What is acoustic encoding in psychology plus#

What is acoustic encoding in psychology plus#

Miller therefore suggested that about seven chunks of information may be stored in short term memory whether in single or combined forms give or take one or two chunks, 'The magical number seven plus or minus two'_ 7 +/- 2. Items are chunked according to the meanings they have in long-term memory. Miller further suggested that the capacity of the short term memory may be enlarged by grouping items together by associations/links they have with each other.Įg 1+1 2+2 3+3 4+4 5+5 6+6 7+7 = Seven discrete chunks but combined according to same numbers therefore increasing capacity of short term memory. Miller referred to each of these items as chunks.įor example: 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 = Seven discrete chunks These items may be numbers, letters or words etc. Miller (1956) suggested that most people store about seven independent or discrete items in short term memory. The research has good reliability.Ĭapacity refers to the amount of information that can be stored in the short-term memory. The results may also have been influenced by individual differences or participant variables. They may have exhibited demand characteristics and experimenter bias may have occurred as the experiment did not employ blind conditions. Participants were undergraduate students and therefore unrepresentative of the general population. They therefore lack ecological validity due to controlled artificial environments. This suggests that the semantic encoding (meaning) as well as acoustic encoding occurs in the short term memory.īoth the Conrad and Shulman research were laboratory experiments. Similar numbers of errors of recall from the stimulus list was made for homonym and synonym probes. Thirdly some of the probe words used were identical to the ones on the original stimulus list. Secondly, some probe words were synonyms (different words with same/similar meaning, for example: talk and speak). Recall was then tested using cue or probe words which were one of three types.įirstly, some of the probe words used were homonyms (words which sound the same but have different meanings, for example: ball and bawl). Shulman presented participants visually with lists of 10 words. This research suggests that Conrad was incorrect in proposing that all encoding in short term memory was acoustic. Research into encoding in short term memory - Shulman (1970)

Conrad referred to these errors as Acoustic Confusion. This suggests that visually presented information is encoded according to acoustics/sounds.

Conrad found that errors of recall were linked to letters which had a similar sound.īs were mistaken for Ps 62 times, Vs were mistaken for Ps 83 times but Ss were mistaken for Ps only 2 times.