Coding, capacity and duration of memory

Question 1

Coding

Answer 1

the process of converting information from one form to another

Question 2

What did Alan baddeley do?

Answer 2

gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember and asked them to recall them in order

Question 3

Baddeley group one

Answer 3

• acoustically similar

- words sounded similar

Question 4

Baddeley group two

Answer 4

• acoustically dissimilar

- words sounded different

Question 5

Baddeley group three

Answer 5

• semantically similar

- words with similar meaning

Question 6

Baddeley group four

Answer 6

• semantically dissimilar

- words that all had different meanings

Question 7

What did Baddeley find?

Answer 7

• when participants had to do the recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worst with acoustically dissimilar words
• if participants were asked to recall the words after a time interval of 20 mins, they did worse with the semantically similar words

Question 8

What did Baddeleys findings suggest about coding in long term memory?

Answer 8

information is coded semantically In long term memory

Question 9

What is a limitation of Baddeleys study?

Answer 9

• it used artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material as the word lists had no personal meaning to participants
• this means we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different types of memory tasks
• e.g. when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks
• suggests that the findings have limited application

Question 10

capacity

Answer 10

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

Question 11

What did Jacobs do?

Answer 11

• developed a technique to measure digit span
• e.g. the researcher gives the participants 4 digits to recall these in the correct order out loud. if this is correct, the researcher reads out 5 digits and so on until the participant cannot recall the order correctly
• this determines the individuals digit span

Question 12

What did Jacobs find?

Answer 12

• the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3

- the mean span for letters was 7.3

Question 13

What did Miller do?

Answer 13

• made observations of everyday practice

- e.g. he noted that things come in sevens: 7 notes on musical scales, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins

Question 14

What did the number 7 mean in the study Miller?

Answer 14

-suggested that the capacity of STM is 7(+/-2)

Question 15

What did Miller find?

Answer 15

• people can recall 5 words as well as 5 letters

- they do this by chunking, grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks

Question 16

What is a limitation of Jacob’s study?

Answer 16

• it was conducted a very long time ago
• early research into psychology often lacked adequate control
• e.g. some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested so they didn’t perform as well as they might of done
• means that the results may not be valid because there were confounding variables that were not controlled
• however results of this study have been confirmed in other research supporting its validity

Question 17

What is a limitation of Millers study?

Answer 17

• Miller may have overestimated the capacity of STM
• Cowan reviewed other research and concluded that he capacity of STM was only 4 chunks
• suggests that the lower end of millers estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items

Question 18

Duration

Answer 18

the length of time information can be held in memory

Question 19

what was Peterson and Peterson study?

duration of STM

Answer 19

• the student was given a consonant syllable to remember and was asked to count backwards from a 3 digit number
• counting backwards was to prevent any mental rehearsal of the consonant syllable
• on each trial, they were asked to stop after a different amount of times 3,6,9,12,15 or 18 seconds - called the retention interval

Question 20

What did Peterson and Peterson find?

Answer 20

-STM may have a very short duration, unless we repeat something over and over again

Question 21

What is a limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study?

Answer 21

• the stimulus material was artificial
• trying to memorise constant syllables does not reflect most real life memory activities where what we try to remember is meaningful
• therefore this study lacked external validity

Question 22

What was Bahrick et al study on duration of LTM?

Answer 22

• studied 392 participants from Ohio aged from 17 to 74

- participants were given a photo recognition test from their high school yearbook consisting of 50 photos

Question 23

What did Bahrick et al find?

Answer 23

• participants who were tested within 15 years pf graduation were approx 90% accurate in photo recognition
• After 48 years, recall declined to 70%
• shows that LTM lasts a long time

Question 24

What is a strength of Bahrick et al study?

Answer 24

• higher external validity as real life memories were studied
• when studies have been conducted on meaningless pictures to be remembered, recall was lower