Duration of memory - Lesson 2

Question 1

Define rehearsal

Answer 1

a way of transferring info into LTM

Question 2

Peterson and Peterson: studies duration of STM using 24 university students. Results:

Answer 2

Ppts remembered 90% with a 3 second interval, but only 2% after 18 secs interval.

Question 3

What do Peterson’s results suggest about duration of STM?

Answer 3

Recall got progressively worse as the delay grew longer

Question 4

Positive evaluations for Petersons

Answer 4

Showed that forgetting in STM can happen if info isn’t rehearsed.
Showed duration of STM is 18secs.
Highly controlled = limited effect of extraneous variables.

Question 5

Negative evaluations for Petersons:

Answer 5

Used artificial stimuli therefore they had no personal meaning to participants - lacked mundane realism.
May not be able to generalise findings to a different kind of memory task. Therefore lacks external validity.
Relatively small sample of students.