Short Term Memory

Question 1

Who invented the MSM

Answer 1

Atkinson and Shiffrin

1968

Question 2

Sensory Register

• where
• capacity
• duration
• how it transfers to STM

Answer 2

at the senses
Unlimited capacity
For milliseconds
If we pay attention to it

Question 3

STM

• what for
• duration
• coded
• capacity
• how it transfers to LTM

Answer 3

• immediate tasks
• held for 18-30 seconds
• coded acoustically
• 5-9 chunks
• maintainable rehearsal

Question 4

LTM

• Duration
• capacity
• coded
• transfer?

Answer 4

• unlimited
• unlimited
• semantically
• retrieved

Question 5

Strengths of the MSM

Answer 5

• Controlled lab studies support the idea of different memory stores
• STM and LTM activate different parts of the brain
• STM pre frontal cortex
• LTM hippocampus

Question 6

Weaknesses of the MSM

Answer 6

It is too simplistic as it suggests that the STM and LTM are unitary stokes however research doesn’t support this

Question 7

Milner (1968)

What happened?

Answer 7

Case study on patient HM who had an operation to remove hippocampus after suffering epileptic fits.

Question 8

Milner(1968)

The findings?

Answer 8

Patient HMs STM remained normal however his long term memory was affected. He was unable to transfer any new information from his STM to his LTM, although he could recall previous memories.

Question 9

Milner (1968)

How does it support the MSM?

Answer 9

The case of patient HM sports the MSM by showing that there are different memory stores as only his LTM was affected and his STM remained in tact, showing that there are different stores within our memory that are linear.

Question 10

Milner (1968)

Limitations of the case study?

Answer 10

Milner based his evidence on a case study. However patient HM has different a traumatic experience and therefore it may have been a unique case. This means that the finding’s cannot be generalised and lack population validity.

Question 11

Warrington and Baddeley (1974)

What happened?

Answer 11

They studied patient KF who had been involved in a motorbike accident and suffering brain damage.

Question 12

Warrington and Baddeley (1974)

The findings?

Answer 12

Patient KFs STMwas affected, however not all. For example his retention of auditory information was significantly worse than his retention of visual information.

Question 13

Warrington and Baddeley (1974)

How it opposes the MSM?

Answer 13

This study shows that STM cannot be a unitary store ad only part of patient KFs STM was affected and therefore showing that the MSM is too simplistic. Later Baddeley developed the working model of makeup to combat this flaw.

Question 14

What do Warrington and Baddeley research into?

Answer 14

Different stores within the STM

Question 15

What does Milner research into?

Answer 15

The MSM

Question 16

What did Craik and Tulving research into?

Answer 16

Processing

Question 17

Craik and Tulving (1975)

What happened?

Answer 17

In order to test shallow processing they gave participants a list of words and asked after if a certain word was printed on capital letters or not. In order to test deep processing, participants were asked if a word fitted into a sentence.

Question 18

Craik and Tulving (1975)

The findings?

Answer 18

Participants performed better with deep processing questions as they were able to use the word which helped them to remember it. This helped developed the theory of elaborative rehearsal.

Question 19

Craik and Tulving (1975)

How does it show limitations of the MSM?

Answer 19

The MSM focuses on the amount of required maintenance rehearsal to transfer STM to LTM, however Craik and Tulving Show that it is not the amount of rehearsal that Matters, but the type of rehearsal.

Question 20

What is coding?

Answer 20

The format in which information is stored in various memory stores.

Question 21

What are the two types of coding for sensory memory?

Answer 21

ICONIC MEMORY
Visual information that’s coded visually

ECHOIC MEMORY
sound or auditor information that’s coded acoustically

Question 22

Who researched coding into the LTM and STM?

Answer 22

Baddeley (1966)

Question 23

Baddeley (1966)

What happened?

Answer 23

Participants were given four sets of words:
The first set of words sounded similar
The second set sounded different
The third set has similar meaning
The fourth set had different meaning

For STM
The words were recalled immediately

For LTM
The words were recalled after a longer interval of time

Question 24

Baddeley (1966)

The findings?

Answer 24

For STM;
Baddeley found that people had trouble remembering words that sounded similar after shorter intervals. This is because the STM is trying to store these words acoustically, but they sound too similar so merge together in our brain

For LTM;
Barely found that after longer intervals, participants made more mistakes on words with similar meanings as our brain stores LTM semantically and so the words were too similar in meaning to recall

Question 25

Baddeley (1966)

Limitation of Baddeley‘s study

Answer 25

One limiting factor of Baddeley‘a study is that it used artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material and therefore the findings cannot be generalised as we would not perform these tasks in our everyday life. This means that the study lacks ecological validity.

Question 26

What is capacity?

Answer 26

The amount of information that can be stored in a memory store.

Question 27

What did Jacobs research into?

Answer 27

The serial digit span and how many chunks of information the STM can hold.

Question 28

Jacobs (1887)

What happened?

Answer 28

He decided a technique camped the ‘serial digit span’. He has an Experimente read put a list of numbers and then participants immediately recall and write down the list of numbers. He increased the list by one number each time. He then checked to see which set of numbers had no errors and counted the amount of numbers in that list. This showed an individuals capacity.

Question 29

Jacobs (1887)

The findings?

Answer 29

Participants remembered

9. 3 numbers
10. 3 letters

Question 30

Jacobs study (1887)
What did miller later conclude?

Answer 30

Millers magic number

People have the capacity to Remember 7+/-2 numbers or 5-9 chunks of information

Question 31

Jacobs

Give two limitations of his study

Answer 31

One limitation is that it’s fairly outdated and older study often lacked adequate control over variables and therefore the results may not be valid due to confounding variables.

Another limitation is that Jacobs did not account for the size of the chunk of information, this will affect capacity. SIMON (1974) found that capacity was dependent on the size of the chunk.

Question 32

What is duration?

Answer 32

The length of time information can be held in the memory

Question 33

What did Peterson and Peterson research into?

Answer 33

Duration of LTM

Question 34

Peterson and Peterson(1959)

What happened?

Answer 34

Conducted a lab experiment with 24 participants and asked them to recall trigrams after counting down from a set number for a given amount of time.
THIS IS KNOWN AS THE BROWN TECHNIQUE

Question 35

Peterson and Peterson (1959)

The findings?

Answer 35

Longer duration =
lower % of trigrams remember
This is because STM has limited duration when rehearsal is presented as the information is lost through trace decay.