Bahrick (1975)

• Duration of LTM - Bahrick et al (1975) AIM:

  Bahrick et al (1975) used high-school yearbooks to test the long-term memories of ex-students.
• Bahrick et at (1975) PROCEDURE:

  Asked to free recall as many names as they could of their old classmates.

  Asked to identify photographs of their classmates mixed with other photographs of non-classmates.

  Asked whether they recognised the names of their classmates when mixed in with random names.

  Asked to put names to faces.
• Bahrick et al (1975) FINDINGS:

  In tests of recall, participants were 20% accurate after 47 years.

  In tests of recognition, participants were 90% accurate after 20 years and 60% accurate after 47 years.
• Bahrick et al (1975) CONCLUSIONS:

  They found that recognition was better than recall memory, presumably because people do not need to search for the information, merely whether they have seen it before.
• Evidence of the Multi-Store Model (MSM): compare Bahrick et al (1975) with Peterson and Peterson’s (1959) study of short-term memory. This study suggests that there is a significant difference between the two models in terms of duration. This supports the multi-store model because it suggests that they are distinct systems.