Duration of STM STARTER: Quick Quiz – 2 minutes Swap papers – Mark (as a class) Hand back – How did you do? What do you need to go over?
Experiment I am going to show you a trigram (3 consonants), I want you to look at them and then count backwards in 5s from the number I give you. I will then ask you to write the trigram down, after a timed period.
CPW
NGV
RPW
TMK
FGH
TWY
LFR
MJG
CXZ
PDW
SBQ
Class Graph Recall interval in seconds Percentage of trigrams correctly recalled
Peterson and Peterson (1959) Using your text books on p. 83 complete the table in your booklet. How do our results compare to theirs?
Peterson and Peterson 1959 Aim: To investigate the duration of short-term memory. Procedure: A lab experiment was conducted in which 24 participants (psychology students) had to recall trigrams (meaningless three-consonant syllables, e.g. TGH). To prevent rehearsal participants were asked to count backwards in threes or fours from a specified random number until they saw a red light appear. This is known as the Brown Peterson technique. Participants were asked to recall trigrams after intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds. Results: The longer the interval delay the less trigrams were recalled. Participants were able to recall 80% of trigrams after a 3 seconds delay. However, after 18 seconds less than 10% of trigrams were recalled correctly. Conclusion: Short-term memory has a limited duration when rehearsal is prevented. It is thought that this information is lost from short-term memory from trace decay.
Factors affecting the duration of STM Read through the texts on p Summarise each factor into one sentence, add to the page in your booklet
Factors affection duration Rehearsal – Helps things stay longer in the STM, without rehearsal it is quickly lost Deliberate intention to recall – Unless we are trying to remember the information it is lost within seconds Amount of info to be retained – as with capacity, it is the number of chunks that are important not the number of letters.
Short Term Memory Exam Questions Outline and evaluate research into the nature of short-term memory (12 marks)
Essay Plan using Assessment Objectives AO1 Knowledge and Understanding - OUTLINE AO2 Application of Knowledge - EVALUATE ENCODING CAPACITY DURATION
Homework Complete essay on STM To be handed in Monday 22/09/14 or Wednesday 24/09/14