Coding, Capacity, Duration Flashcards
(10 cards)
How is information coded in STM and LTM according to Baddeley (1966)?
STM is coded acoustically; LTM is coded semantically. STM struggles with acoustically similar words; LTM with semantically similar ones.
What did Jacobs (1887) find about STM capacity?
Using digit span tasks, Jacobs found an average STM capacity of 9.3 digits and 7.3 letters.
What did Miller (1956) suggest about STM capacity?
STM can hold 7 ± 2 items, and chunking increases STM capacity by grouping information into meaningful units.
What was the STM duration according to Peterson & Peterson (1959)?
STM lasts around 18 seconds without rehearsal, shown using trigram recall tasks.
What did Bahrick et al. (1975) find about LTM duration?
LTM can last decades. Participants recalled classmates’ names from yearbooks, with 70% recognition accuracy after 48 years.
What are key differences between STM and LTM?
STM has limited capacity and duration and encodes acoustically; LTM has a large capacity, long duration, and encodes semantically.
Why is Baddeley’s study criticised for low ecological validity?
It used artificial word lists, which don’t reflect meaningful real-life memory tasks.
How does Cowan (2001) challenge Miller’s STM capacity findings?
Cowan found STM capacity to be around 4 chunks, not 7 ± 2, suggesting Miller’s estimate was too broad.
What is a limitation of Peterson & Peterson’s STM study?
The use of meaningless trigrams lacks real-world validity, so the STM duration might be longer in everyday tasks.
Why is Bahrick et al.’s LTM study praised for external validity?
It used real-life memories (classmates), making the findings more generalisable to real-world memory processes.
