The initial hypothesis made by the experimenters was that information which is not constantly

rehearsed is lost almost immediately. The aim of the study was to investigate the duration of
short term memory. More precisely in order to evaluate the hypothesis a lab experiment was
conducted in which 24 psychology students were tested. The participants were asked to recall
trigrams consisting of consonant syllables. These trigrams were presented one at a time and
each had to be memorized and recalled after intervals of 3,6,9,12,15,18 seconds. Trigrams
weren’t the same. After observing the trigram the participants were asked to count backwards
from a specific random number until they saw a red light when they must have recalled the
trigram. The procedure was repeated six times where each time participants had a different
number of seconds available to recall. Results provided evidence that the longer time available
to the student for recalling the less he was able to remember the trigram correctly.
Consequently, the majority of students performed excellently in the 3 seconds but only a few
achieved to remember the trigram after 18 seconds. Lastly the initial hypothesis of Peterson and
Peterson was correct since through the experiment it was proved that short term memory has a
limited duration.