MSM Research Flashcards
Sensory store
Duration
Walsh Thompson
Found that the iconic sensory memory has an average duration of 500 ms
Sensory store
Capacity
Sperling
P’s asked to recall letters from a grid of 12 - typically only recalled around 4 before they faded from sensory memory but reported seeing more than they had time to report
STM
Duration
Peterson and Peterson
Read nonsense trigrams to p’s then got them to count backwards in 3s, then recall - 80% recall after 3 second delay, 10% recall after 18 second delay - shows limited duration
STM
Coding
Baddeley
Gave p’s 4 sets of words, 1 similar sounds, one different sounds, similar meanings and different meanings. When asked to recall immediately, p’s made more mistakes on words that sounded similar - suggesting that encoding is acoustic, processing was overwhelmed by similar sounds so memory is muddled
STM
Capacity
Jacobs
P’s presented with increasingly long lists of numbers or letters and have to recall them in the right order - capacity was 9.3 for numbers and for letters was 7.3. Suggests capacity is within the 7±2 range
LTM
Duration
Bahrick et al
392 American ex-high school students aged 17-74 - tested using free recall and photo recognition - asked to identify former classmates from a line up of 50 - recognition 90% accurate after 14 years and 60% accurate after 47 years suggests LTM can have a very long duration
LTM
Coding
Baddeley
Gave p’s 4 sets of words, 1 similar sounds, one different sounds, similar meanings and different meanings. After delayed recall, p’s had more difficulty remembering words that were semantically similar. Suggests LTM uses semantic coding - processing was overwhelmed by similar meanings, memory s muddled
LTM
Capacity
Wagenaar
Created diary of 2400 events over 6 years and tested himself on recall of the events, finding he had an excellent recall suggests capacity is extremely large, possibly unlimited
