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Memory is one of the most extensively researched concepts in psychology, and the idea of different memory stores has been around since the 1950s.
Short-term memory is a component of memory models responsible for storing memories to which we pay attention. This store has a limited capacity and a limited duration for which it can hold information, and it is easily retrievable for a short time.
The short-term memory definition is the storage of information with a limited capacity and is readily available for a limited time. Typically, short-term memory encodes information acoustically.
If you were walking and looking at a tree, the senses would process the information (visually) when attention is focused on the stimuli. In this scenario, the details of the tree stored in short-term memory would be the short-term memory example.
Short-term memory, Flaticon.
Psychologists have found a different store for short-term and long-term memories. The different memory stores have different encoding methods, durations, and capacities.
Memories stored in short-term memory store are usually encoded acoustically, i.e., when spoken aloud repeatedly, the memory is likely to be stored in short-term memory.
Conrad (1964) presented participants (visually) with letter sequences for a short duration, and they had to recall the stimuli immediately. In this way, the researchers ensured that short-term memory was measured. The study found that participants had more difficulty recalling acoustically similar stimuli than acoustically dissimilar ones (they were better at remembering ‘B’ and ‘R’ than ‘E’ and ‘G’, even though B and R looked visually similar).
This finding shows that short-term memory encodes information acoustically, as similar-sounding words have similar encoding and are therefore easier to confuse and recall less accurately.
Encoding a memory, Flaticon.
There is still disagreement about the duration of short-term memory, but it is generally thought to be about 15-30 seconds. If the information is not elaboratively rehearsed and transferred to long-term memory within this period, it is forgotten and cannot be retrieved.Peterson and Peterson (1959) presented participants with trigrams (nonsensical/meaningless three-consonant syllables, e.g., BDF). They gave them a distractor/interference task to prevent rehearsal of the stimuli (counting backwards in groups of three). This procedure prevents the information from being shifted to long-term memory.The results showed that accuracy was 80% after 3 seconds, 50% after 6 seconds, and 10% after 18 seconds, indicating the duration of storage in short-term memory of 18 seconds. In addition, the recall accuracy decreases the longer the information is stored in short-term memory.
The decline in memory recall accuracy in the short-term memory store, Sharon Thind, StudySmarter Originals.
Miller (1956) proposed the 7+/-2 theory, which states that short-term memory capacity is between five and nine “blocks’ of information. If more information is stored in short-term memory than this number of items, the items are displaced and cannot be moved to the long-term memory store or retrieved.Jacobs (1887) supports Miller’s theory. In the study, participants recalled a series of digits/letters. The sequence of letters and numbers was gradually increased throughout the experiment. The results showed that participants could recall an average of 7.3 letters and 9.3 digits (suggesting participants were better at remembering numbers).
| Encoding | Duration | Capacity |
| Mostly acoustic | Less than 20 seconds | 7+/-2 chunks |
Information needs to be encoded acoustically to ensure it is stored in the short-term memory store. We can do this by repeatedly saying the information out loud.
Short-term memory is information with limited capacity and available for a limited time.
The duration of short-term memory is generally believed to be about 15-30 seconds.
We need to elaborately rehearse information to transfer memories from short-term to long-term memories.
Psychologists have designed several research techniques to measure short term memory. For example, Peterson and Peterson (1959) presented participants with trigrams and gave them a distraction task to prevent rehearsal of the stimuli. The purpose of the distraction task was to prevent the information from being moved and processed in the long-term memory store.
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