PSY30400 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Memory Span
Chapter 5: Short-Term Memory and Working Memory
• How many items can be held in the STM?
o Change Detection:
▪ two pictures of a scene are flashed one after the other and need to
determine the change between the two pictures
▪ Another example of how this is used = flash a display on the left for 100 ms
followed by 900 ms of darkness and then a new display on the right
• Subject needed to indicate if the second display was the same or
different from the first
• Harder if the number of items exceeds the capacity of the STM
o Almost perfect performance when 3 items in display, but
decreases performance when 4 or more
• Suggests that the capacity of the STM is only 4 items
o Chunking: proposed by Miller
▪ describes the fact that small units (like words) can be combined into larger,
meaningful units like phrases, or even larger units, like sentences or stories
▪ Chunk:
• defined as a collection of elements that are strongly associated with
one another but are weakly associated with elements in other chunks
• Ringtail strongly associated with monkey but not as strongly
associated with child or city
▪ Chunking = increases our ability to hold information in the STM
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