A Level Psychology AQA - Short and Long Term Memory AO1
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- Created on: 26-02-21 11:38
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- Short and Long term Memory AO1
- capacity
- Capacity concerns how much data canm be held in a memory store. STM is a limited capacity store whereas LTm has a potentially infinite capacity
- Capacity of STM can be assessed using digit span. Joseph Jacobs (1887) used this technique to assess STM capacity.
- He found that the average span for digits was 9.3 items and 7.3 for letters.
- Jacob suggests that lower letter span may be because there are only 9 digits and 26 letters
- He found that the average span for digits was 9.3 items and 7.3 for letters.
- George Miller (1956) wrote a memorable articl called the magic number seven plus or minus 2, in which he reviewed psychological research
- Concluded that the span of immediate memory is about 7 items - sometimes a bit more, sometimesa bit less.
- He noted that people can count seven dots flashed on a screen but not many more.
- The same is true if you are asked tor ecall musical notes, letters and even words.
- Miller also found that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters - we chuink things together and can then remember more
- Duration
- LTM potentiall lasts forever but STM doesn't last very long - it has a short duration, unless you repeat the items over and over
- Duration of STM - LLoyd Peterson and Margeret Peterson (1959) studied the duration of STM, using 24 students
- Each participant was tested over 8 trials. On each trial a participant was given a consonant syllable and a 3 digit number
- They were asked to recall the consonant syllable after a retention interval of 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds. During the retention interval they had to count backwards from their 3 digit number
- On average, they were 90% correct over 3 secs, 20% after 9secs, and only 2% after 18secs
- This suggests that STM has a very short duration - less than 18 seconds- as long as verbal rehearsal is prevented
- On average, they were 90% correct over 3 secs, 20% after 9secs, and only 2% after 18secs
- They were asked to recall the consonant syllable after a retention interval of 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds. During the retention interval they had to count backwards from their 3 digit number
- Each participant was tested over 8 trials. On each trial a participant was given a consonant syllable and a 3 digit number
- Duration of LTM: Harry Bahrick et al (1975) tested 400 people of various ages (17-74) on their memory of classmates
- A photo recognition test consisted of 50 photos, some from the individual's high school year book.
- In a free-recal test they were asked to list the names they could remember of those in their graduating class
- Those who were tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in identifying faces. After 48 years, this declined to about 70%.
- Free recall was about 60% accurate after 15 years, dropping to 30% after 48 years.
- Coding
- Information that we store has to be written in memory in some form - it is described as a "code" in which it is held in the form of sounds (acoustic), images (visual) or meaning (semantic)
- Acoustic and semantic coding - the following words are acoustically similar, but semanticall different: cat , cab , can , cad , cap , mad , max , mat , man , map.
- The following words are the opposite - semantically similar but acoustically different: great, large, big, huge, broad, long, tall, fat, wide, high
- Alan Baddeley (1966a and 1966b) used word lists like those above to test the effects of acoustic and semantic similarity on STM and LTM
- He found that participants had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in STM but not LTM, whereas semanticall similar words posed little problem in STM, but led to muddled LTMs
- This suggests that STM is largely encoded acoustically whereas LTM is largely encoded semantically
- He found that participants had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in STM but not LTM, whereas semanticall similar words posed little problem in STM, but led to muddled LTMs
- capacity
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