Capacity In Memory AO3

• Jacobs Supported Miller


  • Finding the capacity of STM was 9.3 digits or 7.3 letters
  • Some research has disagreed
• Cowan reviewed research


  • Suggested the capacity is chunks, so perhaps the bottom end of Miller's estimate (4+1) is more accurate
• Linton's research


  • Has ecological validity as it is about memory for personal events and unfamiliar items
  • Backed up by Huang, who tested himself on 560 past students and was correct 80% of the time
  • Suggesting LTM can hold large numbers of individual pieces of information
• Investigating the capacity of short term memory


  1. Reading participants a sequence of letters/numbers

  2. Asking them to repeat the same sequence back immediately

  3. Adding an additional digit on each subsequent trial to measure the capacity (digit span technique)
• One way researchers have investigated the capacity of short term memory is by using the digit span technique