The nature of memory: STM, LTM and duration.

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  • Created by: racheon
  • Created on: 20-02-14 19:30
What is memory?
The process in which we retain information.
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What does memory involve doing? (3)
Taking in information, storing it and retrieving it when needed.
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What are the 3 types of memory?
Sensory, short-term and long-term.
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What are the 3 nature's of memory?
Capacity, duration and encoding.
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What is capacity of memory?
A measure of how much information can be held in our memory.
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What is the capacity of the 2 main types memory? (2)
Short-term memory - 7+-2 bits of information. Long-term memory - unlimited.
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What is duration of memory?
A measure of how long information is held in our memory.
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What is the duration of the 2 main types memory? (2)
Short-term memory - about 18-30 seconds. Long-term memory - indefinite.
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What is encoding of memory?
The form in which information is stored in our memory.
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What is the encoding of the 2 main types memory? (2)
Short-term memory - mainly acoustic. Long-term memory - mainly semantic.
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Describe the procedure of Peterson and Peterson's study.
24 university students were shown trigrams of 3 consonants and were asked to recall them after a delay of up to 18 seconds, going up in 3's. In order to prevent rehearsal they had to count backwards from 300 in 3's out loud.
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What were the findings of Peterson and Peterson's study?
Participants remembered about 90% when the delay was 3 seconds but only 2% when it was 18 seconds, and recall decreased steadily between them.
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What did Peterson and Peterson conclude from their study?
When rehearsal is prevented the duration that information stays in the short-term memory is about 20 seconds.
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Evaluate Peterson and Peterson's study.
Lab experiment so cause & effect can be inferred,used artificial stimuli so lacked realism, small sample size of the same age and culture, only used trigrams so tested visual memory, they were given different trigrams which may have caused confusion.
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Describe the procedure of Bahrick's study.
A real life American study using 400 students aged 17-74. They were asked to recall the students that were in their year, then were shown pictures of them and were asked to name them.
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What were the findings of Bahrick's study?
Participants remembered about 90% of classmates after being shown the pictures, and recall with no picture decreased with age.
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What was Bahrick's conclusion after their study?
The more meaningful the material to the participants the longer it stays in their long term memory.
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Evaluate Bahrick's study.
Used real life stimuli so was highly valid, used multiple ages so more reliable, couldn't control whether they saw the classmates so less valid
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How did Nairne et al. do their study?
They modified Peterson's study so that the material was the same to prevent items interfering which could affect recall. Participants were shown 5 nouns and after an interval were shown them in a different order to recall them in the correct order.
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What did Nairne et al.'s study show?
Items could still be recalled after 96 seconds therefore information remains longer in the short-term memory if there's no interference from other items.
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Evaluate Nairne et al.'s study.
Participants might be better at remembering words rather than consonants or numbers, meaning this may only apply to some kinds of short-term memory tasks, however the results show forgetting rates vary depending on interfering materials.
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Define long-term memory.
Memory for events that have happened in the past, last from 2 minutes to 100 years.
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Define short-term memory.
Memory for immediate events, lasts for a very short time and disappears unless it's rehearsed, limited duration and capacity, is sometimes referred to as working memory.
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What did Marsh et al. study and find?
They conducted a similar study to Peterson but didn't tell the participants the study was on recall, and forgetting occurred after 2 seconds.
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Why did Marsh et. al carry out their study?
Because they suggested Peterson's high levels of recall were because participants knew they were being tested.
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What did Shepard do in their study?
They did a lab experiment to test the duration of long-term memory by showing participants 612 memorable pictures.
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What did Shepard find?
That after an hour they were shown some of the pictures with other pictures and they has almost perfect recognition. 4 months later they could recognise 50% of them.
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

What does memory involve doing? (3)

Back

Taking in information, storing it and retrieving it when needed.

Card 3

Front

What are the 3 types of memory?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What are the 3 nature's of memory?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What is capacity of memory?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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