For A-Level Psychology, new series
Written in an easily understandable, comprehensive, and succinct format that can be converted into essay notes (a plan of each 8/16 mark question) or answers to shorter questions.
MEMORY (Paper 1): Covering all required topics including:
-The memory system
-Th...
, Consists of 3 types of memory:
SENSORY REGISTER:
Gathers information from the sense organs. Function is to retain information long enough to enable an
individual to decide whether or not to process further. The duration is short, and information that is not
attended to is lost
-Large capacity, 0.5 second duration, sense specific coding
SHORT-TERM:
Information is sent to the short-term memory from the sensory register once attention is paid to it.
STM is a temporary store, and if information is not rehearsed it is lost at this stage
-Capacity of 5-9 items, 18 second duration, acoustic coding
LONG-TERM:
Involves storing information over long periods of time, with information stored for longer than 30
seconds counting as LTM
-Unlimited capacity, up to a lifetime duration, semantic coding
CAPACITY= the amount of information held by the memory store
DURATION= the length of time the memory store holds information
CODING= the form in which the information is stored, divided into visual (physical appearance of the
stimulus), acoustic (sound of a stimulus) and semantic (meaning of a stimulus)
THE SENSORY REGISTER
CAPACITY
Each sensory memory store has a very large capacity, with information stored in an unprocessed,
highly detailed and ever-changing format
DURATION
All of the sensory memory stores have limited duration, with the duration of each inconsistent
(different types of information within each store decay at different times). Different sensory stores
have different durations, and duration decreases with age.
Sperling (1960)- Capacity and duration of the sensory register
Method: flashed a 3x4 grid of letters onto a screen for 1/20th of a second and asked ptps to recall the
letters of one row. As the information faded quickly, he sounded different tones to indicate a row of
recall. Recall of letters in the indicated row was high, suggesting all information was originally there-
this indicated the capacity of the SR is fairly large and lasts for around 0.25 seconds
CODING
Information is stored in a raw, unprocessed form with separate memory stores for different sensory
inputs (echoic for auditory, iconic for visual, haptic for tactile, gustatory for taste, olfactory for smell).
Information that is paid attention to is passed to the STM, while the remainder fades quickly.
Crowder (1993)- Coding of the sensory register
Found that SR only retains information in the iconic store for a few milliseconds, but for 2-3 seconds in
the echoic store, supporting the idea of sensory information being coded into different sensory stores
(it is modality specific)
BUT: sensory stores may consist of several sub-stores for example visible and informational
persistence in the iconic memory
DISCUSS RESEARCH INTO THE FEATURES OF STM
AO1:
CAPACITY:
STM has a limited capacity and research has indicated 5-9 items
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