Memory

Memory

1. Duration

   • How long a memory lasts
   • Peterson and Peterson
     • Investigated the duration of STM
     • Participants were shown nonsense trigrams and were asked to recall them after either 3, 6,9,12, 15 or 18 seconds
     • During the pause they were asked to count backward sin 3s from a given number in order to prevent them from repeating the letters to themselves.
     • Results: After 3 seconds, participants could recall 80% of trigrams correctly and after 18 seconds, only about 10% were recalled correctly.
     • Conclusion: When rehearsal is prevented, very little can stay in the STM for longer than about 18 seconds.
     • Evaluation: Strengths= Laboratory experiment, objective, nomothetic. Weaknesses= ecological validity, artificial, only one type of stimulus, use of different trigrams, confusion.
   • Bahrick

2. Capacity

   • How much can be held in the memory

3. Encoding

   • Transferring information into code, creating a 'trace'.