Coding, capacity and duration of memory

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Cards (6)

  • What research has been done on coding of memory?
    • Baddeley 1966
    • presented lists of 10 short words to 4 groups of participants
    • acoustically similar and dissimilar and semantically similar and dissimilar groups
    • participants were asked to remember the words and recall them in the right order
    • in STM, they did worse with acoustically similar words
    • in LTM, they did worse with semantically similar words
    • this suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM (based on sound) and semantically in LTM (based on meaning)
  • Evaluate Baddleys experiment into coding of memory.
    + identified a clear difference between STM and LTM, which led to the multi store model of memory being developed
    -uses artificial stimuli, so cannot tell us much about coding information in everyday life
  • What research has been done on the capacity of STM memory?
    • Miller 1956
    • capacity of STM is 7 +/- 2
    • easier recall is done by chunking: grouping sets of digits and letters into chunks
    • Jacobs 1887
    • digit span experiment: recalling digits or letters until participants could not recall any further
    • mean number of digits recalled was 9
    • mean number of letters recalled was 7
  • Evaluate research done into capacity of STM
    + Jacobs digit span experiment has been replicated and results were similar (good validity)
    -Miller's magic number may be an overestimate of STM capacity, other research has found that capacity is only 4 +/- 1
  • Discuss research into the duration of STM
    • Peterson & Peterson
    • participants were given consonant syllables to remember and asked to count backwards from a number in 3's to prevent rehearsal
    • then asked to recall the consonant syllable after varying periods of time
    • findings showed that duration of STM is about 18 seconds with no mental rehearsal
    -artificial stimulus material, recalling consonant syllables does not reflect most everyday recall activitis
    -so the study had low external validity
  • Discuss research into the duration of LTM.
    • Bahrick et al
    • tested US graduates who were asked to recall faces and names of classmates
    • after 15 years, there was 90% accuracy
    • after 48, accuracy declined to 70%
    • suggests that duration of LTM may last a lifetime
    + high external validity, as meaningful memories were investigated