Memory (Paper 1)

Question 1

Coding for STM/LTM + Study

Answer 1

STM - Acoustic
LTM - Semantic

P’s told semantically (meaning) similar and dissimilar words, then acoustically (sounding) similar and dissimilar words.

Found P’s muddled acoustically similar words when asked to recite them in sequence order.

Shows STM codes in Acoustic and LTM in Semantic.

Question 2

Capacity for LTM + Study

Answer 2

Unlimited

Some bloke wrote down 2,400 events in a diary and rehearsed them.

Found he could recite nearly all of them with high accuracy of where it was, who was there, when it was etc.

Suggests LTM Capacity is very vast, possibly unlimited.

Question 3

Duration for STM + Study

Answer 3

18-30 Seconds

Trigram study. P’s tried to remember a list of trigrams (ZTE, TBH, RPG etc) and counted to a certain number before reciting the list.

Found STM dropped off in intervals of 3 seconds. 80% remembrance at 3 seconds down to 10% at 18 seconds with a few lasting until 30 seconds.

Suggests STM info storage lasts up to 18-30 seconds

Question 4

Capacity For STM + Study

Answer 4

7 +/- 2

Digit spam study.

Read out a sequence of random numbers, each time the P recited them back correctly he recited a new random sequence but added one extra number.

Found avg number of correctly recalled numbers was between 7 and 9.

Question 5

Duration for LTM + Study

Answer 5

Lifetime

Tested 392 graduates from a high school on face recognition of people from their old school year book.

Two conditions:

• Photo recognition: Matching name to face. After 15 years - 90% recall. After 48 years - 70%
• Free recall: Name person in picture. After 15 years - 60% recall. After 48 years - 30%