1. coding, capacity, duration

Question 1

define CODING

Answer 1

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

Question 2

RESEARCH ON CODING

Baddeley gave different lists of words to 4 groups of participants to remember:

Answer 2

Group 1: acoustically similar words e.g. cat, can, cab
Group 2: acoustically dissimilar words e.g. bad, pit, cow
Group 3: semantically similar words e.g. great, big, large
Group 4: semantically dissimilar words e.g. good, hot, huge

Question 3

BADDELEY - PROCEDURE
Participants were shown the words and asked to recall them in the correct order. When they did this task immediately (recall from STM), they tended to do worse with

Answer 3

acoustically similar words

Question 4

RESEARCH ON CODING

When they recalled the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (recalling from LTM), they did worse with

These findings suggest

Answer 4

semantically similar words.

that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

Question 5

RESEARCH ON CODING

AO3: strength of coding research

identified 2 separate stores, led to MSM

Answer 5

Baddeley’s study identified a clear difference between two memory stores.
Later research showed there is some exceptions to Baddeley’s findings, but the idea that STM uses mostly acoustic coding and LTM uses mostly semantic coding has stood the test of time.
This is a strength because this was an important step in our understanding of the memory system, which led to the multi store model.

Question 6

RESEARCH ON CODING

AO3: limitation of coding research

artificial stimuli

Answer 6

Baddeley’s study used artificial material rather than meaningful stimuli.
The word lists had no personal meaning to the participants, so Baddeley’s findings may not tell us much about coding in different kinds of memory tasks, especially in everyday life. When processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding for STM tasks.
This suggests that these findings from this study have limited real life application.

Question 7

define CAPACITY

Answer 7

the amount of information that can be held in a memory store.

Question 8

CAPACITY STUDIES - STM ONLY

Jacobs measured participants digit span by

Answer 8

reading out digits and asked them to recall out loud. If they recalled correctly, one more digit would be out until failure. This determines the individual’s digit span.

Question 9

CAPACITY STUDIES - STM ONLY

Jacobs found:

mean span for digits and letters

Answer 9

that the mean span for digits was 9.3 and letters was 7.3.

Question 10

CAPACITY STUDIES - STM ONLY

Miller noticed that things come in 7s, e.g. 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins.
Miller thought that the capacity of STM is

Answer 10

about 7 items plus or minus 2.

Question 11

CAPACITY STUDIES - STM ONLY

Miller also noted that people can easily recall 5 words as well as letters - this is done by

(define chunking)

Answer 11

chunking, grouping sets of letters or digits into units or chunks.

Question 12

CAPACITY STUDIES - STM ONLY

AO3: strength of coding research

Jacobs - replication

Answer 12

Jacobs’ study has been replicated.
This is a very old study and early research in psychology often lacked adequate control, e.g. some participants digit spans might have been underestimated due to confounding variables such as noise that provided distraction. Despite this, Jacobs’ findings have been confirmed by other controlled studies since.
This means that Jacobs’ study is a valid test of digit span in STM.

Question 13

CAPACITY STUDIES - STM ONLY

AO3: limitation of coding research

Miller - less chunks? (Cowan)

Answer 13

Miller may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
Cowan reviewed other research and concluded that. The capacity of STM is 4 plus or minus 1 chunk.
This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate (five items) is more appropriate than seven items.

Question 14

DURATION STUDIES - STM

Peterson & Peterson
Procedure

Answer 14

tested 24 students in 8 trials each. Students were given a consonant trigram (e.g. YGZ) to remember and a 3-digit number to count backwards from to prevent any mental rehearsal of the trigram.
They were told to stop at varying periods of time e.g. 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds.

Question 15

DURATION STUDIES - STM

Peterson & Peterson
findings & conclusion

Answer 15

⭐️ 3 seconds: 80% correct / 6 seconds: 50% correct / 18 seconds: less than 3% correct.
⭐️ Duration of STM = 18 seconds unless information is repeated over and over.

Question 16

DURATION STUDIES - STM

AO3: limitation of DURATION research

artificial stimulus

Answer 16

Peterson and Peterson’s study used artificial stimulus material.
The study is not completely irrelevant as we do remember meaningless things like phone numbers. Even so, recalling consonant syllables does not reflect most everyday memory activities where what we try to remember is meaningful.
This means their study lacked external validity.

Question 17

DURATION STUDIES - LTM

Bahrick et al.
Procedure

Answer 17

studied 392 American participants aged 17-74. high school yearbooks were obtained, and they were tested on their memory of the names of their friends through:
photo recognition
free recall

Question 18

DURATION STUDIES - LTM

Bahrick et al.
findings and conclusion

Answer 18

PHOTO RECOGNITION:
15 YEARS - 90% ACCURATE
48 YEARS - 70% ACCURATE

FREE RECALL: 15 YEARS - 60% ACCURATE
48 YEARS - 30% ACCURATE

⭐️ LTM LASTS UP TO A LIFETIME.

Question 19

DURATION STUDIES - LTM

AO3: strength of DURATION research

meaningful memories

Answer 19

Bahrick’s study has high external validity.
This is because the researchers investigated meaningful memories. When studies of LTM were conducted with meaningless pictures to be remembered, recall rated were lower.
This suggests that Bahrick’s findings reflect a more real estimate of the duration of LTM.