Coding, Capacity and Duration

Question 1

What is capacity?

Answer 1

How much information can be held in a memory store.

Question 2

Capacity of STM -

Answer 2

5 - 9 items

Question 3

Capacity of LTM -

Answer 3

potentially unlimited

Question 4

What is coding?

Answer 4

The format that information is stored in

Question 5

What is acoustic coding?

Answer 5

stored as a sound

Question 6

What is semantic coding?

Answer 6

Stored through its meaning

Question 7

How is info mainly stored in STM?

Answer 7

acoustically

Question 8

How is info mainly stored in LTM?

Answer 8

Semantically

Question 9

Research into the coding of STM

A03

Answer 9

• Baddely presented participants with one of the four word lists ( acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar and semantically dissimilar)
• Ppts were then given the list of words in the wrong order and had to rearrange then into the correct order.
• The group with the acoustically similar words only recalled 10% of the list accurately while the other groups recalled their lists with 60 - 80% accuracy.
• This shows that STM relies on acoustic coding.

Question 10

Research into the coding of LTM

A03

Answer 10

• Baddely presented participants with one of the four word lists ( acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar and semantically dissimilar)
• Ppts then had a 20 min interval
• Ppts were then given the list of words in the wrong order and had to rearrange then into the correct order.
• The group with the semantically similar words performed worse on the recall task.
• This shows that LTM relies on semantic processing / coding.

Question 11

Miller’s research into capacity of STM -

Answer 11

Miller observed that many things come in seven eg 7 days of the week
WIth this observation in mind he found that people can correctly recall 7 +- 2 items.

Question 12

Jacobs research into capacity of STM -

Answer 12

Jacobs developed a way to test digit span.
He would present participants with a list of 4 numbers.
If the ppt recalled the numbers in the correct order, then they were presented with a list of 5 numbers and so on. Most ppts correctly recalled 5 - 9 items on the digit span test.

Question 13

Research into the duration of STM -

Answer 13

Ppts were given 3 letters to remember.
They were then asked to count backwards from a 3 digit number until they were told to stop.
They then had to recall their 3 letters.
The longer the ppts had to wait before recalling their letters the worse their recall was.
This shows the the duration of STM is very limited.

They concluded that the duration of LTM was approximately 18 seconds.

Question 14

Research into the duration of LTM -

Answer 14

Ppts looked through their high school yearbook and completed 2 tasks.
1 - state whether they recognised the faced of the people in the photos.
2- freely recall the names of the people in the yearbook

On a whole, the ppts were able to successfully recognise the images of their classmates and freely recall their classmates names, even decades after they had graduated.

This shows that the duration of LTM is potentially unlimited.