Capacity of STM & LTM

What was Miller’s estimate of the capacity of short-term memory?

• 5-9

• Average of 7

Explain what evidence Miller based his claim on

• Review of digit span experiments

• Observations of everyday life

Explain how the capacity of short term memory can be extended

• through chunking information

• Into more meaningful groupings of information

What is the serial position effect?

People tend to recall items from the:

• Beginning of the list (primacy effect)

• End of the list (Recency effect)

• Serial Position effect = primacy effect + recency effect

• U shaped curve

Outline the case study of Clive Wearing

• Virus destroyed large parts of hippocampus in his brain

• Has virtually no memories of events since damage

• STM is largely normal - hold information for at least 7 seconds

• Memories pre damage are intact and frozen in time

• STM functions but doesn’t transfer to LTM