Peterson And Peterson Flashcards
(13 cards)
What type of experiment was it?
Lab experiment
Sample size?
24 psychology students
What university?
University of Indiana
What was their findings?
Short term memory has a limited duration when rehearsal is limited- supports MSM theory
What did they do?
Showed ppts meaningless 3 letter trigrams
Asked ppts to recall the trigrams after a delay of 3-18 seconds
Had ppts to count backwards during the delay to prevent rehearsal
What was the delay?
3-18 seconds
What is the Brown Peterson technique?
Blocks rehearsal by getting ppts to do an interference e.g. counting backwards in threes
What were their findings?
Recall of the trigrams dropped rapidly as the delay increased
What happened after a 3 second delay?
PPTS could recall only 80% of the trigrams
What happened after 18 seconds?
PPTS could only recall 10% of the trigrams
What do their findings mean?
Information in STM is quickly lost if it is not rehearsed
STM has limited capacity and duration
AO3: ecological validity?
Low ecological validity- asked to recall 3 letter trigrams
Artificial task and lacks mundane realism
Hard to apply findings to real life
AO3: psychology students?
May have come across the model before- may have developed demand characteristics
Individual differences- some may have already learnt ways to remember more
