the amount of info that can be held in a memory store
the research - digit span
Jacobs (1887) measured digit span
he gave ppts 4 digits, they were asked to recall them aloud. if they were correct, he would add 1 digit each time until they were incorrect, this determines their digit span
the mean span for numbers was 9.3items and for letters it was 7.3
evaluation
REAL-LIFE (limit) - Jacobs conducted his study in the 1880s where most research lacked adequate control and there were confounding variable, this makes it lack applicability