Memory - Duration - Peterson and Peterson Flashcards
Long term or Short term ?
Short term memory
Aim ?
how long information remains in short term memory.
who ?
Peterson and Peterson
when?
1959
Participants?
24 Undergraduate students
How many trials did each participant take part in ?
8
Procedure ?
Had to recall trigrams.
Trigrams were presented one at a time and had to be recalled after intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds
How often were the Trigrams recalled ?
recalled after intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds
what is a trigram ?
A trigram are meaningless three consonant syllables)
How did they prevent rehearsal ?
The rehearsal was prevented because they had the participants count backwards in threes or fours from a specified random number until they saw a red light appear.
Findings
There was a rapid increase in forgetting as the time delay increased
Findings after 3 seconds?
80% of trigrams were recalled correctly
Findings after 6 seconds?
50% of the trigrams were recalled correctly.
Findings after 18 seconds?
less than 10% of trigrams were recalled correctly.
Conclusion
information in the short term memory is lost quickly when there is little or no opportunity to rehearse it.
why is using fixed timings for participants a strength ?
A controlled variable to get more reliable results
why is eliminating noise and other factors a strength ?
controlled extraneous variables.
Cause and effect relationship.
wanted to see if rehearsal affected memory recall so they controlled things like noise.
why is standardised procedures a strength ?
because it is repeatable - added results which you can meta-analyse it to make it more generalisable.
why is a non everyday test a weakness ?
this is not how memory is tested in everyday life.
not realistic - lacked mundane realism
why does it lack ecological validity ?
It was in a lab
participants behaviour may not be natural and this could lead to ungeneralizable results.
why is using psychology students a weakness ?
Had already studied memory, therefore knew what was happening and knew what was expected of them. May have changed their behaviour based on what they thought was expected.
what type of experiment was this ?
A lab experiment.
