Short and long term memory Flashcards

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1
Q

What is the short term memory?

A

Your memory for immediate events

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2
Q

What is capacity with regards to memory?

A

A measure of how much can be held in the memory

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3
Q

What is duration with regards to memory?

A

A measure of how long a memory lasts before it is no longer available

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4
Q

What is encoding with regards to memory?

A

The way information is changed so it can be stored in memory

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5
Q

What is the capacity of the STM?

A

7+/-2 items or chunks

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6
Q

What is Miller’s magic number?

A

7+/-2

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7
Q

What type of experiment did Jacobs do?

A

A digit span experiment

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8
Q

What were Jacobs findings?

A

Average digit recall of 7.3

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9
Q

What is the duration of STM?

A

18-30 seconds

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10
Q

Who conducted research into the duration of STM?

A

Peterson and Peterson

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11
Q

What did Peterson and Peterson present their participants with?

A

Nonsensical trigrams

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12
Q

What were Peterson and Peterson’s participants required to do?

A

Recall the trigram after a delay of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds

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13
Q

During the delay in Peterson and Peterson’s task, what were participants required to do?

A

Count backwards from a random 3 digit number

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14
Q

When plotted on a graph, what did Peterson and Peterson’s findings show?

A

That memory decays over time

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15
Q

What did Peterson and Peterson’s study lack?

A

Mundane realism

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16
Q

Why did Peterson and Peterson’s study lack mundane realism?

A

Because they used artificial stimuli which don’t accurately reflect everyday experiences

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17
Q

What has more recent research suggested about the capacity of the STM?

A

That Miller over-exaggerated it

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18
Q

What does more recent research suggest is the capacity of the STM?

A

4 chunks

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19
Q

What are the 3 types of coding?

A

Semantic, acoustic and visual

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20
Q

What is semantic encoding?

A

Memories held in the form of meanings

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21
Q

What is visual encoding?

A

Memories held in the form of images

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22
Q

What is acoustic encoding?

A

Memories held in the form of sounds

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23
Q

What is the capacity of LTM?

A

Limitless

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24
Q

What is the duration of the LTM?

A

Limitless

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25
Q

What was Bahrick investigating?

A

The duration of LTM

26
Q

How many people did Bahrick test?

A

400

27
Q

What ages were Bahrick’s participants?

A

17-74

28
Q

What were the two test Bahrick conducted?

A

Photo-recognition and free-recall

29
Q

In Bahrick’s study, what was accuracy of photo-recognition in participants who were tested within 15 years of graduation?

A

90%

30
Q

In Bahrick’s study, what was accuracy of free-recall in participants who were tested within 15 years of graduation?

A

60%

31
Q

In Bahrick’s study, what was accuracy of photo-recognition in participants who were tested after 48 years of graduation?

A

70%

32
Q

In Bahrick’s study, what was accuracy of free-recall in participants who were tested after 48 years of graduation?

A

30%

33
Q

What are semantically similar words?

A

A set of words with a similar meaning (e.g. large, big, huge)

34
Q

What are acoustically similar words?

A

Words with a similar sound (e.g. cat, cab, cap)

35
Q

What is the main coding in the STM?

A

Acoustic

36
Q

What is the main coding in the LTM?

A

Semantic

37
Q

What was the aim of Baddeley’s study?

A

To test the effects of acoustic and semantic similarity on STM and LTM

38
Q

What did Baddeley find with regards to acoustically similar words?

A

They struggled when in STM but not LTM

39
Q

What did Baddeley find with regards to semantically similar words?

A

They struggled when in LTM but not STM

40
Q

What are the 2 AO3 points of research into the capacity of STM?

A

1) Capacity may be even more limited
2) Individual differences

41
Q

What has not been able to happen with Miller’s findings?

A

They have not been replicated

42
Q

In a review of studies investigating the capacity of the STM, what was the maximum capacity found to be?

A

4 chunks

43
Q

What is the maximum capacity of visual information in the STM?

A

4 items

44
Q

What did Jacobs find with regards to age?

A

Digit span increased with age

45
Q

What did Jacobs find was the mean digit span of 8 year olds?

A

6.6 digits

46
Q

What did Jacobs find was the mean digit span of 19 year olds?

A

8.6 digits

47
Q

Why may digit span increase with age?

A

May be due to brain development and/or the development of skills such as chunking

48
Q

What are the 2 AO3 points of research into the duration of STM?

A

1) Testing STM was artificial
2) STM results may be due to displacement

49
Q

What can be said about Peterson and Peterson’s task?

A

It was highly artificial

50
Q

Why was Peterson and Peterson’s task artificial?

A

Trying to memorise nonsensical trigrams does not truly reflect real life memory events

51
Q

Why may Peterson and Peterson’s task have high mundane realism?

A

Some of the information we do have to remember (e.g. phone numbers and postcodes) tend to be meaningless

52
Q

What does Peterson and Peterson’s study lack?

A

Internal validity

53
Q

What did Peterson and Peterson actually study, rather than decay?

A

Displacement

54
Q

Why may Peterson and Peterson’s participants have experienced displacement rather than decay?

A

The participants were counting numbers in their STM - this may displace the syllables they were trying to remember

55
Q

What happened when a researcher replicated Peterson and Peterson’s study but used auditory tones instead of numbers?

A

Displacement didn’t occur and the duration of STM was found to be longer

56
Q

What are the 2 AO3 points of research into the coding of STM + LTM?

A

1) Coding in STM may not be exclusively acoustic
2) Baddeley may not have tested LTM

57
Q

Other than acoustic, which other type of coding has been found to occur in the STM?

A

Visual

58
Q

Who provided research support for visual coding in the STM?

A

Brandimonte

59
Q

What did Brandimonte find?

A

That participants used visual coding in the STM if they were given a visual task + prevented from verbally rehearsing in the retention interval before performing a visual recall task

60
Q

What was prevented in Brandimonte’s study?

A

Converting visual images into verbal codes

61
Q

Why has Baddeley’s methodology been strongly criticised?

A

LTM was tested by asking the participants to recall the word lists 20 minutes after hearing them - it is questionable as to whether 20 minutes is really LTM