memory

Question 1

what is capacity?

Answer 1

a measure of how much can be held in memory. it is represented in terms of bits of information such as number of digits

Question 2

what is coding?

Answer 2

the format information is stored as, such as visual codes, semantic codes, or acoustic codes

Question 3

what is duration?

Answer 3

a measure of how long a memory lasts before it is no longer available

Question 4

what are the two types of memory?

Answer 4

the Long Term Memory (LTM), and the Short Term Memory (STM).

Question 5

what is the capacity of the short term memory?

Answer 5

7 (+/- 2). about 7 items, sometimes less, sometimes more.

Question 6

how can the capacity of the short term memory be assessed, who created it, and how is it carried out?

Answer 6

the Digit Span Test can be used to capacity of the STM. It was developed by Joseph Jacobs, and includes seeing how many words, letters, or numbers a person can recite in the correct order from reading or hearing a set list.

Question 7

what is the duration of the short term memory?

Question 8

who studied the duration of the short term memory, and how?

Answer 8

Peterson and Peterson assessed the duration of the STM. they did this using 24 students. each participant was tested over 8 trials. participants were given 3 letters and a 3 digit number, and they were asked to recall the letters after a retention interval of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 seconds. during the retention interval they were asked to count backwards from the given number.

Question 9

what were the results for the Peterson and Peterson study on the duration of the short term memory?

Answer 9

on average, 90% of participants were correct after 3 seconds, 20% were correct after 9 seconds, and only 2% were correct after 18 seconds.

Question 10

what are the coding’s of the long term and short term memories?

Answer 10

long term memory is largely encoded semantically and short term memory is largely encoded acoustically

Question 11

what are the two explanations for forgetting?

Answer 11

interference theory and retrieval failiure

Question 12

what does interference theory suggest?

Answer 12

it suggests long term memories become confused by other information whilst it is coded

Question 13

what are the two types of interference in interference theory?

Answer 13

proactive and retroactive interference

Question 14

what is proactive interference?

Answer 14

when old information interferes with the recall of new information

Question 15

what is retroactive interference?

Answer 15

when new information interferes with the recall of old information

Question 16

what two factors makes interference more likely?

Answer 16

how similar the two pieces of info are and time sensitivity

Question 17

why are two similar pieces of information more likely to be forgotten?

Answer 17

this is due to response competition, both pieces of information are available, its just difficult to chose between them

Question 18

when does time sensitivity affect memory more?

Answer 18

the smaller the difference in time between learning two pieces of information, the more likely they are to be confused

Question 19

what is context dependant forgetting?

Answer 19

Context-dependent forgetting is when you struggle to remember something because you’re in a different environment from when you learned it.

Question 20

what is state dependant forgetting?

Answer 20

State-dependent forgetting is when your memory is better if you’re in the same internal state (like mood or alertness) as when you learned something.