Capacity

• Capacity

  This is HOW MUCH information our memory can store
• Studies for STM

  • Jacobs, 1887, used digit spans (putting numbers together) - the average recall was 9.3 numbers
  • Miller, 1956, used chunking and noticed that things tend to be remembered in 7s (7+/-2 items). By chunking information together into meaningful pieces we can increase the amount which we can remember.

  Strength:

  • internal validity - extraneous variables were controlled in the setting

  Weakness:

  • reliability - they may have overestimated STM capacity as other researchers have found that STM is only around 4+/-1 (Cowan, 2001)
• LTM capacity

  Unknown - impossible to measure but believed to be limitless/up to a lifetime