coding, capacity and duration (Jacobs 1887 Digit span)

Aim

To find out the capacity of people’s STM

Procedure

Research read 4 digits, and increased digits until participants couldn’t recall the order correctly. Final amount is there digit span

Findings

On average, participant could repeat 9.3 digits and 7.3 letters

Strength of Jacob’s digit span experiment

• findings have been replicated (Bopp in 2005)- high reliability and validity as it is able to be repeated

Weaknesses of Jacob’s digit span experiment

Old study- lacked control which means there were more confounding variables e.g. distracted participants