STM: Encoding - Baddeley 1966

Question 1

What was Baddeley’s study?

Answer 1

Cat/Mat study.

Question 2

What was the objective if Baddeley’s (1966) cat/mat study?

Answer 2

To test whether STM coding favours acoustic or semantic coding.

Question 3

How did Baddeley test this?

Answer 3

By having 4 word groups.

A - acoustically similar words.

B - equally common words but sounding different.

C - adjectives with similar meaning (semantic)

D - adjectives with distinctive meaning.

Percentage figure for each list collected.

Question 4

What were the reported percentages for correctly recalled words in each group?

Answer 4

A - acoustically similar words - 10%

B - equally common but different sounding - 82%

C - adjectives with similar meaning (semantic) - 65%

D - adjectives with distinctive meaning - 71%

Question 5

What can we conclude from Baddeley’s results?

Answer 5

We code acoustically, we know this because of the acoustic confusion in list A.

Due to the fact that we suffer from acoustic confusion shows we encode primarily acoustically in STM.