Human Memory
Lesson 9
Human Memory Encoding in LTM Produced by
www.psychologyrevise.com www.learnconnect.co.uk
Encoding in LTM • As far as encoding is concerned, there is some evidence that the meaning of the stimulus is often the main factor here. In other words, semantic coding is important.
Key Study – Encoding in STM & LTM
Baddeley (1966) Aim: • To explore the effects of acoustic and semantic coding in STM & LTM.
Procedure: • In the STM study, participants were asked, immediately after presentation to recall, in serial order, a list of 5 words taken from a pool of words in the following categories: acoustically similar words (e.g. man, mad, map) acoustically dissimilar words (e.g. pen day, few) semantically similar words (e.g. great, big, large) semantically dissimilar words (e.g. hot, old, late)
• In the LTM study , each list of words was extended to 10 and recall was tested after an interval of 20 minutes.
Findings: • Words with similar sounds were much harder to recall using STM than words with dissimilar sounds. • Similarity of meaning had only a slight detrimental effect on STM. • When participants were recalling from LTM, recall was much worse for semantically similar words than for semantically dissimilar words. • Recall from LTM was the same for acoustically similar and acoustically dissimilar words.
Conclusion: • STM relies heavily on acoustic coding. • LTM primarily makes use of semantic memory. Criticisms: • The use of the method allows for a causal link to be drawn between the type of coding used in STM & LTM and the accuracy of recall. • The conclusions of this study may not reflect the complexity of encoding. Evidence from other studies shows that, in certain circumstances, both STM and LTM can use other forms of coding.