short and long term memory Flashcards
1
Q
what is the capacity of LTM
A
potentially infinite
2
Q
capacity of STM
A
digits = 9.3 letters = 7.3
3
Q
duration of STM
A
very short
less than 18 seconds
4
Q
coding of STM
A
acoustically
5
Q
Coding of LTM
A
semantically
6
Q
experiment for capacity of STM
A
- Joseph Jacobs digit span
- students had to repeat back a string of numbers or letters and the length was gradually increased.
- average span of 7.3 letters and 9.3 words
- easier to recall digits because there is only 9 of them where’s there is 26 letters
- Miller came up with 7+-2
7
Q
experiment for duration of STM
A
- Lloyd and Peterson
- participant given a consonant syllable and a 3 digit number.
- had to recall syllable after interval from 3 secs to 18 secs
- during interval they had to count backwards from 3 digit number
- 90% correct after 3 secs, 2% correct after 18 secs
8
Q
experiment for duration of LTM
A
- Bahrick
- photo recognition test consisting of photos from participants year book.
- those tested within 15 years of graduation were 90% accurate
- after about 50 years this declined to about 70%
- free recall condition also showed similar pattern of results
9
Q
why was testing STM artificial ?
A
- trying to memorise consent syllables doesn’t reflect everyday activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful
- counter argument that we do sometimes try to remember meaningless things e.g. phone numbers. Some relevance to everyday life
9
Q
explain the weakness of individual differences
A
- Capacity of STM isn’t same for everyone
- Jacobs found that recall for 8 year olds was 6.6 digits whereas for 19 year olds it was 8.6
10
Q
explain the weakness that Baddeley may not have tested LTM
A
- in the study, STM was tested by asking participants to recall a word lost immediately after hearing it.
- LTM was tested by waiting 20 minutes. Questionable wether this is really LTM
11
Q
What is a particular strength of Bahrick’s study
A
- the use of meaningful stimuli, and a methodology which is high in mundane realism
- suggests that the findings have high ecological validity because they can easily be generalised to real life , due to the stimuli reflected those which we would often try to learn and recall in our every day lives
12
Q
problem with Bahrick’s experiment
A
- sample of American university graduates
- lacks population validity
