Peterson and Peterson 1959

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PETERSON AND PETERSON 1959

Aim: To show the duration of the STM

Method:

Shown nonsense trigrams eg CVT.

Asked to recall after 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds (interference task

Results:

After 3 seconds recall was about 80% correct

After 18 seconds recall was about 10% correct

Conclusion: When rehearsal is prevented very little stay in the STM for more than 18 seconds

Evaluation:

Likely to be reliable

Laboratory experiment

Nonsense trig-rams are artificial -> lacks ecological validity

Meaningful or real life memories last longer in STM

Only 1 type of stimulus used

Confusion from previous trigrams

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