Coding, capacity and duration Flashcards
Coding
The way in which information is stored in different memory stores.
Capacity
The AMOUNT of information that can be held in a memory store
Duration
the LENGTH of time info can be held in memory
STM (features: capacity, duration, coding)
Short term memory- limited capacity store
coding is mainly acoustic,
capacity is 5+/-2
duration is 15-18 seconds
LTM (features: capacity, duration, coding)
Long term memory - permanent store
unlimited capacity and duration
coding is mainly semantic
Research into coding (Name + date)
Alan Baddeley (1966)
Research into coding ( Procedure + results)
- Tested participants by giving them words to remember that were either semantically or acoustically similar/ dissimilar.
R: When the words are acoustically similar they mixed up their words, when tested immediately and when the words are semantically similar they got them mixed up after being tested later.
Research into capacity (Name + date)
Jacobs (1887)
Conclusion of Baddleys coding research
Long term memory is semantic - and support the idea of separate memory stores.
Jacobs (1887) - Procedure
- Tested participants using the digit span test. (Given digits in a sequence and asked to recall them)
Jacobs (1887) - Results
Mean recall: 7.3 (Letters)
Mean recall: 9.3 (Digits)
What was George Millers theory ( what did he state)
Noted that things often come in 7s.
Therefore STM’s capacity is around 7 items
He also says that we remember groups by chucking
Define chunking
Grouping digits or letters into chunks or units.
Name of the STM research + procedure
Peterson and Peterson - Given trigrams to remember then asked to count for different amounts of time so rehearsal is not allowed.
Results of P+P
The longer the intervals the harder it was to recall
