Question

To make a long-distance call, tom has to dial an unfamiliar phone number. he looks up the number but may have trouble retaining it. this best illustrates the limited capacity of _____ memory.

Answer 1

The correct answer is short-term memory.

Short-term memory (STM) refers to our ability and capacity for retaining a small amount of information for a short period of time. Remembering an unfamiliar phone number entails the use of our STM. However, a phone number is difficult to retain in our STM because STM has a digit span of approximately seven units. This means that our STM can hold around seven digits of a phone number and not all (10+) of them.