Memory - Duration - Peterson and Peterson

Question 1

Long term or Short term ?

Answer 1

Short term memory

Question 2

Aim ?

Answer 2

how long information remains in short term memory.

Question 3

who ?

Answer 3

Peterson and Peterson

Question 4

when?

Answer 4

1959

Question 5

Participants?

Answer 5

24 Undergraduate students

Question 6

How many trials did each participant take part in ?

Answer 6

8

Question 7

Procedure ?

Answer 7

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

Question 8

How often were the Trigrams recalled ?

Answer 8

recalled after intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds

Question 9

what is a trigram ?

Answer 9

A trigram are meaningless three consonant syllables)

Question 10

How did they prevent rehearsal ?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

Findings

Answer 11

There was a rapid increase in forgetting as the time delay increased

Question 12

Findings after 3 seconds?

Answer 12

80% of trigrams were recalled correctly

Question 13

Findings after 6 seconds?

Answer 13

50% of the trigrams were recalled correctly.

Question 14

Findings after 18 seconds?

Answer 14

less than 10% of trigrams were recalled correctly.

Question 15

Conclusion

Answer 15

information in the short term memory is lost quickly when there is little or no opportunity to rehearse it.

Question 16

why is using fixed timings for participants a strength ?

Answer 16

A controlled variable to get more reliable results

Question 17

why is eliminating noise and other factors a strength ?

Answer 17

controlled extraneous variables.
Cause and effect relationship.
wanted to see if rehearsal affected memory recall so they controlled things like noise.

Question 18

why is standardised procedures a strength ?

Answer 18

because it is repeatable - added results which you can meta-analyse it to make it more generalisable.

Question 19

why is a non everyday test a weakness ?

Answer 19

this is not how memory is tested in everyday life.

not realistic - lacked mundane realism

Question 20

why does it lack ecological validity ?

Answer 20

It was in a lab

participants behaviour may not be natural and this could lead to ungeneralizable results.

Question 21

why is using psychology students a weakness ?

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

what type of experiment was this ?

Answer 22

A lab experiment.