digit span

• how much information the STM can hold at one time
• Joseph Jacobs (1887) found out the capacity of STM by measuring digit span
• for example, the researcher reads out 4 digits and the participant recalls these in the correct order
• if this is correct then the researcher reads ut 5 digits and so on until the participant cannot recall anymore
• jacobs found out that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and the mean span for letters was 7.3