-1Peterson and Peterson (1959)

Duration in Short-Term Memory

Aims: Peterson and Peterson aimed to study how long information remains in short-
term memory. They aimed to test the hypothesis that information which is
not rehearsed is lost quickly from short-term memory.

Procedure: Participants were presented with trigrams consisting of three consonants (e.g.
hwr, jrq, klp). Recall of these trigrams was required after a delay of 3, 6, 9
12, 15, or 18 seconds. Between the presentation of the trigram and the time
asked to recall it participants were asked to count backwards in threes from a
random 3-digit number (e.g. 625, 622, 619). This was done to prevent
rehearsal of the trigram. Recall had to be 100% accurate and in the
correct order to count. Participants were tested repeatedly with the various time
delays. The effect of time delay on memory was assessed in terms of the
number of trigrams correctly recalled.

Findings: There was a rapid increase in forgetting as the time delay increased. After 3
seconds 80% of the trigrams were recalled correctly. After 6 seconds this
fell to 50%. After 18 seconds less than 10% of the trigrams were recalled
correctly. Peterson and Peterson found that very little information
remained in the short- term memory for more than 18 seconds.

Conclusions: Information held in the short-term memory is lost quickly when there is little or no
opportunity to rehearse it.

Criticisms: Peterson and Peterson’s study lacks mundane realism and external validity as
they used very artificial stimuli. They also only considered short-term
memory duration for one type of stimuli. They did not provide information
about other types of stimuli such as pictures and melodies.