Duration of the STM Flashcards
What is duration?
How long something lasts.
What is the Brown-Peterson technique?
A cognitive exercise purposed for testing the limits of working memory duration, ususally using trigrams.
When did Peterson and Peterson complete their trigram study?
1959.
What did Peterson and Peterson used to measure STM duration in their 1959 study?
The Brown-Peterson technique.
What type of experiment was Peterson and Peterson’s 1959 study?
A laboratory experiment.
How many PPs took part in Peterson and Peterson’s study?
24.
Outline the general procedure of Peterson and Peterson’s 1959 study.
24 participants were presented with a trigram that had three consonants (e.g. HDG, QMK).
They were told they would be asked to recall these in the correct order (serial order).
They were required to recall the trigrams after a delay of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.
Recall had to be 100% accurate and in the correct order to be deemed ‘correct’.
Experimenters assessed the number of trigrams recalled as a result of the time delay.
What were the 4 findings from Peterson and Peterson’s 1959 study?
There was a rapid increase in forgetting from STM as time delay increased.
After 3 seconds, 80% of trigrams were recalled.
After 6 seconds, 50% of trigrams were recalled.
After 18 seconds, less than 10% of trigrams were recalled.
What was concluded from Peterson and Peterson’s 1959 study?
STM duration is short (about 18-20 seconds).
STM is distinct from LTM because forgetting is enormously faster from STM than LTM.
Outline three evaluative points from Peterson and Peterson’s 1959 study.
Good at measuring the effect of no rehearsal on STM duration.
Easy to replicate because of a controlled environment.
Control over confounding variables.
Lacks mundane realism and external validity, as recall in real world environment would not be this objective and controlled.
Participants were given many trails with different trigrams so they could have become confused.
Only used one type of stimulus was used - what about pictures? Songs? Smells?
