Research on Coding

• Research on coding

  Coding- the format in which info is stored in the various memory stores.

  Baddeley (1966a, 1966b) gave diff lists of words to 4 groups of ppts to remember:

  • acoustically similar (cat, cab, can)
  • acoustically dissimilar (pit, few, cow)
  • semantically similar (great, large, big)
  • semantically dissimilar (good, huge, hot)

  Asked to recall in correct order. Immediately after (STM recall)= worse w/ acoustically similar. 20 mins later (LTM recall)= worse with semantically similar. Suggests info is coded semantically in LTM.
• Research on coding- evaluation

  Artificial stimuli- rather than meaningful material. Should be cautious about generalising findings to other memory tasks. E.g., when processing meaningful info, people may use semantic coding even for STM tasks. This suggests that the findings have limited application.