PSY30400 Chapter 5: Chapter 5 Part 7
Chapter 5: Short-Term Memory and Working Memory
• How much Information can be held in STM?
o Some researchers have suggested that rather than describing memory capacity in
ters of uer of ites, it should e desried i ters of aout of
iforatio
o Alvarez and Cavanagh:
▪ did an experiment using the change detection procedure similar to Luck and
Vogel, but in addition to colored squares, they used more complex objects
(Shaded cube)
▪ Subjects task was to indicate whether the second display was the same as
the first displayed
▪ Results showed that ability to make this judgement was based on the
complexity of the stimuli
• Memory capacity for colored squares was 4.4., but capacity for
shaded cubes was 1.6
▪ Led to the conclusion that the GREATER the amount of information in an
image, the FEWER the items that can be held in visual STM
o Still much debate over whether or not capacity of STM should be measured in terms
of number of items or amount of information
• Overall agreement that upper limit for STM is about 4 items
• Have come to realize that the version of the STM presented in the modal model is TOO
NARROW
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