Peterson and Peterson 1959 duration of stm
Aim: To investigate the duration of STM
Method:Participants were presented with sets of nonsense trigrams. They were asked to recall them either after 3, 5, 8 ,11 ,15 or 18 seconds. During this pause participants were presented with an interference task - used to prevent rehersal of the trigrams.
Results: The results showed that after 3 seconds, 80% of participants were able to recall. However after 18 seconds, only 10% could be recalled accurately.
Conclusion: When rehersal is prevented, very little information can be stored in stm for longer than 18 seconds.
Evaluation: The experiment was artificla and lack ecological validity. If the information presented had been more semantic, stm could have shown to have an even greater capacity. Only one type of stimulus was used. the duration of stm may depend on the type of stimulus used. Also, ppts were presented with several trigrams. This may have confused some, meaning that only the first trigram was realistically trialled.
- Created by: FelixShaw
- Created on: 23-09-13 19:22
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