Capacity- Digit span- Jacobs 1987

• To test someone's digit span, the researcher gives 4 digits, then the pp must recall these in order out loud. If correct, researcher reads 5 digits out, (random each time), when the pp can no longer recall these correctly, this is their digit span.
• Jacons found the mean for the digits was 9.3 items and for letters it was 7.3 items.
• Jacobs (1887) - pps presented with letters or numbers, pps then had to recall the list, was found capacity for letters was 7.3 and for numbers was 9.3, suggesting capacity for STM is very limited, miller suggested this can be improved with chunking (making small sets/groups of items)- reducing the total amount of items overall
• jacobs digit span test short term memory assessment- found that it was 9.3 digits or 7.3 letters
• George Miller 1956- found that people could roughly absorb 7 new pieces of information in the STM at a time, magical number 7+/-2, also the case for words- chunking
• strength of jacobs- replicated many times- findings have been validated,