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2.4 Short-term memory What are the features of STM?
2 Cognitive Psychology – Memory 2.4 Short-term memory What are the features of STM?
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Duration Peterson & Peterson (1959) showed that items in STM are lost rapidly. When asked to learn a three-consonant nonsense syllable and recall it after a delay, participants were less likely to do so as the length of time increased. 2 Cognitive Psychology - Memory
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Peterson & Peterson (1959)
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Peterson & Peterson (1959)
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Peterson & Peterson (1959)
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Peterson & Peterson (1959)
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Peterson & Peterson (1959)
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Peterson & Peterson (1959)
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Peterson & Peterson (1959)
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Peterson & Peterson (1959)
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Peterson & Peterson (1959) This shows that when rehearsal is prevented (by counting backwards during the delay) short-term memory is limited in duration to under 30 seconds.
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Capacity Miller (1956) explored the number of items or ‘chunks’ that could be held in STM. He found that, regardless of the type of material (e.g. letters, words, digits or pictures), we can store only about 7±2 items in STM. 2 Cognitive Psychology - Memory
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Displacement As capacity in STM is limited, two possible things can happen when information is entering the STM quicker than it can be transferred to LTM. Either new items will fail to enter STM (as an extra car cannot fit in when a car park is full) or newer items will push older ones out (like putting a second hamster down a tube will push the first one out!).
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Displacement Information in
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Additional items enter STM
Displacement Information in Additional items enter STM
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Additional items enter STM
Displacement Information in Additional items enter STM
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Additional items enter STM
Displacement Information in Additional items enter STM
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Additional items enter STM
Displacement Information in Additional items enter STM
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Additional items enter STM
Displacement Information in Additional items enter STM
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STM has now reached full capacity
Displacement Information in STM has now reached full capacity
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This additional item causes the earliest one to be ‘pushed out’
Displacement Information in This additional item causes the earliest one to be ‘pushed out’
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More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
Information in More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
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More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
Information in More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
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More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
Information in More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
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More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
Information in More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
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More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
Information in More additional items cause further displacement of earlier items
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Displacement Waugh & Norman (1975) showed that items are lost from STM on a ‘first-in-first-out’ basis. When participants heard a list of digits and were signalled to recall one of the items in the list, they were less likely to be able to do so if it was near the beginning.
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Encoding Baddeley (1966) showed that items in STM tended to become muddled when they sounded similar. When asked to learn and immediately recall a list of words, participants made more errors on those that sounded alike.
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Encoding Try this test. A list of words will appear. Read them carefully, as you will have to recall them. Have a pen and paper ready.
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mad day tall big late man pen mat broad map strong hot can foul cap wide safe great cat large bar old pit high
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Now write down as many words as you can.
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We will talk about the results later.
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pause
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Write down as many words as you can from the list you saw earlier.
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pause
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mad mat man map cat can cap day late pen strong hot foul safe bar pit
old tall big broad wide great high large Count up the number of words you recalled in the left hand and right hand columns on the first and second recall. Also note any words you added on each occasion.
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Acoustically Similar Control Semantically Similar
mad mat man map cat can cap Control day late pen strong hot foul safe bar pit old Semantically Similar tall big broad wide great high large Count up the number of words you recalled in the left hand and right hand columns on the first and second recall. Also note any words you added on each occasion.
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