Memory

Question 1

who tested sensory memory?

Answer 1

Sperling

Question 2

what was Sperling’s method

Answer 2

Laboratory experiment

Participants were shown a 3×4 grid of letters (12 letters total)

The display was shown for 0.05 seconds
Two conditions:

Whole report: participants recalled as many letters as possible

Partial report: after the letters disappeared, a high, medium, or low tone signalled which row to recall

Question 3

what was the dependent and independent variable of the experiment?

Answer 3

Dependent variable: number of letters correctly recalled

Independent variable: type of report (whole vs partial) and delay of tone

Question 4

what were Sperling’s results?

Answer 4

In condition 1, where participants had to recall the entire grid, they usually recalled around 4-5 letters. When participants were asked to recall only one of the rows, they usually recalled around 3 letters.

Question 5

according to Jacobs what is the capacity of our short term memory store?

Answer 5

7 +/- 2 letters or numbers
(5-9 chunks of information)

Question 6

Q: Using the results of Jacobs (1887) and Miller (1956), explain how short-term memory can be improved when remembering long sequences of digits.

Answer 6

A: Jacobs (1887) found that short-term memory has a limited capacity, meaning people can only recall a small number of items at one time. Miller (1956) suggested that STM can hold 7±2 items and that chunking increases capacity by grouping information into meaningful units, allowing longer sequences to be remembered.

Question 7

what is the definition of: Short-term memory

Answer 7

the store we use for a short period of time while we need it to complete an ongoing task.

Question 8

the capacity of short-term memory is..

Answer 8

limited

Question 9

What is the duration of short-term memory?

Answer 9

limited to around 18-30 seconds.

Question 10

What is the main type of coding used in short-term memory?

Answer 10

acoustic

Question 11

duration, from shortest to longest:

Answer 11

sensory register, short-term, long-term

Question 12

capacity, from smallest to largest:

Answer 12

short-term, sensory register, long-term

Question 13

short-term memory is focused on what kind of info:

Answer 13

iconic, echoic and semantic

Question 14

seeing something that triggers a memory is what?

Answer 14

recognition

Question 15

our ability to retrieve info from LTM is much better…

Answer 15

when we have to recognise info.

Question 16

more likely to generalise =

Answer 16

high ecological validity. (Bahrick et al)

Question 17

weakness of Bahrick’s study

Answer 17

extraneous variables = reduce validity

Question 18

Who developed the multi-store model?

Answer 18

Atkinson and Shiffrin

Question 19

What is the multi-store model?

Answer 19

• a memory model to explain how we transfer information across memory stores.
• there are three memory stores: the sensory register, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Question 20

What does it mean to say information flow is unidirectional?

Answer 20

information can only flow in one direction across the stores.

Question 21

Describe Sperling’s study investigating the sensory register.

Answer 21

Sperling presented participants with a 4 by 3 grid of letters for 50 milliseconds and immediately tested their recall of the letters. Following presentation of the grid, participants were either asked to recall the entire grid, or one row of the grid.

Sperling found that when participants were asked to recall the entire grid they could recall around 5 letters, but when they were asked to recall a row, they could only recall around 3 letters from the row.

Sperling reasoned that, to recall a particular row, participants would have needed to store the entire grid in the sensory register. So, he concluded that the sensory register has a large capacity. However, when asked to recall the entire grid, participants could only recall 4-5 letters because of the short duration of the sensory register.

Question 22

Describe the results of Bahrick’s study into long-term memory.

Answer 22

Bahrick investigated the duration of long-term memory by testing participants ability to remember the names of their school classmates 15 years and 48 years after they finished school.

Bahrick found that 15 years after participants left school, their memory recall was around 60% accurate, and their recognition memory was around 90% accurate.

48 years after school, participants’ recall accuracy had dropped to 30%, but their recognition memory was still 80% accurate!

So, Bahrick’s study provides evidence that the long-term memory has a very long duration but our recall from long-term memory is better when we are asked to recognise the information rather than recall it spontaneously.

Question 23

Describe Baddeley’s 1966 study into short and long-term memory.

Answer 23

Baddeley asked participants to recall four lists of words that either sounded similar, sounded different, had a similar meaning, or had a different meaning.

He found that participants recalling acoustically similar words had more difficulty when tested immediately after learning. However, 20 minutes after learning, participants recalling semantically similar words had more difficulty.

He concluded that information is stored acoustically in short-term memory and semantically in long-term memory.

Question 24

How do patient case studies support the multi-store model?

Answer 24

Case studies like those of Henry Molaison support the multi-store model because they show that people can damage their long-term memory without it affecting their short-term memory, thus supporting the idea that we have different memory stores.