Memory Flashcards
What is the short term memory?
A limited capacity memory store.
What is the long term memory?
A permanent memory store.
What is coding?
The format in which information is stored in the various memory stores. It allows information to be converted between different forms.
How are both the STM and LTM coded?
Short term memory is coded acoustically whereas long term memory is coded semantically.
What is a study that supports the coding of the STM and LTM?
Baddley conducted a study on coding.
He gave lists of different words to four groups of participants to remember. The lists were either acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar or semantically dissimilar.
Participants had to recall the lists in order. Research found that when they did the task immediately and had to recall from their STM, they did worse with acoustically similar words. However, when they did the task after 20 minutes and had to recall from their LTM they did worse with the semantically similar words.
This suggests that information is coded acoustically in the STM and semantically in the LTM.
What is a strength of research into coding?
P - One strength of Baddely’s study is that it identified a clear difference between two memory stores.
E - Later research showed that there are some exceptions to Baddeley’s finding, but the idea that the short term memory uses mostly acoustic coding and the long term memory being semantic has stood the test of time.
L - This was an important step in our understanding of the memory system, which led to the multi-store model.
What is a limitation of research into coding?
P - One limitation of Baddeley’s study was that it used quite artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material.
E - For example, the word lists had no personal meaning to participants. This means that the findings may not tell us much about coding in different kinds of memory tasks, especially in everyday life.
When processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
L - This suggests that the findings from this study have limited application.
What is capacity?
The amount of information that can be held in a memory store.
What is the capacity of STM and LTM?
The capacity of the short term memory is between 5-9 whereas the capacity of the long term memory is unlimited.
What is a study that investigates the capacity STM?
Miller made observations on everyday life and found that things come in sevens (7 notes on the musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins)
This caused Miller to believe the capacity of the short term memory is 7 plus or minus .
What is chunking?
Chunking is grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks. This tends to make it easier to remember.
Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as easily as five letters. This is done by chunking.
What is a study that supports the capacity of the STM?
Jacobs conducted a digit span test to investigate the capacity of the STM.
The researcher reads out four digits and the participant recalls them out loud in the correct order.The number of digits read out increased until participants cannot recall the order correctly. This indicates a person’s digit span. This was also done for letters.
Results showed that the mean span for digits was 9.3 items and for letters it was 7.3 items. This supports Miller’s notion of 7+-2.
What is a strength of Jacob’s research into capacity?
P - One strength of Jacobs’ study is that it has been replicated.
E - The original study is quite old as it was done in 1887 and early research in psychology often lacks controls.
E - For example, confounding variables may have caused some participants digit spans to have been underestimated.
However, Jacobs findings have been confirmed by other, more controlled studies like ones done by Bopp and Verhaeghen.
L - This suggests that Jacobs’ study is a valid test of digit span in the short term memory.
What is a limitation of Miller’s research into capacity?
P - One limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of the short term memory.
E - Cowan reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of the STM is only about 4 plus or minus 1 chunks.
L - This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate, which was 5 items, is more appropriate than 7 items.
What is duration?
The length of time information can be held in the memory.
What is the duration of the STM and LTM?
The duration of the short term memory is about 18 seconds whereas the duration of the long term memory is a lifetime.
What is a study that investigates the duration of the STM?
Peterson and Peterson tested 24 students in 8 trials each.
On each trial they were given a consonant syllable and a 3 digit number. They counted backwards from the number until told to stop. The counting backwards prevented maintenance rehearsal of the syllable which would increase the duration of the STM.
On each trial they were told to stop after varying periods of time, This happened in 3 second intervals and as time increased the percentage of correct responses decreased. After 3 seconds, the average recall was around 80% and after 18 seconds it was about 3%.
These findings suggest that the STM duration may be about 18 seconds unless verbally rehearsed.
What is a study that investigates the duration of the LTM?
Bahrick et al studied 392 American participants between ages 17-74.
They obtained high school yearbooks from participants or directly from schools. They tested recall through photo recognition tests consisting of 50 photos and free recall tests where participants recalled all the names of their graduating class.
Findings:
Those tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in photo recognition and after 48 years recall declines to 70%.
For free recall it was less accurate than recognition. Results found that after 15 years they could only remember 60% of names. This dropped to 30% after 48 years.
This shows that the long term memory may last up to a lifetime for some material.
What is a limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study into duration?
P - One limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus material was artificial.
E - In real life, we may sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless material. However, recalling consonant syllables doesn’t reflect everyday memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful.
L - This means the study lacked external validity.
What is a strength of Bahrick et al’s study into duration?
P - One strength of Bahrick et al’s study is that it has high external validity.
E - This is because the researchers investigated meaningful memories. Shepard aimed to study the duration of the long term memory, where meaningless pictures were remembered and recall rates were lower.
L - This suggests that Bahrick et al’s findings reflect a more realistic estimate of the duration of the long term memory.
What is the multi store model of memory?
Atkinson and Shiffrin created a representation of how memory works in terms of three stores. It describes how memory is transferred from one store to another, what makes memories last and what causes them to be lost.
What are the three stores involved in the MSM?
Sensory register
Short term memory
Long term memory
What is the sensory register?
The sensory register receives all stimuli from the environment. It includes several stores, called sensory memory stores, one for each of our five senses.
How is each store in the sensory register coded?
The coding in each store is modality specific. This means it is coded depending on the sense
- Coding in the iconic sensory register is visual
- Coding in the echoic sensory register is acoustic (through sound)
Other sensory stores include touch, taste and scent information.
What is the duration of the sensory register?
It is very brief (less than half a second).
What is a study that supports the duration of the sensory register?
Sperling tested the iconic sensory register.
Participants saw a grid of digits and letters for 50 milliseconds. They were either asked to write down all 12 items or told they would hear a tone immediately after the exposure and they should just write down the row indicated.
Findings:
When asked to report the whole thing their recall was poorer (about 42%) than when asked to give only one row (75%).
What is the capacity of the sensory register?
It has a very high capacity because of millions of receptors and nerve cells.
How can information move from the sensory register to the STM?
Through paying attention.
How is the short term memory coded?
What is it’s capacity and duration?
The short term memory is a limited capacity store.
Coded - Acoustically according to Baddeley
Capacity - 7+-2 according to Miller. However, Cowan suggests it is 5+-1.
Duration - About 18 seconds unless it’s rehearsed according to Peterson and Peterson.
What is maintenance rehearsal in the MSM?
This is when we repeat material to ourselves over and over again. This allows for information to stay in the short term memory for a longer period of time.
How does information pass from the STM to the LTM in the MSM?
If information is rehearsed enough (prolonged rehearsal) it can pass into our long term memory.
How is the long term memory coded?
What is it’s capacity and duration?
Coded - Semantically according to Baddeley
Capacity - Unlimited
Duration - A lifetime according to Bahrick et al
How can we recall memory from the long-term memory?
Through retrieval.
What is a strength of the multi store model?
P - One strength of the multi store model is that there is research support from studies showing that the STM and LTM are different.
E - Baddely found that we tend to mix up words that sound similar when using our short term memory but we mix words that have similar meanings when using our long term memory. In addition, Coding and Capacity.
L - These studies clearly show that the short term memory and long term memory are separate, independent memory stores.
What is a counterpoint to the research support for the MSM?
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