STM

• who researched into coding of the STM?

  baddeley
• outline the method of baddeley's study into coding of the STM?

  • gave participants 1 of 4 word lists
  • words were acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar or semantically dissimilar
  • participants recalled list immediately
• what were the findings of baddeley's study into coding of the STM?

  • participants did worse with acoustically similar words
  • STM is encoded acoustically
• who researched into capacity of STM?


  1. jacobs
  2. miller
• outline the method of jacob's study into capacity of the STM

  • digit-span technique
  • participant immediately recalled sequence of letters or number
  • increased by one letter or number with each trial
• what were the findings of jacob's study into the capacity of the STM?

  • mean amount of letters recalled = 7.3
  • mean amount of number recalled = 9.3
• explain what miller found about the capacity of the STM

  • capacity = 7 +- 2
  • to increase capacity, people chunk information
• who researched the duration of STM?

  Peterson and Peterson
• outline the method that peterson & peterson used when studying the duration of the STM

  • gave participants a nonsense trigram of 3 syllables with a 3 digit number
  • to prevent rehearsal, had to count backwards in 3s from number until told to stop
  • told to stop after 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds and then recalled trigram
• what did peterson & peterson find about the duration of the STM?

  • recall was most accurate after 3 seconds = 80%
  • by 18 seconds, recall declined to 10%
  • duration of STM is 18 to 30 seconds
• evaluate research into capacity

  Miller

  • practical implications to education and work
  • undermining evidence from Cowan who found 4 chunks
• evaluate research into duration

  Peterson & Peterson

  • highlighted importance for rehearsal
  • lacks ecological validity as used trigram which is artificial
• evaluate research into coding

  Baddeley

  • real-world application to education settings
  • simplistic due to findings of working memory model