Duration, coding and capacity- Memory

Question 1

What’s encoding?

Answer 1

• Process by which we ‘take on board’ information
• information can obtain be obtained via the senses
• two most common sensory modes of storage are sight and sound
• ICONIC MEMORY= visual material
• ECHOIC MEMORY= describes sound

Question 2

What’s storage?

Answer 2

• Describes how memories are held
• we have 2 types of memory, short and long term
• idea is we process information in the short term memory and then pass it on to a more permanent long term storage

Question 3

What is retrieval?

Answer 3

• accessibility to stored information is governed by retrieval cues
• if we encode the information with a ‘useful’ retrieval cue, then we can use that to help us locate the information

SENSORY REGISTER—-(attention)—> SHORT-TERM MEMORY—(rehearsal)–> LONG-TERM MEMORY

Question 4

What is the capacity, duration and coding of the short term memory?

Answer 4

• Capacity= 7+-2 items (chunking can increase capacity)
• Duration= 15-30 seconds (extended through rehearsal/repetition)
• Coding= sound

Question 5

What’s the capacity, duration and coding of the long term memory?

Answer 5

• Capacity= unlimited
• Duration= from a few minutes to a life time
• Coding= there are 2 forms:

SEMANTIC= meaning
IMAGERY/VISUAL= picture form

Question 6

What’s the capacity, duration and coding of the sensory register?

Answer 6

• Capacity= all sensory experience
• Duration= 1/4 to 1/2 a second
• Coding= Sense specific

Question 7

How can you increase the capacity of the short term memory?

Answer 7

• CHUNKING
• reduce larger pieces of information into smaller categories
• imposes meaning on otherwise meaningless numbers or letters

Question 8

How can you increase the duration of information being held in the STM?

Answer 8

• Rehearsal/repetition
• Requires some form of speech (aloud or mental) whereby the subject says the information to keep it circulating within the STM
• This is easily disrupted by either internal or external distractions

Question 9

What is research done into capacity (Jacobs)?

Answer 9

• Jacobs developed a technique to measure digit span
• Researcher gives 4 digits and then the ppt is asked to recall these in the SAME ORDER OUT LOUD
• if they do this correct, researcher then reads out 5 digits and so on until ppt can’t recall the order correctly—> this determines individual’s digit span

Question 10

AO3 for research done by Jacobs into capacity:

Answer 10

• confounding variables may make results invalid
• conducted a long time ago—>
  early research often lacked adequate control

Question 11

Research done by Peterson and Peterson into the duration of the STM?

Answer 11

• gave ppts trigrams (GBH) which they had to recall after varying amounts of time between 0-18 seconds
• in between, they had to count backwards until they were told to stop
• only 10% of trigrams recalled after 18 seconds—> deduced that duration of STM was about 18 seconds

AO3=
info may’ve been displaced from the STM due to its limited capacity so new info such as counting backwards may’ve displaced the trigrams

Question 12

Research into coding- Baddeley:

Answer 12

• Gave different lists of words to 4 groups of ppts to remember

1= acoustically similar (sound similar)
2= acoustically dissimilar (sound diff)
3=semantically similar (mean the same)
4= semantically dissimilar (diff meanings)

• ppts shown original words and asked to recall them in the correct order
• when asked to do this immediately after hearing the words (so STM) recall was worst for acoustically similar words —-> therefore info is coded ACOUSTICALLY in the STM
• When ppts asked to recall words after 20 mins (so LTM) recall was worse with semantically similar words–> therefore info coded semantically in LTM

Question 13

Baddeley’s research into coding - AO3 points:

Answer 13

• words had no personal meaning to the participants so less likely to remember them
• used artificial stimuli
• findings have limited application- can’t generalise as used such meaningless words

Question 14

Research into duration of long term memory (Bahrick)

Answer 14

• studied 392 participants from Ohio aged 17- 74
• Looked at high school year books, recall was tested by a photo recognition test and a free-recall test
• Participants tested within 15 years of graduation= 90% accurate for photo recognition, 60% accurate for free-recall test (recalled names)
• participants tested within 48 years of their graduation=
  70% accurate in photo recognition, 30% accurate in free recall

shows LTM has a long duration

Question 15

AO3 of duration of long term memory research

Answer 15

• high external validity as studying meaningful memories
• confounding variables not controlled, participants may have looked at their yearbooks and rehearsed their memories over the years