APFCC+-+Peterson+and+Peterson

APFCC: Peterson and Peterson

 * Theorist: ** Peterson and Peterson
 * Study of: ** Short term memory duration without rehearsal.
 * Year: ** 1959

To test the hypothesis that information can only be held in the short term memory for duration of 20 seconds without rehearsal.
 * Aim: **

The participants were to remember a single nonsense syllable of three constantans. The participants were also given an interference task (counting backwards in threes from a randomly chosen three digit number). The participants were required to be 100% correct in there recall for the answer to be considered correct.
 * Procedures: **

Recall decreased steadily between 3 and 18 seconds. This suggested that the duration of short term memory is not much more than 18 seconds.
 * Findings: **

The duration of STM is not much more than 18 seconds without rehearsal. Therefore, without rehearsal information stored in the STM is quickly lost without rehearsal. This supports the hypothesis that short term memory has a duration of 20 seconds. It was also found that STM is different from long term memory because LTM has a much longer duration.
 * Conclusion: **

The study has low ecological validity and cannot be generalized because the experiment method cannot be applied to everyday life. The trigrams the participants were required to remember were not meaningful and therefore may not be remembered well as something that has meaning.
 * Criticisms: **