Summary Memory Notes AQA Psychology Year 1

MEMORY:
MEMORY:Human memory can most broadly be defined as the process by
which we recall information about events that have happened in the
past.(long term and immediate past)
CAPACITY:The amount of information held in a memory store
DURATION:The length of time information can be held in memory
CODING:The format in which information is stored in the various memory
stores

SHORT TERM MEMORY:The limited capacity store-coding is mainly
acoustic(sounds).Duration of around 18-30s and a limited capacity(5-9
items)
LONG TERM MEMORY:The permanent memory store-coding is mainly
semantic(meaning).Unlimited capacity and a duration of a potential lifetime

Capacity of Memory:George Miller=conducted memory experiments and
concluded that we can recall 5-9(average 7) items on average
Said ‘chunking’ items into smaller groups can be more effective

THE DIGIT SPAN TEST:
● Developed by Jacobs in 1887
● Researcher gives a number of digits that have to be recalled in a
order to participants
● Researcher adds more digits until the participant cannot recall the
order-this determines digit span
● Found that the mean digit span is 9.3(letters=7.3)

Duration of Memory:Peterson and Peterson (1959)
● Studies the STM of 24 university students
● 8 trials per student
● Each trial the student was given a consonant syllable (e.g. YTR) to
remember and a 3 digit number
● They then had to count backwards in threes until told to stop(each
trail had a different stop time (3,6,9,12,15,18))=called the retention
interval

, ● Their findings suggest that the STM has a short duration=unless
REHEARSAL takes place (18-30 secs)
● REHEARSAL:A way of transferring information into the LTM.

Information can enter the brain via the senses but is stored in three various
forms:
● VISUAL
● ACOUSTIC
● SEMANTIC

ENCODING:BADDELEY (1966):
He presented participants with four lists and asked them to remember as
many words as they could immediately after and 20 minutes later. Some
lists were acoustically similar(sound the same) and dissimilar and some
were semantically similar(mean the same) and dissimilar. He found that the
participants had trouble remembering the acoustically similar ones
immediately after (STM) but not in LTM. Also, participants had trouble
remembering semantically similar words after 20 minutes (LTM) but not in
STM.
These findings suggest that:
STM:ACOUSTICALLY CODED:When words sound too similar the brain
gets confused when remembering them
LTM:SEMANTICALLY CODED:If words have too similar of a meaning the
brain gets confused when recalling them.

BAHRICH ET AL (1975):
Found that the duration of the LTM was extremely long:Studies 392
participants from Ohio between 17-74. He asked them to recall information
from their highschool yearbook (1:photo recognition test 2:free recall). They
found that those who had left school for 15 years were 90% accurate in
photo recognition- after 48 years, this went down to 70%. In the free recall
tests: after 15 years people were 60% accurate and after 48 years people
were 30:accurate.

, MULTI STORE MODEL OF MEMORY:ATKINSON AND SHIFFRIN (1968)




SENSORY REGISTERS/MEMORY:The stores for each of our 5 senses,
the main ones being iconic memory(visual information coded visually) and
echoic(acoustic information coded acoustically) Sensory memory has a
huge capacity(millions of receptors) but a very short duration (less than half
a second) therefore ATTENTION must be paid for information to progress
past this stage to STM
Maintenance:When we repeat information over and over again:elaborate
rehearsal transfers information into LTM.

Critical Evaluation:
● Strength:supported by research studies that show the STM and LTM
are qualitatively different
● Weakness:Studies have found that there is more than one type of
short term store while the MSM places emphasis on a unitary store.