Short term and long term memory evaluation Flashcards
Name evaluation points for Capacity
- P: Miller’s findings have not been replicated
E:Cownan 2001 reviewed various studies on capacity and found that STM was likely limited to 4 chunks. Vogel et al 2001 also found that capacity for visual information (rather than verbal stimuli) was around 4 times the limit.
L: Means that it has low reliability and that STM is not as extensive as once thought.
Name evaluation points for duration
- it is artificial as it does not reflect the real world as we would not usually recall consonant syllables however, we do recall meaningless digits i.e postcodes and others
- Petersons study did not measure what it set out to measure.
- participants were counting numbers in their STM and this may displace or overwrite the syllables to be remembered
- Reitman in 1974 used auditory tones instead of numbers so that displacement wouldn’t occur and found that duration was longer
Name evaluation points for coding
P: STM may not be entirely acoustic
E:Branditmore et al in 1992 found that participants used visual coding if they were given a visual task and prevented from doing any verbal rehearsal in the retention interval (had to say la la la) before performing a visual task
L: suggests that STM may not be acoustic
Name an evaluation for Capacity
There are individual differences
Jacobs found that recall increased steadily with age
Eight year olds could remember 6.6 digits (mean) whereas 19 year olds could remember 8.6 this may be due to change sin brain capacity
But this also means that findings surrounding STM cannot be generalised to the public
Name an evaluation for coding
P: Baddely may not have tested LTM
E: in this study Baddely tested STM by asking participants to recall a word list immediately after hearing it. LTM was tested by waiting 20 minute, this casts doubts as to whether this was really LTM
L: this casts doubts on the validity of research because he may have not been testing LTM
