Essay Plans
Memory
Paper 2 - Section B
, Coding / Capacity / Duration
Outline and evaluate research into coding / capacity / duration in memory (8)
Duration → How long can the memory be stored for
Study: Peterson and Peterson (STM)
➔ P’s shown sets of 3 consecutive numbers/letters - recall after 3,6,9,12,15,18 sec
➔ Task between presentation / recall to prevent rehearsal (count back in 3)
➔ Recall had to be 100% accurate to be correct
➔ As delay increased, correct recall decreased - 18 secs only 10% correct recall
➔ Duration of STM is approx 20 secs when rehearsal is prevented
Study: Bahrick (LTM)
➔ Ex-students (USA) asked: 1. free recall names / 2. Recognise from a set of 50 photos
➔ Free recall: 15 years: 60% accurate / 48 years: p’s were 30% accurate
➔ Photo recognition: 15 years: 90% accurate / 48 year: 70% accurate
➔ Recognition is easier than recall
➔ LTM does have a very long, potentially lifetime duration
Evaluation: Strengths
★ High ecological validity - testing real life memory / not artificial
Evaluation: Weaknesses
★ Hard to generalise - college friends, they would’ve had lots of contact with
★ Great emotional significance - less importance may = less long memories
★ Many extraneous variables - may still be in contact with their college friends
Coding → How / what for is the memory stored in
Study: Baddeley
➔ P’s given 4 sets of words: A - acoustically similar / B - acoustically dissimilar
C - semantically similar / D - semantically dissimilar
➔ P’s asked to immediately recall words OR delay recall (30 sec intervals)
➔ Immediate: good B / bad A / same C+D
➔ Delayed: good D / bad C / same A+B
➔ STM - coding mainly acoustic as acoustically similar words were confused
➔ LTM - coding mainly semantic as semantically similar words were confused
Evaluation
★ DC’s - p’s may gues aims so behaved differently e.g didn’t put as much effort into
remembering it
★ Low ecological validity → tasks not realistic / generalised to real life
e.g lab study so artificial tasks which have no personal meaning to P’s
Capacity → How much can be stored
Study: Jacobs - digit span
➔ Random digits read out to p’s who had to read them back using serial recall
➔ List increased in length by one digit at a time
➔ Average digit span - 9.3 for numbers / 2.3 for letter
➔ STM has a limited capacity of around 5-9 items
Study: Millers magic number
➔ STM could hold 7 (+/- 2 items)
➔ We can “chunk” info together we can store a lot more info in our STM
Memory
Paper 2 - Section B
, Coding / Capacity / Duration
Outline and evaluate research into coding / capacity / duration in memory (8)
Duration → How long can the memory be stored for
Study: Peterson and Peterson (STM)
➔ P’s shown sets of 3 consecutive numbers/letters - recall after 3,6,9,12,15,18 sec
➔ Task between presentation / recall to prevent rehearsal (count back in 3)
➔ Recall had to be 100% accurate to be correct
➔ As delay increased, correct recall decreased - 18 secs only 10% correct recall
➔ Duration of STM is approx 20 secs when rehearsal is prevented
Study: Bahrick (LTM)
➔ Ex-students (USA) asked: 1. free recall names / 2. Recognise from a set of 50 photos
➔ Free recall: 15 years: 60% accurate / 48 years: p’s were 30% accurate
➔ Photo recognition: 15 years: 90% accurate / 48 year: 70% accurate
➔ Recognition is easier than recall
➔ LTM does have a very long, potentially lifetime duration
Evaluation: Strengths
★ High ecological validity - testing real life memory / not artificial
Evaluation: Weaknesses
★ Hard to generalise - college friends, they would’ve had lots of contact with
★ Great emotional significance - less importance may = less long memories
★ Many extraneous variables - may still be in contact with their college friends
Coding → How / what for is the memory stored in
Study: Baddeley
➔ P’s given 4 sets of words: A - acoustically similar / B - acoustically dissimilar
C - semantically similar / D - semantically dissimilar
➔ P’s asked to immediately recall words OR delay recall (30 sec intervals)
➔ Immediate: good B / bad A / same C+D
➔ Delayed: good D / bad C / same A+B
➔ STM - coding mainly acoustic as acoustically similar words were confused
➔ LTM - coding mainly semantic as semantically similar words were confused
Evaluation
★ DC’s - p’s may gues aims so behaved differently e.g didn’t put as much effort into
remembering it
★ Low ecological validity → tasks not realistic / generalised to real life
e.g lab study so artificial tasks which have no personal meaning to P’s
Capacity → How much can be stored
Study: Jacobs - digit span
➔ Random digits read out to p’s who had to read them back using serial recall
➔ List increased in length by one digit at a time
➔ Average digit span - 9.3 for numbers / 2.3 for letter
➔ STM has a limited capacity of around 5-9 items
Study: Millers magic number
➔ STM could hold 7 (+/- 2 items)
➔ We can “chunk” info together we can store a lot more info in our STM
