Psychology-Memory

Question 1

What is capacity?

Answer 1

Concerns how much data can be held in a memory store. STM is a limited capacity store whereas LTM has a potentially infinite capacity

Question 2

Who studied capacity of STM

Answer 2

Miller 1956

Question 3

What was Millers study?

Answer 3

People are shown different numbers, words or amounts of dots on a screen and are then asked to recall what they saw to test their short term memory

Question 4

What did Miller find?

Answer 4

Miller found that 7 (+or-2) was the ‘magic number’, most people could remember about 7 words, numbers or dots

Question 5

What was Millers conclusion?

Answer 5

Short term memory only has a limited capacity as only seven items can be remembered

Question 6

What are the three evaluation points for capacity?

Answer 6

Capacity of STM may be even more limited, the size of chunk matters and there are individual differences