Cognitive Psychology / PSYA1

Question	Answer
Describe the capacity and duration of the short term memory.	The short term memory has limited capacity and limited duration, being unable to hold information for longer than 18 seconds.
Who conducted a study into the short term memory in 1956?	Miller
What is Miller's magic number?	7 +/- 2 items or "chunks".
What did Miller find in his study?	He found that the attention span of immediate memory for most people is 7 +/- 2 items.
Summarise "chunking".	- A chunk depends on your personal experience. It can improve the capacity of your memory. It may reduce accuracy.
GIve a positive evaluation point of Miller's study.	His work has useful application, for example, phone numbers are chunked to make them easier to remember.
Give a criticism of Miller's study.	Later research has not completely proven or confirmed Miller's conclusion.
What is the primacy and recency effect, otherwise known as the serial position effect?	Out of a list of words, participants are much more likely to remember and recall the first word they heard and the last one/few they heard. They are more likely to forget those in the middle of the list.
Who conducted research into the primacy and recency effect?	Glanzer and Cunitz (1966).
What did Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) find?	Found that counting backwards for 10 seconds between the end of the list presentation and the start of recall virtually eliminated the recency effect, but otherwise had no effect on recall.

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	Created by ktlouise over 9 years ago