Memory OLD

• What is a strength and weakness of Baddeley's 1966 study on coding?


  1. Identified a clear difference between the two memory stores, usefully contributed to the creation of the multi-store model of memory
  2. Artifical stimuli - the lists of words had no personal meaning or significance to the participants and so would not reflect everyday use of recall. Limited application
• What is capacity? What did Jacobs and Miller conclude about the capacity of the STM?


  The amount of information that can be held in a store. Jacobs - read list of 4 digits to ppts. and increased the number until they couldn't recall the list in the correct order anymore, average digit span was 9.3 and letter span was 7.3. Miller suggested that we remember things easier by 'chunking' pieces of information together, so it is now agreed that the capacity of STM is 7 +/- 2.
• What are 2 weaknesses of Jacobs' and Miller's research on capacity of the STM?

  Jacobs' studies are old and often lacked adequate controls, e.g. participants may have been distracted by something and so their digit spans were underestimated. Miller may have also overestimated how 'chunking' works as Cowan's reviews of conflicting research concluded that the STM's capacity is only around 4+/-1 chunks.
• What is a weakness of Petersen and Petersen's study?


  Artificial stimuli: the trigrams used were of no significant meaning to participants and did not reflect an everyday task of recall so has limited application to real life. This means it lacks external validity
• What did Bahrick et al. (1975) conclude about the duration of the LTM?

  Tested around 400 people of various ages (17-74) on their memory of classmates via photo recognition and free recall. Recall for those 25 years within graduation was 90%, and 48 years was 70%, suggesting that LTM may last up to a lifetime.
• What are 2 strengths of Bahrick et al.'s study?


  Meaningful stimuli: material used had personal meaning and significance to participants and was incentive for genuine effort; increases external validity and reflects a more 'real' estimate of duration

  Longitudinal data: study was conducted over a long period of time showing fairly high historical validity
• What is the multi-store model of memory?

  Framework that describes how information flows through the memory stores:

  Environmental stimuli is picked up by the sensory register and is sent to the short-term memory if paid attention to. If rehearsed this information is then sent to the long-term memory. Information can then be sent from the LTM to the STM via retrieval.
• What is the sensory register like? (Capacity, duration, coding)

  The sensory register codes via sensory experiences, with different stores for each sense. It has a high capacity due to a large amount of stimuli from the environment but a very brief duration of less than 1/2 a second.
• What is the short-term and long-term memory like? (Capacity, duration, coding)

  The short-term memory codes mainly acoustically, has a limited capacity of 7+/-2 items and a duration of about 18 seconds.

  The long -term memory codes mainly semantically, has an unlimited capacity and duration of up to a lifetime.
• What is a strength and weakness of the multi-store model of memory?


  Research support for different stores: HM's hippocampus was removed to relieve his epilepsy - he couldn't form long term memories but his short-term memories were intact. Supports the principle of two separate stores

  
  

  Type of rehearsal: Craik and Watkins suggested prolonged rehearsal isn't needed to transfer information from the STM to the LTM - another effective way is 'elaborative' rehearsal which is semantically linking information to your existing knowledge. Shows MSM does not fully explain how LTM is achieved