Memory- Types of Memory Flashcards
What are the three types of memory?
Sensory register, short-term memory, long-term memory
What information does the sensory register store?
Temporarily stores information from senses
What is spontaneous decay?
Memory disappears from sensory register unless we pay attention to it
What is the capacity of the sensory register?
Very large
What is the duration of the sensory register?
Very limited
How is information coded in the sensory register?
Depending on the sense
What is the capacity of short-term memory?
Limited
What is the duration of the short-term memory?
Limited
How is information coded in the short-term memory?
Usually acoustic
What is the capacity of long-term memory?
Pretty much unlimited
What is the duration of long-term memory?
Theoretically permanent
How is information coded in the long-term memory?
Usually semantic
What are the three types of long-term memory?
Episodic memory, semantic memory, procedural memory
What is episodic memory?
- Stores information about events
- Contains information about time and place, emotions, details of what happened
- Declarative, consciously recalled
What is semantic memory?
- Stores facts and knowledge
- Simply knowledge
What is procedural memory?
- Knowledge of how to do things
- Can’t be consciously recalled
What was Peterson and Peterson’s study?
- Participants shown nonsense trigrams
- Asked to recall after 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds
- Asked to count backwards in threes from a 3-digit number (interference task)
What were the results from Peterson and Peterson’s study?
- 80% could recall trigrams correctly after 3 seconds
- 10% could recall trigrams correctly after 18 seconds
What was the conclusion from Peterson and Peterson’s study?
When rehearsal is prevented, very little can stay in STM for longer than about 18 seconds
What was Bahrick’s study?
- 392 people asked to list names of ex-classmates (free-recall test)
- Shown photos and asked to recall names of people shown (photo-recognition test)
- Given names and asked to match to photo (name-recognition test)
What were the results from Bahrick’s study?
- Could recognise about 90% of names and faces within 15 years of leaving school
- About 60% accurate of free-recall
- Free recall declined to about 30% after 30 years
- Name-recognition about 80% accurate and photo-recognition about 40% after 48 years
What is the conclusion from Bahricks study?
- Evidence of VLTMs in real-life setting
- Recognition better than recall
- May be huge store of information but not easy to access
What was Jacobs’ study?
- Participants presented with string of letters or digits
- Had to repeat back in same order
- Number of digits or letters increased until participant failed to recall sequence correctly
What were the results from Jacob’s study?
- Majority of the time, participants recalled about 9 digits and about 7 letters
- Capacity increased with age during childhood
What was the conclusion from Jacobs’ study?
- STM has limited storage capacity of 5-9 items
- Individual differences such as age
What did Miller review?
Research into the capacity of STM
What did Miller argue?
The capacity of STM is seven plus or minus two
What is chunking?
Combining individual letters or numbers into larger and more meaningful units
What was Baddeley’s study?
- 4 groups- acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar, semantically dissimilar
- Independent groups design
- Asked to recall words either immediately or after a 20-minute task
What were the results from Baddeley’s study?
- Harder to recall acoustically similar words from STM
- Harder to recall semantically similar words from LTM
What was the conclusion from Baddeley’s study?
STM coded acoustically and LTM coded semantically
