bahrick's experiment 1975

• aim


  to study long term memories in a real life setting
• bahrick asked pps to remember names of ex classmates from high school 15 years after they left and then 48 years after
• in free recall task, 392 people asked to list named of their ex classmates
• in photo recognition task, pps were shown photos of their ex classmates and asked if they could remember names
• in name recognition task, participants were given names of ex classmates and asked to find matching photographs
• when Bahrick tested participants recall 15 years after they left school, they were 60% accurate
• when he tested their free recall 48 years after they left school, participants were 30% accurate
• in the recognition task, 15 years after leaving school, their accuracy was 90%
• 48 years after leaving school the recognition accuracy dropped to 80%
• bahrick concluded that long-term memory store can store things for a very long duration
• he also concluded that recognition memory is better than our recall memory accuracy