may have been a confounding variable such as participants being distracted during testing, meaning that their digit spans might have been underestimated. -However, Jacobs’ findings have been supported/confirmed by other modern and more controlled studies suggesting that Jacobs’ study is a valid test of digit span in STM.

Question 17

Who studied capacity in STM?

Answer 17

Jacobs (1887) and Miller (1965)

Question 18

What study found how information is coded in STM?

Answer 18

Baddeley (1966)

Question 19

What did Jacobs (1887) study? What was the procedure?

Answer 19

-Investigated ‘digit span’
-Researcher read out 4 digits and the participant recalled them back in the correct order. If they were correct the researcher read out 5 digits, and so on until the participant couldn’t correctly recall.

Question 20

What is the capacity of STM?

Answer 20

7 +or- 2

Question 21

Explain the strength that Baddeley’s study identified a clear difference between two memory stores?

Answer 21

-Later research showed that there are some exceptions to Baddeley’s findings
-but the idea that STM uses mainly acoustic coding and the long term memory store uses mainly semantic is still important today.
-This was an important step in our understanding of the memory system, which led to the multi-store model of memory.

Question 22

What was the mean span for letters in Jacobs’ study?

Answer 22

-the mean span for letters was 7.3

Question 23

Explain the limitation that Peterson and Peterson’s (1959) study used artificial stimulus material?

Answer 23

-study still has relevance because humans do sometimes try remember somewhat meaningless things (such as phone numbers)
-However, recalling consonant syllables does not reflect most everyday memory activities where we are trying to remember meaningful things.
-This means the study lacked external validity due to lack of generalisability.

Question 24

What was the mean digit span in Jacobs’ study?

Answer 24

-the mean digit span across all participants was 9.3

Question 25

How is information coded in STM?

Answer 25

Acoustically

Question 26

What did Peterson and Peterson conclude from their study?

Answer 26

-that STM duration may be about 18 seconds, unless there is mental rehearsal

Question 27

What were Jacobs (1887)’s fimdings?

Answer 27

-the mean digit span across all participants was 9.3
-the mean span for letters was 7.3