Psychology - Memory
Coding, capacity and duration of memory:
Memory – Memory is the process of storing and retrieving information.
Research into coding:
Coding – the process of converting information between different forms.
Alan Baddeley gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember:
Group 1 (acoustically similar) words sounded similar e.g. cat, cab, can.
Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) – words sounded different e.g. pit, few, cow.
Group 3 (semantically similar) – word with similar meanings e.g. great, large, big.
Group 4 (semantically different) – words with different meanings e.g. good, huge, hot.
Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct
order.
Short term memory – worse with acoustically similar words.
Long term memory (after 20 minute interval) – worse with semantically similar
words.
Information is coded acoustically in the STM and semantically in the LTM.
Research into Capacity:
Capacity – the amount of information, that can be held in a memory store.
Joseph Jacobs (digit Span):
The researcher read out four digits and the participant recalls these out loud, in the
correct order. This increases until the participant cannot recall the order correctly.
Jacob’s found the mean digit score across all participants was 9.3 items and 7.3 for
letters.
George Miller (chunking) – Miller made observations of everyday practice. He noted
that things come in sevens e.g. seven days of the week. Miller thought that the capacity
of the STM was about 7 items, (plus or minus 2). Also, people can recall five words as
easily as five letters, this is done by chunking (grouping sets of digits or letters into
chunks or units).
Research into Duration:
Duration – the length of time information be held in memory.
Duration of the short term memory (Peterson)
Coding, capacity and duration of memory:
Memory – Memory is the process of storing and retrieving information.
Research into coding:
Coding – the process of converting information between different forms.
Alan Baddeley gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember:
Group 1 (acoustically similar) words sounded similar e.g. cat, cab, can.
Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar) – words sounded different e.g. pit, few, cow.
Group 3 (semantically similar) – word with similar meanings e.g. great, large, big.
Group 4 (semantically different) – words with different meanings e.g. good, huge, hot.
Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct
order.
Short term memory – worse with acoustically similar words.
Long term memory (after 20 minute interval) – worse with semantically similar
words.
Information is coded acoustically in the STM and semantically in the LTM.
Research into Capacity:
Capacity – the amount of information, that can be held in a memory store.
Joseph Jacobs (digit Span):
The researcher read out four digits and the participant recalls these out loud, in the
correct order. This increases until the participant cannot recall the order correctly.
Jacob’s found the mean digit score across all participants was 9.3 items and 7.3 for
letters.
George Miller (chunking) – Miller made observations of everyday practice. He noted
that things come in sevens e.g. seven days of the week. Miller thought that the capacity
of the STM was about 7 items, (plus or minus 2). Also, people can recall five words as
easily as five letters, this is done by chunking (grouping sets of digits or letters into
chunks or units).
Research into Duration:
Duration – the length of time information be held in memory.
Duration of the short term memory (Peterson)
