Psychology Internal Assessment

The effect of retention interval on the number of trigrams recalled

Submitted by:jwp521

Group members: jwp521, hlp386

Date of submission: March 2022

Examination session: May 2022

Word count:2157

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Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 3

Exploration ................................................................................................................................ 5

Analysis...................................................................................................................................... 7

Evaluation ............................................................................................................................... 10

Works cited .............................................................................................................................. 12

Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................................... 14

Appendix 2 ............................................................................................................................... 15

Appendix 3 ............................................................................................................................... 16

Appendix 4 ............................................................................................................................... 17

Appendix 5 ............................................................................................................................... 18

Appendix 6 ............................................................................................................................... 19

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Introduction

There are multiple explanations for the decay in memory. Since the beginning of time,

cognitive researchers have been interested in how memory is stored and retrieved. According

to the Multi-Store Memory model (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968, pg 4), the basic structural

division of the memory system has three components- sensory memory, short term memory

and long-term memory. Newly learned information enters the short-term memory store and it

essentially acts as a rehearsal buffer where information is held while it is rehearsed for long-

term storage, however since it has finite capacity overloading this type of store is most likely

a reason for forgetting. The Multi-Store Memory model states that short-term memory can

only be held for a period of 15-30 seconds unless it is rehearsed, after this the information

decays. Brown’s (1958, page 729-750) theory is important in the conceptualization of the

Multi-Store Memory model as it can help us understand the fundamental difference between

long-term memory and short-term memory. Brown established that time-based explanations

of forgetting can account for forgetting information over short periods of time as well as

short-term memory capacity. According to Brown, memory decay can only be noticed when

rehearsal is blocked.

This was further demonstrated by Peterson and Peterson (1959, page 193-198) who

achieved similar results to Brown while using a more dynamic experimental design. Instead

of utilizing the same retention interval after trigrams were presented, they decided to compare

the effect of different durations of retention intervals on the recall of trigrams. This study

further investigated the decay in memory as the time of rehearsal was reduced, the retention

intervals were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18 seconds in length. Participants were required to memorize

trigrams while they counted backward during the interval periods given by the experimenter

and then recall the trigrams. This manipulation in time interval demonstrated Brown’s decay

hypothesis, when rehearsal was blocked (by the participants counting backward), the recall of

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the trigrams became significantly worse. The findings demonstrated that after the 3 second

interval, participants were able to remember 80% of the trigrams correctly, but this dropped

to only 10% after the 18 second interval. They concluded that the ability of the participants to

recall trigrams decreased logarithmically with increased retention time.

This theory is worth studying as the findings of this experiment will help us

understand why we tend to forget things that have not been rehearsed thoroughly and develop

better strategies to improve our memory retention. These strategies can be applied widely

whether it be in examinations, classrooms, eyewitness testimonies or even in a grocery store.

This study is a simple replication of Peterson and Peterson (1959, page 193-198).

Based on the findings of the original experiment, the aim of this experiment is to investigate

the decay in memory through the recall of trigrams in the short-term memory store as a result

of increased retention time from 3 or 18 seconds among teenagers.

The independent variable of this experiment is the duration of retention time 3 or 18

seconds and the dependent variable is the number of trigrams recalled by the participants

from the original list.

Alternate hypothesis: There will be significant decrease in the number of trigrams recalled

by the participants when the duration of the retention time is increased from 3 to 18 seconds

Null hypothesis: There will be no significant difference in the number of trigrams recalled

by the participants when the duration of the retention time is increased from 3 to 18 seconds

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Exploration

This experiment used a repeated samples design, this research design involves

multiple measures of the number of trigrams recalled taken on the same participants. The

independent variable for the experiment is the duration of the retention of 3 and 18 seconds

and the dependent variable is the number of trigrams recalled by the participants. As the

experiment aimed to measure how the duration of the retention time affects the recall of

trigrams, it required us to use the same experimental design where the same participants took

part in both the 3 second and 18 seconds retention interval conditions. Using this design

allowed the researchers to compare the recall of the trigrams during the two retention

intervals of 3 or 18 seconds.

Self-selected sampling was used as it guaranteed the easy selection of the sample.

Social media was used to inform participants about the conduction of the experiment and

students could decide if they wanted to be part of the experiment. Self-selected sampling

ensured that all participants could take part on their own accord and had an interest in taking

part in the experiment. It was ensured that the sample group had an equal number of males

and females. They were within the age group of 16-20 to eliminate age and gender as

confounding variables. There were a total of 20 participants in our sample group. The sample

was made up of students attending a private school in India and had English as their first

language. The school runs the IB programme and has about 90 students. This sample was

selected as informed consent was not needed and they were more motivated as they

understood the importance of internal assessments.

The main material used in the experiment was the list of trigrams. The original list of

trigrams utilised in the Peterson and Peterson study was not easily available, so we generated

a list of random 3 letter trigrams (refer to appendix 4) which did not have meaning. We

randomly drew 5 trigrams from a hat for each of the trials of 3 or 18 seconds. In the original
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experiment, Peterson and Peterson utilised 6 intervals. However, since IB allows only two

IVs, this experiment will only take into consideration the first and the last interval period of 3

and 18 seconds respectively.

Certain confounding variables were controlled so it could be determined if the

dependent variable was not affected by any other factor other than the independent variable.

Noise could act as a potential confounding variable, since this experiment was conducted

online, we could not completely ensure that they were sitting in a quiet room. However to

control this all participants were asked to sit in a quiet room during the standardized

instructions. Since the experiment was conducted online, we needed to ensure that the

internet connection from both the participant’s and experimenters’ sides was good to prevent

any discontinuity in the trials and all participants were asked to raise their hands in order to

prevent copying during the presentation. It was also ensured that the slides were presented for

a duration of 2 seconds, the interval time was exactly 3 and 18 seconds and the time given for

writing was 60 seconds, this would help maintain continuity throughout the experiment, thus

controlling for confounding variables.

To begin, the participants were asked to sign a letter of consent (see appendix 2) and

then standardized instructions (see appendix 1) were read to the group. All participants were

shown a list of 5 trigrams (refer to appendix 4) each for a duration of 2 seconds, this was kept

constant throughout the experiment to help maintain continuity. Both the trials were

conducted on the same day. For the first trial the participants had a retention interval of 3

seconds and for the second trial the participants had a retention interval of 18 seconds.

Participants were given a distractor task during each of the retention intervals. During the

distractor task participants had to count backwards from a specific number. It was ensured

that participants kept their hands up during the distractor task so the experimenter could make

sure no one was copying. After this, participants were given 30 seconds in both the trials to
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recollect as many trigrams as they could. After the data was collected, all the participants

were debriefed on the experiment (see appendix 3)

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Analysis

Descriptive statistics

In order to analyse the data, I looked at both the mean and standard deviation

Mean and standard deviation:

Condition 1(3 seconds) Condition 2(18 seconds)

Mean 3.5 1.35

Standard deviation 0.889 0.875

As it can be seen from the raw data (appendix 5), there were no extreme outliers in

the dataset is found. Measuring the mean helps minimize error and obtain an average of the

data received. In condition 1(3 seconds retention time), the sample group remembered an

average of 3.5 words while in condition 2 (18 seconds retention time), the sample

remembered an average of 1.35 words. This shows that there was a significant decrease in

trigrams recalled in the 18-second retention condition in comparison to the 3-second retention

condition. The standard deviation was calculated as it is the best measure of dispersion using

the mean. The variability from the mean is almost constant in both the conditions, making the

data comparable. The data appears to indicate that the duration of retention played a

significant role in determining how many trigrams were recalled by the participants and

supports the alternate hypothesis that predicted the same.

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Inferential statistics

The Wilcoxon Signed-rank test (appendix 6) computed the significance for the

repeated measures design and describes the data with great accuracy as it focuses on the

results of a small sample size. The test indicated that the results are significant at a level of

significance of 0.05 because the W value of 0 was lower than the critical value of 41, A p-

value of 0.00015 was obtained, results are significant at p0.05. Therefore, the null

hypothesis can be rejected and the alternate hypothesis can be accepted. Therefore, causation

or a cause and effect can be determined stating that for a higher retention time, the number of

trigrams recalled is significantly lower.

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Evaluation

As it can be seen by the results stated, the results are significant at p0.05 and

therefore the alternate hypothesis was accepted. We were able to support the findings of

Peterson and Peterson (1959, page 193-198) and the prediction that increased retention time

can influence the number of trigrams recalled. The original study could have gotten more

accurate results as they experimented with each participant individually and 8 times for each

time interval. This experiment supports the Multi-store memory model and Brown’s decay

theory and shows how when rehearsal was blocked by the distractor task, the number of

trigrams recalled are much lower.

A strength of the design was using respected measures design which involves

multiple measure of the number of trigrams recalled taken on the same participants which

helped reduce participant variability. A limitation of this design is order effects, participants

would know what to do when seeing the trigrams in the second condition (18-second

retention interval). To combat order effects, a potential modification would be to use

counterbalancing, alternating the order in which participants perform in different conditions

of an experiment can help balance out the results.

One of the limitations of our sample was the use of self- selected sampling. Since

self-selected sampling was used, all individuals were more confident about their memory

abilities, which makes it harder to generalize the findings. Using only native English speakers

helped eliminate a confounding variable and acted as a strength for the experiment. However,

this could highlight another confounding variable which is the lack of representativeness. It

becomes very hard to generalize our findings as the sample was made of students only from

the age of 16-20. Although there were a few more girls in the sample of 20 students, it was

mostly gender-balanced and gender did not act as a confounding variable. A potential

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modification would be to recruit older participants or participants with lower memory

capabilities and see if they demonstrate the same results.

Strengths in the procedure exist, the constant pace at which the slide containing the

trigrams changes was dictated by PowerPoint to avoid human error. The participants did not

know the aim and thus demand characteristics did not arise. The instructions were clear and

the participants were asked if they were clear with the instructions before we conducted the

experiment. It was shown that all participants understood the procedure judging by their

performance. However, a limitation could be the use of trigrams in the task as it brought

down the ecological validity as people are not asked to remember trigrams in their daily lives.

Potential modifications would include the use of a more realistic context, using words or

phone numbers instead of trigrams to test the duration of short-term memory as this could

increase ecological validity. This experiment could have been conducted offline, this would

ensure that confounding variables like background sound, internet connection, and copying

can be controlled.

Therefore, it can be concluded for our study that the results were statistically

significant indicating that short-term memory can only be held for a period of 15-30 seconds

unless it is rehearsed. The null hypothesis can be rejected because there was a significant

decrease in the number of trigrams recalled by the participants when the duration of the

retention time was increased from 3 to 18 seconds.

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Works cited

Atkinson, RC and Shiffrin, RM. “Human memory: A proposed system and its control

processes”. Stanford University and Stanford, California, 2008,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0079742108604223. Accessed

on June 2021

“Biases in psychological research”. Boundless Psychology,

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/bias-in-

psychological-research/. Accessed in June 2021

Brown, J. “Distortions in Immediate Memory.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental

Psychology, vol. 8, no. 3, July 1956, pp. 134–139, doi:10.1080/17470215608416812.

Dixon, Travis. “Evaluating Psychological Studies (Quantitative).” IB psychology,

2016, https://www.themantic-education.com/ibpsych/2016/10/26/evaluating-

psychological-studies-quantitative/. Accessed on August 2021

Jean, Margaret and Peterson. “Journal of Experimental Psychology Short-term

Retention of Individual Verbal Items.” (1959). Accessed in January 2021

Mcleod, Saul. “Duration of Short-term Memory Experiment - Peterson and

Peterson.” Simply Psychology, 2020, https://www.simplypsychology.org/peterson-

peterson.html. Accessed in August 2021

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Ricker, Timothy J et al. “Decay theory of immediate memory: From Brown (1958) to

today (2014).” Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) vol. 69,10

(2016): 1969-95. doi:10.1080/17470218.2014.914546. Accessed in August 2021

Swash, Laura. “Peterson & Peterson”. Psychology Sorted, 2018

https://psychologysorted.blog/tag/peterson-peterson/. Accessed on April 2021

“The Multi-Store Model of Memory”. Student psychology Hub, 2021

https://www.psychologyhub.co.uk/the-multi-store-model-of-memory/. Accessed on

October 2021

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Appendix 1

Standardized instructions

Good Afternoon, thank you for joining us today.

● Today we are going to conduct a simple psychology experiment on investigating short

term memory. We are going to show five trigrams on a ppt which are meaningless

syllabus.

● Each trigram will be presented for a duration of 2 seconds.

● These need to be recalled after certain intervals of time.

● During this time interval you will be given a filler activity and when this time is up

the screen will turn red and you will be given 1 minute to write the trigrams that you

can remember.

● You can then email a picture of it

● While the PPT is being presented we request you to keep your hands visible to the

camera so that we know no one is writing while PPT is being presented.

● Please make sure that you have a pen and a paper and that you are sitting in a quiet

room.

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Appendix 2

Consent letter:

Dear participant,

Please sign this with your name on the line below if you are willing to participate. We are

conducting a simple study to investigate short-term memory. We also need to inform you that

your results will remain anonymous and you have the right to withdraw from the experiment

at any time. You will also be informed about the overall result of our experiment and will not

be caused any physical or mental harm during the conduction of the experiment.

Name:_____

Age:______

Gender:____

Signature:______

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Appendix 3

Debriefing notes

We would like to thank you for participating in our study. This experiment was based on the

working memory model and decay theory which suggests that as the time interval increases,

the number of trigrams recalled would be lesser. The experiment is a simple replication of the

Peterson and Peterson experiment. The Peterson and Peterson experiment was conducted in

1959 and the aim of it was to investigate the duration of short term memory. Short term

memory refers to the system that holds limited amounts for information for a short duration

of time.

In our study participants had time intervals where you were given a distractor task (to recall

backwards from a specific number to prevent rehearsal or practice of the trigrams)

The findings of this study were really interesting. When we looked at the duration of

retention, it showed that as the time of retention increased from 3 to 18 seconds , the number

of trigrams recalled were lesser . Our findings are supported by the fact that our independent

variable, the time interval had an effect on the dependent variable, the number of trigrams

recalled.

These results are consistent with the Peterson and Peterson study. This is a completely

voluntary experiment. Your results are kept completely confidential but in case you would

like to withdraw your results at any time you can email either of us and we will not include

your results in our reports.

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Appendix 4

List of trigrams

With 3 seconds interval

1. HYT

2. JOK

3. DET

4. SQU

5. KPQ

With 18 seconds interval

1. PST

2. MIO

3. HQP

4. LML

5. BUD

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Appendix 5

Data collection

Participant 1 1 1
Participant 2 4 1
Participant 3 4 0
Participant 4 4 1
Participant 5 3 1
Participant 6 3 3
Participant 7 2 2
Participant 8 4 1
Participant 9 4 0
Participant 10 3 1
Participant 11 3 0
Participant 12 4 1
Participant 13 4 2
Participant 14 3 2
Participant 15 4 2
Participant 16 4 1
Participant 17 5 2
Participant 18 4 3
Participant 19 3 1
Participant 20 4 2

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Appendix 6

Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test

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