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9 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Capacity |
The measure of how much can be held in memory. |
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Capacity in STM |
very limited (less than 7 'chunks' of information) |
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Capacity in LTM |
potentially unlimited |
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Joseph Jacobs (1887) |
Used a digit span, a technique to test capacity used in the 19th century.
The average span for digits was 9.3 items, and 7.3 for letters.
Suggests that this may be because there are only 9 digits whereas there are 26 letters. |
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George Miller (1956)
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The magic number 7 +/- 2.
Miller wrote an article called this ^. Reviewed psychological research and concluded that the span of immediate memory is 7.
People can cope reasonably well with counting 7 dots flashed onto a screen but not many more than this.
The same is true if you are asked to recall musical notes, digits, letters and even words.
Miller also found that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters -- we chunk things together and can then remember more. |
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Simon (1974) |
Found that people had a shorter memory span for larger chunks, such as 8-word phrases, than smaller chunks, such as one-syllable words. |
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Vogel et al, (2001) |
Some researchers have also looked at the capacity of STM for visual information (rather than verbal stimuli) and found that 4 items was about the limit. |
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Chunking |
Miller (1956) proposed that the capacity of STM can be enhanced by grouping sets of digits or letters into meaningful units or chunks.
E.g, 10 100 1000 10000 is easier to remember than 10100100010000. |
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Age and capacity |
Jacobs also found that recall increased steadily with age. 8 y/os could remember an avg of 6.6 digits whereas the avg for 19 y/os was 8.6 digits.
The reason for this may be due to: > the gradual increase in brain capacity. > people developing strategies to improve their digit span as they get older (such as chunking) |
