Brown/Peterson & Peterson Technique
What is the Brown/Peterson & Peterson technique?
A method used to test how long information can be held in working memory without rehearsal.
What is the serial position effect?
A U-shaped relationship between item position and recall probability.
What is working memory?
Memory in this technique is described as very fragile and easily lost.
What are three unrelated words?
Participants are asked to remember items such as these.
What is the primacy effect?
Better recall for items at the beginning of a list.
What is 15–20 seconds?
Information is often forgotten after delays of this many seconds.
What is three?
Participants are often asked to count backwards by this number to prevent rehearsal.
What is the recency effect?
Better recall for items at the end of a list.
What is rehearsal?
Forgetting occurs mainly because this process is blocked.
What is rehearsal prevention?
This counting task prevents information from being silently repeated.
What are recent items?
Items remembered best because they were still in short-term memory.
What is interference from the distracting task?
This best explains why recall drops rapidly in Brown/Peterson experiments.
What is recall?
After a short delay, participants are asked to do this with the original items.
What are early items?
Items remembered best because they received more rehearsal.
What is forgotten?
Material held for less than a minute is frequently this.