Research into coding, capacity and duration of memory

Question 1

Define coding

Answer 1

converting information between different forms of memory

Question 2

Who conducted research into coding

Answer 2

Baddley

Question 3

Outline coding research procedure

Answer 3

Baddley gave word lists to 4 groups of pp’s
acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar, and semantically dissimilar.
Showed pp’s the word lists and then asked them to recall, when recall was done immediately recall was worse for semantically similar words, but after 20 mins, recall was worse for semantically similar words.

Question 4

What are the conclusions of coding research

Answer 4

The STM is coded acoustically and the LTM is coded semantically.

Question 5

Define capacity

Answer 5

Capacity is the amount of information that can be retained in a memory store at one time

Question 6

Who performed research into capacity

Answer 6

Jacobs

Question 7

Outline the procedure for capacity research

Answer 7

Jacobs read participants 4 digits and asked them to recall the digits in the correct order. If they successfully did this, he added a digit to the list. This continued until the PPs could not longer correctly recall the list in order.

Question 8

What were the findings of capacity research

Answer 8

The mean number of digits that pp’s could recall was 9.3 items, and the mean number of letters was 7.3 items.

Question 9

Who performed research on the span of memory and chunking

Answer 9

Miller

Question 10

Outline span of memory observations

Answer 10

Miller observed that features of everyday life come in 7’s, eg 7 days of the week. He suggested capacity of the STM was 7+-2 items.

Question 11

Outline chunking findings

Answer 11

Miller noticed that people could recall 5 words as easy as they could recall 5 letters, as we group letters together in chunking processes.

Question 12

Define duration

Answer 12

How long memories can be stored in memory stores for

Question 13

Who performed research into the duration of the STM

Answer 13

Peterson and Peterson

Question 14

Outline the procedure for STM duration research

Answer 14

24 students were each subject to 8 trials. In each trial, they were given a three-letter trigram to remember, as well as a random three-digit number to count back from until told to stop. They were told to stop at random intervals of 3,6,9,12,15 and 18 secs.
After 3 secs = recall 80%
After 18 secs = 3%

Question 15

Conclusions of STM duration research

Answer 15

The duration of the STM is 18 seconds unless we use maintenance rehearsal to keep information in the STM.

Question 16

Who conducted LTM duration research

Answer 16

Bahrick

Question 17

Outline the duration of LTM research procedure

Answer 17

392 American pp’s. School yearbooks were obtained from pp’s or from their schools.
pp’s were assessed on:
-photo recognition from 50 photos, where some photos were of people in their yearbooks.
-free recall of names from their graduating class

Question 18

Findings of LTM duration research

Answer 18

After 15 years of graduation, photo recognition was 90%, whereas after 48 years of graduating, this fell to 70%
After 15 years of graduating, free recall was 60% and after 48 years of graduating, this fell to 30%.

Question 19

conclusions of LTM duration research

Answer 19

The duration of the LTM could be up to a lifetime for some information.