Memory Paper 1

Question 1

What is meant by coding?

Answer 1

The formant in which information is stored in the various memory stores

Question 2

What is the main encoding of the STM

Answer 2

Mainly acoustic (by sound)

Question 3

What is the main encoding of the LTM?

Answer 3

Mainly semantic (by meaning)

Question 4

What is meant by capacity?

Answer 4

The amount of information that can be held in a memory store

Question 5

What is the capacity of the STM?

Answer 5

Very limited (between 5 and 9 items on average)

Question 6

What is the capacity of the LTM?

Answer 6

Unlimited (a lifetime)

Question 7

What is meant by duration?

Answer 7

The length of time information can be held in memory

Question 8

What is the duration of the STM?

Answer 8

Very limited (between 18 and 30 seconds)

Question 9

What did Alan Badderly (1966) investigate?

Answer 9

The process of coding

Question 10

How did Alan Badderly investigate the process of coding?

Answer 10

He gave a list of words to four groups to remember

Question 11

What were the group of words the participants had to remember?

Answer 11

Group 1: acoustically similar (e.g. cat, can, cab)
Group 2: acoustically dissimilar (e.g. pit, few, cow)
Group 3: semantically similar (e.g. large, great, big)
Group 4: semantically dissimilar (e.g. good, huge, hot)

Question 12

What was the procedure of Alan Badderley’s research?

Answer 12

Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order. When they had to do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall) they did worse with acoustically similar words)

If participants were asked to recall the world list after a time interval of 20 mins (LTM recall) they did worse with the semantically similar words

Question 13

What did Badderley’s research show us?

Answer 13

The information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM

Question 14

What is one limitation of Baddeley’s study

Answer 14

The findings from the study have a limited application as it used an artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material; the list of words have no personal meaning to the participants which means we cannot generalise the findings

Question 15

What did Joseph Jacobs (1887) investigate?

Answer 15

The size of capacity in STM

Question 16

What was the method of Joseph Jacobs study?

Answer 16

Participants were presented with a string of letters or digits. They has to repeat them back in the same order . The number of digits or letters increased until the participant failed to recall the sequence correctly

Question 17

What was the result of Joseph Jacobs study?

Answer 17

Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.2 and the mean for letters was 7.3

Question 18

What is the capacity of STM according to Jacobs study?

Answer 18

7+-2

Question 19

What is one limitation of Joseph Jacobs study?

Answer 19

It lacks temporal validity as it was conducted long ago and research back then lacked control which decreases the validity of this study as it could’ve been affected by cofounding variables

Question 20

What is on strength to counter the limitation of Joseph Jacobs study?

Answer 20

Further research into capacity has confirmed his findings

Question 21

What did Peterson and Peterson investigate?

Answer 21

The duration of STM

Question 22

What was the method/procedure of Petersons and Petersons study?

Answer 22

Participants were shown nonsense trigrams (3 random consonants e.g. CVM) and asked to recall them after either 3,6,9,12,155 and 18 seconds. During the pause they were asked to count backwards in threes from a given 3 digit number (interference task) to prevent them from repeating the letters internally

Question 23

What were the results/findings of Petersons and Petersons research?

Answer 23

• After 3 seconds, participants could recall 80% of trigrams correctly
• After 18 seconds, participants could recall less that 10% of trigrams correctly
• STM has a very short duration unless we have the opportunity to repeat it over and over again (verbal rehearsal)

Question 24

What is one strength of Petersons and Petersons research?

Answer 24

It is a laboratory experiment so it is likely to be reliable as the variables can be tightly controlled

Question 25

What is one Limitation of Petersons and Petersons research?

Answer 25

It lacks ecological validity as nonsense trigrams are an artificial stimuli

Question 26

What is one strength to the limitation of Petersons and Petersons research?

Answer 26

The artificial stimuli can be used in trying to remember things such as postcodes and number