Cognitive Psychology: STM and LTM

Question 1

Define Short Term Memory

Answer 1

It is a system for storing information for brief periods of time

Question 2

Define Long Term Memory

Answer 2

Stores a vast amount of information for a large period of time (claimed to be unlimited)

Question 3

Duration of STM

Answer 3

30 seconds

Question 4

Name a study that backs the Duration of STM

Answer 4

Peterson and Peterson (1959)

Question 5

What was the procedure of the study?

Answer 5

Ppts were briefly shown trigrams, and were asked to count back in threes from a specified number to stop rehearsal.

Question 6

What did they find?

Answer 6

Peterson and Peterson found that recall was about 80% after a 3 second interval, and after 18 seconds fewer than 10% of the trigrams were accurately recalled.

Question 7

Evaluate the findings of this study

Answer 7

> Interference from previous trigrams might have been the cause of poor recall, not just decay
Trigrams are artificial; they aren’t something we would try to remember in our day to day lives, so this study lacks ecological validity

Question 8

Duration of LTM

Answer 8

Unlimited

Question 9

Name a study that backs the Duration of LTM

Answer 9

Bahrick et al. (1975)

Question 10

What was the procedure of the study?

Answer 10

Ppts were asked to recall their ex-classmates. In the first condition, they were shown photos and asked to recall the names of the people shown. In the second condition they were given names and asked to match them with the photos

Question 11

What did they find?

Answer 11

Within 15 years of leaving school ppts could recognize 90%of the names and faces. After 30 years recall had declined to about 30% accuracy

Question 12

Evaluate the findings of this study

Answer 12

> This was a field experiment using a real life situation recalling their classmates from their yearbook. This means this study has high ecological validity

Question 13

Capacity of STM

Answer 13

7 +/- 2

Question 14

Name a study that backs the Duration of STM

Answer 14

Baddeley (1975)

Question 15

What was the procedure of the study?

Answer 15

Ppts were presented with 5 words on a screen. They were taken from one of two sets: one was a set of one-syllable words; the other was a set of polysyllabic words. The ppts were then asked to recall these words and write them down

Question 16

What did they find?

Answer 16

Ppts would consistently remember more short words than long words.

Question 17

Evaluate the findings of this study

Answer 17

The shorter words may be easier to remember to recall than long words because they sound more familiar to us.

Question 18

Capacity of LTM

Answer 18

Potentially Unlimited

Question 19

Encoding of STM

Answer 19

Acoustic Encoding

Question 20

Name a study that backs the Encoding of STM

Answer 20

Baddeley (1966)

Question 21

What was the procedure of the study?

Answer 21

1 group of ppts were given Acoustically Dissimilar and Similar words and Semantically Dissimilar and Similar words

Question 22

What did they find?

Answer 22

Ppts had problems recalling acoustically similar words when recalling the word list immediately (from STM), recall was 55% accurate, compared to acoustically dissimilar words which had 85% recall accuracy. Same goes for semantically dissimilar and similar words

Question 23

Evaluate the findings of this study

Answer 23

The use of independent groups design allows a causal link to be drawn between the type of coding used in LTM

Question 24

Encoding of LTM

Answer 24

Semantically

Question 25

Name a study that backs the Encoding of LTM

Answer 25

Baddeley (1966) (Already gone through the study as it covers both LTM and STM)