Memory Flashcards
What is coding?
The way in which information is stored into memory (Acoustic, Visual or semantic).
What is Capacity?
A measure of how much can be held in memory (bits or chunks of memory).
What is Duration?
A measure of how long a memory lasts in a store before it is not available for recall.
What was Baddeley’s study on Coding?
Baddeley’s Cat/Mat study consisted of 4 lists of words (A,B,C,D). List A has words that sound acoustically the similar. List B are common English words but sound different (Acoustically dissimilar) List C are adjectives with similar meanings (semantically similar). List D is adjectives with distinctives meanings (semantically dissimilar).The participant would read each list of words and then cover them and write them out from memory. Baddeley found that A=10%, B=80%, C=65%, D=70%.
We can conclude from this that STM is coded acoustically as participants had difficulty accurately recalling the acoustically similar lists.
What was Jacobs study on the capacity of STM?
Jacobs was testing how many pieces of information the STM can hold at any one time. Participants were asked to read out 15 lists of numbers from 3 digits to 10.
Jacobs found that participants could recall digit spans between 5-9 digits in length. Miller called this number “Miller’s magic number 7+/-2 items for words, dots ,letters and musical notes.
Chunking can help increase the number of items we can hold in STM. This is where we group items into larger units or chunks.
What was Peterson and Peterson’s study on the duration of STM?
Participants read 3 consonants with no meaning (e.g. AWD). Participants then have to count backwards in 3s from a number, e.g. 71. This time period is called retention interval and varied from, 3-30secs and prevents the rehearsal of Trigrams. Participants then had to recall their trigram.
Results:
3secs=10% recall
18secs=10% recall
30secs= 0% recall
(Has low ecological validity).
What is the coding, capacity and duration of the Sensory register?
Coding = Sense specific.
Capacity = Very large.
Duration = 250 milliseconds.
What is the coding, capacity and duration of the STM?
Coding = Acoustically.
Capacity = 5-9 items (Jacobs), 7+/-2 (Miller).
Duration = 18-30 seconds.
What is the coding, capacity and duration of the LTM?
Coding = Semantic
Capacity = Unlimited
Duration = Bahrick tested his high school year book, 400 participants, Task 4 - asked to name everyone in the year group. He got poor results.
Task 2 - ppts given set of pictures, some were students and some were not, asked to recognised people they knew. 90% were correct.
Task 3 - Given set of names, asked to recognise which were from school. 70% were correct.
Give some supporting and challenging evidence from Shallice and Warrington for the Multi store model.
Shallice and Warrington - Case study of KF.
K.F’s memory was impaired as a result of a motorbike accident. He suffered significant brain damage. This SUPPORTS the idea of separate unitary stores in the MSM, as KF’s STM had reduced to 1-2 items his long term memory was fine, showing his LTM and STM must be located in different areas of the brain as one was damaged and one wasn’t.
This CHALLENGES the simplifies nature of the MSM. K.F’s difficulties in capacity in SM were only for verbal items, his STM for visual and acoustic items were fine (suggesting that just one unitary store for all STM’s is oversimplifying how our STM actually works.
Give some supporting and challenging evidence from Blakemore for the Multi store model.
Blakemore - Clive wearing has virtually no LTM since having herpes. Which destroyed parts of his temporal lobe. His STM is fine.
This SUPPORTS the idea of separate unitary stores.
This Challenges the fact that one unitary store for all LTMS oversimplifies how the LTM actually works. This is because Clive’s difficulties with LTM were only for episodic memories, his semantic and procedural were fine.
Give an issue and debate for the MSM.
The MSM is Machine reductionist as it attempts to explain a complex behaviour by comparing humans to computers, however memory is complex and involves emotions/motivation. This undermines the complexity of the MSM.
