Memory key case studies

• Aim: to see if memory recall of a story is affected by schema due to previous knowledge
• Participants- war of the ghosts 


  • 20 British participants who were not told the aim of the study
  • Bartlett gave them an unknown story called "war of the gnosis" that they could only read twice
• Procedure


  Participants were asked to recall the story 15 mins after, 1 hour later, and even 10 years later
• Strengths


  • Study was generalizable as both males and females were used
• Weaknesses


  • Study has low ecological validity as it does not reflect everyday memory recall of real events
• Peterson + Peterson (1959) - STM memory


  Aim: to test the duration of the short-term memory store
• Procedure


  24 psychology students were read a trigram to remember, then asked to count backwards in 3s or 4s (interference task), then asked to recall the trigram after 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds
• Strengths


  • Study is applicable as it supports the multi-store model of memory's claim
• Weaknesses


  • Only used 24 students, lacking generalizability as it may not reflect other people's memory
• Who proposed the study which aimed to investigate the duration of the memory store?

  peterson and Peterson
• Who proposed the study which aimed to investigate schemas?

  Bartlett