Psychology AS

Memory: The process by which we retain information about events that have happened in the past.

STM: Short Term Memory: Immediate events, disappears when not rehearsed.
Duration: Very Short only lasts a few seconds.

Study: Peterson& Peterson (1959): Nonsense Triagrams given to 24 students, then asked to count back from a number given after the triagram (ATY 456) in 3's or 4's until told when to stop between 3- 18 seconds (Stopped rehearsal): Found that 90% recalled after 3 secs only 2% after 18 secs 

LTM: Long Term Memory: Past events.
Duration: Anything from 2- 100 Years plus

Study: Bahrick et al 1975: Asked people to remember faces and names from their High School Year Book (various ages): 48 years on 70% accurate!!!!! 

Capacity: How much can be retained in a certain place
Encoding: The way in which information is stored in order to to enable it to be memorised.

STM: Capacity: Very small: (Miller 1956) flashed dots on screen. People could cope with 7 +/- 2 (Can recall more when you 'Chunk' words together)
          Encoding: Normally Acoustic, but when not given the oppurtunity to do so visual encoding can be done instead (Brandimote et al (1922)).

LTM: Capacity: Potentially unlimited
         Encoding: Semantic (Meaning): However evidence (Frost 1972) found evidence of visual encoding.