Duration

• What are the strengths of duration?

  1. Ecological validity
• What are the limitations of duration?

  1. Methodological issues
• Strength (duration) = ecological validity

  • Bahrick et al. (1975) study has high external validity
  • Researchers investigated real-life, meaningful memories (peoples’ names and faces)
  • When studies of LTM were conducted with meaningless pictures, recall rates were lower
  • Thus, Bahrick et al.’s findings reflect a more ‘real’ estimate of duration of LTM as they implemented stimuli that depicts real-life memories
  • Findings can therefore be applied to everyday human life
• Limitation (duration) = methodological issues

  • Peterson and Peterson (1959) used a sample of 24 psychology students
  • One issue is that the nature of their psychological education may mean they are familiar with partaking in research and therefore may have demonstrated demand characteristics to assist the experimenter
  • The research also utilised artificial materials as they were asked to recall nonsense syllables, which is unlike memory in everyday life
  • These findings can’t be applied to everyday examples of memory due to the lack of external validity