Memory - Paper 1*

Question 1

what is capacity?

Answer 1

how much info can be held

Question 2

what is duration?

Answer 2

how long the information can be stored

Question 3

what is coding?

Answer 3

how the information is processed into something that can be stored e.g. acoustically by sound or semantically by meaning

Question 4

what is the capacity of the sensory register?

Answer 4

Spearling (1960) = capacity is unlimited

3x4 letter grid for 1/20th second.
when high, medium or low pitch tone produced to indicate which row was recalled ppts scored 3/4.

as ppts didn’t know which row they had to recall the information had to be available somewhere.

Question 5

what is the capacity of STM?

Answer 5

Jacobs (1887) = limited capacity

serial digit span technique
ppts given sequence of numbers and asked them to repeat them back in the order they were presented.

average STM span = 5 to 9 items
capacity can be increased by chunking items together to reduce the number of separate items overall.

Miller (1956) supports with capacity 7 plus/minus 2 chunk

Question 6

what is the capacity of LTM?

Answer 6

capacity is unlimited. can lose data along the way through decay and interference but forgetting not due to capacity limitations.

Question 7

what is the duration of sensory regsister?

Answer 7

250 milliseconds

Question 8

what is the duration of STM?

Answer 8

Brown-peterson technique = approx 18-30 seconds

ppts shown constant trigrams and given interference task by counting backwards in 3’s to prevent rehearsal.
after intervals they recalled trigrams.

didn’t affect recall after 3 seconds but as time increased, performance delcines.
after 18 seconds, memory decayed.

Question 9

what is the duration of LTM?

Answer 9

Bahrick et al(1975)

400 ppts aged 17-74 shown names and photos, some old school friends.
had to ID school friends

those that left school 48 years previously recalled 80% of names and 70% faces suggesting memory of names and faces is long lasting