Psychology Give a Brief Account of the Difference Between Short-Term Memory and Long-Term Memory and Consider the Extent to Which Research Supports the Distinction Between Them.

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Give a brief account of the difference between Short-term memory and Long-term memory and consider the extent to which research supports the distinction between them. (12mark) Memory is a process that is used to require, store, retain and later receive information. There are two types that I will be concentrating on in this essay: they are Short-term memory and long-term memory. Duration is the amount of time is takes to remember something. The Peterson and Peterson study took place in 1959. This study was to investigate the duration of short-term memory. The results supported the multi-store model of the memory as 18% could recall the trigram after 3seconds, but after 18seconds fewer than 10% remembered. This shows that the trigram was only in their short-term memory for a few seconds before being forgotten. However, there was a weakness as trigrams are not used in every day life so it is questionable how much ecological validity these findings have. Bahrick did another investigation to test the duration of Long-term memory. He tested participants through the ages 17-74 on their memory of school friends. Recognition is better than recall so there may be a huge store of information but it is not always easy to access and therefore need aid such as pictures. Capacity is how much the brain can take in. While the short term memory is said to have a limited capacity, the capacity for the long term memory is said to be unlimited. This is supported through Millers research. Miller conducted a study in which participants were read a series of numbers and then repeated them back to the experimenter. The number of digits they had to recall was increased until the participant was unable to recall them accurately. His results found that the average number span was five to nine items (+/-7) suggesting that the short term memory is limited. A limitation of Baddeley’s

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