When I teach the unit on memory in Intro Psych, I start out with a 10-item
quiz that has items illustrating short-term memory, long-term memory, and
various phenomena like encoding failure and so forth. The short-term memory
items are strings of digits - one string is meaningless, another is a string
of dates like 177614921999, to illustrate chunking. I also use phone numbers
to illustrate STM. Later when we get more into the topic, I use memory for
items on a shopping list as another example. You could also use memory for
names of new people met at a party or meeting. I could probably think of more
but those were the first thoughts in response to your post.
Nathalie Cote
Belmont Abbey College
> my usual explanation of Short term memory is the standard:
> it is a limited capacity system and last for about 30 seconds.
> The example of the limited capacity given is that of the 7 digit
> telephone number.
> I am getting tired of citing the telephone number as an example.
> What other examples of limited STM capacity do other tipsters give?
> Btw,I suspect with the telephone companies now thinking of going
> to a 10 digit telephone number,the 7 digit example may not be
> concurrently valid.
>
> Michael Sylvester
> Daytona Beach,Florida
