Cognitive Psychology: Memory

Cognitive Psychology: Memory

1. STM study: Lloyd and Margaret Peterson (1959) They conducted a study on the duration of STM. They tested on 24 students attending the university they worked at. The experimenter said a consonant syllable to the participant followed by a 3 digit number (e.g: WRT 303). The consonant syllable was selected to have no meaning. After hearing this, the participant had to count back from the number in 3s or 4s until told to stop. They then had to recall the nonsense syllable. The Peterson’s found that participants remember about 90% when there was only a 3-second interval and about 2% when there was an 18-second interval. This suggests that when rehearsal is prevented, STM lasts about 20 seconds at most.

2. STM, LTM and Duration Short-term memories don’t last very long but can be maintained in the short-term memory by repetition. Verbal rehearsals such as saying things over to yourself are a good way to keep a memory active and excessive rehearsal can make the memory become long- term. Long- term memory refers to memories that last anywhere from 2hours to 100 years plus.