intro to memory

    Cards (5)

    • One limitation of Baddeley's study was that it used artificial stimuli rather than meaningful material. The word lists had no personal meaning to participants.
      This means it is hard to generalise the findings to different kinds of memory tasks in real life. For example, when processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks.
      This suggests that the findings from this study have limited application.
    • A limitation of Jacob's study it that it was conducted a long time ago and early research in psychology often lacked adequate control.
      For example, some participants may have been distracted while they were being tested so they didn't perform as well as they might.
      This decreases the internal validity of the findings since there were confounding variables that were not controlled.
      However, other research has confirmed the study's results which supports its validity.
    • One limitation of Miller's research is that he may have overestimated the capacity of STM.
      For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four chunks.
      This suggests that the lower end of Miller's estimate (five items) is more appropriate.
    • A limitation of Peterson & Peterson's study is the use of artificial material since memorising consonant syllables does not reflect most real life memory activities where what we are trying to recall is meaningful. Therefore, this study lacks external validity.
      However, sometimes, remembering fairly meaningless things such as phone numbers is common and so the study is not completely irrelevant.
    • One strength of Bahrick's study is that real life, meaningful memories were studied which increases the external validity of the study.
      When studies on LTM have been carried out using meaningless pictures, recall rates were lower.
      However, in this study, confounding variables are not controlled, for example, some participants may have looked at their yearbook and rehearsed their memory over the years.
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