Memory - Outline findings and/or conclusions of research into the duration for short term memory
PSYCHOLOGY ASSIGNMENT
MEMORY
- Outline findings and/or conclusions of research into the duration for short term memory.
This experiment was demonstrated by Peterson and Peterson (1959). Participants of the experiment were shown a trigram (BGM or VRW). Then the participants were asked toto count backwards in threes to stop them thinking about the letters. After intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12 and 18 seconds, participants were asked to recall the trigram.
They found that participants were able to recall 80 per cent of the trigrams after 3 second intervals. Further on, fewer trigrams were recalled as the time interval lengthened. After 18 seconds, fewer than 10 per cent of the trigrams were recalled correctly. Peterson and Peterson concluded that items disappear from Short term memory (STM) only when rehearsal is prevented. Therefore Decay is the mechanism for forgetting in Short Term Memory.
- Outline one explanation of Forgetting In LTM and give one criticism of this explanation.
Forgetting might be caused by the Interference Theory. It was assumed that one set of learning interferes with another and wipes out the memory. Interference Theory has been tested by means of Paired-associate learning. The participants are initially presented with several pairs of words (e.g. cat-tree). The first word in each pair (cat) is known as the stimulus term, and the second word is known as the response term (tree). Learning continues until the participants can recall each response term when presented with the stimulus. Then the participants learn a second list of paired associates. There are 2 types of interference, Proactive and Retroactive. Proactive is when past experiences interfere with current recall. Participants recall is tested for the second list of paired associates. Performance of the experimental group (who learned both lists) is compared with the control group (who learned only the second list). Proactive Interference should mean that the experimental group do less well that the control group. Retroactive is when later learning interferes with earlier learning. This would mean that the experimental group does less well. There is strong evidence for both proactive and retroactive interference when the same stimulus terms are used. However little pro and retroactive interference is found when the stimulus words in both the lists are different.
