Coding, Capacity and Duration of memory

Coding and encoding:

• Memory is often thought of as a process whereby a physical 'trace' of information about the past is stored.

• The way memory is encoded describes format that 'raw' information is converted to when storing and retrieving such 'traces'.

Types of encoding - 

• Visual (Image)

• Acoustic (Sound)

• Semantic (Through meaning)

Research on Coding:

When information enters the memory system, it is stored in different formats depending on the memory store. The process of converting information from one form to another is called coding. 

Procedure - 

Alan Baddeley gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember.

Group 1 (acoustic similar) words that sounded similar 

Group 2 (acoustic dissimilar) words that sounded different 

Group 3 (semantically similar) words with similar meanings

Group 4 (semantically dissimilar) words that all had different meanings 

Participants were shown the words and asked to recall them in correct order.

Findings - 

• When they had to recall the words immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar…