Found that visual information in the SR stays for a few milliseconds but auditory stays for 2-3 seconds.
Suggests sensory information is likely to be coded into different stores (such as haptic, iconic, etc).
1 of 8
Sperling (1960)
Sensory register
Flashed a 3x4 grid of letters for 1/20 of a second with a tone (low/medium/high) to indicate which row to recall.
Recall of the row indicated was high which suggests all of the information is originally held so the SR has a large capacity.
2 of 8
Evaluation of research into the sensory register
+ Research supports the idea that there are separate sensory stores as it's been found that different types of sensory memory have different durations
- Research often involves an artificial stimulus so lacks mundane realism
3 of 8
Baddeley (1966)
Short and long term memory stores
Participants were presented with 1 of 4 word lists (either acoustically similar/dissimilar words or semantically similar/dissimilar words).
When testing STM, worst recall was for the acoustically similar list and for LTM worst recall was for the semantica
4 of 8
Jacobs (1987)
Short term memory store
Participants were given increasingly long lists of items to recall (serial digit span method). Found that correct recall dropped rapidly after 9 items for numbers and 7 items for letters. This suggests the STM has a capacity of 7 + or - 2 items.
5 of 8
Peterson and Peterson (1930)
Short term memory store
Read participants a set of trigrams and asked them to count back in 3s to prevent rehearsal. Found that 90% of trigrams were recalled after 3 seconds but only 5% after 19 seconds.
Suggests that rehearsal is a key part of keeping memories in the STM or tra
6 of 8
Bahrick et al (1975)
Long term memory store
Showed participants a list of names including some ex-school friends and asked them to identify people they knew from school. 90% were identified if they left school <15 years ago. 80% were identified if they left school 48 years ago.
Suggests that the LT
7 of 8
Evaluation of research into short or long term memory
- Often uses artificial stimuli so lacks mundane validity
- Studies into LTM often use recognition rather than recall so duration may be incorrect as recognition is easier
+ Bahrick's research has ecological validity as it's something we would do in real
8 of 8
Other cards in this set
Card 2
Front
Sperling (1960)
Sensory register
Back
Flashed a 3x4 grid of letters for 1/20 of a second with a tone (low/medium/high) to indicate which row to recall.
Recall of the row indicated was high which suggests all of the information is originally held so the SR has a large capacity.
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