A succinct and complete summary of the memory topic of AQA A-level Psychology. Using only this material when revising for the Memory section of Paper 1 I was able to achieve an A* in psychology.
Memory revision notes
Coding, capacity and duration of memory
Research on coding - Baddeley
Coding - the process of converting information between different forms
Baddeley gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember: group 1
(acoustically similar), group 2 (acoustically dissimilar), group 3 (semantically similar) and group 4
(semantically dissimilar)
Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in correct order. Recalling
from short-term memory (STM), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.
Recalling from long-term memory (LTM), after an interval of 20 minutes, they did worse with the
semantically similar words.
These findings suggest that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.
Strength
Identified difference between two memory stores - Although later research showed there are
some exceptions to Baddely’s findings the idea that STM uses mostly acoustic coding and LTM
mostly semantic has mostly stood the test of time. This was also an important step to the
creation of the multi store model.
Limitation
Artificial stimuli - For example, the word lists had no personal meaning to participants. So
Baddely’s finding may not tell us much about coding in different kinds of memory tasks,
especially in everyday life. When processing more meaningful information, people may use
semantic coding even for STM tasks.
Research on capacity - Jacobs/Miller
Digit span - Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants was 9.3 items and
7.3 letters.
Span of memory and chunking - George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, Miller thought that the capacity of STM is about 7 items, plus or minus 2 hence so
many things come in seven e.g. seven days of the week, seven deadly sins, etc… He also noted
that people can recall five words as easily as they can recall five letters. We do this by chunking -
grouping sets of digits or letters into units or chunks.
Strength - Jacob
Research support - The study is a very old one and early research in psychology often lacked
adequate controls. Despite this, Jacob’s findings have been confirmed by other, better controlled
studies since (e.g. Bopp and Verhaeghen 2005). Suggests Jacob’s experiment was well
conducted and is a valid test of digit span in STM (high internal validity).
Limitation - Miller
Overstated STM capacity - a more recent review done by Nelson Cowan (2001) concluded that
capacity of STM is only about 4 (plus or minus 1) chunks. Suggesting that the lower end of
Miller’s estimate, of five items, is more appropriate than seven.
Research on duration - Peterson and Peterson’s/Bahrick et al
Duration of STM
Method - On each trial the student was given a consonant syllable (such as YCG) to remember. They were also given
a 3 digit number. The student counted backwards from this number until told to stop. The counting backwards was to
prevent any mental rehearsal of the consonant syllable.
Peterson and Peternson (1959) found after 3 seconds, the average recall of
consonant syllables was about 80% and after 18 seconds it was about 3%.
, Suggesting that STM Duration may be about 18 seconds, unless we repeat the information over
and over (i.e verbal rehearsal).
Duration of LTM
Harry Bahrick et al. (1975) tested participants recall through:
(1) photo recognition test consisting of 50 photos, some from the participants' high school
yearbooks. Findings:
- Within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate
- After 48 years, recall declined to about 70% accuracy
(2) free recall test where participants recalled all the names of their graduating class. Findings:
- 60% after 15 years accurate
- 30% after 48 years accurate
This shows that LTM may last up to a lifetime for some material
Limitation - Peterson and Peterson’s study
Artificial stimulus - Although the study is not completely irrelevant because sometimes we do try
to remember fairly meaningless material e.g. phone numbers. Recalling consonant syllables
does not reflect most everyday memory activities where what we are trying to remember is
meaningful. Low external validity.
However, on occasion have to learn meaningless numbers e.g. phone numbers
Strength - Bahrick et al
High external validity - researchers investigated meaningful memories whereas when studies on
LTM were conducted with meaningless pictures to be remembered, recall rates were lower (e.g.
Shepard 1967). Suggesting his results reflect a more ‘real’ estimate of the duration of LTM.
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