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Duration studies - Coggle Diagram

- - - - 3 second interval - participants recalled 80% correctly
        
        6 second interval - participants recalled 50% correctly
        
        18 second interval - participants recalled 10% correctly.
  - - - Good control of variables - because of the laboratory setting.
    - - Low ecological validity - because of the artificial set-up.
      - Lacking variety of stimulus - no data on whether the type of stimulus affects the duration of the short term-memory.
- - - - Free recall
        
        Participants were asked to simply list the names of ex-classmates
        
        They were given no prompts or material to help them.
      - Photo-recognition
        
        The participants were asked to recalled the names of people from their photographs from their class yearbook.
        
        No list of names was given
      - `Name-recognition
        
        The participants were asked to match the names of people to their photograph
      - Results
        
        The results showed that free recall declined the most within 30 years, whereas name-recognition maintained a higher accuracy.
        
        15 years after graduation
        
        There was 90% accuracy for the name-recognition test.
        
        60% accuracy for the free recall test.
        
        This was true even for large class sizes.
        
        30 years after graduation
        
        There was only 30% accuracy for free recall.
        
        48 years after graduation
        
        Name-recognition was 80% accurate
        
        Photo-recognition was 40% accurate.
        
        Conclusions
        
        Overall, through the years recognition was more accurate than recall.
        
        They concluded that the information is stored in the long-term memory but the information may be difficult to retrieve.
        
        The forgetting process is very slow (compared to other studies which only examined memory in a laboratory setting).
        
        Bahrick et al attribute the slowness of forgetting to practice and the effect of overlearning.
        
        Overlearning
        
        People during high school spend a lot of time learning other peoples names and practising them.
        
        In other words, names that are well practised are difficult to forget.
        
        This information is meaningful to the participants. Perhaps more so than, for example, other knowledge learnt during the same time period.
        
        Evaluation
        
        High ecological validity - field experiment, longitudinal study and everyday skill tested (mundane realism).
        
        Results cannot be generalised to other types of information which people may hold in their long-term memory.
        
        Extraneous variables - researches couldn't control how much contact participants had with each other or with ex classmates.