Coding, Capacity and Duration of Memory

Question 1

What is coding?

Answer 1

Process of converting information from one form to another for the correct memory store.

Question 2

What is capacity?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

What is duration?

Answer 3

The length of time information can be held in a memory store.

Question 4

What is the short term memory?

Answer 4

Limited capacity store.

Question 5

What kind of coding does the STM include?

Answer 5

Mainly acoustic

Question 6

Capacity of the STM?

Answer 6

5 to 9 items on average.

Question 7

Duration of the STM?

Answer 7

Between 18 and 30 seconds.

Question 8

What is the long term memory?

Answer 8

The permanent memory store.

Question 9

What kind of coding is used in the LTM?

Answer 9

Semantic (meaning).

Question 10

What is the capacity of the LTM?

Answer 10

Unlimited capacity.

Question 11

What is the duration of the LTM?

Answer 11

Can store memories for a life time.

Question 12

Who did research on coding?

Answer 12

Baddeley (1966)

Question 13

What were the 4 lists Baddeley gave to participants to remember?

Answer 13

1. Acoustically similar (cat, cab, can)
2. Acoustically dissimilar (pit, few, cow)
3. Semantically similar (great, large, big)
4. Semantically dissimilar (good, huge, hot)

Question 14

What were participants asked to do? (Baddeley)

Answer 14

They were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order.

Question 15

What happened for participants who took part in STM recall?

Answer 15

They tended to do worse on acoustically similar words in recall, suggesting STM is coded acoustically.

Question 16

What happened for participants who took part in LTM recall?

Answer 16

They tended to do worse on semantically similar words, suggesting that LTM is coded semantically.

Question 17

Who did research on capacity of memory? - Digit span

Answer 17

Jacobs. How much information can STM hold at one time- developed the digit span.

Question 18

What did Jacobs conclude?

Answer 18

People can store more numbers than letters. Letters = 7.3 items
Numbers = 9.3 items

Question 19

How did Jacobs measure digit span?

Answer 19

The researcher gives, for example, 4 digits and the ppt is asked to recall them in the correct order. If this is correct then the researched gives them 5 digits and so on until they can not recall them correctly.

Question 20

Who did research into span of memory and chunking?

Answer 20

Miller

Question 21

What did Miller conclude about the capacity of the STM?

Answer 21

It can hold 5-9 items.

Question 22

Why does Miller suggest that people can remember 5 numbers just as well as 5 letters?

Answer 22

They use chunking - grouping sets of digits and numbers together into units or chunks.

Question 23

Who did research on the duration of the STM?

Answer 23

Peterson and Peterson.

Question 24

What did Peterson and Peterson do?

Answer 24

Designed an experimental procedure where undergraduate students took part in trials where they were asked to remember a trigram. They were then given a number to count back from to prevent rehearsal of the trigram. They were then asked to stop after a variety of time amounts (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 sec) and recall trigram.

Question 25

What were the results of the Peterson and Peterson study?

Answer 25

After 3 seconds, 80% recalled the trigram. After 18 seconds, less than 10% could recall.

Question 26

Who did research into the duration of LTM?

Answer 26

Bahrick et al

Question 27

What did Bahrick et al do in his research?

Answer 27

Studied 392 ppts from Ohio aged between 17 and 74.Yearbooks were obtained to test memory. Recall was tested in multiple ways 1. photo recognition test with 50 photos, some from yearbook. 2. free recall where ppts recalled names from their graduating class.

Question 28

What were the results of Bahrick et al's research?

Answer 28

Those tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in their recall. After 48 years recalled dropped to 70%. Free recall was less good than recognition = 15 years - 60%. 48 years - 30%.

Question 29

Evaluation of Baddeley's research into coding?

Answer 29

It used quite artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material. The word lists had no personal meaning to ppts. This means we should be cautious about generalising the findings to different kinds of memory task. For example, processing more meaningful info - people may use semantic even for STM. This suggests findings may have limited application.

Question 30

One limitation of Jacobs study into digit span?

Answer 30

It was conducted a very long time ago. Early psychology often laced adequate control. For example, ppts could have been distracted and therefore not have performed aswell. May mean results are not valid as cofounding variables were not controlled. However the results have been confirmed in other research, supporting its validity.

Question 31

A criticism of Millers research into memory span and chunking?

Answer 31

He may have overestimated the capacity of STM. E.g. Cowan reviewed other research ad concluded that the capacity of STM was only about 4 chunks. This suggests that Miller's lower estimate of 5 is more appropriate than 7.

Question 32

A limitation of Peterson and Peterson's research into the duration of the STM?

Answer 32

The stimulus was artificial. Trying to remember trigrams does not reflect most real- life memory activities where what we are trying to remember is meaningful - t lacks external validity. However, we do sometimes try to remember pretty meaningless things, such as phone numbers, so it is not totally irrelevant.

Question 33

What is a strength of Bahrick t al's study into the duration of LTM?

Answer 33

It has high external validity - real life meaningful memories were studied. When studies on LTM have been conducted with meaningless pictures, recall rates were lower. The downside to real - life research is that Bahrick could not control all confounding variables. For example ppts may have looked at their yearbook photos and rehearsed their memory over the years.

Question 34

What does the multi- store model of memory consist of?

Answer 34

Sensory register, STM and LTM.

Question 35

What goes into the sensory register?

Answer 35

Stimuli from the environment

Question 36

How many sensory stores are there in the sensory register?

Answer 36

5 - one for each of our senses

Question 37

What are the 2 main sensory stores in or sensory register?

Answer 37

Iconic memory - visual info being visually coded Echoic memory - sound info being acoustically coded

Question 38

What is the duration of the sensory register?

Answer 38

Less than half a second