1_Psychology - Memory

1_Psychology - Memory

1. Duration

   • A measure of how long a memory lasts before it is no longer avaliable
   • Key Study on STM - Peterson and Peterson
     • Experimenter said a consonant syllable followed by a three-digit number (e.g. WRT 605
       • Ps asked to count back in 3s/4s from number then asked to recall the syllable after a certain amount of time
         • Ps remembered 90% at 3 sec interval and 2% at an 18 sec interval
   • Key Study on LTM
     • Ps asked to put names to faces in their high school year book
       • 48 years on, Ps were 70% accurate
   • Evaluation
     • Other research has suggested that when Ps do not expect to be tested after the interval, forgetting may occur after just 2 seconds - not a full understanding of STM
     • Narine et al found items could be recalled after up to 96 seconds when asked to recall same items across trials - info remains in STM unless new material replaces it

2. Encoding

   • The way information is changed so it can be stored in the memory
     • LTM codes semantically
     • STM codes acoustically
   • Key Study on Encoding - Baddeley
     • Ps given list of acoustically similar/dissimilar words and semantically similar/dissimilar words
       • Ps had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in STM and semantically similar words in LTM
   • Evaluation
     • STM also uses visual encoding - Ps encode visually in STM if given a visual task and prevented from doing verbal rehearsal
     • LTM is not exclusively encoded semantically

3. The Nature of Memory

   • Capacity
     • A measure of how much can be held in memory
     • Key study on STM - Jacobs
       • Line of numbers, Ps to look at digits, cover them then recall, going along the line (1 number covered then 2 then so forth)
         • Average span found to be 9.3 items when it was digits, found to be 7.3 with letters
     • Increasing STM capacity
       • Magic number - 7 plus/minus 2
       • People remember more using chunking - can recall 5 words as well as 5 letters as we chunk things together
     • Evaluation
       • Individual differences - 8 year olds could remember 6.6 digits whereas 19 year olds could remember 8.6
       • Real world application - postcodes and number plates easily remembered by chunking
       • STM may be more limited - found to be only 4 chunks