M1. Coding, Capacity And Duration Of Memory

Question 1

Coding

Answer 1

• ‘type’ of memory in each store
• short-term: acoustic
• long-term: semantic
• Baddley: more mistakes when recalling acoustically-similar words straight after learning; more mistakes recalling semantically-similar words 20 mins after learning

Question 2

Capacity

Answer 2

• volume of information/data kept in any memory store
• STM: 5 - 9 items (Miller’s 7’s and ‘chunking’)
• LTM: unlimited
• Jacobs: mean letter span 7.3, mean digit span 9.3 (number of units we can recall after increasing intervals)

Question 3

Duration

Answer 3

• amount of time that information can be stored in each memory store
• STM: 18 - 30 seconds
• LTM: unlimited (photo recognition classmates of 396 P’s dropped from 90% to 70% between 15yrs and 46yrs post graduation) Bahrick

Question 4

• Eval: Jacobs lack of standardisation

Answer 4

• present day lab experiments control confounding variables - Jacobs didn’t.
• confounding variables (such a spa noisy room or difficult word lists) decrease recall accuracy; leading to unreliable results

Question 5

+ Eval: Bahrick (1975): meaningful stimuli

Answer 5

• meaningful stimuli, and high in mundane realism
• findings therefore have high ecological validity because they can easily be generalised to real life
• information reflects type which we’d recall everyday: that containing personal and meaningful value