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Psychology - Coding, capacity and duration - AO1 Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by

Memory - - Coding, capacity and duration - AO1

This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.

CODING

Short term memory and long term memory
Baddeley
Aim: to invest­igate how inform­ation is coded in our short term and long term memory
procedure: 4 conditions - Baddeley had four groups in which he gave one word list to each group. The word list was either semant­ically similar, semant­ically dissim­ilar, acoust­ically similar, or acoust­ically dissim­ilar. Each partic­ipants had to learn the word list and then recall the words either immedi­ately or after 20 minutes.
Findings: partic­ipants who were asked to recall the word list immedi­ately after they had learnt them (STM) did worse on the acoust­ically similar list. Partic­ipants who were asked to recall the word list 20 minutes after they had learnt them (LTM) did worse on the semant­ically similar word list
Conclu­sion: inform­ation is coded acoust­ically in the STM and semant­ically in the LTM

CAPACITY

Short Term memory
Short Term memory
Jacobs
Miller
Aim: to invest­igate the capacity of the STM
Miller noticed that items come in sevens (seven deadly sins and seven days in the week) so therefore miller concluded that the short term memory has a capacity of 7 items. Miller aso found that it is the same mean capacity for words and letters.
Procedure: Jacobs would give partic­ipants a list of digits which they were to recall. Each time the pts correctly recalled the list of digits he would add a new digit to the list. When they got the list wrong he stopped the experi­ment.
Chunking- miller concluded that indivi­duals remember more by chunking - this is where you group items into chunks.
Findings: the mean span of digits was 9.3 accurately recalled. The mean span of accurately recalled letters was 7.3.
Conclu­sion: Jacobs concluded that the capacity of the short term memory was small - 9.3 for digits

DURATION

Short term memory
Long term memory
Peterson and Peterson
Bahrick
Aim: to invest­igate the duration of short term memory.
Aim: to invest­igate the capacity
Procedure: Peterson and Peterson gave partic­ipants a consonant syllable and a three digit number. Partic­ipants were shown the consonant syllable then asked to count back in threes from the three digit number for either 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18 seconds. They partic­ipants were told to recall the consonant syllable.
Procedure: 400 partic­ipants - 2 conditions - Condition 1, partic­ipants were asked to take part in a photo recogn­ition task - partic­ipants were shown 50 photos of faces some of which were from their graduation yearbook. Condition 2- partic­ipants were asked to recall as many names as possible from their graduating class.
Findings: partic­ipants who were asked to recall the consonant syllable after 3 seconds - 90% accurately recalled the consonant syllable. Partic­ipants who were asked to recall the consonant syllable after 9 seconds - 20% of the partic­ipants accurately recalled the consonant syllable. Partic­ipants who were asked to recall the consonant syllable after 18 seconds - 2% of the partic­ipants accurately recalled the consonant syllable.
Findings: Condition 1 - partic­ipants who had graduated in the past 15 years had a mean accuracy of 90%. While partic­ipants who had graduated at least 40 years ago it declined to 70%. Condition 2 - partic­ipants who had graduated in the past 15 years had a mean accuracy of 60%. While partic­ipants who had graduated at least 48 years ago had a mean accuracy of 30%
Conclu­sion: duration is short - less than 18 seconds
Conclu­sion: duration of long term memory is long as partic­ipants could remember classmates from 48 years ago.