Coding of both STM and LTM Flashcards
What is STM?
limited capacity memory store. in STM coding is mainly acoustic, capacity is between 5 and 9 items on average, and duration is about 18 seconds
What is LTM?
the permanent memory store. coding is mainly semantic, it had unlimited capacity and can store memories for up to life time
What is coding?
the format in which information is stored in the various memory stores
Who carried out the study for coding in STM and LTM?
Alan Baddeley
What was the procedure study?
Gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember:
-acoustically similar words
-acoustically dissimilar words
-semantically similar words
semantically dissimilar words
participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.
what were the findings of the Badly study?
when they did this task immediately, recalling from STM, they tended to do worse with acoustically similar, when they recalled the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes, recalling from LTM they did worse with they semantically similar words
What is a limitation of Baddeley’s study?
P-one limitation Baddely’s study was that it used quite artificial material rather than meaningful stimuli
E-for example, the word lists had no personal meaning to participants. So Baddely’s findings may not tell us much about coding in everyday life. When processing more meaning full information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks
C-this suggests that the findings from this study have limited application
What is a strength of Baddeleys study?
P-One strength of Baddelys study is that it is identified a clear difference between the two memory stems
E-Later studies showed that there were some exceptions to Baddelys findings. but the idea that STM uses mostly acoustic coding and LTM mostly semantic has stood the test of time
C-This was an important step in our understanding of the memory system
