Memory Flashcards
(155 cards)
Key study for coding in STM and LTM
Baddeley
Procedure of Baddeleys study
Four groups given different lists to remember (acoustically similar/dissimilar and semantically similar/dissimilar).
Participants asked to recall the words in the correct order. Some were required to recall immediately (STM) others 20 minutes later (LTM)
What does acoustically mean
Refers to sounds or the sense of hearing
What does semantically mean
The meaning of something
Findings is Baddeleys study
Acoustically similar words remembered worst for STM, semantic remembered worst for LTM
Conclusions from Baddeleys study
Suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM
Limitation of Baddeleys study
Used artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material. The words used had no personal meaning to the participants. Means we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory tasks. For example when processing more meaningful information people may use semantic encoding even for STM tasks
Study for the capacity of STM
Jacobs
Procedures of Jacobs study
Developed the digit span technique (refers to digits/ letters being read one at a time).
Researcher gives an amount of digits and the participants has to recall these in the correct order. If this is correct the research reads out more digits until the participant can’t recall the order correctly. This determine digit span
Findings in Jacobs study
Mean span for digits was 9.3 and mean span for letters was 7.3
Limitation of Jacobs study
It was conducted a long time ago and lacked adequate control of extraneous variables. Some participants may have been distracted so didn’t perform as well making the result not valid because there were confounding variables that were not controlled. However the results of this study have been confirmed in other research supporting the validity
Key study for the capacity of LTM
Miller
Procedure of Millers study
Miller reviewed several studies on memory which tested the amount of info we receive, process and remember in our immediate memory.
He made observations of everyday practice and realised things come in sevens : 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins etc
Findings of Millers study
Suggests the span (or capacity) of STM is about 7 plus or minus two.
Chunking is also used to increase capacity. He realised people can recall 5 words as well as 5 letters.
What is chunking
Grouping sets of digits or letters into meaningful units or chunks
What is capacity
The amount of information that can be held in a memory store
Limitation of Millers study
Miller may have overestimated the capacity of STM. Cowan rconckuded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks suggesting the lower end of Millers estimate is more appropriate than 7.
What is a digit span
Way of measuring the capacity of short term memory in terms of the maximum number of digits that can be recalled in the correct order
Key study for the duration of STM
Peterson and a Peterson
Procedure of the Peterson study
24 undergraduate students were given a consonant syllable to remember and a three digit number. Students then asked to count backwards from three digit number until told to stop. This was to prevent any rehearsal of the syllable. On each trial they are told to stop after a different amount of time (3,6,9,12 seconds etc) this is called retention interval
What is a consonant syllable
Three letter chunks with no vowels, also called a trigram
Findings of the Peterson study
After three seconds recall was about 80%. Recall after 18 seconds was about 3%.
Conclusions of the Peterson study
STM may have a very short duration (of less than 18 seconds) if maintenance rehearsal is prevented
Limitation of the Peterson study
Stimulus material was artificial. Does not reflect real life memory activity where what we are trying to remember is meaningful. I he study lacked ecological validity. However we do sometimes try to remember fairly meaningless things like phone numbers so the study isn’t totally irrelevant