Memory Flashcards
What is the definition of capacity?
The measure of how much can be held in memory. It is represented in terms of bits of information.
What is the definition of coding?
Is the way information is changed so that it can be stored in memory. Information enters the brain via the senses and is stored in different types of forms: acoustic codes, visual codes or semantic codes.
What is the definition of duration?
A measure of how long a memory lasts before it is no longer available.
What did Miller (1956) test?
Miller tested capacity and came up with the magic number (7+/-2) where he concluded that the span of immediate memory is about seven items. He suggests people chunk things together to remember more.
What did Jacobs (1887) test?
He tested capacity by using digit span and discovered the average span for digits was 9.3 items and 7.3 for letters. Jacobs argued its easier to remember digits than letters as there are 26 of them.
What did Peterson and Peterson (1959) test?
They tested duration by studying 24 participants over 8 trials where each participant was given a consonant syllable and a three digit number. They were asked to recite the consonant syllable after intervals of three seconds (3,6,9,12,15,18) and then say the three digit number backwards . They discovered on average 90% correct aver 3 seconds, 20% after 9 and only 2% after 18. suggesting STM has a short duration.
What did Bahrick et al. (1975) test?
Tested duration by testing 400 people of various ages (17-74) on their memory of old classmates. they had some do photo recognition tests while others did free recall. Found that those who were tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in identifying faces, declining to 70% after 48 years. Free recall was about 60% accurate within 15 years and declined to 30% after 48 years.
What did Baddeley (1966) test?
He tested coding by using word lists to test the effects of acoustic and semantic similarity in STM<M. He found that participants had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in STM but not LTM, whereas semantically similar words posed little problem for STM but led to muddled LTM . Suggesting STM is largely encoded acoustically and LTM is largely encoded semantically.
