Short and long term memory Flashcards
What is the short term memory?
Your memory for immediate events
What is capacity with regards to memory?
A measure of how much can be held in the memory
What is duration with regards to memory?
A measure of how long a memory lasts before it is no longer available
What is encoding with regards to memory?
The way information is changed so it can be stored in memory
What is the capacity of the STM?
7+/-2 items or chunks
What is Miller’s magic number?
7+/-2
What type of experiment did Jacobs do?
A digit span experiment
What were Jacobs findings?
Average digit recall of 7.3
What is the duration of STM?
18-30 seconds
Who conducted research into the duration of STM?
Peterson and Peterson
What did Peterson and Peterson present their participants with?
Nonsensical trigrams
What were Peterson and Peterson’s participants required to do?
Recall the trigram after a delay of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds
During the delay in Peterson and Peterson’s task, what were participants required to do?
Count backwards from a random 3 digit number
When plotted on a graph, what did Peterson and Peterson’s findings show?
That memory decays over time
What did Peterson and Peterson’s study lack?
Mundane realism
Why did Peterson and Peterson’s study lack mundane realism?
Because they used artificial stimuli which don’t accurately reflect everyday experiences
What has more recent research suggested about the capacity of the STM?
That Miller over-exaggerated it
What does more recent research suggest is the capacity of the STM?
4 chunks
What are the 3 types of coding?
Semantic, acoustic and visual
What is semantic encoding?
Memories held in the form of meanings
What is visual encoding?
Memories held in the form of images
What is acoustic encoding?
Memories held in the form of sounds
What is the capacity of LTM?
Limitless
What is the duration of the LTM?
Limitless