Peterson and Peterson (1959) Short-term Retention of Individual Verbal Items

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

to test the duration of short-term memory

Question 2

procedure

Answer 2

• 24 students
  1) student asked to repeat out loud a trigram that they heard
  2)immediately afterwards they were asked to say out loud a three-digit number read to them by the experimenter
  3) then count backwards in three or fours from that number
  4) when signaled by a red light, each student had to recall the trigram eight times
  5) they did this with time delays: 3,6,9…18 seconds
  6) procedure was repeated 48 times using different trigrams

Question 3

Results

Answer 3

1) The longer each student had to count backwards the less able they were to accurately recall the trigram
2) after 3 seconds- remembered over 80% of the trigrams correctly
3) after 18 seconds- remembered less than 10% of trigrams correctly

Question 4

conclusion

Answer 4

information held in our short-term memory fades rapidly and only 10% could be recalled after 18 seconds.

Question 5

One strength of the study

Answer 5

1) scientific and standardized procedure, Hugh reliability and can be replicated easily
2

Question 6

3 weaknesses of the study

Answer 6

1) participants asked to recall trigrams which is an artificial task therefore the procedure lacked mundane realism
2) study used psychology students who were familiar with the topic, therefore there is a high chance of participants displaying demand characteristics which decreases the validity of the results
3) this study is a lab experiment, therefore lacks ecological validity