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LTM AND STM CODING - Coggle Diagram
LTM AND STM CODING
What is Memory?
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Why do we need memory?
Memory is vital for learning. Without memory, no learning would take place. This supported by case studies of brain damaged patients.
Memory is used for remembering how to do things such as catch a bus or ride a bike. It is also important for talking to friends and remembering places.
Without memory….we wouldn’t be human!
Coding Evaluation.
- STM may not be exclusively acoustic.
- STM appears to rely on an acoustic code for storing information. However, some experiments have shown that visual codes are used as well.
- Brandimote at al 1992 found that people used visual coding in STM if they were given a visual task.
- Wickens et al 1976 found that STM sometimes use semantic code.
- LTM may not be exclusively semantic.
- Frost 1972 showed that LTM recall was related to visual as well as semantic codes.
- Nelson and Rothbart 1972 found evidence of acoustic coding in LTM.
- Therefore, coding in STM and LTM is not one type but instead varies on the circumstances. .
- Sperate Memory stores.
- Baddeley's study identified a clear difference between two memory stores.
- The understanding that STM was mainly acoustic coding and LTM was mainly semantic was an important step in understanding the memory system, which led to the multi-store model.
- Artificial stimuli
- Baddeley's study was artificial.
- The word list had no personal meaning to participants. So his findings may not tell us much about coding in different kinds of memory tasks, especially in everyday life. When processing more meaningful information, people may use semantic coding even for STM.
Fings from this study have limited application.
Two Types.
There are types of memory: short term and long term aka. STM and LTM. The difference between the two are defined by the difference between durations, capacity and coding
STM
- The limited capacity memory store.
- Coding is mainly acoustic (sound).
- Capacity is between 5 and 9 items on average.
- Duration is about 18 seconds.
LTM
- The permeant memory store.
- Coding is mainly sematic (meaning).
- It had unlimited capacity.
- Duration is lifetime.
Coding.....
Information is stored in memory in different forms, depending on the memory store. The process of converting information between different stores is called coding. Information enters the brain via the sense ie: eyes and smell. There are three different forms that it can be stored in:
- Acoustic = sound
- Visual = imagery
- Semantic = meaning
Alan Baddeley:
He used word lists to test the effects of acoustic and semantic similarity on STM and LTM.
Example of word lists:
- cat, cab, can, cad, cap, etc = Words are acoustically similar but semantically different.
- Great, large, big, huge, etc = Words are semantically similar but acoustically different.
In his study he had four groups of particpants. There were:
- acoustically similar
- acoustically different
- Semantically similar
- Semantically different
Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order. - participants were using their STM.
Then, the participants were asked to recall the words after a 20 minutes interval. Here they were using their LTM.
Findings.
- He found that participants had difficulty remembering acoustically similar words in STM but not LTM.
- Participants fund remembering semantically similar words in STM easy but got muddled in LTM.
- Suggests that STM is largely encoded acoustically whereas LTM is encoded semantically.