Memory

• One of the main limitations of memory research is that students are used as participants. For example Bahrick’s duration of LTM study used American students as participants. However the findings of the study may not be applicable towards UK students because there is a limited culture this means that the results cannot generalise to all participants.
• Another main limitation of memory research is that students are used as participants for example Peterson + Peterson used psychology students and therefore they were able to be display demand characteristics by changing their behaviour to assist the experimenter therefore we cannot generalise the findings from psychology students to all populations so it limits the usefulness of the findings.
• Another limitation of memory research is that the tasks are artificial. The research uses meaningless stimuli that does not reflect the way we use our memories is everyday life. Peterson +Peterson asked participants to recall constant syllables which are not reflective to everyday life. 

  Therefore lacking in external validity this suggests that the findings from memory studies have limited application 

  However  in real life we do remember meaningless things like phone numbers so this questions to the extent that the study is not totally irrelevant. 
• Alternatively Bahrick’s research used real life meaningful memories by asking participants to recall people from their graduating class. This means that the findings are more applicable.
• A limitation of the capacity of STM is that it does not consider individual differences. For example Jacobs found that the recall of the digit span technique increased with age. 8 year olds could recall 6.6 whereas 19 year olds could recall 8.6. The conclusion is that the STM capacity being 7+-2 is different with age therefore the results cannot be generalised with the entire population. 
• One strength of Bahrick  et et al study  that it has higher external validity , research studied real life meaningful memories whilst when studies on LTM have been conducted with meaningless pictures to be remembered recall rates were lower suggest there’s is an importance when information is meaningful, Although the issue of using real life research is that cofounding variables are not controlled so Bahricks ppts may have looked at their yearbook photos and rehearse memories over the years