CODING, CAPACITY + DURATION

• STM - name the studies for it

  Miller

  Murdock
• describe the study for coding and capacity

  Miller

  - observations of everyday practice - e.g things come in 7s

  - as a result, span of STM is 7 items (5-9)

  - can be improved by chunking
• describe the study for duration

  Murdock

  in the Murdock serial position curve experiment, participants are presented with a list of words and then asked to recall them in any order. Murdock found that words presented at the beginning (primacy) and end (recency) of the list were better remembered than those in the middle. This reflects the primacy effect (due to rehearsal of words at the beginning) and the recency effect (due to words at the end being in short-term memory).
• LTM - name studies

  - Goddeden + Baddeley

  - Bahrick et al
• describe the study for coding

  - bahrick at al - deep sea divers

  - 392 americans aged between 17+74

  - 1. 50 photos from high school yearbook

  - 2. free recall pf graduating class

  - Ps tested 48y after graduation were 70% accurate in photo recall but less in free recall
• AO3: Weakness - miller

  - overestimated capacity of LTM

  - overestimate of 9 may be approx. 4

  lower end of his estimate is more appropiriate
• AO3: strength - Bahrick et al


  - high external validity

  - semantic tasks were used rather than artificial

  -meaningless tasks had lower recall rates

  - however confounding variables are not controlled
• AO3: Weakness - Murdock


  - uses of artificial stimulus

  - researchers have studied patients with amnesia and found they have diff stores for reading and learning in stm

  - stm recall was better when participanst red digits themselves rather them being read to them