Duration

Question 1

What does duration mean?

Answer 1

Duration refers to the amount of time information is stored.

Question 2

What is the duration of STM?

Answer 2

18-30 seconds

Question 3

What is the duration of LTM?

Answer 3

Potentially unlimited

Question 4

Describe Peterson&Petersons research into capacity of STM.

Answer 4

1. P&P asked 24 students to listen to a consonant triagram,
2. After hearing the triagram they were asked to immediately count backwards in 3’s from a number in order to prevent rehearsal
3. They were asked to recall the string of letters at 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds.
4. At 3s recall was 90% accurate decreasing to 2% accuracy at 10s.

Question 5

Describe Bahrick et als research into the duration of LTM.

Answer 5

1. Bahrick et al asked 392 participants aged 17-74 to free recall (name) old class mates from their highschool.
   2 . They were then given 50 photos and asked if they could recognise any of their class mates from them.
2. After 15 years, free recall was 60% accurate , and after 48 years it dropped to 30%
3. Recognition from photographs was around 90% accurate after 15 years, dropping down to 70% after 48 years.
4. This shows even if information cannot be retrieved in a moment doesn’t mean it is not still stored.