The aim of my study was to repeat the work of Peterson and Peterson on the duration of short-term memory between males and females aged 17-18. I took a random sample of 16 pupils from Egglescliffe Sixth Form 8 males and 8 females. They were all asked to complete the Brown-Peterson technique. The statistics used for analyzing the results was Chi-square. The recall sheets showed more females recalled correctly than males, and that the duration of STM is 18 seconds. This accepts my alternative hypothesis and suggests that Peterson and Peterson's findings still hold true today.

Introduction

Peterson and Peterson (1959) demonstrated the duration of STM using a method that became known as the Brown-Peterson technique. Participants were shown a trigram of 3 consonants e.g. DRS, GTH. They were then asked to recall the trigrams either after 3,6,9,12,15 or 18 seconds. Participants were given an interference task before they were asked to recall the trigrams...