Short And Long Term Memory

Question 1

Capacity

Answer 1

Amount of info held in a memory store

Question 2

Capacity of short term memory

Answer 2

Limited

5-9 items

Question 3

Capacity of long term memory

Answer 3

Unlimited

Years

Question 4

Jacobs STM 1887

Answer 4

Investigate capacity of STM using digital spam technique 
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443 females (8-19)
Repeat back string of numbers or letter in same order and amount of items given increased until participant does no more
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Average of 7.3 letters and 9.3 numbers 
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Supports millers notion of 7+/-2

Question 5

Chunking

Answer 5

Where you split big pieces of information into smaller chunks so that it’s easier to remember

Question 6

Jacobs investigation strengths

Answer 6

Lab experiment
Less extraneous variables
Other studies have similar answers which increased validity

Question 7

Jacobs investigation weakness

Answer 7

Conducted a long time ago

-results might not be valid as there were confounding variables that were not controlled

Question 8

Duration

Answer 8

Length of time the information can be held in the memory

Question 9

Duration of short term memory

Answer 9

18-30s

Question 10

Duration of ltm

Answer 10

Potential lifetime

Question 11

Peterson and Peterson 1959

Answer 11

Investigate duration of stm
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24 uni students, 3 letter consonant nonsense syllable followed by a 3 digit number.
Asked to count backwards in 3s or 4s to prevent reversing nonsense syllable
2 practice trails, 8 real trials 
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90% remembered when 3s interval
2% remembered when 18s interval 
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Longer you wait more you forget

Question 12

Bahrick 1975

Answer 12

Duration of long term memory
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392 people from Ohio, 17-74
Lost names of ex classmates ( free recall)
Shown photos then asked to name ( photo recognition)
Given names and match photos ( name recognition test)
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15 years of leaving school - 90% remembered on name and faces
60% free recall
After 30years, went down to 30% accuracy
After 48 years, name recognition 70%, photo recognition 40%
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Recognition better that recall
Huge store of info but might need cues to access it

Question 13

Strength of bahrick investigation

Answer 13

High external validity-applied to real world

Question 14

Weakness of bahrick investigation

Answer 14

Harder to control confounding variable when using real life stimulus

Question 15

Peterson and Peterson strength

Answer 15

Lab experiment

Highly controlled

Question 16

Peterson and Peterson weakness

Answer 16

Meaningless in real world as stimuli was artificial

Question 17

Coding

Answer 17

The way information is hanged so that it can be stored in the memory

Info enters brain via senses but stored in different forms

Question 18

Coding in short term memory

Answer 18

Acoustic

Question 19

Coding in long term memory

Answer 19

Semantic

Question 20

Baddeley 1966 aim

Answer 20

To test whether acoustic coding( sound of the word) is used in short term memory whereas Semantic coding in LTM

Question 21

Baddeley procedure

Answer 21

Lab experiment
Condition 1) acoustically similar ( meet feet sweet)
Condition 2) semantically similar (neat clean tidy)
Condition 3) acoustically dissimilar ( hot far jam) CONTROL
Condition 4) semantically dissimilar ( pen jump day) CONTROL

Variables changed were AS/AD and SS/SD
variable measured were number of errors
Asked to serial recall either immediately for STM or 20mins later LTM

Question 22

Baddeley finding

Answer 22

Immediate recall- more errors on AS list then on AD list
No difference between SS and DS words

Delayed recall - more errors on SS list then SD. No difference between AS and DS

Question 23

Baddeley conclusions

Answer 23

Nature of encoding is different for LTM and STM
STM- acoustically encoded, semantics not important

LTM-semantically encoded, acoustics not playing important role

Question 24

Baddeley strengths

Answer 24

Lab experiment

Controlled

Question 25

Baddeley weakness

Answer 25

Types of LTM not considered
Artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material
Word list had no meaning to participant