Psychology B AQA AS Revision Notes

Encoding/Capacity/Duration

·         Encoding is the form in which information is stored in the memory.

·         Information enters the brain via the senses (e.g. eyes and ears) and is then stored in forms such as visual codes (picture), acoustic form (sounds) or a semantic form (the meaning of something).

o   Visually – Thinking of an image

o   Acoustically – Saying the word repeatedly

o   Semantically – (through meaning) using your knowledge of the word

·         Capacity is how much information can be stored in the memory.

·         It is measured in terms of bits of information, such as number of digits.

·         Duration is how long the information can be stored in the memory.

Encoding

Capacity

Duration

STM

Acoustic –

Baddeley

7+/-2 –

Miller

20-30 secs –

Peterson

LTM

Semantically –

Baddeley

Unlimited

Bahrick

STM:

Research Study: encoding

Ø  Baddeley – Lab experiment. Participants were given lists of acoustically similar and dissimilar words and semantically similar and dissimilar words.

Showed that participants had more difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in STM.

Research Study: capacity

Ø  Miller – Reviewed previous research and concluded that the span of STM is 7+/-2. He also found that chunking things together makes it easier to recall.

Research Study: duration

Ø  Peterson – Lab experiment. Participants were given a nonsense trigram and a three digit number to remember. They were asked to count backwards from the number between different intervals to prevent rehearsal.

Showed that participants could remember 90% with a 3 second interval but only 5% after 18 seconds, suggesting the duration of STM is 20-30 seconds.

Evaluation – Low ecological validity as material used is artificial

                      Trigrams could have been displaced by numbers therefore forgetting                                                                                                                                                                             was due to displacement.

LTM:

Research Study: encoding

Ø  Baddeley – Lab experiment. Participants were given lists of acoustically similar and dissimilar words and semantically similar and dissimilar words.

Showed that participants had more difficulty remembering semantically similar words, suggesting that LTM is encoded semantically.

Research Study: duration

Ø  Bahrick – Natural experiment. Participants of various ages were asked to match names to faces from their high school yearbook.

Showed that participants 48 years on were 70% accurate suggesting that the duration of the LTM was better due to the information being more meaningful.

Multi-Store Model (Atkinson & Shiffrin)

·         Multi-store model (MSM) is an explanation of memory. It is based on the idea that it has three separate memory stores (SM, STM, LTM).

o   Information first arrives at SM. Once attention is paid to the information it transfers to the STM.

o   Information in STM is in a fragile state. If the information is not rehearsed then the information is lost (decays).

o   New information enters known as displacement.

o   However, if the information is rehearsed then the information further transfers into the LTM…