Short And Long Term Memory

Question 1

Characteristics of short term/long term memory?

Answer 1

Short term
- measured in minutes/seconds
- small capacity
- short duration
- mostly acoustically coded
Long term
- measured in Hours and days
- potentially unlimited capacity
- long duration
- mostly semantically coded

Question 2

What are the 3 key ideas to do with memory?

Answer 2

Capacity, duration and coding

Question 3

How can short term memory capacity be measured/what “magic number” was suggested by miller?

Answer 3

• can be measured with digit span
• Millers magic number - 7+/-2 suggests that most people can recall around 5-9 things in short term memory.
• he suggested that “chunking” information helped with memory.

Question 4

Outline method of Studies investigating duration of short term memory

Answer 4

Short term memory study - participants given consonant letter to remember, and instructed to count backwards for fixed time periods,