Memory Stores

Sensory Memory

5 

5 senses & emotion goes into our memory Perception - First step for memory Takes info from sense organ & holds it in same form

Iconic - Visual information - Stored as imagesEchoic - Auditory Input - Stored as soundsHaptic - Tactile Input - Stored as 

Duration - Info decays within 2 seconds Capacity - Very Large Encoding - Same way as it goes in

SPURLINGLook at a grid for less than a second & write down what you remember

Application to Real Life

Subliminal Advertising

A presentation too brief to be noticed - "Subliminal"

In 1957, James Vicary boosted sales by showing 0.03 second messages saying : "drink coca-cola" / "eat popcorn"

Findings not been reliably replicatedSubliminal advertising later banned

Short Term Memory

When we become conscious of memory

Limited CapacityLimited Duration (30 Seconds)Information either passes into long term memory or is forgotten

CONRAD - encodingShown a sequence of letters one after another Some similar sounding & Some distinct sounding Had to recall letters in order

Found that letters which are acoustically similar (rhyming) are harder to recall from STM, than those which are acoustically dissimilar

Suggest that STM mainly encodes things acoustically, even though items were presented visually

Peterson & Peterson - durationStudents had to recall combinations of 3 letters (trigrams) after longer & longer intervalsDuring the intervals, students were prevented from rehearsing by a counting task

Miller - capacity"The STM can hold the magic number 7, plus or minus 2"

After 3 seconds, 80% recalled correctlyAfter 18 seconds, less than 10% recalled correctlyRecall got progressively worse as delay grew longer

Suggests that our STM fades in under 30 seconds if we are not rehearsing it

Participants asked to recall various stimuli in orderCapacity of STM between 5&9 items

Found that capacity of STM could be considerably increased by combining/organising seperate bits of info into larger chunks

Chunking involves making the info more meaningful, through organising it in line with existing knowledge from your LTM

Baddeley - encoding

P

Presented participants with 1 of 4 wordlists repeated 4 times Acoustically similar: cat, mat, sat Acoustically dissimilar: pit, day, cow Semantically similar: big, huge, tall Semantically dissimilar: hot, safe, foul

Then delayed recall for 20 minutes by giving participants an unrelated task

Then d

Participants then given each wordlist in a jumbled order and had to rearrange to its original order

FINDINGSRecall for semantically similar list was poor - 55%Recall for all other lists fairly high - 70%-85%

CONCLUSIONLong term memory encodes semantically.When we try to remember lots of information with similar meanings, we get confused & forget some of it

Capacity - Potentially unlimited

Bahrick et al (1975) - duration

374 participants aged 17-74 tested on memory of school friends

Free recall (all classmates they could remember) Recognition of classmates from a selection of 50 photos Name recognition test Photo matching test

In or

In order to check accuracy of recall, researchers used year books for relevant year groups of participants

FINDINGS34 years previously - 90%48 years previously - 80%

CONCLUSIONRecall can be accurate over a very long period of time, leading to the term, "very long term memory" to describe this phenomenon

Bahrick et al Evaluation

Field experiment - high ecological validity

Poorly controlled - participants could have seen class mates since leaving school but not taken into account Only one type of recall (visual) was tested - Could be argued that this recognition is recall

General Evaluation

Based on lab experiments - high levels of control - can say the IV had an effect on the DV, can identify cause & effect relationships

Memory ability will vary depending on type of material - only have a limited understanding of encoding, capacity & duration Sample - uni students - not generalisable Individual differences - some have better memories Lab experiments - low ecological validity Demand Characteristics

Sensory Memory

Short Term Memory

Long Term Memory

Evaluation