Psychology-Memory COPY Flashcards
What is capacity?
Concerns how much data can be held in a memory store. STM is a limited capacity store whereas LTM has a potentially infinite capacity
Who studied capacity of STM
Miller 1956
What was Millers study?
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
What did Miller find?
Miller found that 7 (+or-2) was the ‘magic number’, most people could remember about 7 words, numbers or dots
What was Millers conclusion?
Short term memory only has a limited capacity as only seven items can be remembered
What are the three evaluation points for capacity?
Capacity of STM may be even more limited, the size of chunk matters and there are individual differences