The Modal Model

STM; How does info enter LTM?

• sensory stores —> attention —>

• short term store <— rehearsal

• —> encoding —> Long term store —> retrieval

• —> Short term store

Short-term memory

• The focus of our attention WHICH

• Disappears in 12-15 seconds

• When attention ends, we can measure how long that previously attended info is available

Brown-Peterson Task

1. Present info to be remembered (i.e. JDL)

2. Prevent rehearsing —> “count backwards by 3, starting w/ 200”

3. Request recall of info after delay

4. Record proportion of info recalled

Capacity if STM

• George Miller 7 ± 2

• Number of items that can be retained in short term memory

• Variety of stimuli: words, numbers, musical notes

Chunking

Regrouping info in STM

• increase # of items that can be retained

• prior knowledge aids in restructuring of info from simple units to more complex “chunks”

Limits to chunking?

• unlimited amount of info if you were to chunk everything you were attending to into 7 distinct “chunks”?

• No scientific proof of being able to increase amount of items attended to at a time

Word length effect

• longer it takes to pronounce words, fewer items retained in STM

• Longer words contain more info

• Takes more time to process larger chunks of info

Capacity of STM

• capacity limit best described as a number limit & a capacity limit