Coding in STM and LTM

What is coding?

The format in which information is stored in the various memory stores.

What is the study on the coding of STM?

• Baddeley (1966)

• Gave different lists of words to 4 groups a participants to remember.

• Acoustically Similar, Acoustically Dissimilar, Semantically Similar, Semantically Dissimilar.

• Participants shown these word lists and asked to recall them in the correct order.

• Did this task immediately after shown words.

What study examined coding in LTM?

• Baddeley (1966)

• Same study as STM

• But participants recalled word list after 20 minutes so they would be recalling from long-term memory.

What did Baddeley (1966) find?

• When recalling from STM, participants tended to do worse with acoustically similar words.

• When recalling from LTM, participated aid worse with semantically similar words.

• Suggests that information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.

What is one strength of Baddeley (1966) study?

It identified a clear difference between 2 memory stores. Later research showed that there are some exceptions to Baddeley's findings, but the idea the ST14 uses mostly acoustic coding and LTM is mostly semantic has stood the test of time. The was an important step in our understanding of the memory system, which led to the multi-store model.

What is one limitation of Baddeley (1966) study?

One limitation was that it used quite artificial stimuli rather that meaningful material. For example, the word lists had no personal meaning to participants. So Baddeley's 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 tasks. This suggests that the findings from this study have limited application.