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Summary Coding, Capacity and Duration
Looking at coding capacity and duration and the key terms and studies involved.
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Coding, Capacity and DurationMemory
KEY NAMES
Coding Capacity Duration
Alan Baddeley Joseph Jacobs (1887) Margaret and Lloyd Peterson (1959)
(1966) George Miller (1956) Harry Bahrik (1975)
Key
words
Coding
Coding – The
format in which Alan Baddeley (1966) – Gave different lists of words to 4 different groups.
information is Group 1 – Words that sound acoustically similar
stored in the Group 2 – Words sounded acoustically dissimilar
various memory
Group 3 – Words semantically similar
stores
Group 4 – Words semantically dissimilar
Capacity – The When they were asked to repeat the words immediately after, they did worse with the acoustically similar words,
amount of while a wait period of 20 minutes made remembering words semantically similar more difficult.
memory that can Evaluation
be held in a x Artificial Stimuli – The word list had no meaning to the participants and therefore may not be
memory store generalizable
Duration – The Capacity
length of time
information can Digit Span – Joseph Jacobs (1887) – The researcher gives a number of digits and then the participant is asked
be held in the to repeat these digits in the exact order back. If the participant is correct, the number of digits goes up by one and
memory this is repeated, until the participant makes a mistake. When the digits were numbers, the average number of
digits was recalled was 9.3, while it was 7.3 if the digits were letters.
Short term Evaluation
memory (STM) x Lacking validity – Older research is often subject to extraneous variables due to lack of control. Other
– The limited-
research has however supported this study’s validity.
capacity memory
store. Coding is Span of memory and chunking – George Miller (1956) – Many things in every day life come in groups of 7, e.g
mainly acoustic, 7 deadly sins, 7 days of the week, suggesting that the span of STM is 7+/- 2. He also noticed that people can
capacity 7+/- on recall 5 letters as well as they can 5 words, through chunking.
average, Evaluation
duration 18 to 30 x Cowan (2001) reviewed other research and found the capacity for chunks to be only about 4 chunks,
on average. meaning Miller’s lower estimate (5) was more accurate.
Long term Dur a ti on
memory (LTM)
– The STM - Margaret and Lloyd Peterson (1959) – 24 undergrads were tested on 8 trials. They were given a
permanent consonant syllable to remember and then told to count back from a three-digit number to prevent rehearsal. Each
memory store. time, they would be counting for longer before they had to repeat the consonant syllable back. Correctness
Coding is mainly dropped from above 75% at 3 seconds to below 25% at 18 seconds.
semantic, Evaluation
capacity x Meaningless stimuli – While we do sometimes remember meaningless things, this is unlike many real lif
unlimited and memory techniques and so lacks external validity.
can store
LTM - Harry Bahrik (1975) – 392 participants from Ohio aged between 17 and 74 and high school year books
memories for as
long as a life
were obtained. In the first task, participants were asked to identify people while looking at 50 photos in the year
time. book. The second task included free-recalling the names of their entire graduating class. If the participants had
graduated within 15 years, their photo recognition was 90% while free recall was 60%. Participants who had
graduated more than 48 years ago had a photo recognition of 70% and a free recall of 30%. This showed the
longevity of memory in the LTM.
Evaluation
High external validity – The stimulus had meaning to the participants and so is something they
may recall day to day, in real life situations.
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