STM coding, capacity and duration eval

• stm capacity eval limitation individual differences

  the capacity of the STM is not the same for everyone

  Jacobs found that recall (digit span) increased steadily with age; eight year olds remember an avg of 6.6 digits whereas the mean for 19 yr olds was 8.6 digits.
• stm capacity eval limitation miller research may overstimate stm capacity

  Miller's research may overestimate STM capacity

  For e.g, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research. He concluded that the capacity of STM was only about 4 (plus or minus 1) chunks.

  This suggests that the lower end of Miller's estimate (5 items) is more appropriate than 7 items
• stm capacity eval strength a valid study

  A valid study- strength is that it has been replicated

  Despite this being an old study meaning it may have lacked adequate controls (confounding variables e.g participants being distracted)

  Jacob's findings have been confirmed by other, better controlled studies e.g Bopp and Verhaeghen (2005) which suggests the og study is a valid test of digit span in STM.
• stm duration eval limitation of peterson and petersons study

  P and P's study lacks external validity as the stimulus was artificial

  Trying to memorise consonant syllables doesnt reflect meaningful, real-life activities

  Therefore this study lacks external validity
• stm coding eval limitation may not exclusively code acoustic

  STM may not exclusively code acoustic

  Brandimote et al found that participants used visual coding in STM if they were given a visual task (pictures) and prevented from doing any verbal rehearsal in the retention interval

  Normally, we 'translate' visual images into verbal codes in STM, but, as verbal rehearsal was prevented, participants used visual codes
• stm coding eval limitation baddely identified 2 memory stores

  Baddeley's study identified 2 memory stores.

  Later research showed that there are exceptions to Baddeley's findings.

  STM is mostly acoustic and LTM is mostly semantic

  This led to the development of the MSM
• stm coding eval limitation baddeley artifical stimuli

  Artifical stimuli

  Baddeley's study used artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material

  For e.g, the word list had no meaning to the participants so his meanings may not tell us much about coding in diff kinds of memory tasks especially in everyday life.

  When processing more meaningful information, ppl may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.

  This suggests that the findings from this study have limited application