ENCODING- LTM

BADDELEY 1966

PROCEDURE:

• Ppts. were divided into four groups and shown a list of 10 words in these categories:
  - acoustically similar words
  - acoustically dissimilar words
  - semantically similar words
  - semantically dissimilar words
• After an interval of 20 minutes, were ppts. were given another task to do. They were asked to recall the wrods in the correct order, the ten words they had heard- this was carried out four times.

FINDINGS:

• Recall was much worse for semantically similar words (55% accuracy) than for semantically dissimilar words (85% accuracy)
• Recall was the same for acoustically similar/ dissimilar words.

CONCLUSIONS- LTM primarily makes use of semantic coding, which is shown by ppts. who had difficulty in recallng the correct order of words what had similar meanings.

Material can be represented in other ways, not just semantically. It seems that the type of stimulus material can affect the way we encode in LTM.

• ACOUSTIC ENCODING- our ability to regonize sounds, such as police sirens and telephones rigning, shows that we can store material in an acoustic form
• VISUAL ENCODING- we can also easily bring the mind pictorial images of peoples or places that suggest some visual coding in LTM 

CHILDHOOD AMNESIA- young children are incapable of laying down well-organised and intergrates memories and so they are not available for later recall.

HOW DURATION IS MEASURED- the method used to tap into memory is also important. People are much better at remembering information from long ago if they are tested by recognition rather than by free recall.

ATKINSON AND SHIFFRIN 1968

• The model arose from the information processing approach where memory ischaracterized as a flow of information through a system. The system is divided into three stores and information passes through each stage in a fixed sequance
• There are capacity and duration limitaions at each stage
• Tansfer of information between stages ay require re-coding
• External stimuli from the enviroment first enter sensory memory, where they can be registered for very brief periods of time before decaying or being passes onto the short-term store
• STM contains only the small amount of information that is acutally in active use at any one time. Information is usually encoded acoustically at this stage
• Memory traces in STM are fragile and can be lost within about 30 seconds through displacement or decay, unless they are repeated (rehersed)
• material that is rehearsed is passed on to the long-term store where it can remain for a lifetime, although loss is possible from this store through decay, retrieval failure or interference
• Coding in LTM is assumed to be in terms of meaning, i.e. semantic