Studying Encoding, Capacity & Duration

Question 1

What is coding in terms of memory?

Answer 1

How information is stored and transmitted in memory

Question 2

Describe Baddeley’s Encoding Experiment

Answer 2

Participants were given one of 4 word lists to learn: acoustically similar words; acoustically dissimilar words; semantically similar words and semantically dissimilar words. They were then instructed to recall the word list either immediately (testing STM) or after 20 minutes (testing LTM).

Question 3

What were Baddeley’s Findings in terms of Encoding?

Answer 3

STM is encoded acoustically, as when testing STM participants did worse when recalling the list of acoustically similar words.

LTM is encoded semantically, as when testing LTM participants did worse when recalling the list of semantically similar words.

Question 4

What is Capacity?

Answer 4

The amount of information a memory store can hold

Question 5

How concluded the mean capacity of LTM?

Answer 5

Jacobs

Question 6

How did Jacobs measure the capacity of STM?

Answer 6

By measuring digit span

Question 7

What is Duration?

Answer 7

The length of time information can be held in a memory store

Question 8

Describe Peterson & Peterson’s STM Duration Experiment

Answer 8

Gave participants a consonant syllable (eg. AMK) to remember, and then asked them to count down from a random number until asked to recall the consonant syllable

Question 9

Describe Bahrick’s LTM Duration Experiment

Answer 9

Participants aged 17-74 were quizzed on their high school yearbooks (eg. by recalling names, matching faces to names)

Question 10

What did Miller note?

Answer 10

The phenomenon of chunking: when our memory groups sets of digits and letters into chunks of 7 in order to make them easier to remember

Question 11

What are the 2 key findings of Peterson’s & Peterson’s research?

Answer 11

• The rate of accuracy of recall was 80% after 3 seconds
• The rate of accuracy of recall was 3% after 18 seconds